What someone considers “strong” is of course based on their experience with lifting. What one calls “crazy strong”, is another’s easy work up set. But generally when people talk about “getting strong” it usually means they want to stand out in their current environment. And whether that’s Globo Gym, their college weight room, or a competitive powerlifting gym, the key to getting strong is...patience. Not some secret supplement or secret exercise you haven’t heard about yet, but patience.
Now how that applies is that in a given month, 99% of your reps should be fast, strong, and technically perfect. The reason for that is because what ultimately stops so many people, is that they get consumed doing lifts that are either go for broke, grinding, slow reps, or lifts done with sloppy, poor technique. These are all the enemy of strength.
But if you can embrace the mindset that it’s a marathon not a sprint, and patiently work on your technique, improve your bar speed, and only add weight to the bar as long as you are keeping technique, you will eventually blow the doors off all the athletes who are consumed by “maxing out” “test week” and all other impatient, short sighted programming.
While they quickly plateau, you’ll be just beginning.
Keep building on that, and you’ll get to earn your first naysayers, who will attribute your success to things like “oh he just has better genetics”, when all you actually did was apply the words of wisdom in Galatians 6:9, which says, “...for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”