-: Just to finish up the progression discussion.
Just wanted to talk about strength-specific work.
And I think a good place to start here
is just discussing a needs analysis
for what we're trying to accomplish with strength training.
So I think one thing to keep in mind,
strength is, it's not like a physiological adaptation,
it's like the expression of multiple adaptations.
So the things like hypertrophy, neurological aspects,
those are all contributing to strength.
So when people say, powerlifting, high-specificity
squat bench, deadlift at low reps, that's true
when it comes to the actual sport of powerlifting,
if we're using that as our example.
But how we get there, and Alex, we were talking about this,
hypertrophy is gonna play a huge role in strength,
especially across your training career.
We know, and get accounts for 60 to 70%
of the variance in advanced athletes.
So when we talk about specificity,
it's contingent on the objective
for the timeframe being examined.
So that's the whole concept of periodization, right?
It's to maximize these traits for a given timeframe,
which are then going to lead into the next.
So like I said, increase in strength,
not direct physiological adaptation.
So what type of adaptations are we biasing at a given time
within a periodized plan?
So most of you, you're familiar with linear periodization.
So usually in the traditional context of sport,
it goes hypertrophy, strength, power,
and you see intensities come up across
and volumes start to come down.
So hypertrophy's front loaded with most of this stuff,
and those phases are generally longer.
So for a lot of the powerlifters that I work with,
the majority of the year is still biasing development.
And that's especially true early in a training career.
One of the things in novices,
if you work with a novice actor
or a beginning powerlifter, a junior powerlifter,
I mean, you've got quite a bit of muscle,
but a lot of people just starting out
that are interested in powerlifting are underdeveloped.
Getting them long term, the best thing they can do
is focus on development with enough of the movements
to gain proficiency in those movements and get stronger.
But muscle size alone is gonna drive a lot of that,
especially across the training career.
Okay, so this is just a wide lens view of a macro cycle,
so say meat to meat.
So you have volume and hypertrophy bias,
then you have the more neurological avenues,
and then the taper.
And so this follows that linear theme.
So moderate intensities of load,
that say six to 12 rep range-ish,
the higher intensities, moderate to high,
those are where specificity of load starts to go up.
And then when you taper, typically a taper,
the tapering research that's available tells us that
volume drives a lot of the fatigue
that you accumulate through training.
So keeping, if you think of the fitness and fatigue model,
we want to maintain fitness drop fatigue.
So fitness is another fancy term for adaptations acquired.
So if we wanna maintain fitness that's specific to strength,
we wanna keep intensities high
and we want to pull back on volume.
So you can see on the bottom right, volume is low.
But I think sometimes when people deload
or taper for strength, they really pull back
too aggressively on the intensity front.
And outside of connective tissue,
if someone's just feeling their knees
are about ready to explode three weeks out then,
but if they feel good, you want to keep intensity
more or less intact.
And one way to do it while still scaling back the stimulus
is to increase the reps and reserve.
So intensity's high, so say you're doing five reps
at a given load in the taper.
Maybe you do three reps at that load.
So absolute intensities intact, relative efforts down.
And so yesterday we talked about
just the basics of the size principle.
So the higher or the closer to proximity to failure you are,
the greater motor unit recruitment you're gonna get,
especially at lighter loads.
Once you get into heavier loads,
you get a higher degree of recruitment out of the gate.
But since rep ranges are more moderate
and loading is more moderate in the volume phase,
I tend to push those a little bit closer to failure
on average than some of the neurological phases of training.
And there can be debates here.
And I know Cass and I have talked about this some,
but the main reason for scaling back the RIR,
the average RIR for the neurological phases is just
because you're training your nervous system regardless.
You're getting a high neurological stimulus
even if you're a little bit further from failure.
So you can see here, volume is going down,
intensity is going up.
In each one of these, what's specific for one phase,
even though what's most specific
for the sport of powerlifting
would be this max strength expression,
what you're doing in the taper.
Actually in the taper you're training further from failure
than you are in a meat obviously.
But what you're doing in the hypertrophy phase
is gonna be drastically different
than what you're doing on meet day obviously.
So specificity through the lens of the trait
you're trying to develop.
All right, so one of the questions yesterday
when we had that discussion was
some of the benefits of proactive strategies
versus reactive.
And Cass touched on this a little bit.
But pre-planned increases in the absolute training stress
usually increase in reps, load, sets or combination.
And generally with these, you can have a pretty good idea
of what you're gonna be utilizing,
which is gonna drive that increase.
So with strength, load progression
is where you're gonna bias a lot of these progressions,
especially in the main movements.
So the reason high intensities are better for strength,
that's very evident in the research
is because strength is, you're still able to maintain
muscle mass at high intensities, volume's gonna be lower,
but usually it's sufficient to maintain muscle
from the upstream hypertrophy work you did.
And then you have the coordination component
of high intensities, how you squat with 70% of your max
is gonna be different in terms of intermuscular coordination
than squatting it 90.
So load progression or high intensities
are going to be more beneficial there.
And then connective tissue adaptations
are often overlooked.
Increases in tendon stiffness, lateral force transmission,
things like that.
And so there's a reason outside of just the fact that
you're lifting heavy in competition,
why high intensities are beneficial.
So some of the benefits, the stimulus in an absolute sense
is inevitably progressing.
If you're gonna be using this strategy,
that's a benefit to it.
Sometimes this is a bad thing if someone's not ready
for that progression yet.
But that is the primary benefit
and it can increase self-awareness
and performance capabilities.
And so we talked about novices and how they'll often,
they just don't have much self-awareness
of what they're capable of.
They hop on a machine or under a bar
and they're adding 10 pounds every session.
So having a proactive increase there that forces them down
that road can be helpful.
And then for more advanced athletes and even novices,
new exercises where proficiency is quickly coming up.
If you switch from a leg press in a hypertrophy phase,
and you add an additional squat day,
and you haven't been squatting much,
that squats gonna come up a lot quicker
than if you were squatting multiple times a week
to begin with.
So being more assertive in your load progressions
and proactive strategies is gonna be beneficial there.
So some drawbacks,
it does not fully account for daily readiness.
So you can add load that maybe you're not quite adapted for,
you're not quite ready for,
and there's some ways around this, which we'll discuss.
But that that's gonna be a byproduct of your recovery,
the fatigue side of the equation,
then the rates of adaptation, which is the fitness side.
And then the potential increased injury risk
if they're inadequately adapted.
So pretty intuitive, but certainly, it plays a role.
There's pros and cons, but it's a tool that you'll use
across every demographic at some point.
Okay, so reactive strategies.
So this is what I talked about yesterday,
where you're letting these performance increases
come to you.
You're letting these extra reps, this added load
emerge based off of your rate of adaptation.
And basically the premise of autoregulation is to provide
a stimulus that's appropriate for that given day
in that state of readiness.
So I think a lot of people,
when they think of autoregulation,
they tend to think like,
okay, this is to hold me back, so I don't get over zealous,
but the opposite is true as well.
You wanna capitalize on the days you feel good.
So going back to the proactive strategies
and the fixed load increases.
If you add five pounds, but maybe you could have added 10,
and your goal is strength,
then you probably should have added 10.
So even with this, there's still a planned avenue
for progression, as he discussed you.
You have in the back of your mind
which model you're gonna use.
But the magnitude of increase
is where things are autoregulated,
and that's where things the RPE and RIR scale
come into play.
You can increase load, but have an RIR cap for...
The reps are essentially what's autoregulated
based off of your ability on that day.
So benefits, accounts for readiness.
Often it's an easier diagnostic,
assessment of how things are going
looking at trends over time.
One thing that he mentioned, if you add a rep or add load
but lose a rep, sometimes it's a little bit hard to judge,
okay, well, was that a better performance or not as good?
If you remember from yesterday that table that I showed
with the percentages and the RPE.
That can be useful here,
because you can estimate your max for a movement.
And this could even be on a,
obviously, you're never gonna test your bicep curl 1RM,
but you can look at the load you got, the RIR you got
and do some math,
and there's calculators that do this for you.
But it'll estimate you can see, is your strength trending up
in a movement over time?
Or is your performance on that day better or worse?
Drawbacks, it does require quite a bit of objectivity.
I think this is especially true with RIRs that are higher.
And then for a lot of powerlifters or strength athletes,
they'll have a rep in an RPE pairing,
which I think is the hardest thing for people to do.
Even working with advanced strength athletes,
people they tend to have a number in the back of their mind
when they enter the gym
and they're gonna more often than not try to hit it,
even if it's not there.
And so it takes a lot of honesty to,
like as you're working up in weight to say like,
"Okay, that load is gonna overshoot by one to two RPE,
I should probably back off."
And that can be discouraging depending on the athletes.
So I use this, but I oftentimes also give
a target load to aim for,
and a range of reps, which can help.
All right, so reactive progression
with fixed load increases.
Even in the hypertrophy phases is a strength athlete.
I like to use this method quite a bit,
and this can be for a top set.
It can be for accessory movements.
Really there's a number of ways to do this,
but really you're gonna be adjusting the rep range
depending on the movement.
So you use these pre-planned load increases,
either set to set or session to session.
These higher intensities, they're gonna promote
these additional strength adaptations.
But you're going use RIR to scale that stimulus.
So you're gonna get the neural adaptations,
the skill acquisition component.
What's really important confidence moving heavier,
progressively heavier loads,
which is a big part of being a good powerlifter
is being confident when you unrack the bar.
Then load dependent connective tissue adaptations
are gonna benefit from that.
So how this looks,
when we look at our acute training variables,
number of sets, it's gonna vary
depending on the phase you're in.
Reps, usually with this method
I'll perform up to the assigned RIR.
And that that can be, as you can see on the right,
it can be static, it can climb like we talked about earlier.
You can also use velocity loss.
Have any of you trained with a velocity device before?
Have you?
So that's another way you can autoregulate.
You stop at a certain velocity loss.
And for hypertrophy, I don't really know anybody
that uses one of those for that.
I mean, you could, but generally for hypertrophy work,
slightly higher percentages of velocity loss
are gonna be beneficial because that's gonna mean
you're a little bit closer to failure.
So load, you're gonna have these pre-planning increases
like I said, it's gonna depend on the movement.
I don't think this is a good model for something
like a lateral raise or something that's really light.
The heavier the movement,
and the more you can accommodate these minimal increases,
whether it be two and a half pounds to five,
I think that's appropriate for this.
So what that would look like,
and I just use a top set example here.
So week one, set to 400 pounds up to an eight RPE,
you get four reps.
Then week two, you increased to 410,
week three, 420, and so on.
But you can see as you go, your estimated max,
if you can read that, is trending up at a unrealistic rate,
I'd say across four weeks, but just to illustrate this.
But you'll see that that's occurring
while reps are trending down.
So this is to illustrate that that linear theme of intensity
ramping up, reps coming down or volume coming down
is holding true there.
Okay, let's see.
Cass, did you have, done with yours?
Cass: Yeah.
Okay, so next we're gonna talk about the different targets
depending on your goal.
So how can training close to failure
impact the training stimulus?
So I screwed up the animation on this one.
So acutely, when we train to failure,
we increase the metabolic cost of that set.
You're gonna be burning more calories,
increase in motor unit recruitment,
and that's in relation to the resistance.
So again, heavier loads that might not be the case.
Your recruitment might be,
you might be recruiting pretty much everything
from rep one on.
But the lighter you go, the more this is gonna hold true,
where motor unit recruitment's gonna go up.
Perceived discomfort's gonna go up,
which I think is overlooked a lot of the time, I think.
Cass: Experienced any of this.
-: Yeah, so you have to consider,
none of you are gonna wanna come back
and do that again tomorrow, it would be hard.
Well, you wouldn't want to,
and you wouldn't be recovered for it.
But then there's the residual effects,
and we have data to show training to failure,
consistently increases in muscle damage,
neuromuscular fatigue, and that's both peripheral fatigue,
localized muscular fatigue.
And then that feeds back to central fatigue.
And muscle damage, peripheral and central fatigue
are like the big three.
And they're all related with one another.
So if you have a high degree of central fatigue,
that can be exacerbated by high levels of muscle damage.
And it doesn't mean muscle damage is always bad,
but extreme levels of muscle damage.
If you look at it from a protective mechanism,
your nervous system, if a muscle is destroyed,
it's not gonna wanna recruit the higher threshold fibers,
it's just not a good idea for your in order to do that.
So a lot of that's protective just built in.
But then residually between sets there's a reason
we haven't advocated training to failure on your first set.
Now that would be a really good proxy for performance
on that day, but then the rest of your session,
you're reducing your overall impulse
like we talked about yesterday,
because your other sets are gonna then be,
the performance gonna be lower,
mechanical tension's gonna be lower.
And yeah, usually if you're going to hit failure,
you want it to be later in the sets
or potentially later in the session,
depending on what else you're training.
So the big takeaway here, we wanna train in a manner,
we're trying to maximize the conceptual adaptation
to stimulus ratio for a given timeframe.
And so yes, training to failure for a given set,
that's gonna be a very potent amount of stimulus
for that timeframe.
But when you look at it across the session,
obviously that changes the story a bit,
and then certainly across the week.
And that's something I'm sure all of you
have had to get through to your clients at some point.
All right, so how does goal
impact the management of RPE and RIR?
So it needs to be managed within the context
of other variables for the goal.
If you're in a metabolic phase,
you're gonna likely be training a bit higher.
If you're in a taper and you're trying to keep fatigue down,
it might be a little further.
I personally, and I know you and I have gone back and forth
on this a little bit.
I tend to do the inverse of we did
when we had the different rep ranges,
like the lateral raises.
I think you said four to five RIR on the first set.
But we had that climbing.
But generally I have higher rep ranges
are trained a little bit closer to failure.
And then I increase the RIR a little bit
as intensity comes up, simply for the neurological
or the recruitment aspect.
We don't need to go as much to failure.
And each set is a little bit less fatiguing that way.
And there's pros and cons to that.
So a top set, for example,
that'll still be high RPE, lower RIR.
But if I'm doing work after that off work,
it might be a little bit more sub-maximal than that.
So the overall theme here, hypertrophy,
you need that balanced combination of resistance,
effort per set, and adequate number of sets.
Given the loading is generally more moderate,
there's not a rigid cutoff like we talked about,
but most sets should probably be within four to five RIR.
And I think most people are gonna train that way anyway.
But for strength, the bias is more towards load
and total force output per rep.
And that's another reason why I have that position
of keeping the RIR a little bit more sub-maximal,
high intensities, because when we talk about strength,
outside of the top set,
which is gonna be high force output anyway.
If we're trying to maximize for a given number of reps
at a given intensity,
if we're trying to maximize force output
on a rep per rep basis, if we go too close to failure,
the highest force rep is gonna be, which rep in a set?
The first one.
It's like we're gonna be accelerating that the most,
highest force output,
and if you were to stand on a force plate
and measure force, it's gonna go down.
Even though you're moving the load,
the bar speed is slowing.
So with strength, focusing on force output
is the name of the game.
And it's not say you have to train six RIR
or anything like that.
But I do tend to go a little bit more sub-max
and lean more on the side of doing more sets for the volume
than I would be going higher or lower RIR in less sets,
if that makes sense.
Let's see, touched on that.
Yeah, so basically what I just said.
So this touches a little bit on that force velocity concept.
So as bar speed slows across the set,
high threshold motor units might be contributing more force,
so they're shortening slower,
'cause there's fatigue
and they're picking up the slack.
But total force output of the movement as a whole
is going to be less.
So there's a disparity between movement force
and fiber shortening velocity.
Does that make sense?
Okay, then metabolic phases benefit from higher effort,
higher reps, increased density of sets.
And those can still,
I mean, you're still accruing mechanical tension,
you're still experiencing mechanical tension
in those phases,
but the emphasis is more on building a foundation
for the other phases.
All right, so let's talk a little bit about
work capacity here.
So you're gonna hear different definitions for this.
I think what makes the most sense is work capacity,
it's the ability to sustain or replicate force output
for a given task over a given period of time.
And that's both within a set, within a session
and then session to session.
So how well are we able to maintain a relative performance?
And then when we talk about what can acutely impact
work capacity within a session,
the biggest thing is rest intervals.
And while your work capacity is what it is,
but you can work around a shitty work capacity
with higher or longer rest intervals.
Closer proximity to failure.
The more fatiguing, the more you're gonna carry that fatigue
into the next set, and your ability to perform
is going to go down.
But then also muscle glycogen levels,
and I touched on this earlier today or yesterday,
but with contest prep athletes,
especially if they're chronically depleted,
sometimes these higher rep ranges,
they will burn more calories,
but are they getting the stimulus side as well?
Are they checking that box as well as they could?
Sometimes not.
And just as some personal anecdote here,
I've noticed the last time I did a prep,
I would download my volume earlier in the week,
the more glycolytic work and that was coming off
of two to three refeeds.
So I would be more or less topped off in terms of glycogen.
Then I could benefit from those higher rep ranges,
have performance, not really suffer.
And then as I got more depleted,
then I'm doing the lower rep, more phosphagen system
type of work and less dependent on muscle glycogen.
I found that that seemed to leverage
the benefits of the higher reps
without as much of the downsides.
All right, so how can a low work pass
negatively affect a stimulus?
And this is where the idea of effective reps
has a very clear flaw.
So fatigue between sets,
it's gonna mean less mechanical tension in subsequent sets.
Anytime our performance goes down
at a given relative effort,
you're gonna have less mechanical tension.
So easy way to illustrate that,
set one, do 100 pounds for 12 reps at a two RIR,
say you either don't rest long enough,
or you just have poor work capacity.
You might get 90 pounds for 12 reps.
So all is equal, you can see that
you're gonna be experiencing less mechanical tension
for that rep range in the second set.
All right, these are things you can work around
work capacities that are a limiting factor.
So if it's high, and Cass you touched on some,
but if it's high, progressing in effort is a good option,
doing an additional rep,
working your way up in a rep range
and working towards these lower RIR
because you're gonna be able to recover from them
a little bit better, or your average RIR
just simply being lower for that session.
But if you experience this robust drop off,
then you can limit that drop off
by keeping things a little bit more sub max.
And that's where manipulating sets can really come in handy.
You can make up that loss stimulus
through an addition of sets.
And then the other benefit of that,
we know training to failure
tends to cause more muscle damage.
So training a little bit more shy of failure,
even though you're matching volume of work
and you're still getting a good enough stimulus,
you're training close enough to failure,
but backing off maybe one to two RIR and doing more sets.
That can benefit you on the recovery side of things as well,
by mitigating that muscle damage.
And then you can work your way back up
and as you develop more capacity
and say you go from four sets at a three RIR,
then you progress to three sets with a two RIR, for example.
All right, so any questions on that at all?
Do you have anything to add?
No, all right.