To provide a muscle strengthening apparatus and method allowing a user to surely master how to exert a strength fitted to a movement mode of each sport item.

This apparatus for training or rehabilitating the muscle by applying a prescribed load to a user, is so constituted that a force applied from the user is transmitted to the prescribed load via at least a single pulley; at least one of the pulleys is a load change means with a shape expressing a necessary force for every moment from starting a single movement till finishing the movement, which is indicated in a previously prepared output characteristic expressing how to exert the force in the single movement of a sport item which the user wants to train, by appropriately changing the distance from the rotation center to an action line where the load is applied, on a vertical; and the load change means is specified and fabricated by the relation of (f)×(r)= constant.

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