Are You Resistance Training Too Much?

Level 3: Pro

Welcome Players! The days of spending 3 hours or more in the weight room pumping iron are long gone for everyone except bodybuilders. While most people can certainly benefit from strength training, most athletes are probably resistance training too much. Their time could be much more wisely spent balanced between training to strengthen their weaknesses and optimize their strengths. Let’s explore a perspective where the most important part about athletics is winning with skill.

Contents:

• Benefits of Resistance Training

• Strength Training for Sport

• Attributes or Improvement?

• Balancing Act

• Skill >

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Benefits of Resistance Training

The research to support resistance training is plentiful and clear: it is essential for diminishing the effects of aging on the musculoskeletal system and has immense ergogenic benefits for physical performance of any kind.

Health-based considerations include:

• Lowers all-cause mortality - even more if combined with aerobic exercise

• Can lower blood pressure

• Reduction in inflammatory markers

• Improvements in psychological well-being

• Improve workplace efficiency

• Increases muscle mass - helps reduce falls and osteoporosis / sarcopenia in elderly

• Improvements in strength in older adults leads to improved movement quality and capability

This is by no means an exhaustive list, yet the significant advantages stand out markedly.

Everyone should be incorporating resistance training in some capacity. Whether old, young, or anywhere in between resistance training has the potential to significantly improve health status and acts as an important buffer against the functional decline of aging.

Strength Training for Sport

The benefits of resistance training on health markers are important, but resistance training as a means of sport performance enhancement are absolutely essential.

Resistance training, especially when done for strength:

• increases muscle mass

• increases power

• increases stability

• can improve muscular endurance

• can reduce muscular imbalances / dysfunctions

• improves kinesthetic awareness (knowing where your body is at in space)

There is not a single sport that I can think of whose athletes could not benefit from regimented resistance exercise. Every athlete, of any skill level or age group (yes, including babies¹), should be resistance training in some form or fashion.

There is unanimous conclusion and research to support consistent resistance training. The next discussion then, is how much?

Dose-Dependent Response

There are lots of independent variables to consider when asking the question, “How much resistance training is right for me?”

In no particular order:

1. Training age (experience)

2. Goal

3. Volume

4. Frequency

5. Exercise splits (upper body/lower body/full body, etc)

We know that for untrained individuals, resistance training 2-3x week is all that’s necessary to get significant changes in health markers as noted above.

For highly trained individuals looking to increase muscle hypertrophy, both the frequency and volume needs to be much larger; closer to 5-6 days a week with greater amounts of sets × reps.

The title of this study puts it quite aptly: High-Frequency Resistance Training Is Not More Effective Than Low-Frequency Resistance Training in Increasing Muscle Mass and Strength in Well-Trained Men.

Of course there is room for a much larger nuanced discussion that is dependent on the specific population you’re talking about. This is what makes up the context. What I’m talking about is in general, not your specific situation.

For most people, resistance training benefits are optimized at 3 days per week. Let me explain. ⬇️

Attributes or Improvement?

I wrote two articles on the purpose of training, and how to intelligently use training to achieve a desired outcome or adaptation. You can read them here ➡️ Health vs. Performance and Levels of Physical Activity: Are You Exercising or Training?

A mistake I often see in most individuals’ approach to performance improvement is the over-emphasis on training and lack of emphasis on actual performance improvement.

Training is a tool that can and should be leveraged to reconcile performance improvements in whatever the sport or goal is. If you’re a golfer, the goal is to shoot a lower score. If you’re a basketball player, the goal is to be more efficient at scoring, defending, or contributing to a team victory. A runner’s goal is to run faster (or farther) without injury or negative consequence.

We need to be careful not to lose sight of what the goal is.

The goal is not to be bigger, faster, stronger all the time. A common trap that amateurs or inexperienced competitors can fall in to is using a training modality as a crutch to compensate for poor skill or performance.

Remember, the goal is to perform better, not be stronger, faster, more powerful, etc.

While having those attributes can certainly help you perform depending on the context, there must always be a filter where you say, “Does improving attribute X actually result in improved performance based on my goal?” or is there a bias, assumption, misconception, or faulty truth hidden in the pursuit of that improvement?

Balancing Act

With this in mind we can re-evaluate how we use resistance training to augment performance.

We must be cognizant that for almost all competitive levels, the best way to improve at a sport or task is to practice that sport or task! All other training modalities are secondary to the primary sport.

Beginner

For the beginner or below-average competitor, resistance training is best at a frequency of two times a week. This is the lower limit of what’s necessary to elicit positive adaptations for an un-trained individual. It allows for maximal time spent in sport practice and does not require extensive commitment. With even a moderately well-structured program 2 resistance training sessions a week should take up 2-2.5 hours of time MAX.

Coaches note: 1 day a week isn’t a proposition for real improvement. One exposure every seven days is not enough to build meaningful gains in a reasonable amount of time regardless of task or skill. It is useful, however, in starting to build a positive habit and learn how to manage the logistics of practicing. Many success stories were had from one-day-a-week turning into 2+ days a week.

Intermediate

For the average competitor of intermediate skill level, resistance training is probably best completed 3-4x / week. The more training experience an individual has the more they will be able to tolerate repeated resistance training sessions without consequential soreness that would limit sport practice.

The average skill level also means they are in the most-contested bracket by volume of competitors - there are a LOT of people who are in the same position. Those that put in the “extra” work, ie. resistance training outside of sport practice, are likely to gain an edge on the field who are not engaging in such practices.

This stage of competitor is in the purgatory zone of skill where they have practiced enough to pass beginner but have yet to come close to skill mastery. They have many more hours of practice to endure without significant improvement, and as such are looking to other variables to improve to encourage a carry over to improvements in performance.

Advanced

And finally we have the advanced competitor, the elite athlete, the professional.

This person is in the top percentile of their sport and have logged thousands of hours of practice time. They have advantages in their game, some weaknesses, superior strategical intelligence and meet all physical requirements² for performance.

They must continue to practice to maintain their skillful edge, but do not require as much practice time due to their experience. This allows them an opportunity no other skill level of athlete has - the ability to train other variables outside of sport practice with the sole intention of improving performance.

Roger Federerer, Tom Brady, Lebron James

The elite athlete, and their team, now have an important decision to make.

How should they spend their training time? What attributes, or methodologies, will bring about the greatest impact to their performance with the lowest risk of negative consequences?

The above question is the quintessential critique as to why most people may be resistance-training too much.

Is resistance training any more than proven necessary more beneficial to improvements in athlete performance compared to utilizing that time on training other attributes or with other modalities?

Skill >

For any sport, at any level, skill is the single most important performance factor.

The more physical in nature or contact-based the sport, of course the more skill can be influenced by those attributes, yet to what degree I do not think we can say. Martial Arts, Mixed Martial Arts, Wrestling, Sumo, Boxing, etc.

Yet for all others, how you do something is the greatest equalizer.

The quarterback with the strongest arm isn’t the best.

LeBron James doesn’t have the highest vertical jump in the NBA.

The best players at those positions are those with the best skill.

The quarterback can make the best decisions on who to throw to and then execute it.

LeBron has a unique combination of athletic ability, sport IQ, and decision making that made him the best player in the league for many years.

So when talking about performance, let’s not always just jump to the conclusion that elite athletes need to resistance train, or strength train, or do any specific intervention on a certain exposure frequency when in reality, they need to identify their performance needs and provide the exposures that give them the desired adaptation.

It’s why some american football linemen report increases in performance from taking ballet classes (footwork), why soccer players benefit from pilates (control), why quarterbacks from yoga (mobility).

Each contains a context about achieving an adaptation from a stimulus.

If we were to take this approach, how often would you fill in the blank with resistance training.

And if you do utilize resistance training, would you have it consist of the majority of the trainable hours in a program?

Let’s say you play tennis. You want to train to get better at tennis. You have 4 trainable hours a week.

Do you spend them:

1. Playing tennis

2. Resistance training

Playing tennis of course! But that example is too easy.

Let’s say you have 10 trainable hours a week. You train 5/7 days for 2 hours each, sometimes broken up into two 1-hour sessions.

What’s the balance between devoting time towards playing tennis, or the available time now to resistance train.

I don’t think the answer is as obvious now. Nor should it be!

That’s why we need to apply some context. YOU are the context!

Is your skill level comparable to the competition or on par for your effort, or is your physical capacity the limiting factor?

Let’s continue the tennis example, if you have never played tennis before, or can’t return volley consistently, resistance training isn’t going to help much. Whereas if you can win volleys but you have a slow serve that gets picked apart, well then resistance training to improve ball speed would be very helpful!

And now with that context we can make a much more accurate estimation of the hours to dedicate to each modality. Practice, or resistance train.

And then we must try it, test it, tweak it, tune it. This is the nature of performance.

Always seeking to improve.

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My message here is that you should not heed broad-stroke, generic advice or recommendations. The context of YOU, your life, goals, and characteristics will always be a more important consideration than blanket recommendations for health and performance. You should learn how to identify these things, and then to seek out information that applies specifically to you.

You should put thought and consideration into how you prepare your body for a physical goal. Health is far too precious to leave to chance or luck. Make good decisions, plan to succeed, and live with vigor.

So, some of you may be resistance training too much, or some too little. But only you will know.

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Disclaimer: This is not medical advice. The content is purely educational in nature and should be filtered through ones own lens of common sense and applicability.

Want to leave a comment or question? Let’s start a discussion 👇

1. I hope the sarcasm is evident, if not. Kidding!

2. Notice the use of the phrasing “meet requirements”. This is to say that they just have the absolute minimum amount of physical ability to create their movement successfully, but not necessarily optimized. Many professional athletes meet the requirements but do not meet the maximum amount of potential. This is the balancing act between which is more important: Performance of the sport/task, or performance of the physical body?