Build Superhuman Strength With 10 Strategies That Stand the Test of Time

These expert tips are everything you need to get stronger.

Feb 23, 2025 - 05:24

Build Superhuman Strength With 10 Strategies That Stand the Test of Time

Strength is the foundation of everyday acts of athleticism (like hitting a 400-yard drive in golf) and not-so-human feats (like strongman Hafthor Björnsson's 925-pound deadlift). Strength isn't limited to muscle size and capacity. When you get stronger, you're better able to lose weight, run faster, and hit harder. This is why we've got 10 no-frills tips on how to build strength that will help make everything in your life feel just a little bit easier—and lighter.

How Long Does It Take to Build Strength?

Building strength doesn't take long. With consistent effort that includes pushing yourself and challenging your limits every week, you can see pretty significant strength gains in as little as two to four weeks.

In fact, according to research published in Frontiers in Physiology, by your second and third week of regular strength training sessions (say, three or four per week), your body will show signs of neural adaptations—changes at the nervous system level—that will make lifting feel easier, allowing you to lift much more weight in fairly short order. This is particularly true when you train with heavier loads that recruit more motor units, which your nervous system has to synchronize, the study shows.

Essentially, your brain learns to send the proper signals to your muscles. These signals allow you to perform the exercise with better skill and less of the natural inhibition your body has when it's not used to generating a lot of force (a natural injury protection mechanism), according to the European Journal of Applied Physiology. This translates to bigger, more efficient lifts. Keep lifting, and you'll get better and stronger, even before you see any muscle growth or physical changes.

Over time, neural and physical adaptations combine to power you towards bigger and bigger lifts. Much of what it takes to push and pull large amounts of weight for the big five lifts (and any strength exercise) is technique. So, practice, practice, practice.

Of course, your response to training won't be like your gymmate's response, as everyone will gain strength in their own timeframe. Other factors that can influence your gains include nutrition, sleep, recovery, and those pesky genetics.

What Are Strength Goals?

Strength goals center around increasing your ability to lift heavier weights. You can create goals for specific lifts, breaking them down into short term goals based on your current abilities. Don't get too ambitious right away—it'll be hard to judge what you'll be able to do long term.

Examples of strength goals could be completing a certain number of reps for squats with a set weight or being able to do a certain number of pullups, increasing the weight you can lift on a deadlift for a 1-rep max or set of 5, being able to squat your body weight or even just a goal of improving technique for your lifts.

Expert Tips on How to Build Strength

1. Own the "Big 5"

Build strength by focusing on the big five lifts
James Michelfelder

The squat, deadlift, bench press, shoulder press, and pullup are the best strength-training exercises, period. Other compound movements like rows, lunges, pushups, and good mornings are great moves, too, but don't make them the focus of your workout. They can be assistance lifts to complement the major lifts.

Compound movements recruit more motor units and activate more muscles, which can also lead to increased hormonal and protein synthesis responses that boost your strength gains, studies show.

2. Prioritize Barbells

Use barbells to get stronger
Jorg Badura

Forget all the fad equipment. The barbell is king, the dumbbell is queen, and everything else is a court jester. They may have their place, but they're not essential. Start your workouts with barbell exercises, such as the "big five," as described above.

Barbells let you load a lot of weight, and lifting heavy is the first step toward getting stronger. Though research has shown similar gains using dumbbells or barbells, it is arguably much easier to load a heavy barbell than it is to wield massive dumbbells to train in low rep ranges required to build strength.

Moreover, research published in the Journal of Sports Science & Medicine found that using a barbell for bench presses caused higher muscle activation for the chest, front delts, and triceps than using a dumbbell for flyes.

Once your heaviest strength exercises are out of the way, you can move on to dumbbell and bodyweight training.

3. Keep It Simple

Some trainers make their clients lift with a certain rep speed, like three seconds up, one second down. That's great for advanced lifters, but if you're just starting out, know this: There's no need to count anything but reps during a set.

Simply focus on raising and lowering your weights in a controlled manner, pausing for a one-second count at the top of the lift. Using an arbitrary tempo can lessen tension on your muscles or force you to use varying amounts of weight, slowing your progress. The only way to be sure you're getting stronger is if your loads consistently increase.

4. Maintain a Log

Write down your exercises, sets, reps, and the fate of each workout. Keep track of your best lifts and the most reps you've done with a certain weight on an exercise. Constantly strive to improve those numbers.

5. Don't Overdo It

Practicing balance is part of learning how to get stronger.
James Michelfelder

Try to stick to three or four lifts per workout. Keeping your workouts short helps you take advantage of hormonal surges. Though a meta-analysis in Sports Medicine-Open found that so long as you perform enough volume, the number of workouts per week you do doesn't matter too much. However, when you do too many exercises in a session, at least some get done half-assed.

All you need is one main lift per workout (one of the big four), one or two assistance lifts (for keeping the body in balance and further strengthening the muscles that perform the main lift), then core or specialty work at the end. Doing any more lessens your results and could lead to overtraining.

The European College of Sport Science and the American College of Sports Medicine say to watch for signs of fatigue, mood changes, and performance decline. Back off the intensity if you sense your body is not recovering and you're heading into this territory.

6. Try Sets of 5

You should rotate many different rep ranges in your workouts, but sets of 5 seem to offer the best blend of muscle size and strength gains. If you're pushing through one of the big five moves during strength training, you'll find that your form often breaks down after 5 reps anyway.

In terms of set number, the common range is between 3 and 12. A literature review of research published in Research Developments in Medicine and Medical Science found that more than 3 sets induce greater protein synthesis that leads to muscle and strength gains. Likewise, one clinical trial published in Neuro Endocrinology Letters shows that 6 sets may be the optimal number for inducing growth hormone and testosterone levels after your workout, which can increase muscle and strength gains.

7. Add Weight Slowly

The main reason people plateau and stop gaining strength is that they go too heavy for too long. Abandon your ego and do your main lifts using 10 percent less than the most weight you can lift for the given rep range. Increase the weight each session—but by no more than 10 pounds—and stick with the same lifts. You'll rarely plateau again.

In fact, you can choose between adding reps or weight in order to progress your workouts, according to research published in PeerJ Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation. So, if you're getting stuck at a certain weight or can't fathom loading on more plates, try adding an extra rep or two instead.

8. Build Your Work Capacity

Build your work capacity with hill running

Research shows that high-intensity interval training is an optimal way to build your work capacity, which will improve your ability to lift more powerfully. Plus, cardio is a must if you want to be lean and healthy, but too much long-distance running or cycling increases levels of hormones that break down muscle tissue.

To get stronger and build your work capacity and VO2 max, do cardio in short, intense bursts. Go to a moderately steep hill and sprint to the top, then walk back down.

When you're ready, sprint again. In your first workout, do only half as many sprints as you think you can. In your next workout, do two more sprints than you did the first time. Continue adding two sprints to your workouts until you can't improve anymore. Then, do sets of sprints.

9. Balance Your Strength Training

Balance your training and your muscle groups
Xavier Wallach

Whatever you do for one side of the body, you must do for the other side. Follow that rule in your workouts, and you should be able to avoid injury and muscle imbalances. If you're doing squats (mainly a quad exercise), also do Romanian deadlifts (which hit the hamstrings hard). Your chest exercises should be balanced with back-training lifts.

You don't necessarily have to do your balance work in the same session, but it should be done in the same week. In general, follow a two-to-one ratio between your pulling and pushing movements. So if you bench-press on Monday (and most of the world seems to), you can do chinups on Tuesday and bent-over lateral raises on Thursday, for example. Every other pressing exercise you do should follow this formula.

10. Perfect Your Form

You may think you know how to perform the big four, but you could probably get more out of them. Here are some quick pointers for each one.

Squat: Begin the squat by pushing your hips back as far as you can. Keep your lower back arched, and you should feel a stretch in your hamstrings. When your hips are bent, begin bending your knees and squatting low. This is what you need to squat maximal weight.

Deadlift: Use the same stance you would to perform a jump — your legs should be narrowly placed. When you bend down to grab the bar, keep your hips down and your back straight, with your shoulders directly over your knees.

Bench Press: Start with your head off the bench. Keeping your feet steady, grab the bar and pull your body up off the bench and forward so that when your butt comes down on the bench, your lower back is very arched. Squeeze your shoulder blades together. Your range of motion should be significantly shorter for stronger pressing.

Shoulder press: Flare your lats when the bar is at shoulder level. It will allow you to use more weight.

11. Add Bands

Add bands to bust through strength plateaus
James Michelfelder

Adding a resistance band to the bar you're lifting is a smart way to crush strength plateaus and challenge your range of motion from a different perspective. Attaching a band to a barbell means the resistance will increase as the band stretches further along in your rep. That makes your "lockout" the hardest part but leaves the first half virtually unaffected.

Anchor the bands with a heavy weight or dumbbell on the floor. To ensure tension throughout the lift, loop the band around the end of the bar multiple times until it's short enough to be tight at the bottom of the move. This works well for the bench press, squats, seated chest presses (anchor the bands behind you), and deadlifts.

12. Try Paused Reps

Add pauses to your reps to help build strength
James Michelfelder & Therese Sommerseth

Removing the momentum from any exercise instantly boosts the difficulty. A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning found that using rest-pause reps led to greater muscle growth in the thighs and improved muscular endurance compared to traditional straight sets. Similar research findings have shown greater strength and hypertrophy gains from using pause reps.

Since you’re no longer able to transfer force by using your muscle reflex (like bouncing out of the bottom of a squat), each rep almost feels like its own set, and moving the weight asks more of your muscles. Because of this, it’s best to decrease the weight by at least 15 percent for the same rep range you’re used to lifting. Using this method for the big compound movements like squats, bench presses, and overhead presses will deliver huge benefits.

One note of caution: Be sure to control the descent during pause reps. Lifting with tightness in both directions will ensure your safety.

13. Slow Your Negative Reps

Slow down the eccentric to cause more muscle fiber damage and build strength
Pavel Ythjall

Applying an exaggerated negative phase to your reps will not only make the lighter weight feel heavy, but it will also make your strongest muscle fibers work harder than they ever have (so, slowing down when you lower into a squat or bring the bar down to your chest for a bench press).

According to science, the eccentric phase of a lift causes more muscle damage, which can lead to even more increases in gains, so long as you recover properly.

If you’ve only focused on the contraction and “lifting” phase of a rep, slow negatives can hit like a brick wall the first time you try them and be quite the humbling experience. Try them for exercises like squats, bench presses, and overhead presses. Your goal: A four-second negative rep before exploding to the top.

14. Scale Up to 1.5 Reps

Adding a sneaky half rep to your full rep increases the time under tension for the muscle, which research shows can lead to greater muscle and strength gains.

Doing one-and-a-half reps works well for push movements. For example, doing a squat, bench press, or overhead press with 1.5 reps creates 50 percent more time under tension and also doubles down on one muscle group as a byproduct (a set of 8 reps of 1.5s will make the chest feel like it did 16 reps). Follow these steps for a successful 1.5 rep:

Unrack the weight and lower slowly.
From the bottom position, explode only to the halfway point of a full extension.
Lower the weight to the bottom of the rep again.
Finally, explode all the way to the top. That’s one rep.

15. Use Extended Sets

Less weight and more reps can be a useful tool to create muscle. A study published in Frontiers in Physiology found that using extended sets (cluster set structure) led to greater strength and power gains compared to traditional straight sets

A simple way to extend your set without dropping too much of the weight you’re lifting is by performing a ladder. To do them, load the bar with your approximate 12-rep max. Start by doing 2 reps. Rest for 10 seconds, and then do 3 more reps. Rest again for 10 seconds, then do 5 more reps.

Rest for 10 seconds, and finish off by doing a full 10 reps. These mini breaks give your anaerobic energy system just enough time to partially recover and crank out a few more reps. And this particular ladder allows you to do 20 reps with your 12 rep max (2, 3, 5, 10) before taking a full rest. You'll test your muscular endurance and your psychological fortitude at the same time.

Strength Building Program

In this program, you’ll workout three days per week, each workout challenging your whole body. Spread these workouts throughout the week, say Monday, Wednesday, and Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. For those familiar with it, this program is loosely based on the Texas Method from Practical Programming for Strength Training by Rippetoe and Kilgore.

Each exercise is associated with a circuit letter, either A, B, or C. Perform one set of A1 and take the recommended break before performing A2. Repeat this until you have completed all the suggested sets. If there is no number beside the letter, just take the recommended time between sets of the one exercise.

Read each line as: “exercise, sets x reps; tempo; rest period.”

The tempo is the 4 digit number and dictates the speed of each rep. Read as down phase, pause, up phase, pause. Therefore, the tempo of 2010 is read as 2-second down, 0-second pause, 1-second up, and 0-second pause.

For all exercises using the 5x5 protocol, work up to a sub-maximal weight and attempt to perform all sets of 5x5 with that weight. If you only get 4 or fewer reps in the later sets, use the same weight the following week and try to hit all 5 sets of 5.

Strength Building Workout Week 1

Workout 1

A1) Barbell Bench Press 5x5; 2010; 60-sec rest

A2) Barbell Back Squat 5x5; 2010; 60-sec rest

B) Conventional Deadlift 5x5; 2010; 3-min rest

C) Reverse Crunch 4x15; 2020; 60-sec rest

Workout 2

A) Barbell Back Squat 3x5 with 80% of Workout 1’s weight; 2010; 2-min rest

B1) Barbell Overhead Press 5x5; 2010; 60-sec rest

B2) Barbell Bent Over Row 5x5; 2010; 60-sec rest

C) Elbow Plank on Ball Stir the Pot 4x60-sec; tempo n/a; 60-sec rest

Workout 3

A) Barbell Bench Press work up to a heavy 3-reps; 2010; 3-min rest

B) Barbell Back Squat work up to a heavy 3 reps; 2010; 3-min rest

C1) Weighted Pull Up 5x5; 2010, 3-min rest

C2) Kneeling Rope Crunches 4x15; 2020; 60-sec rest

Strength Building Workout Week 2

In workout one, you’ll notice the sets and reps are the same. Try to use slightly more weight than you did in week 1 if you could complete all sets of 5x5 with the same weight.