How do I train to get stronger?

To get stronger, you must give your muscles a reason to change, or in other words, get stronger. To do this, you must progressively challenge your muscles with a new stimulus so your muscles can physiologically adapt to this new stimulus. The reason your muscles make these changes is so that if they are ever challenged again with this stimulus, they can handle the stresses place upon them and decrease the risk of injury. In weight training, some ways to progressively challenge or "overload" your muscles to adapt to new stresses and thus become stronger would be to gradually increase the weight you used during your last training session, increase the number of repetitions you performed during your last training session, and/or increase the number of sets you performed during your last training session. If you continually lift the same weight, using the same repetitions with the sets, your muscles will never be challenged or "overloaded" and ultimately, never get stronger. By making the suggested changes to your workout, your muscles get a new challenge and must adapt to it with improvements in strength being the end result.

Strength training requires some type of outside resistance such as gravity, dumbbells or tubing. To perform strength training focus on doing 2-4 sets of each exercise with 8-12 repetitions. Doing this will signal your muscles to grow, and allow them to exert more force efficiently. As you get stronger, increase the weight and sets, and decrease the repetitions you perform.