Testing your muscular strength and endurance before beginning a resistance training program can aid in evaluating the effectiveness of your program. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, or ACSM, resistance training can improve or maintain bone mass, glucose tolerance and the integrity of tendons and ligaments as well as decrease body fat. Understanding testing and training procedures will assist you in reaching your strength training goals.
Testing Requirements
Before performing any muscle testing you want to make sure that you have had enough rest and recovery. It should be at least 48 hours or more after your last strength training workout and you should have obtained at least 6 to 8 hours of sleep. If you are experiencing any muscular soreness wait until it is gone before testing. Regarding sequence, strength tests should be performed before endurance tests, according to the National Strength and Conditioning Association, or NSCA.
Muscular Strength
A one-repetition-maximum test of a bench press or back squat measures strength. You will need 1 to 2 people to act as spotters and help you perform the tests with proper technique. Warm-up performing 5 to 10 repetitions at a light to moderate load of the exercise you will be evaluating. Rest one minute. Increase the weight to a resistance that will allow you to complete 3 to 5 repetitions. Rest for 2 minutes. Increase the weight and perform only 2 to 3 repetitions. Rest 2 to 4 minutes. Increase the weight and attempt a resistance that allows you to perform one repetition. If you do more than one, rest 2 to 4 minutes and attempt it again after increasing the weight. This is your maximal strength for upper or lower body.
Muscular Endurance
Take adequate rest time before attempting endurance tests. Push-ups and partial curl-ups or crunches are common muscular endurance tests. Push-ups with good form are done until failure at a steady pace, according to ACSM procedures. The partial curl-up requires a metronome that will pace you for the duration of the exercise. Keeping pace, you will perform the most curl-ups you can, or up to 75.
General Recommendations
In general ACSM recommends resistance training 2 to 3 days per week with 48 hours rest between sessions for recovery. For those that are new to strength training, one set of 8 to 12 repetitions is adequate, performing one exercise for each major muscle group. This is enough to promote increases in your muscular fitness.
Specific Recommendations
Athletes and experienced exercisers may need to change their strength training based on goals and performance. NSCA recommends 2 to 6 sets for 6 or fewer repetitions to improve strength. To improve muscular endurance perform 12 or more repetitions for 2 to 3 sets. Regardless of your goal, you need to choose a weight that challenges you and progressively increase it so that you continue to see improvement and avoid plateau. For strength training choose a weight that is at least 85 percent of your one repetition maximum and for endurance no more than 67 percent of your 1RM.
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