What is Strength?

Maybe this seems like a silly question, but there are different answers out there depending on who you ask.  
 
Now if we are looking at strength in the physical sense, and want to put it simply, strength is your body's ability to produce and exert force. Another similar definition of strength is how much weight you can move. When you think about it, movements that include power, speed, and muscle endurance, will include some element of strength. So if strength is the amount of weight you can move, power is the speed at which you can move said weigh. Speed is how fast you can move, and endurance is how long you can move and sustain muscle contractions. One can argue that agility (or the quality and speed at which you can change direction), balance (the ability to maintain equilibrium), and coordination (the ability to integrate complex movements) also require some amount of strength or ability of our body to exert and produce force. Active flexibility would ask for this as well.
 
In order to express strength, or your body's ability to produce or exert force your muscle fibers need to have the ability to contract, with connections between your muscles, nervous system and brain, and the ability to control your muscles via these connections. 

One goal of strength training is to enhance this neuromuscular activity, so we are better able to activate and utilize a larger percentage of our muscles to accomplish a task or movement and are better able to produce and manage forces. 
 
The muscle contractions that produce our movements occur due to motor unit/muscle-nerve connections. A motor unit consists of the combination of an individual motor neuron and all of the muscle fibers that it innervates.  Increases in muscle strength and power are generally a result of increasing recruitment of the motor unit (more regions of muscle firing), increased rate of neural firing (increased overall force production) and a greater synchronization and coordination of neural firing (more regions of the muscle firing together). Coordination matters- but more on that later.
 
Some of you may have heard the terms slow twitch muscle fibers and fast twitch muscles fibers. We all have both and genetics will play somewhat of a roll as to the percentage of each that each of us has. Slow twitch muscles fibers produce low level, long lasting force and are activated with lower loads. Something called low threshold motor units innervate these slow twitch muscles fibers. Fast twitch muscle fibers produce high levels of intermittent force, but are less resistant to fatigue. They need higher loads and demand in order to be recruited and are innervated by high threshold motor units. Think of powerful or explosive movements, or movements like jumping or lifting something heavy. In order to recruit these fast twitch muscle fibers, we are going to have to challenge our body with heavier weights and movements (like jumping) that require them to work.

I sometimes talk about coordinative strength. Coordination matters and Todd Hargrove defines coordination this way:
 
"Coordination is why some people make movement look easy, graceful and effective, while others make it look awkward, difficult and painful."

He elaborates further: "Coordination basically means firing the right muscle fibers at the right time for a given physical task. Thus, stability, mobility and balance are just different aspects of coordination. Further, strength, flexibility, power and even endurance cannot be expressed to their full potential without coordination. Therefore, optimizing coordination should be one of your primary goals in regard to improving physical function."

On The Playground we explore a playful integrative practice that develops strength, especially coordinative strength, mobility, stability, balance and a whole lot more.

That means we explore a variety of movements. Some of the movements will develop strength as defined above, as well as coordination, muscle endurance, balance, and control. We play with movements that ask for speed, power and agility, and improve our active flexibility and cardio vascular capacity.

And, of course,  quality nutrition, sleep and adequate recovery, social engagement and play are important.

To move, express and nourish your body (in ALL the ways) is to LOVE your body. 

And Love is a kind of strength too!

Let's Play!