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- The American College of Sports Medicine released its latest strength training guidelines.
- The biggest takeaway: Many forms of resistance training can improve muscle strength, size, and power.
- You can still optimize your workouts for your goals, but the most important factor is consistency.
The American College of Sports Medicine recently released new resistance training guidelines—its first update in 17 years. Drawing from 137 systematic reviews including more than 30,000 participants, the recommendations reinforce that resistance training supports muscle strength, size, and power—and reveal how to optimize your workouts for the best results. Here are five takeaways to know.
1. Consistency Matters More Than Having the “Perfect” Workout
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the new guidelines is that there's no "perfect" training program. You can see results from a wide range of approaches—such as gym sessions, body weight workouts, and resistance band exercises—and the best routine is the one you'll stick with.
"The biggest benefit often comes when people go from doing no resistance training to doing some, and then keep doing it consistently," Stuart Phillips, PhD, FACSM, an author of the new guidelines and professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University, told Health.
What's more, the data suggest that many factors people tend to fixate on, like equipment type, set structure, and exercise order, don't consistently influence outcomes. "Many of the details people obsess over matter less than expected," Phillips added.
That finding may be reassuring for the many people who are intimidated by strength training or don't know where to start, said Shane Davis, MD, a sports medicine physician at Tufts Medical Center who was not involved in the guidelines.
2. You Don’t Need to Train to Failure to Get Stronger
Another unnecessary training tactic, according to the new guidelines: lifting to momentary muscle failure. That's the feeling at the end of the set when your muscles are too exhausted to perform another rep.
The authors wanted to address this concept directly because it still gets lots of attention, Phillips said, and the evidence showed that training to failure did not consistently improve strength, muscle size, or power. People "do not need to push every set to the absolute limit to make progress," Phillips explained.
Davis agreed, adding that you can still see gains if you stop when you still have "a few reps left in the reserve."
Lifting to failure may even be risky for certain populations, such as older adults, the authors wrote. There's a higher risk of blood vessel damage and injury from poor form at the point of failure, Davis told Health.
3. Your Goals Should Guide How You Lift
So what should you actually focus on if you want to optimize your lifting sessions? That depends on your goals, the new guidelines say.
If you're looking to build strength, lift heavier loads for two to three sets per exercise. "You want to lift really heavy early on in your training session," Davis said. When selecting your weight, shoot for 80% of your one-rep maximum.
If your goal is muscle bulk or definition (known as hypertrophy), try to complete more sets—about 10 per muscle group—throughout the week, even if your weights aren't as heavy.
The guidelines also suggest focusing on the lengthening (eccentric) phase of the movement for hypertrophy. “If you think of a biceps curl, it’s not on the way up. It’s slow on the way down," Davis explained.
To boost power, a combination of both strength and speed, use moderate loads and move the weight as quickly as possible during the lifting (concentric) phase of the movement. The weight should be between 30% to 70% of your one-rep max.
4. You Only Need 2 Strength-Training Sessions a Week
You don't have to live at the gym to see results. The new guidelines recommend doing resistance training at least two days a week.
That's likely because your muscles need time to recover, Davis said. Resistance training actually causes short-term damage to muscle fibers, he explained. You have to give those muscles a break—and get proper sleep and nutrition—to rebuild the fibers and get stronger.
"Doing seven days of bicep curls a week—it probably doesn’t lead to nearly as good of gains as doing it less frequently with periods of rest," Davis said, also noting that inadequate recovery increases injury risk. "It is not necessarily always a 'more is better' type of thing.”
For more advanced lifters who want to add extra strength-training sessions, Davis recommends at least one day off before working the same muscle group again.
5. You Don’t Need to Constantly Increase Weight to See Benefits
A core tenet of strength training is that as you get stronger, you need to make your workouts more difficult to continue to see results. This concept is called progressive overload, and it can be achieved by gradually upping the weight, repetitions, or frequency of your workouts over time.
The guidelines state that progressive overload still matters and is especially important for long-term progress. But the data revealed that you can still benefit without progression.
"People can get meaningful benefits from resistance training without overcomplicating things," Phillips said. "Progression is more important for ongoing optimization than for getting initial benefits."
