Improve Your Muscular Strength and Definition

Building muscular strength will help you become better able to lift and move weights and increase your sports performance and total body functioning. Daily tasks, including opening those pesky pickle jars, will become easier once you are stronger.

The size of your muscle fibers and the ability of nerves to activate muscle fibers is related to muscle strength and measured during muscular contraction. Building muscular strength helps with body alignment, making everyday actions easier while increasing metabolism.

What Is Muscular Strength?

Muscular strength refers to the force a muscle can produce with a single maximal effort. Muscular definition is the visual aspect when muscle shape is visible through the skin and underlying body fat.

You might think that muscular strength is how strong you are: How much weight you can carry, how many pounds you can lift at the gym, or how many push-ups you can do during a workout. But the true definition of muscular strength is a little more complicated.

According to the American Council on Exercise (ACE), muscular strength is the ability to generate maximal muscle force while performing a particular exercise. Other factors affect how strong you are and how much strength you have to complete daily chores or exercises. ACE provides definitions for these terms that are related to muscular strength:

• Muscular endurance: The ability to produce and sustain muscle force over a certain period.
• Muscular power: The ability to generate enough force to move weight in the shortest time possible.

For example, the number of push-ups you can do in one minute depends on your muscular strength, power, and endurance.

What happens in your body to produce the effect of strength relies on several factors. One component is muscle size and ratio of fast- and slow-twitch fibers in that muscle.

Neural connection is critical, as the motor neurons in muscles coordinate their firing they signal muscle fibers to contract simultaneously. Strength also relies on muscles having solid support for the movement of joints, including the health of joints, bones, ligaments, and tendons.

Benefits of Muscular Strength

When you improve muscular strength and definition, you enjoy many benefits, especially if you are trying to lose weight—and you don't have to be an expert bodybuilder to take advantage of them. Strength training provides benefits for exercisers of all levels, such as:

• Building more lean muscle mass
• Increasing metabolism
• Reducing body-fat percentage
• Moving through daily activities more easily
• Improving sports performance
• Burning more calories, even while at rest
• Enhancing thinking processes
• Increasing self-esteem
• Protecting against major diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease
• Reducing pain
• Encouraging independence with age, such as by improving balance and stability
• Preventing both acute and overuse injuries

Measuring Muscular Strength

The one-repetition maximum (1RM) test is standard to measure muscle strength. During a 1RM test, an exerciser performs one repetition of a single exercise to see how much weight they can lift using the correct technique. There is a protocol to conduct this test, usually done with the bench press for upper-body strength and the leg press for lower-body strength.

In physical therapy, a therapist may measure a client's muscular strength in two ways. In manual muscle testing, the client resists the pressure exerted by the therapist to push a body part (such as your arm) in a specific direction. This is graded on a five-point scale. A dynamometer device can also be used, with the client pressing on it to exert a force measured in pounds or kilograms.

Exercise to Improve Strength and Definition

The best way to build muscular strength is to have a resistance-training plan. Some call it strength training or "weightlifting," but you don't have to lift weights to improve your muscles. You can perform simple bodyweight exercises for muscular strength or use equipment like a rowing machine.

Strength training improves both the size of your muscle fibers and the ability of your nerves to communicate with the muscles. So as your muscles get bigger with resistance training (muscle hypertrophy), they also become more coordinated to perform movements requiring strength.

Exercises that can help improve strength and definition include:

• Squats: Squats help build your quads (thighs) and glutes (buttocks). This makes walking or running easier, lifting heavy things, and going up and down stairs.
• Lunges: This exercise strengthens your hamstrings and the muscles on the back of your upper leg. Stronger hamstrings help you run faster while providing more stability to your knee joints.
• Biceps curls: Your biceps are the muscles on the front of your upper arms. Strong biceps means easily performing everyday activities like carrying groceries and picking up your kids or grandkids.
• Push-ups: Push-ups work many muscles in your upper body, including your chest, back, and arms. This exercise prepares you for activities like pushing a heavy grocery cart or stroller.
• Planks: A plank also works your upper body while strengthening your core muscles at the same time. A stronger core means better posture and improved balance and mobility.
• Abdominal crunches: The crunch also builds strength in your midsection and back, which some research has found may help ease chronic lower back pain.

Precautions

Taking these steps can help make your muscle-building sessions safer and injury-free:

• Use proper form throughout the entire exercise, from beginning to end.
• Ensure weights are heavy enough to provide resistance but light enough to lift them without sacrificing form.
• Increase your resistance slowly as you get stronger.
• Give yourself rest days so your muscles can recover between workouts. A protein drink can also help.
• Eat enough protein (lean meats, dairy, nuts, and seeds) as this is the building block of muscle.

A Word From Verywell

Exercise of any kind is essential for good health and for maintaining a healthy body weight. Challenging your muscles regularly helps them grow bigger and increases your muscular strength.

When you do strength or resistance training two to three times per week, you build strong muscles to stand taller, burn more calories, and improve the quality of your daily activities and movement. And you can do them inside or outside the gym.

Incorporate muscle-strengthening activities into your everyday routine by doing squats when you pick up laundry off the floor or lunges when moving from one room to the next. It all adds up, giving you stronger muscles as a result.