When it comes to high-rep hypertrophy and endurance training, the body will ultimately discontinue work due to your intolerance to bear the high level of hydrogen accumulation or the accumulation of lactic acid.

A common misconception in strength training is that every set must be taken to muscular failure to yield a positive adaption.

When it comes to high-rep hypertrophy and endurance training, the body will ultimately discontinue work due to your intolerance to bear the high level of hydrogen accumulation or the accumulation of lactic acid.

This is a natural process, as the body is protecting itself from excessive muscle damage.

When it comes to low-rep, maximal-strength work (1-3 reps), the body discontinues work due to the inability to recruit muscle fibers for the job adequately.

In certain situations, carrying sets of exercises to repetition failure are advantageous, such as 1 rep max testing or short microcycles that aim to increase one’s maximal strength.

In most cases, however, training to failure is both unnecessary and detrimental to performance.²

Rarely, if ever, do I have my athletes or clients go to failure when training a heavy compound multi-joint movement.

Should You Train to Failure?

Unfortunately, the notion that training to failure is necessary for performance gains has surfaced over the last several decades.

Advocates of this style often cite that it is necessary to drive adaption and push the limits, paying homage to the old no pain no gain adage.

This couldn’t be further from the truth, and the most effective methods are often less complicated than one is led to believe.

The issue with training to absolute failure in maximal strength is that it causes neural fatigue and disruptions in resting hormonal concentrations.¹

I see most 1 rep max tests from novices, intermediates, and even some advanced athletes. Their performance deviates far from anything I’d consider technical.

The range of motion often shortens dramatically, and they often end up looking like more of a survival attempt than a lift.

Athletes who push themselves to the point of failure, session after session, set themselves up for the inability to properly recover and repeat high performance over the next few days.

In a phase where one seeks to gain strength, they will become fatigued and weaker if they consistently push to failure weekly. Additionally, this can lead to injury and retraction from strength training altogether.

The label that lifting heavy makes them stiff, tired, and hurt when, in reality, they never followed a properly structured plan.

When seeking hypertrophy or muscular endurance, reaching absolute failure is less detrimental from an injury, hormonal, and neuromuscular standpoint; however, it is still unnecessary.

It can lead to overuse, excessive muscular damage, and other similar peripheral issues.

Train Smarter

If you resist the urge to bury yourself and always push for that last rep, you will find the results rather pleasant.

• The most effective method of training is the incorporation of the idea of RIR, Reps In Reserve.
• This means that when you are working at a percentage of your 1 rep max, say 85%; you should theoretically complete four reps with a fifth attempt failing.
• Rather than pushing for four reps at 85% of your 1 rep max, the idea should aim for two or three technically sound reps.
• This is a continuum that can be implemented with nearly any rep range.

In 2011, the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science for Sport and Exercise presented a study³ that displayed two subjects doing squats at ~80% of their 1 rep max.

• Subject 1 quit squatting with the weight when his movement velocity decreased by 20% (leaving more RIR), and Subject 2 quit squatting when his movement velocity decreased by 40% (leaving less RIR).³
• These two subjects followed the program for several weeks, and the results were astonishing.³ Despite Subject 2 completing more overall work and pushing himself closer to failure; he sustained a significantly lower gain in strength than did Subject 1, who quit each set earlier to failure.³

This means that strength training should always be performed with technical proficiency and that in most cases, pushing to failure is unnecessary or even detrimental.

Obviously, certain situations will be different in novice versus experienced trainees; however, the general takeaway is the same.

How to Structure Training:

Once you can accept that going too heavy too often is a recipe for disaster, you are likely left wondering what to do instead.

Training with extremely light weights and low intensities is certainly not the answer either, as you will make no progress and eventually regress.

Training hard while training smart is what I preach to my athletes and clients.

Maintaining a disciplined schedule with perfect technical execution and a strong emphasis on recovery will yield the best results.

Training Programs

One of my favorite ways to layout training is through a method developed by Dr. Mike Stone of East Tennessee State University.

To keep his volume and intensity checked with his programs, he implements a system of loading prescriptions on a very light, light, moderately light, moderate, moderately heavy, heavy, and very heavy termed basis.

These terms are certainly not arbitrary, and instead, have a direct correlation to a range of load percentages as follows:

Dr. Stone then uses these numbers to lay out his program weekly, with each day being labeled appropriately to correspond with what the overall intensity for each lift will be that day.

Click the chart below:

As you can see in this picture, each week is displayed directly under each exercise, as well as the number of sets and reps that correspond with it.

• For example, taking the incline bench press, you can see that three sets of ten reps are prescribed at a moderately lightweight on week one.
• In this case, the person would perform the lift with a load equivalent to 75-80% of their 10-rep max, resting two minutes between sets.

This method does cater to the RIR paradigm previously discussed and allows the individual to work with a 5% range for that given exercise on that given day, depending on how they are feeling.

Furthermore, the intensity shows a steady increase over the course of three weeks, peaking at a moderately heavy intensity and unloading on the fourth week at a light intensity.

This is only one way to organize your training, but it is certainly a fundamental pattern to programming using a periodization strategy.

Remember to train intelligently and understand that sometimes the adage less is more can still reign true.

Training is not meant to break you; it is a tool to increase your capacity to perform.

There is a time and place to empty the tank and display your absolute end degrees of strength; however, nobody ever wins a weight room training championship.

They let it all out on the court or field.

Think about what your current training looks like and how you can implement a better strategy. Be honest with yourself and question whether you may be going too hard and falling prey to the pain and gain trap.

Train hard, but train smart.

References:

1. Ahtiainen, J. P., & Häkkinen, K., “Strength Athletes Are Capable to Produce Greater Muscle Activation and Neural Fatigue During High-Intensity Resistance Exercise Than Nonathletes.” The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 2009, 23(4), 1129-1134.

2. Martorelli, S., Cadore, E. L., Izquierdo, M., Celes, R., Martorelli, A., Cleto, V., Alvarenga, J., & Bottaro, M., “Strength Training with Repetitions to Failure does not Provide Additional Strength and Muscle Hypertrophy Gains in Young Women.” European Journal of Translational Myology, 2017. 27(2).

3. Sanchez-Medina, L., & González-Badillo, J. J., “Velocity Loss as an Indicator of Neuromuscular Fatigue during Resistance Training.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2011. 43(9), 1725-1734.

The post Are You the One Sabotaging Your Gains? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

When you are a new trainee you will undoubtedly discover there are different kinds of strength. You will sooner or later discover that the strength displayed by bodybuilders, weightlifters, powerlifters, and strongmen are not all the same qualitatively. Some are strong at slow, grinding lifts, others are strong at explosive efforts, and still others can maintain their strength exertions repeatedly for long periods of time. The various ways in which strength can be expressed have now been studied quite extensively in the last several decades as the various weight sports have each gone their own way in their development. Just what are these different expressions of strength?

Expressions of Strength

The most basic expression of strength is absolute strength, the maximum amount of force that a muscle can exert. This expression of strength is most commonly seen in the powerlifts. You need to use the maximum amount of strength you have in order to squat, bench press, or deadlift. Speed is not a major factor. All you have to do is move that weight and get it to lockout. While it may seem simple, it actually isn’t, as absolute strength can be subdivided into three different components: concentric or positive direction strength, eccentric or negative direction strength, and static or isometric strength.

These three components are important to the powerlifter. The importance of concentric strength is obvious. You use it to come out of your squats, to push up on your benches, and to straighten up with your deadlifts. This is also the type of strength used by the bodybuilder even though the absolute peaking of such strength is not his or her ultimate goal.

The Importance of Eccentric Strength

Less obvious is the importance of eccentric strength. This is the ability to contract the muscles under tension on the way down in the various lifts, most notably the squat and the bench press. Why is this important? It is important because this eccentric movement is what prepares the muscles for their subsequent concentric phase.

This is plainly obvious when you compare what you can bench or squat in the initial eccentric movement versus what you could do if you started your lift from the chest in the bench or at the bottom of your squat. There is simply no way you can lift as much that way as with utilizing the negative part of the lift at the start.

As a guide, your eccentric strength limit should be about 35 to 40% higher than your concentric limit in any particular movement. If it is not within that range, then you’re not getting the most out of your concentric. So if you can squat 200kg, you should aim for a 275kg negative made under control. Be warned though that eccentric training is much more efficient at producing the lactic acid that makes for day-after (and even more so second-day-after) stiffness, but that is the price of success.

The Benefits of the Touch-and-Go Method

With yet more experience another fact soon comes to light. When you bench press you notice that if you can move from the eccentric to the concentric phase as fast as possible, you will lift more. Competition rules require a complete pause at the chest before the press is made, but in training many lifters use the “touch and go” method. This is where the chest is only touched before the bar changes directions and starts to move upwards. The reason you can press more is because you get a full stretch reflex. A muscle can always exert more force if it is been stretched beforehand, so this advantage is cultivated.

It should also be obvious that the faster you can do this directional change the more force will be produced. With an instantaneous change of direction the muscles can be fully utilized when they go concentric. Compare that to the bench press, where even a short pause at the chest results in some dissipation of the potential upward concentric force. This narrow time span between eccentric and concentric exertions is referred to as the transition phase and the shorter it is the better. If powerlifting is not your thing try to think of it in terms of track and field movements. Just compare a standing broad jump and a running broad jump, or try and see how high you can high jump without an eccentric phase just prior to lift off.

The Role of Static Strength

Finally, we have static strength. This is the kind of strength you experience when doing isometrics. You are exerting force on an object but that object does not move. This is most obvious when doing the deadlift. Your hands are gripping the barbell all during the lift, and while it is true the bar is moving upwards due to the extension of the legs and back, as far as the grip of the hands is concerned they are in eccentric contraction. Many deadlifters have found they can be strong in the concentric part of the lift (there is no eccentric portion in the deadlift), but it all goes for not if they can’t hold their grip during the lift.

We can now see that absolute strength is not as simple as we first thought. The three components should be in correct proportion to one another if your true absolute strength is to be as high as possible.

One Final Caveat

What we have discussed is absolute strength, the most that you can do as a personal record under ideal conditions. It should be mentioned here that these absolute strength limits are not the actual absolute limit of what your muscles can do. Under certain circumstances this barrier can be moved out even further.

We have all read stories about the 110-pound woman who lifted a car off of some traffic victim. We may question the veracity of these stories, but we can still take some basic truth out of them. That truth is that with extraordinary adrenaline charges some superhuman things can be done by even the physically unimpressive. This might also be accomplished with hypnosis, various drugs, or even electrical stimulation. Why does this phenomenon exist? It exists because we have inhibiting responses in our nervous systems that cause us to fail-safe at a certain point. Why would we want to have this failsafe? Because our muscles are strong enough to pull themselves right off of the bones to which they are attached. If we did not have these inhibiting factors, then tendon rupture injuries would be all too common. So we are programmed to shut down well before the danger point is reached.

All in all that is a good thing, but I will close this by saying that champion athletes are the ones who come closest to closing the gap between our everyday absolute strength and our absolute-absolute strength. That is why champion athletes are often observed to have a “risk taker” type of personality. Those who are not risk takers will probably suffer fewer injuries but will also win fewer titles.

Next Week – Speed Strength

The post The Expression of Strength, Part 1 – Absolute Strength appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

One of the things that amazes me the most is that people usually seek an increase in power output by chasing speed increases first. They start to perform plyometrics and modified Olympic lifts in the hope these movements will add to their speed and therefore increase their power. Wouldn’t it be better to actually know if you’d benefit more from gains in strength or speed first, and then create a training plan that helps you achieve exactly that?

In the book Supertraining, Mel Siff explains the concept of the strength deficit as, “ …defined as the difference between maximum strength produced in a given action and absolute strength of which the athlete is capable in that same action.”

What makes this important is that the difference between maximum strength produced and absolute strength can be identified under different speeds and loads. For instance, if there is a large noticeable difference between jumping with the knees slightly flexed and jumping preceded by a dip, you would seek out ballistic and shock methods of training, such as plyometrics. If there is a small difference, however, you’d be better off choosing strength and hypertrophy training with loads ranging from 5RM-8RM and using methods such as CAT (Compensatory Acceleration Training). The main factors to keep in mind, though, even after you have done a self-test, is that your training plan should be in line with the demands of your sport. In sports that have little external load – sprinting, jumping, even baseball pitching – training to increase rapidity of movement is vital.

The difficulty in testing some of these differences is that “absolute” strength is lab-tested by inducing electric shock into the muscles to see how much force can be generated! I don’t know about you, but my general health and fitness plan doesn’t involve being subjected to voluntary electrical shock (which is precisely why I will never do a Tough Mudder). So how can we test this?

A recent study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research came up with a far cheaper and easier way to measure these deficits. By using a jump mat and variously weighted squat jumps, researchers were able to identify the deficits. Using a device similar to a Smith Machine, which only allowed movement in the vertical plane, subjects were tested on their jump heights without the need to balance, so a reasonably accurate test of peak power was conducted.

The researchers findings showed that the same deficits could be seen as described in Siff’s original writings. Athletes who tested poorly on low load jumps (body weight plus 20%) were found to be in need of ballistic training, while those who tested poorly on high load jumps (body weight plus 60%) were in need of extra maximal strength work.

This is a great reason why cookie cutter plans found on the Internet often lead to mediocre results. With a one-size-fits-all plan there is no way to tell if the athlete is in need of speed-strength work or maximal strength work, and only by working on their individual weakness can they really achieve great performance.

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