Scientific Principles of Strength Training - Fatigue Management PDF

CHAPTER FIVE FATIGUE MANAGEMENT SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION Because training must present an overload in order to be maximally effective, proper training regularly disrupts homeostasis. The disruption of homeostasis negatively affects 4 different classes of physiological activity that pertain to training: 1.) Fuel Stores 2.) The Nervous System 3.) Chemical Messengers 4.) Tissue Structure So long as training is overloading and sufficiently frequent to provide meaningful results, not all disruptions are healed and not all fatigue is thus dissipated between successive training sessions. Minimum frequency will be addressed more specifically in the SRA chapter to come, but for now just imagine that if you train once a month, it doesn’t really matter how hard you train, you’ll still recover fully between sessions. Because not all fatigue is dissipated between sessions if you train with any sort of effective training frequency, and each session Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 104 adds more overload, eventually fatigue can interfere with performance, adaptation, and even injury risk. Let’s take a look at the specifics for each of the four factors and how they contribute to this rising fatigue, which sport physiologists term “cumulative fatigue.” 1. ) F U E L STO R E S Fuel stores can be broken down into 3 primary categories: Phosphagens (ATP and Creatine Phosphate) Glucose/Glycogen (the stored form of glucose mostly found in skeletal muscle) Fat (mostly stored in adipose cells under the skin) When lifting heavy weights for reps of 10 and below, the energy provided to fuel this effort comes directly from ATP provided by a roughly even mix of the phosphagen system and glycolysis. Since the phosphagen system (including creatine phosphate’s role) recovers almost all of its capacity within minutes, it’s not a major player in cumulative fatigue. Fat does not provide much direct energy for heavy training, but does play a role in recovery. However unless you run out of body fat, you’re not going to experience a limiting factor with this nutrient (would be a pretty good problem to have, no?)The glycolytic system both directly provides energy for such high intensity training and is a major contributor to providing energy for the recovery of the phosphagen system between sets. Thus, it’s an overwhelmingly powerful determinant in the performance of most powerlifting training. While blood glucose is a source of substrate for glycolysis (which uses up glucose to form Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 105 ATP and fuel muscle contraction), the predominant source of glucose for taxing training is actually muscle glycogen. Glycogen is a tightly packed, branched carbohydrate that is essentially made of thousands of glucose molecules connected to one another. Both the liver and muscle tissue have the ability to store glycogen, but the muscle stores an order of magnitude more, and its stores are much more directly related to performance, as liver stores are mainly used to maintain safe blood glucose levels for operation of the nervous system. Muscle glycogen is constructed when carbs that are eaten in the diet break down into glucose and are let into the muscle cell via insulin and other gateway-opening molecules such as GLUT-4. Glycogen is used highly during taxing training, and must be replenished with a diet adequate in carbs in the hours and days between training sessions. If and when glycogen levels are not adequately replenished and stored glycogen levels dwindle down. Some distinct negatives follow: Diminished training intensity (inability to generate high forces, especially in reps over 3) Diminished training volume (inability to complete multiple sets of heavy training) Increased perception of work effort (everything begins to feel crazy hard and heavy) Direct signaling to turn down anabolic regulators in the cell (leading to potential muscle loss) The biggest factor in glycogen depletion is the total volume of training, Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 106 and the intensity is a much smaller factor. It’s the total work that counts (sets x reps x weight), and the more volume you do, the more glycogen you deplete. Replenishing glycogen occurs through eating enough carbs in the diet, but this can be tough to do, especially because: Carbs might be limited while dieting down to a weightclass Damage (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, DOMS) directly interferes with glucose uptake and glycogen synthesis Thus, when you’re training your hardest and possibly dieting, especially high volume programs (the ones that generally work best, especially to add muscle) glycogen levels can dwindle low enough to present serious problems for training intensity, volume, and adaptations. Not only will you not be able to do the work needed to get better, the low glycogen is itself turning muscle growth OFF! In a normal training and diet situation, no one session depletes glycogen enough for a detectable drop in performance by itself. Impactful reductions of glycogen usually take weeks of powerlifting training to accumulate, but they only take days to resolve. Repleting glycogen fully can be accomplished via: Increase of dietary carbohydrate Reduced training volume Reduced DOMS While glycogen restoration only takes a few days at most to accomplish, the next source of fatigue can take longer, up to several weeks in fact. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 107 2. ) T H E N E RVO U S SYST E M This includes all cells and circuits in the nervous system, for example: Central Nervous System (CNS) Neurons CNS Glial (support) Cells Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) Neurons (the nerves that link muscles to the spinal cord, for example) While the cells of the skeletal system actually provide the force for lifting, the cells of the nervous system activate and coordinate the function of the skeletal muscle cells. Training, especially of the voluminous and heavy variety, tasks the neurons of the motor system with repeated, sometime maximal levels of activity. During this strenuous activity, homeostasis of nerve cells becomes disrupted. One major way in which this occurs is in the generated imbalance of ions and messenger molecules between and within nerve cells. For example, acetylcholine (Ach) is the primary neurotransmitter between motor neurons and their muscle cell targets. As multiple high frequency stimulations of the nerve continue, Ach that carries the signal of activation from nerve to muscle may become depleted. Many other such neurotransmitters are found within the CNS (brain and spinal cord), and some of them take from days to weeks to fully restore, helped by glial cells in the CNS. Lifting that is overloading thus has a disruptive effect on the nervous system, both PNS and CNS, and such disruptions contribute to cumulative fatigue. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 108 Sufficiently fatigued nervous system cells and circuits can have the following effects: Lowering neural drive to muscles, reducing force output and thus strength Poorly coordinated firing patterns, resulting in bar movement instability and technique breakdowns at heavier loads Reducing the learning efficiency of the CNS, thus leading to poorer acquisition of new techniques While training volume is the primary determinant of nervous system fatigue, rising training intensity has an incrementally higher effect on nervous system fatigue, even when volume is held constant. Thus, doing 10 sets of 1 rep at 90% of your 1RM is significantly more fatiguing to the nervous system than is doing one set of 14 reps at 65% of your 1RM, even if the volumes of work for the efforts are almost identical, as is their effect on other systems that accumulate fatigue, such as glycogen depletion, for example. In order to reduce fatigue for the nervous system, training volume must absolutely come down, but intensity decreases likely also play a role. Nervous system recovery rates tend to be slower than glycogen repletion, and can take between days and weeks of less voluminous and lighter training to fully recover. 3.) CHEMICAL MESSENGERS This category includes: Autocrine Messenger Molecules (AMPk, mTOR,...) Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 109 Paracrine Messenger Molecules (Prostaglandins) Endocrine Messenger Molecules (Testosterone, Cortisol,...) Intra- and inter-cellular messenger molecules play an integral role in the adaptive process. In response to various stimuli and under certain conditions, anabolic signaling pathways are activated, and positive adaptations occur. Under levels of fatigue and other conditions, anabolic pathways are turned down and catabolic ones turned up, leading to a reduction in the adaptive rate or even of a recess of strength and size adaptations themselves. Though numerous pathways and the molecules that comprise them are elevated as fatigue accumulates, three major categories of messenger molecules at three different levels of physiology have particularly large associations with fatigue. First, we look inside the muscle cell itself, to the autocrine messengers of mTOR and AMPk. AU TO C R I N E : m TO R & A M P k Though numerous pathways in the muscle cell itself are responsive to training and fatigue, the mTOR (mammalian/mechanistic target of rapamycin) and AMPk (adenosine monophosphate kinase) pathways are probably the best studied, and also some of the most powerful. mTOR is activated by anabolic stimuli. It activates when amino acids from your diet enter the cell, when your glycogen is fully stocked, and when heavy resistance training is performed, among other factors. It’s the primary “anabolic switch” of the cell, and it communicates instructions to build more muscle and recover from training. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 110 AMPk, on the other hand, is activated with higher volume (rather than high intensity) training and all forms of cardio, a hypocaloric and low-glycogen environment, and causes the muscle cell to adapt more to being endurance-based and catabolizes muscle protein for energy. When training volumes and fatigue are low, mTOR activity usually outpaces AMPk activity, and the result is a net increase in positive adaptations like muscle mass. However, if high volume training continues for too long and fatigue accumulates, AMPk activation increases while mTOR activity declines. To make matters worse, high AMPk activity actually directly blunts mTOR activity, and it’s likely not the other way around. Thus, high levels of fatigue create an environment where AMPk activity outweighs mTOR activity, and of course the net result can be as bad as a net decrease in positive adaptations, including muscle size and strength. P 111 PA R AC R I N E : P R O S TAG L A N D I N S & OT H E R PA R AC R I N E FAC TO R S Though the research on paracrine factors is not as voluminous, its seems clear that they are differentially produced during higher and higher levels of fatigue, and that these effects can take weeks to decline if fatigue is brought down. Prostaglandins and other inflammatory cytokines have been shown to be associated with DOMS and are associated with recovery from training. Fatigue seems to disrupt this system, and the disruptions can be detected for long after the fatigue state began, taking weeks in some cases to abate. E N D O C R I N E : T E S TO S T E R O N E & CO R T I S O L Testosterone grows muscle, heals nerves faster, increases healing of most tissues, reduces fat gains, creates a psychologically better training state, and about 50 other training benefits outside the scope of this book. There’s one reason why guys take steroids: because they function like (or often are) testosterone. Cortisol, on the other hand is a hormone that increases fuel utilization and availability in cells, in part by breaking down muscle tissue. It’s very catabolic hormone that directly counteracts testosterone in many of its functions. Of all the research presented in this book, the first research on the relationship of testosterone and cortisol on training is some of the oldest. Scandinavian countries were some of the first to notice that as athletes trained consistently (for weeks to months) with high volumes and few breaks, their levels of testosterone would gradually decline and their levels of cortisol would gradually rise. At the same time, these athletes were experiencing higher and higher levels of fatigue and declining gains in performance, and later, declines in absolute performance itself. Interestingly, the sport scientists studying this Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 112 phenomenon recommended replacing the lowered testosterone with injections, and thus the birth (in part) of anabolic steroid use in sport! Steroid use aside, it was very clear (and much clearer now with much more research) that prolonged high volume training leads to declines in testosterone and increases in cortisol... NOT a beneficial hormonal environment for positive adaptations. While intensity does not greatly affect chemical messengers associated with fatigue, volume does, and in a big way. Especially, it’s consistently high volume with little deviation that sums up these factors to net- negative levels, so the primary way to bring them down is to dedicate time to low-volume training. Many of these chemical messengers take weeks to rise to counterproductive levels and they take weeks of lower volume training to fall back down. Because powerlifters spend most of the time in their strength phases (sets of 3-5 reps) with moderate volumes, this class of fatigue products is not the most concerning. However, powerlifters that add lots of bodybuilding volume to their main programs or go through dedicated hypertrophy phases will be affected. 4.) TISSUE STRUCTURES The structures physically damaged by training include: Muscle cell structures and proteins Muscle fascia (the lining covering muscles) Tendons (connecting muscles to bones) Ligaments (connecting bones to each other) Bones Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 113 As heavy training occurs, the very forces generated by the muscles in resistance of the weight can cause direct damage to the body. Every single training session leads to small microtears in the muscle, but most of these heal over the course of the week and almost all heal over the course of an intentionally easier deload week. However, long periods (weeks and months) of heavy training will lead to microtears in fascia, tendons and ligaments, and even microfractures in bones. By themselves, these microtears and fractures are harmless, as they don’t compromise the structural integrity of the tissue at large. But, if they are left chronically unhealed, future tears and fractures can connect existing ones together and form larger areas of weakness that can and do lead to structural failure and injury, anywhere from a mild sprain or strain to torn muscles, fascia, tendons, and in some rare cases, ligaments and bones. While muscle heals relatively quickly, fascia and tendon heal much slower, on the order of weeks. But because they accumulate damage slowly, problems usually do not present themselves until months of fatigue have been accumulated. Ligament and bone have even longer timescales than tendons. F i g u re 2 : R e c ove r y R a t e s o f S y s t e m s f ro m M a x i m a l Tra i n i n g Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 114 What the discussion on the particulars contributors and effects of fatigue means is that proper powerlifting training should seek to manage fatigue by occasionally lowering it over multiple timescales. Because not letting it rise at all means no overload and no adaptations and doing nothing about it means no adaptations and possibly injury, fatigue must be allowed to rise and be lowered at intermittent times via: Light Sessions and Non-Training Days for glycogen restoration Deload Weeks for nervous system fatigue and some cellular messengers and muscle tissue damage Low-Volume Phases for cell messengers that function on longer timescales, such as testosterone and cortisol Active Rest Phases for healing of connective tissues such as fascia, tendon, ligament, and bone, and possibly some psychological fatigue factors as well Details of these practices will be presented in a later section on the proper application of the fatigue management principle. P OW E R L I F T I N G D E F I N I T I O N In powerlifting terms, the principle of Fatigue Management states that while we train hard and overload to accrue adaptations, those very beneficial adaptations that make us fit also fatigue us. In the short term and at low levels, fatigue is just a part of the training process, and is quite unavoidable as it comes as a package deal with the fitness gains of overloading in training. But if fatigue rises to high levels, it interferes Chapte r N o. 5 SciSci e net n iftic if ic P rP inrcinipcles ip les o f oSt f St ren ren g tg h tTra h Tra in in ingin g P 115 with performance, adaptation, and tissue integrity, none of which are conducive to best training outcomes. Thus, fatigue should be allowed to rise with normal hard training, but periodically be brought down by easier training to sustainable and non-interfering levels, so that hard training can commence once again and promote another round of beneficial adaptations to enhance size, strength, and overall powerlifting performance. Various levels of cumulative fatigue correspond with physiological states that, lucky for us, have distinct names and convenient definitions. At any point in the training process, a lifter is carrying only one of these 3 levels/categories of fatigue severity: A. ) N O R M A L T R A I N I N G AT O R B E L O W M R V If you’re doing anything between not training at all (and like most normal everyday people, carrying almost no cumulative fatigue) and training right up to your MRV, then you can be classified as being in “adequate recovery.” Your fatigue is low enough that it’s not interfering with either adaptation or performance, and your injury risk is not elevated. There is almost no need to fatigue manage in this state, as it’s full-steam ahead! B. ) OV E R R E AC H I N G ( F U N C T I O N A L & N O N - F U N C T I O N A L ) Overreaching results from training for some time between points c and d from our discussion on MRV in the Overload chapter. This can be done both accidentally and on purpose. If the way you got to passing your MRV is by not recovering enough (for example, you’re not getting enough sleep this week), then your fatigue begins to rise to levels that present a problem. This is termed “non-functional overreaching,” since your training stimulus did not increase to make it happen, but your Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 116 recovery just went down. Thus, this type of overreaching comes without the benefits of increased adaptations, because it’s the hard training that gets you adaptations, not a lack of recovery. If it was actually the fatigue and not the hard training that increased it that lead to gains, we could all just break up with our significant others while taking on double shifts at work and gains would explode! Functional overreaching is when you intentionally push your training to just over your body’s ability to recover, and then pull it back to benefit from the gains from the harder training as your body gets a chance to recover. It’s inherently short-term and comes as a result of over-working, not under-recovering. If you have no idea about fatigue management and you increase training, feel fatigued, back off, and improve, you actually did just perform functional overreaching, just unplanned! Functional overreaching works because when you train more, you gain more, and fatigue is not harmful unless it lingers for too long. In fact, temporary hardship followed by later gains is termed Supercompensation, and some research shows that it doesn’t just happen in the recovery between two training sessions, but can also occur over the course of several weeks, if a couple of those weeks are just beyond MRV and the next one or two are way below it. Normal training actually involves small cycles of overreaching with every training session. The muscle fibers of your chest are overreached for several days after your training session, and then they heal. So you never quite stay at MRV, but rather fluctuate just over and under it, promoting both the adaptation of going over it and the recovery of staying under it. This can stretch out to the mesocycle timescale, where the last week of 4 weeks of hard training may be, as a week, technically over MRV (overreaching). The deload week that follows reduces fatigue by being far below MRV, and viola, adaptations are made! Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 117 Intentional week-long overreaching is a beneficial process, but must be very carefully used, especially with regards to timing. If overreaching occurs for too long (in most powerlifting training, over 2-3 weeks), overtraining may result. C. ) OV E R T R A I N I N G When most people say they are “overtrained,” they really mean they are overreached. Overtraining is a much more deleterious and serious occurrence. It happens when your body holds on to too much cumulative fatigue for too long, and your very ability to reduce fatigue becomes impaired. Sounds pretty messed up huh? It is. There are two main classes of overtraining: net-neutral and net-negative overtraining. N E T- N E U T R A L OV E R T R A I N I N G If you catch the overtrained state early enough, there is a good chance that you can recover performance back to original levels. It’s difficult to make precise recommendations here, but within the first month may be a rough guide. It may take as long as two months to recover past performance and begin to improve again, but it doesn’t have lasting negative effects. The main reason it takes so long to recover performances is that weeks (perhaps a whole month) of very light and low volume training (somewhere in the vicinity of half the MRV) are required to reduce that much fatigue. And then, another several weeks (perhaps a month or more) is needed to re-establish previous fitness levels, only after which new net gains in performance can be made. Net-Neutral Overtraining does not leave lasting negative impacts, but it absolutely wastes up to several months of otherwise potentially productive training time. It’s definitely something you don’t want, but it’s not the worst type of overtraining. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 118 N E T- N E G AT I V E OV E R T R A I N I N G Net-Negative Overtraining is the kind that leaves long term marks. If the overtraining state is very severe, prolonged, or both, recovery back to previous levels of performance may take several months to a year! Sometimes, previous best performance is never recovered, especially if the overtraining occurs close to the athlete’s career end. Even if recovered, performance and training can be wrought with long- term injuries. Those that have overtrained to this extent are often plagued with joint problems, scar tissue development (and the tearing of the latter during hard training), and chronic inflammation. Yes, you might get back to where you were and even better, but now you’ve got more injuries and special conditions to deal with. The best advice here: it’s better to avoid this state of affairs. Scary as Net-Negative Overtraining is, it’s profoundly rare in powerlifting. Because of the lower volume, higher-intensity nature of powerlifting training as compared to combat sports, endurance sports, or team sports, the over-reached lifter is much more likely to get hurt before they actually overtrain, and especially overtrain far enough to get into the net-negative realm. The sports with the highest levels of net- negative overtraining are ones in which so much volume is done, multiple daily sessions are performed, usually combining conditioning work, weight room work, and technical/tactical work. Powerlifting relies on chronically low fatigue levels so that the heavy weights of training can actually be successfully lifted, thus it’s unlikely to lead to net-negative overtraining. But it certainly pays to know about this state and watch out just in case. For every doubt that this state can be reached, there’s a kid somewhere running a “Bulgarian volume program” after only 2 months of training. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 119 F i g u re 3 : M e e t i n g M RV ove r t h e M e s o c yc l e On the left hand side we have training that never approaches MRV and is thus not stimulative enough for maximal gains in performance. On the right hand side we have training that starts out already higher than MRV and would thus lead to an unsustainable accumulation of fatigue. In the middle is the most likely effective structure of training, whereby training is very close to the MRV and MRV is only intentionally superseded right before a deload. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 120 P R I N C I P L E I M P O R TA N C E R A N K Fatigue management is our 3rd most highly ranked priority for training. It’s not as important as Specificity, because we first need to know what it is we’re going to be fatigued from! It’s not as highly ranked as Overload because hard training is a MUST for powerlifting success not in the sense that “not doing it will eventually catch up to you,” but in the literal sense that if you don’t apply overload, you simply won’t be a powerlifter. You’ll be a person of average strength who shows up to meets and confuses people with absurdly mediocre performances. Other than those two principles, fatigue management is by far the most important. If you apply NO fatigue management at all, you’re either training so easily that you’re not making hardly any gains, or so hard that you’ll either stop getting better, get worse, get hurt, or all three, probably in that order. Fatigue Management allows you to train hard sustainably, which, together with Specificity and Overload, form the first complete set of powerlifting principles. If you only know and apply those three principles, you’re going to have a long and productive career in the sport. There are lots of lifters, and some very good ones, that don’t go beyond these three core principles. But how many are there that don’t manage fatigue? Well, none that have working limbs anymore! Of course it pays to apply all the other principles as well, especially if you want to be the best you can be, not just “good.” But if you don’t apply any one of these three core principles, your involvement with the sport will either be wholly uneventful, short-lived, or both. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 121 I M P L I C AT I O N S & E X A M P L E S O F P R O P E R A P P L I C AT I O N O F P R I N C I P L E FAT I G U E M A N A G E M E N T 1. ) M AX I M U M R E COV E R A B L E VO LU M E The proper implementation of the fatigue management principle is very simple at its core, but can get quite complicated if we want to understand and engineer our best and most meticulous attempts at managing fatigue. Interestingly, the overload principle is our best segway into the discussion of how to apply the principle of fatigue management in an effective manner. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 122 The first part of the overload principle tells us that we have to train within a ‘maximal threshold’ above the minimum of which adaptations are stimulated the most effectively. While training above this threshold produces the adaptations we desire, it also produces fatigue. If we train way below this threshold, the little fatigue we accumulate is dissipated during the normal rest days between session and fatigue management is pointless. At this point training is pointless again because training that sums no fatigue will almost certainly sum no adaptations. We must accept it as a given that all proper overloaded training will come with cumulative fatigue. The second part of the overload principle states that in order for the best rate of gains to occur, successive stimuli need to be more difficult and disruptive to physiology than recent ones. This means that not only will fatigue be elevated with every session, but that if we graph fatigue against time (see below), we see that fatigue rises faster and faster with every microcycle. Eventually, such fatigue will interfere with a host of physiological abilities and outcomes, the first of which is performance. This is where we can give a very precise definition to MRV for the first time. The MRV of a time period is the maximum tolerable training volume of the body, such that any lower volumes are not maximally overloading and any higher volumes lead to a decrease in performance. What do we mean by performance? Actually, we mean four different things based on each of the four phases of powerlifting training: a.) Hypertrophy Phase MRV: The volume above which muscle size decreases. b.) Strength Phase MRV: The volume above which basic strength decreases. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 123 c.) Peaking Phase MRV: The volume above which maximal force expression with stable technique decreases. d.) Active Recovery Phase MRV: The volume above which fastest recovery rates decrease. F i g u re 4 : Fa t i g u e Ac c u m u l a t i o n w i t h O ve r l o a d Tra i n i n g The MRVs of the different phases are, on average, meaningfully different from one another. a.) The hypertrophy phase MRV is by far the highest volume of all of the phases. You can be beat to crap, have nervous system fatigue like crazy, be low on energy, and still be able to produce enough volume above 60%1RM to signal additional muscle growth. Now, when chemical messenger alterations speed up, even hypertrophy grinds to a halt. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 124 Every training session activates mTOR and AMPk. If the training is done right, much more mTOR activation occurs with each session than AMPk and the net result is muscle growth. However, as fatigue accumulates over weeks of training, AMPk activity with each session begins to rise, eventually so much that it overshadows mTOR activity and the net stimulus can be muscle loss. A very related process occurs with cortisol and testosterone, and likely the paracrine factors as well. Yes, hypertrophy eventually succumbs to fatigue and volumes need to decline, but the MRV of hypertrophy training is definitely higher than it is for the other phases. Being able to tell when your MRV for hypertrophy is reached or surpassed is very difficult in practice, as most of us don’t have access to radioactive leucine labeling to directly measure muscle growth. However, there are some decent proxies for “in the trenches” estimates. You’ve probably surpassed your hypertrophy MRV when you” Can’t maintain your usual reps with 60-75% 1RM weights No longer get very good pumps from training Get dull, achy, and tired the next day after training instead of sore Feel depleted and unenergetic during workouts, struggling to meet minimum work efforts b.) The strength phase MRV requires that strength performance is maintained. Thus, we have surpassed the MRV of the strength phase as soon as we can no longer generate our highest forces and lift the weights needed to provide a strength overload. In order to keep strength unaffected, the nervous system must not be overly fatigued, nor can Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 125 glycogen stores dip too low, testosterone levels too low, etc... Thus, the kind of fatigue levels and volumes that are appropriate for the hypertrophy phase are absolutely too high for the strength phase, and thus the strength phase MRV is lower. The way to tell your strength MRV is easy. When you can’t match you recent performances in sets of 3-6 reps, your strength performance has declined and you’re at or just past your MRV. If you did 405 for 5,5,5 reps the first week, then did 415 for 5,5,5 the second week, but could only get 425 for 3,2,2 reps, you are no longer as strong as you were and your MRV has been passed. c.) The MRV for the peaking phase is a bit more difficult to estimate, but in many ways it’s the most intuitive. It’s far lower than the MRV for hypertrophy and strength phases, because your fatigue must be very low for you to strong enough and have good enough nervous system coordination to lift your biggest weights. If you can hit your heavy sets of 3 like expected and with good technique, you’re probably at or below MRV, but if you raise your volume and begin missing reps and having technical breakdowns, you’ve likely surpassed it. d.) The MRV for the active recovery phase is simply the most volume you can do and still recover at the best rate. Since recovery is very hard to measure directly, we have to use research-discovered volume guidelines most of the time to estimate our MRVs for this phase. Suffice it to say, the MRV of the active recovery phase may be as little as 1/4 the volume of the hypertrophy phase. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 126 M RV OV E R T H E M E S O C YC L E Because performances usually (or rather, should) peak with every mesocycle, the MRV can also be defined by mesocycle. That is, your MRV in any one training session is a rather meaningless concept, because some light sessions can recover you from almost anything. MRV as a concept is best reserved for the mesocycle, as that’s the most realistic way to both estimate and apply it. This does not mean that every single week of the mesocycle will have training programmed exactly at the MRV. Because intentional overreaching has distinct benefits, we’re going to intentionally surpass MRV towards the end of most mesocycles of training. If we’re to have a recovery and adaptive expression from this overreach, we need to follow it with a deload that has a much lower MRV. In order to have an efficient accumulation-to-deload ratio, and also apply the overload principle properly (starting at the bottom of the maximal threshold and working our way up over the weeks) the overreaching week should be proceeded with weeks that are lower than MRV, but come closer and closer. This makes training effective as well as sustainable over the long term, preventing us from deloading every other week by always trying to train for MRV. Since our training is almost at MRV for the first part of the accumulation, at MRV in the middle, and over MRV right before the deload (and far under during the deload), our average MRV is defined as the MRV for the whole mesocycle, and is usually about the same volume as the middle- end microcycles of our typical mesocycle. From now on when we refer to MRV, we’ll be referring to this average per-mesocycle figure. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 127 F i g u re 5 : M RV C h a n g e s W i t h i n t h e M e s o c yc l e MRV starts low due to new exercises and need for room to expand through overload threshold, then rises until it flatlines and falls at week 4, then falls drastically during deload to prepare for next whole meso. M RV BY S I T UAT I O N D I F F E R E N C E S W I T H I N AT H L E T E S While the MRV is a theoretical construct that has a set value for each type of training phase, many variables can alter the MRV for a single particular individual. These variables generally fall into two categories; those that expand work capacity, and those that expand recovery. The recovery side is absolutely necessary for MRV to improve, because too much of a work capacity increase will just make you that much more Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 128 fatigued and quickly pass your MRV. However, recovery enhancement is not sufficient, as an increase in training volume must follow in most cases to make best use of the newly enhanced recovery abilities. F i g u re 6 : M RV, Wo r k C a p a c i t y, a n d R e c ove r y Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 129 In the figure above, R stands for Recovery, WC stands for Work Capacity and MRV for Maximum Recoverable Volume. Most real-world changes affect both sides of the MRV increase. Proper amounts of sleep and good nutrition both allow you to train harder (thus increasing how much volume you can perform at any given intensity) and recover faster and adapt more completely, thus raising your MRV from both sides. Drugs (anabolic steroids, for example) also allow the lifter to both stimulate and recover in an enhanced fashion. Life stress and other physical activities may not impede hard training as much, but do come with a high price for recovery, so reducing them can raise the MRV from the recovery side. Using a high volume work capacity/hypertrophy phase before a strength phase can enhance your strength phase work capacity, but it doesn’t do nearly as much for recovery. Both sides need to be elevated to bring up the MRV. The implication here is very straightforward. If you want to have a higher MRV and be able to benefit from higher volumes of training (which are always better than lower volumes so long as you can recover from them), you’ve gotta make sure you do everything you have to both hit it hard in the gym and recover between sessions. This means that as your training gets more serious, your recovery modalities need to get more serious as well. Very few of the best lifters miss out on too much sleep or food, and they usually do a good job staying low-stress. Not only can your recovery strategies improve over time, simply training for long periods (months, years) raises your MRV by way of work capacity improvements. Thus, another quick takeaway is to avoid doing the routines of elite lifters verbatim... you might not yet have the MRV to keep up. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 130 M RV D I F F E R E N C E S B E T W E E N AT H L E T E S The same circumstances that cause one individual to have different MRVs through their training career also lead to the development of differences in MRV between different athletes. Two different lifters might get different amounts of sleep and rest. One lifter might eat more or eat better than another, or be using more or better drugs. The crazy volumes of the mythical Bulgarian routines became much more understandable once it was revealed that Bulgarian national team lifters lived at a training compound where their food, drugs, sleep, and massage were all provided for them at arm’s length, without any stressors save the weight room to speak of. This is a good thing to keep in mind before starting a super high intensity, volume, and frequency routine inspired by Bulgarian methods. Of course on top of all of those same differences we see both within and between lifters, we have the factor of genetics. Work capacity, recovery capacity, and MRV differ drastically between various lifters, often for genetic reasons and those having nothing to do with external lifestyle factors. Some lifters can get three hours of sleep and smash workouts, while still others miss one hour out of eight and start to overreach. Of course you don’t choose your genetics, so there is no point to lingering on this topic, but it’s worth noting that doing exactly the same number of working sets as your training partner for every exercise faces theoretical problems right from the get-go. If we’re all different at least to some extent, perhaps at least our training volumes should reflect this if we want to maximize our training effect and lifting potential. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 131 M RV & R E L AT I V E I N T E N S I T Y ( P R OX I M I T Y TO FA I LU R E ) Countless variables determine MRV. The phase of training, the work capacity of the athlete, the recovery ability of the athlete, and other factors play a role. But one training variable that we have yet to discuss alters MRV in a profound way that merits its own discussion. Relative intensity (as defined in the first chapter) can also be understood as the proximity to failure achieved by any rep effort. If you did a set of 3 reps, and you could have done 5 with a gun to your head but physiologically could have done no more than 5 reps, we can say that you stopped 2 reps short of failure. We can thus say that your failure proximity was higher than if you only did 2 reps with the same weight or one rep with the same weight. Failure proximity has a very high effect on fatigue, such that with the same volume and intensity in a program, the one with the sets taken to failure is going to be more fatiguing than the one not taken to failure. Thus, if we take your 5RM and make you grind out all 5 reps at the same time in one set, you’re going to sum more fatigue than if you did all the reps as singles with 3 minutes in between sets. The fatigue of just one set is so small that the difference is barely noticeable, but with a whole training session’s worth of sets, training to failure can produce a noticeably higher level of fatigue for any given volume. What this last point means is that failure training lowers the MRV. Training consistently to failure and still trying to recover enough to be able to present a weekly overload requires much lower volumes of training. High Intensity Training (HIT), which is based on training to failure for each working set, by no coincidence, programs a very low Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 132 volume approach. Because volume is so highly linked to muscle growth and strength improvements, such an approach to training has been shown inferior for both outcomes. No, intentionally lowering the MRV is not a good idea. Failure training is not conducive to a high MRV, but for the same workload as non-failure training, it actually tends to produce slightly better size (and possibly strength) increases. The further away working sets are from failure, the less effective they are in causing positive adaptation, as noted earlier in the discussion on overload. With those two pieces of information combined, the best training is likely done close to failure (enough to be within the maximal threshold of the individual) but not at failure, as that produces such a disproportionate amount of fatigue as to lower the MRV substantially and pay the price of lower volume training. If anywhere, failure training may be beneficial at the end of an accumulation phase of a mesocycle. Firstly, the deload is coming up next anyway so cumulative fatigue won’t interfere with the next week’s training. Secondly, the overload presented in the preceding weeks of the mesocycle has been steadily growing, and it’s going to take some of the most extreme approaches to elicit an adaptive response. Lastly, training far beyond the MRV in the final week may elicit a supercompensation effect during the deload. In fact, training to failure (or not quite but very close to it for safety concerns) may be tailor-made for the final microcycle of accumulation training, but it’s anything but tailor made for almost all other applications in powerlifting. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 133 2. ) T R A I N I N G VA R I A B L E S T H AT C A N A LT E R FAT I G U E A C C U M U L AT I O N & D I S S I PAT I O N The rate at which fatigue accumulates and dissipates is a slightly different topic than the MRV. When you start training at your MRV or close to it, how long can you train there before fatigue begins to accumulate and lower your MRV? Once you’re deloading from your MRV, how long does it take to drop that fatigue? It’s not a question of just how much food you eat or how good your genetics are because other details about the lifter and training plan matter as well. Some of the more prominent ones include; lift type, proximity to peak, body size, strength, fiber type, and technique. Gender may also be a possible consideration, but mostly due to the aforementioned reasons clustering with gender. A.) LIFT TYPE As mentioned in the Overload chapter, machine movements and isolation moves tend to cause less homeostatic disruption than free weight and compound movements. This means that barbell movements will almost always sum up fatigue faster at any given set, rep, and intensity scheme than machine moves. This is not a negative, because they sum up a concomitant amount of fitness as well, and perhaps even out of proportion to their fatigue effects, which makes them ideal training tools in most scenarios. The point to take note of is that if you really need to keep fatigue down for whatever reason and you’re ok with perhaps not optimally adapting in that phase of training, machines might be a good idea. Isolation moves are less fatiguing because they almost always lack the proclivity to generate very high training volumes. Because a true Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 134 calculation of volume involved weight, sets, reps and distance (to calculate total work done), compound movements with their longer ranges of motion and their heavier weights can simply get you more work quicker. In addition, isolation exercises work a much smaller amount of musculature. The less muscle that is homeostatically disrupted (and the less nervous system activity it takes to activate that small amount of muscle), the less fatigue there is. Thus, 5x10 in the biceps curl is never going to disrupt like 5x10 in the bent-over row, at least because so much less muscle mass is used. We have an idea of which lifts will be more fatiguing than others; those with longer ranges of motion, proclivity to be exert the highest forces and those with more involved musculature. If we rank the powerlifts according to these guidelines, we find the following pattern: Most fatiguing: Deadlift Intermediate ROM (just short of squat in most cases), heaviest weights, by far most muscle used. Intermediately Fatiguing: Squat Longest ROM, intermediate weights and muscle used. Least Fatiguing: Bench Press Shortest ROM, lightest weights, least muscle used. There are two quick implications from this information, both of which will be explained in much greater detail in the later chapters on SRA Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 135 and Phase Potentiation. Firstly, because for any set/rep scheme benches both accumulate and drop fatigue faster than deadlifts, it’s likely that higher frequency programming will be much more helpful to benching than to deadlifting, with squatting falling somewhere in between the two. Secondly, when dropping fatigue to peak for meet performance, it’s likely a good move to begin lowering the training load for deadlifts first, squats second, and benches last to give adequate (but not too much) time for fatigue to dissipate while adaptations are retained. There are several other tentative differences between lift type and fatigue characteristics that we’ll mention in the discussion of other factors below. B. ) P R OX I M I T Y TO C A R E E R P E A K As the training process continues for years on end and physiological adaptations occur, the boundaries of system capabilities start to make their presence known more regularly. One reason for this is that recovery systems don’t always keep pace with the adaptation of performance systems. The heart and liver clear lactate from the blood when the muscles use glycolysis and produce it during heavy efforts. The bigger your muscles are and the harder your nervous system pushes them, (both of which increase with advancement of training) the more lactic acid they put out. But the heart and liver don’t change as much with training, so you’re left with largely the same system to recover lactic acid as you always had, but now with much more lactic acid to recover. Just the same way, the immune system (which is critical to recovering muscles between bouts of exercise) does not meaningfully change over the years of training while the damage it has to clean up increases. Same goes for the GI tract, which has to provide nutrition to an ever-needy body with largely unchanged capabilities. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 136 The further you push your body’s performance and the further back recovery systems fall, the quicker fatigue both sums and the slower it falls, even with your now very high MRVs. Very experienced lifters often get criticized for training with lower frequencies, but the consideration of “proximity to peak” is an important one in understanding why that practice may be somewhat warranted. C. ) B O DY S I Z E This one is brutally simple: bigger structures can lift more weight and have more tissue to disrupt. No matter how hard you work your biceps, they recover in a couple of days. Try the same sets and reps with your quads and you might not walk for a week and a half. This observation applies to 3 different classes of phenomena: Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 137 Lifts involving more muscle will take on more fatigue (DL vs SQ vs BP) The same lifter that has grown in size over the years will accumulate fatigue faster and dissipate it slower as he/she grows. Different lifters of different sizes have different fatigue dynamics. Bigger lifters usually need lower frequencies and longer tapers to dissipate fatigue. In addition to muscle size, body length plays a role as well. For every squat 5’6 Mike Israetel does, 6’2 Chad Wesley Smith does more work, even if the sets, weight, and reps are identical. Work is force multiplied by distance of bar path, and longer bar paths for taller and lankier lifters both sum fatigue faster and dissipate it slower. A great example of this is the case of Kiril Sarychev’s bench press training. Kiril goes heavy in the bench only about every week and a half. This super low frequency of overload makes no sense until you consider that Kiril: Is working out with sets of 5 at over 600lbs Has arms and pecs the size of very good lifters’ quads and glutes (weighs a lean 396lbs!) Is 6’8, so he moves the bench bar about as far with each rep as your average 198 class sumo deadlifter does during a pull. Thus, it makes perfect sense that he should bench heavy only every week and a half, which is about how often high level 198 deadlifters do heavy pulls! Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 138 D. ) S T R E N G T H The more force you can exert, the more homeostatic damage you can cause. In very plain terms, stronger lifters can beat themselves up more and will thus both sum fatigue more quickly and wait longer for it to dissipate. Interestingly enough, relative intensity plays a role too, as weights lifted closer and closer to the 1RM cause more and more fatigue for the same volume. Equipped lifters train with such heavy weights (in excess of 100% of their 1RM), that the Westside system designed for equipped lifting only programmed one heavy session for upper and lower body each during the week. It took a whole week for even the best lifters on the most drugs to recover enough to train that heavy again. On the opposite extreme, “squat everyday” programs have been touted as highly effective by numerous lifters, and indeed they are quite effective especially in short “concentrated loading” periods of several weeks at a time. But not-the-strongest lifters have been noted to have MUCH more success with these programs than those who are at the top of the strength world. There is quite a polarity there, with most of the strongest lifters actually doing the lowest frequency programs (with the Lilliebridges being the ultimate example). For lifters going through their career paths and gaining strength, either less frequent training must be done with time or the variation in volume- load (undulation, as it’s called by some) within the microcycle must become more pronounced to meet the need for recovery, even at similar total volumes. E.) FIBER TYPE The human skeletal muscle system is made up of a combination of slower twitch muscle fibers and faster twitch muscle fibers. Faster twitch fibers Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 139 contract at faster velocities, respond better to heavy resistance training (grow more), and generate higher forces. Slower twitch fibers contract at slower velocities, respond more poorly to heavy resistance training (grow less), and generate lower forces. But because they generate lower forces, are more well vascularized, and for several other reasons, slower twitch fibers take on less homeostatic damage than faster twitch fibers and heal much quicker. Muscle groups with a higher proportion of faster twitch fibers take longer to heal, and those with a higher proportion of slower twitch fibers heal more quickly. The muscles of the upper body tend to be faster twitch (on average) that those of the lower body (specifically the quads and glutes), which may explain while the squat is a bit more fatigue resistant than we would come to expect based solely on weight lifted and ROM. Interestingly, the hamstrings are notoriously fast-twitch dominant in most people, which may explain, in addition to the great use of upper body musculature as well, why the deadlift is so fatiguing. In addition to lift or body part specificity in fiber type, different individuals have varied fiber type averages. If we take all of the muscles of the human skeletal muscle system, one individual may be 60% faster twitch and 40% slower twitch, while another might have the opposite ratio. Those individuals with faster fibers will tend to be able to generate and hold onto more fatigue, while those with slower fiber types have a gigantic work capacity and recovery ability, so will be able to dissipate fatigue rapidly as well as have very high MRVs. Though in a bit of irony, those same slower twitch individuals tend to experience less success in their results because of the poor adaptive nature of their dominant fibers to heavy resistance training. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 140 F. ) G E N D E R Females have two unique physiological advantages in fatigue dissipation just because they are female. Female musculature tends to be more highly vascularized and thus may recover faster. Females are more rarely found at the extremes of fiber type ratio. In a sport such as powerlifting that attracts the fast- twitch extremes, most females will be clustered closer to an even mix of fast and slow fibers than the males, though of course it comes down to the fiber type of each individual male or female. This means that females will gain a slight Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 141 advantage in the proclivity to generate less homeostatic damage and recover faster than males. Those factors are likely to play a role in the ability of females to both sum fatigue slower and dissipate it faster than males, but by far the dominant differences arise from the fact that, on average, female lifters tend to be smaller, have shorter ranges of motion, and not be quite as strong as their male counterparts. G.) TECHNIQUE For two lifters moving the same load, the lifter with better technique will expend less energy and expose his/her body to lower forces. One of the reasons not yet mentioned for the deadlift being as fatiguing as it is the fact that it’s poorly leveraged lift. If only we could get the bar path completely vertical and in our center of gravity like a squat or a trap bar deadlift! The muscles of the spine and posterior chain must work that much harder to support a rigid posture while leaning over, and that likely taxes them so much as to contribute to a higher total fatigue from deadlifting. Poor leverages, especially due to the movement of the center of pressure (bar plus lifter) away from the summed center of rotation of all of the joints can necessitate a maximal contraction of the supporting muscles (and beyond maximal, if eccentric action of the erectors occurs when saving a forward-tipped squat, for example). Because the deviation from efficient movement causes greater energy utilization and greatly taxes the muscular and nervous systems, it likely adds to cumulative fatigue. As lifters gain experience in the lifts and sharpen their technique, they can expect to have improvements in fatigue management abilities. On the other hand, letting your technique Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 142 slip just to grind out a few more reps may be a very costly move to your fatigue state. By training with good technique, not only does fatigue rise slower and drop faster, but your maximum recoverable volume may rise as well, which is of course quite the additional benefit. 3. ) T R A I N I N G - B A S E D FAT I G U E M A N A G E M E N T S T R AT E G I E S Because this is a book about powerlifting training, strategies that can be used to reduce fatigue outside of the gym (such as food, rest, drugs, etc...) will not be the focus. Some introductory reading about external strategies for fatigue reduction can be found here. Examining the fatigue management strategies based on training variations, we will find that there are 4 distinct approaches worthy of individual discussion: rest days, light sessions, deloads, and active rest periods. These approaches are stratified by timescale, and very roughly (with lots of overlap) correspond to the four primary mechanisms of fatigue, namely disruptions to fuel stores, the nervous system, chemical messengers, and tissue structures. R E S T/O F F DAYS Rest days are perhaps the most universal and widely accepted fatigue management approach. Rest days allow for the training volume to be essentially zero and allow recovery processes to dissipate fatigue to catch up greatly and prepare the body for another productive microcycle. Interestingly, the function of rest days is also based on their psychological advantages, not just their physiological ones. Because research shows that in many instances a lighter training session (particularly low in volume) may actually attenuate physiological fatigue Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 143 more effectively than a day off, it would be a good question to ask why those athletes that want the best possible outcomes even bother with off days. There are two reasons for this. Rest day effect on fatigue reduction is likely almost identical to that of a light session in most circumstances. Any difference is quite small, and this is important because rest days offer an advantage (described next) that is likely to be larger than this small disadvantage. Rest days have a powerful role in the reduction of psychological fatigue. Stressors are cumulative, and psychological fatigue (what people normally mean when they say they’re “stressed out”) adds right into the cumulative fatigue effect, even though it is not caused by tissue disruption or any physical trauma. The very act of packing your bag, mixing your supplements, actually going to the gym, warming up, and going through even an absurdly easy workout is stressful. If you train as hard as you’re supposed to in order to present an overload, all of these acts may be associated with a mild fight-or-flight stress response. Last week you almost died squatting, so picking up your weightlifting shoes and putting them in your bag is going to have some disruptive psychological effects just by itself. Even the very stress of commuting, be it walking, biking, taking public transport, and especially driving will in many cases outweigh the slight advantage of light sessions over total rest days. In sum total, rest days are an indispensable part of the fatigue management arsenal. Their effects particularly on psychological fatigue make them a staple in literally every single notable powerlifting program ever. How many rest days to take? There are two opposing constraints to consider. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 144 Before considering the constraints that hem in the number of rest days a maximally effective program would have, we must be clear that we’re limiting our discussion to programs that seek optimality. If your program is restricted to only 3 days per week due to scheduling constraints outside of the sport, then so be it. And that’s just fine, but it has to be granted that any more off days than optimal would have to be for some reason external to the training process. Outside of external limits, we have two constraints on off-day number; minimum psychological fatigue reduction needs and constraints on concentrated loading in relationship to overload. M I N I M U M P SYC H O LO G I C A L FAT I G U E R E D U C T I O N N E E D S Ideally, lifters would need no off days. But as described above, psychological fatigue makes them advantageous. One day per week is the likely minimum, as it has been noted that 7 day programs are almost entirely absent from top approaches. While 6 day programs (and thus only one rest day) are theoretically tolerable and have produced top results numerous times, the authors of this book have experienced (through both their own training and those of their clients, which in total sums to several thousand people) that two days off per week seems to be noticeably more effective. This is particularly true when drug-free athletes are involved and when the off days are presented back-to- back. This sequential arrangement of rest days seems to promote a very high degree of psychological fatigue reduction, and also has the added effect of helping lifters actually miss the gym! If you’re at the gym all the time for both hard and easy training, the very act of being there can begin to be stale (in fact in the old literature, “staleness” was a term for cumulative fatigue). Having one, or seemingly even better, two days off in a row can prove very motivating for a productive return for another overloading microcycle. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 145 C O N C E N T R AT E D LOA D I N G I N R E L AT I O N S H I P TO OV E R LOA D It’s a given that in any one week or microcycle of training, there is a certain amount of overload training that will occur. In order for this training to be the hardest possible (and thus most overloading given the other features of the program), the most possible recovery time must be programmed between sessions. More recovery time means a better chance to present overload in the next session. If you Squat heavy Monday, bench Heavy Tuesday and deadlift heavy Wednesday, you simply won’t perform as well in the bench and deadlift as if you had done them on Wednesday and Friday, respectively. Thus, using only this constraint, we can conclude that the best program is the one that spreads its overloading sessions rather evenly throughout the microcycle. In any program with meaningful volume, using only the concentrated loading consideration would leave us without any rest day to speak of, as every day would likely fill up with either an overload session or additional volume or recovery work. The best approach seems to be somewhere between the two. At least one rest day should be taken, possibly two. Outside of those rest days, the overload pattern of the microcycle should be spread fairly evenly. There is some evidence to suggest that too even of an overload spread may itself not be best, and for that we turn to the discussion of light sessions in the next section. Rest days not only reduce psychological fatigue (which of course is another kind of nervous system perturbation), but they also restore substrates, primarily glycogen. Chemical messengers are largely Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 146 unaltered in the timeframe of the rest day and will need a longer phase of fatigue reduction (to be described later) to restore to normal activity. Some healing of muscle damage occurs during rest, but very little other connective tissue damage is healed, as tissues like tendon and bone take much longer to measurably recuperate. LIGHT SESSIONS In a later chapter, the SRA principle will be discussed in depth. Until then, it will suffice to mention that hard training presents a stimulus (via overload) and that lighter training and rest are the most conducive states for recovery and adaptation. Hard training during recovery times can interfere with the level of adaptation gained. Thus, it pays to have training sessions during the microcycle that are overloading, and training sessions during the microcycle that promote recovery. Light sessions offer a very advantageous combination of features: Promote recovery and adaptation Allow for skill practice in the lifts without adding fatigue Largely prevent the slight deterioration of fitness that occurs with each multi-day rest period, which can sum to meaningful differences in performance in the long run Light sessions work. But what are they? How are they defined, exactly? Rest days are self-explanatory and need no definition, but there is quite a bit of confusion about what light sessions really are. In effect, a “light session” is one that does not present an overload and thus does not sum any additional fatigue. A light session has to be far enough below the MRV to allow for considerable fatigue dissipation, while high enough in volume and intensity to prevent too much fitness loss. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 147 Too much volume and intensity, and the only result is a conservation of fatigue rather than a reduction or elevation. This is perhaps the worse of the three possibilities, as an elevation of fatigue is at least performed by an overload volume that also garners adaptations. “Middle of the road” light sessions (and as we shall see, the same kind of deloads) end up just wasting time, as they are neither reducing fatigue nor creating adaptations. Too little volume, and the light session turns into a rest day with a gym trip. Not enough volume is presented to slow down adaptive decay (use it or lose it, to be addressed in formal discussion in the Phase Potentiation chapter), so the light session becomes mostly pointless. Between volume and intensity, volume usually has the biggest effect on fatigue, and every light session must at the very least be of lower volume than the normal training sessions. While volume has the biggest effect on fatigue, intensity has the biggest effect on conserving adaptations. Thus if adaptive conservation with fatigue reduction is the goal (and it is), “light sessions” must in most circumstances in actuality be low- volume sessions that are still heavy enough to conserve adaptations. The main exception to this structure is during a peaking phase where percentages of 1RM in training exceed 90%. At such very high intensities, intensity itself becomes a major fatiguing variable, and thus light sessions during a peaking phase will reflect this. In essence, the following recommendations emerge for light sessions: Hypertrophy Phase Light Sessions: Volume: 50% of overload day Intensity: 90% of overload day Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 148 Strength Phase Light Sessions: Volume: 70% of overload day Intensity: 70% of overload day Peaking Phase Light Sessions: Volume: 90% of overload day Intensity: 50% of overload day As the training weights get heavier the MRV gets lower and intensity becomes a bigger and bigger contributor to fatigue. For this reason, the above pattern emerges and light sessions become actual “light” days in the literal sense only as the training weights get heavier. Two distinct mistakes can be made in creating a light session. By far the most common mistake is to reduce intensity while increasing volume. Yes, that technically makes the day “lighter” in weights used, but the volume increase causes so much fatigue that this kind of light session may in fact sum more fatigue than a normal training day, especially in the strength and peaking phases. For example, if your normal training day is 5x5 at 100lbs and your deload is 5x10 at 60lbs, your volume of training on the light session is actually higher than it is on the normal day. Because the intensity is lower, fatigue on this light session won’t be higher than on the normal day, but probably about the same. This results both in a lack of stimulus and a lack of fatigue reduction, the worst of both worlds. In a peaking phase the volumes are even lower and thus high rep light weight training can create even more fatigue than normal training. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 149 The other mistake that can be made is to insufficiently drop intensity. During strength and peaking phases, intensity does become a significant contributor to fatigue, and manipulating volume isn’t good enough. Hitting squats for 3x3 instead of 3x5 may not be enough of a fatigue reduction tool to matter when the weights are well over 80% 1RM. This mistake is quite rare in powerlifting, but should still be cautioned against. W H E N TO U S E L I G H T S E S S I O N S The use of light sessions in training is by no means mandatory, as is the use of all of the other fatigue management modalities including rest days, deloads, and active rest periods. Light sessions can be used 1-2 times per week, with their more expanded use more prominent in strength and peaking phases when low fatigue is a much more important factor in effective programming. In hypertrophy training, the use of light sessions has no strong theoretical backing. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 150 In strength and peaking phases, one or two light sessions can be placed at the end of a microcycle, so as to recover fatigue dramatically for the next big overload presentation in the next microcycle while giving the lifter more technical practice with the lifts. In terms of their effects on sources of cumulative fatigue, light sessions are almost identical to rest days, with their biggest effect being on glycogen and nervous system recovery, with minimal effects on chemical messengers and tissue structure healing. D E LOA D S Fatigue due to the depletion of glycogen only takes several rest days or light sessions to recover. However, nervous system fatigue, the disruption of chemical messengers and microtears to muscle and fascia are not meaningfully reduced within several days of lower volume and intensity training. Luckily, this type of fatigue also takes longer to elevate to levels that disrupt performance and adaptation. If an overload is being applied, fatigue from nervous system, chemical messenger, and tissue damage can begin to affect performance and adaptation. At this point a longer and more dedicated phase of fatigue reduction must be employed so as to allow another several weeks of hard training. The deload performs exactly that function. The deload functions on the same principles of reducing volume and intensity to lower fatigue as the light session. This means that deloads must be easy enough to drop meaningful amounts of fatigue but simulative enough to conserve most adaptations. An additional concern with deloads is their length, as nervous system, chemical messenger and tissue damage simply take longer to heal no matter how little stress Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 151 is provided. For this reason, the average deload will take an entire microcycle to execute, which of course is part of its very definition. In practical terms the deload will take about one week to perform. The recommendations of volume and intensities for deloads are very similar to those of light sessions, but with one notable difference. Deloads must have an average lower intensity than light sessions because tissue damage will not heal nearly as quickly or completely with higher intensities, even if the volume is very low. Because recently- healed tears are still structurally weak, there is good reason to at least make the latter part of the deload very low intensity so as not to provide even momentary forces high enough to re-tear the healing structures. Granted those modifiers, a working recommendation for deload structure can look like the following: Hypertrophy Phase Deloads First Half of Microcycle: Volume: 50% of overload day Intensity: 90% of overload day Second Half of Microcycle: Volume: 50% of overload day Intensity: 50% of overload day Strength Phase Deloads First Half of Microcycle: Volume: 70% of overload day Intensity: 70% of overload day Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 152 Second Half of Microcycle: Volume: 50% of overload day Intensity: 50% of overload day Peaking Phase Deloads: First Half of Microcycle: Volume: 90% of overload day Intensity: 50% of overload day Second Half of Microcycle: Volume: 50% of overload day Intensity: 50% of overload day During the final peaking mesocycle before the meet, such deloads do not apply and a taper must be constructed instead, with more details on that in the Phase Potentiation chapter. Does proper deloading need to be carried out with exactly those percentages? Absolutely not. Those are simply best “educated guess” averages from both literature and coaching experience of the authors. A variety of deload paradigms can be effective, and it’s important to just make sure the essentials are met. That is, some meaningful reductions in both volume and intensity must occur to truly bring down fatigue enough to be worth a week away from overloading training. W H E N TO U S E D E LOA D S Because deloads reduce a significant enough portion of fatigue (almost all of it, actually) to allow for weeks of overloading training after, they are perfectly suited to be placed at the end of each mesocycle, which Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 153 can last between 3 and 5 weeks of accumulation in most cases. Deloads prepare the lifter for another mesocycle (month or so) of overloading training just like rest days and light sessions prepare the lifter for another microcycle (week or so) of overloading training. After the execution of a proper deload, the lifter should be fully restocked with glycogen (assuming an iso- or hyper-caloric diet), the nervous system should be almost completely healed, chemical messengers (especially cortisol and testosterone) should be back to at least sustainable levels, and normal microtears to muscle and fascia should be completely healed. This puts the lifter in a great spot for another productive mesocycle, but is not the whole picture of fatigue management just yet. To fully reduce fatigue back to a true zero-level, we’ll need something stronger. AC T I V E R E S T P E R I O D S After a whole macrocycle (several months to a year) of hard training, the nervous system, especially the CNS, may have recovered only 90%- 95% with each deload, and the cracks are starting to show. Chemical messengers may be chronically elevated a bit too much for optimal performance and adaptation. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, microtears and fractures to tendon, ligament, and bone have been increasing in size and number. This last concern is especially important as it’s the most likely source of traumatic injury if unchecked. Deloads are a very effective mesocycle-length fatigue reduction tool, but for the macrocycle, a more pronounced approach is needed. An active rest phase is just that, and it has the same sorts of differences between itself and deloads that deloads have with light sessions: longer Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 154 and less intense. While a deload is only a week long, an active rest for powerlifting should usually average around two weeks in length. Much less and most lifters will not be recovered enough for a whole new macrocycle of training. Much more and most lifters are long recovered and may be losing adaptations for no reason. In addition, while deloading has at least a moderate intensity period in its first part, no such feature exists in an active rest phase, which is characterized by low volume and intensity through its duration. Thus, recommendations for the active rest phase are: Volume: 50% of overload day Intensity: 50% of overload day W H E N TO U S E AC T I V E R E S T P H A S E S The ideal time to use active rest phases is right after a big meet, probably between once and twice a year depending on the lifter. Bigger, stronger, and more experienced lifters will accumulate more extreme tissue damage and will thus be more likely to require twice-a-year active rests. The two weeks after a meet are almost ideal for active rest phases, as the next meet is far away and strategic losses in fitness (which will occur during the active rest) are tolerable. It’s certainly fine to take a whole week away from the gym right after the meet and take the next week to perform active rest, but the full two weeks of active rest is likely the better choice by a small margin, especially if the lifter is not in psychological need of relief from the gym. Active rest can be a very good time to focus on technical work, rehab, and mobility, simply because those qualities are very difficult to improve concurrently with heavy training. This will explained further in the discussion over under- application of fatigue management later on. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 155 From a psychological perspective, active rest phases are perhaps the toughest of all fatigue reduction strategies. Two whole weeks of 50%/50% training is just a very long time for most powerlifters to do without so much as a hint of overload in the gym. By the end of the active rest phase, most lifters are practically institutionally insane, but that’s a great thing! It’s great because the active rests literally reduces all fatigue back to zero and gets the lifter ready for what may be a year of hard training. How motivated should you be to start a whole yearlong journey? Well, insane is a good start! 4. ) A U T O R E G U L AT E D V S. P R O A C T I V E FAT I G U E M A N A G E M E N T The whole purpose of fatigue management is to regularly drop fatigue down to levels that do not interfere with the presentation of an overload (performance) and the manifestation of adaptations from that overload training. So far, we’ve only discussed programmed or proactive forms of fatigue management. We know that glycogen stores fall over the course of days, so we have rest days and light sessions. We know that nervous system fatigue sums up over weeks, so we have planned deloads, and we know that chemical messenger disruption and tissue damage sum over months, and for that we have planned active rests. So far, so good. However, all of these fatigue management strategies rely on at least a reasonably accurate prediction of fatigue accumulation. If your training depletes your glycogen within the 5 days of your training during a week, then the two days of rest after are perfectly timed to restore glycogen levels. But what if your glycogen levels get too low at day 3? What if after the usual two days of rest they are still not high enough to allow for best overload presentation next week? Not all weeks are the same. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 156 After all, the real world is rife with details and potential complications. Maybe you had to move some furniture for a friend and your glycogen utilization was elevated? Maybe you went through a stressful time and your eating was not up to par? Perhaps your sleep was off and your nervous system fatigue is too high to start another week or even month of hard training? Sometimes your pec might feel tender with tissue damage from a rep that was too unstable. Do you just plow through the next week as planned? On the other hand, what if your fatigue is lower than expected? A good problem to have, but a missed opportunity if you just stick to the plan and change nothing. Why train only 4 weeks on end when you could have done 5 and successfully overloaded for one extra week? Might not be much in the grand scheme, but 3 extra weeks of training per year might be another 5-10lbs on your yearly total. Lift for 5 years and that’s a meaningful number, perhaps putting you in the number 1 spot at your next meet, or the number 2 if you didn’t take the chance to train extra when you were plenty healed for the task. To address this class of conundrums, lifters can make use of a strategy called “autoregulation.” Autoregulation of fatigue management requires the lifter to keep tabs on fatigue levels. The most straightforward way to do this is with performance indicators, but other methods such as morning resting heart rate, desire to train, hunger, and sex drive can be and have been used with success. To use performance as an example, if you are supposed to finish your last week of accumulation (right before deloading) with 5x5 at 200kg and you finish the workout with an easy 2-3 reps left in the tank on each set, is it really time for a deload? We have two inputs to consider before we can calculate the best course of action in each scenario. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 157 AC C U M U L AT I O N : D E LOA D R AT I O If you autoregulate by training an extra week here and there, awesome. This will run into our next input, but for the accumulation:deload (A:D) ratio, training more simply improves it, meaning we spend more of the year getting even better than what was planned. However, taking extra off days, light sessions and deloads too often can reduce the sum total accumulation:deload ratio, essentially shrinking the amount of time during the year that you actually spend improving. In extreme cases (to be discussed in detail on the faulty application of fatigue management later) this can result in a pattern of training way above MRV for a couple of weeks, getting too fatigued, taking an unplanned deload or succession of light sessions, and repeating the process. The end result is simply less time spent productively training, which is not a desired outcome and thus poses a limitation to the use of autoregulation. TRAINING PLAN INTERFERENCE The next limitation to the use of autoregulation is the possible interference of this process with the larger training plan. If you need 8 weeks of strength training to work up to the weights you plan to hit, and your hypertrophy phase was expanded by two weeks because your fatigue was still in check, you now only have 6 weeks to strength train. Yeah, you’re the biggest you’ve ever been, but that new muscle no longer has sufficient time to be trained for maximal utilization by the nervous system, so your performance at the coming meet may simply not reflect your new muscularity, while the scale and the weightclasses might! Because powerlifting meets occur on distinct dates and training for them should be planned well in advance, certain phases of training don’t have an infinite leeway in alteration, and a considerable amount of structure needs to be conserved for best results. This presents another Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 158 limit for autoregulation, except usually in the opposite direction as the one imposed by the accumulation:deload ratio problem. How do we make sure to benefit from autoregulation while remaining within the aforementioned constraints? R E C O M M E N DAT I O N S a.) Stay in Touch with Abilities, Expectations (MRV) If you don’t know your MRV, you’re going to either under- or over- accumulate fatigue on a regular basis, throwing off both the A:D ratio and the training plan. Thus the biggest recommendation for autoregulation is to do the best possible job you can of finding out your average MRV and sticking to it! If you think you can recover from 10x10 squats where in reality 6x10 is your usual best, you’ll be doing a whole lot of messing up the A:D ratio. On the other hand, if you think you can recover at most from 6x10 squats but your true MRV is 10x10, you’re going to be extending your mesocycles by possibly weeks at a time and seriously disrupting your training plan. The MRV estimate is of course imperfect as both work capacity and recovery fluctuate, but at least a good running average is a start. Don’t train by feel and you won’t have to fatigue manage by feel. b.) Alter Sets and Weights Marginally for too Little Fatigue If you’re doing a good job of tracking your MRV and training right near it, you’ll still run into situations where you feel less fatigued than you should. In this case, the best recommendation that does not interfere with the training plan is to increase the number of sets you perform, or even the weight on the bar. If you plan an accumulation phase of 4 weeks and week 2 is a breeze, go up 15lbs instead of 10lbs on some Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 159 week 3 movements, or add a set or two to them. That’s going to get you the same effect as adding a whole week of training, but won’t alter your training plan structure one bit. This kind of adjustment requires a very low level of ego and a very high level of connection with your own abilities. Such are the domains of the experienced lifter and the rewards of years of intelligent training... do your best with them no matter your training age. c.) Use Extra Light Sessions, not Deloads for too Much Fatigue Using our example from b.), if too much fatigue has begun to accumulate and week 2 begins much harder than it should, the best course of action to reduce fatigue without reducing the A:D ratio is to take the rest of that week as light sessions. Light sessions are on average better at conserving adaptations than deload weeks, and they sure as heck don’t take as long. They are perfect for use in just this kind of application; when fatigue is just a little too high for that point in the mesocycle. This strategic use of light sessions requires honesty, low ego, and personal knowledge of abilities, but it pays huge dividends by allowing the lifter to keep fatigue low enough to still get most of the training of that mesocycle around the MRV, instead of having to drop down a whole week to recover. In summary, a plan is needed, on top of which autoregulation can play an important role. Autoregulation is best done through small increases in volumes and intensities when training is too far below the actual MRV. For training that eeks a bit too high over the actual MRV, autoregulation can reduce fatigue mostly through light sessions later in the week, avoiding whole unplanned deloads that reduce the A:D ratio. If you need unplanned deloads too often, chances are you’re misestimating your mesocycle-scale MRV. Lastly, because autoregulation requires a low ego Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 160 (to prevent from adding volume and weight too liberally) and a close connection to one’s abilities (to know when to back off or go harder), its use should be paired to training experience. Beginner lifters (who should also have a coach in most cases) should stick to much more rigid programming, as both their abilities to autoregulate and their needs (they don’t accumulate much fatigue and they will progress even if they under-train some) are not high. As lifters gain more experience and time in the rack and on the platform, autoregulation can enter a more expanded use. A tiny caveat is that while autoregulation becomes a more realistic option for advanced lifters, their more intimate knowledge of their MRV will in all likelihood relegate their use of autoregulation to a modifier of their programming rather than the dominant feature. U N D E R - A P P L I C AT I O N O F FAT I G U E M A N A G E M E N T 1. ) C H R O N I C A L LY O V E R D O I N G V O L U M E From our discussion earlier on the overload principle, we made use of the following table, which is instrumental to the topic of chronic volume excess as well. In this table, training volume can be split into 5 categories: a.) Training that is not voluminous enough to incur any meaningful and desired adaptations. b.) Training that is voluminous enough to incur some meaningful and desirable adaptations, but not the most that can be accrued. c.) Training that is at the MRV, and is the most volume that lifter can benefit from. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 161 d.) Training that is higher in volume than the MRV but not overwhelming to recovery in the medium term and is still beneficial, though less than maximally. e.) Training that is so high in volume, that recovery is impeded highly enough to be a net neutral effect on performance and adaptation, or a net negative. F i g u re 7 : Tra i n i n g Vo l u m e a n d M RV Training more is absolutely more productive until category C in the table above is surpassed. This category is the MRV, your body’s maximum ability to recover and benefit from training. Once this category is surpassed, training more and more actually adds no more value if Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 162 continued for extended (weeks) period of time. Fatigue management allows the powerlifter to approach category c, pass it, and enter category d, as functional overreaching has shown to have some benefits. However, this is intentionally a short-term process, lasting perhaps the last week of a mesocycle until a deload is employed to bring down fatigue. An under-application of fatigue management results in volumes that exceed point d too often or perhaps even most of the time. This inevitably leads to performance stalling, poor or negative adaptations, possibility of performance regression and potential overtraining if carried out for too long. There are at least 3 notable paths to chronically over-using volume past the MRV: ‘ H A R D CO R E ’ M E N TA L I T Y You’re a powerlifter. Powerlifting is a hardcore sport, period. It’s your job to regularly put yourself in the path of weights that are heavy enough to literally kill you. If you weren’t powerlifting, you’d probably be a pirate, assassin, or samurai. You know, something like that! On a serious note, powerlifters have a “hardcore” mentality of accepting challenges, not quitting easily, and willingly accepting pain and hardship to make progress. This mentality serves us extremely well to get through hard workouts, get in the right amount of food, and step up to the challenge of PRs on the platform. However, if taken too far, this mentality can lead to a jettisoning of logic. yes, it’s a good idea to try hard and go to crazy in training, but only because we know the psychotic effort leads to improvement. If we’ve willingly surpassed our MRV, doing more work Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 163 is no longer getting us any better. At this point each lifter has to make a decision about what is more important; getting better at powerlifting or feeling more “hardcore” about their approach to it. Each reader can decide for themselves. C O P Y I N G R O U T I N E S O F T H E G R E AT S This will come as a shock to most readers, but only one of you is actually Ed Coan. I know, I know, it sounds crazy but please keep reading. Routines of past and current greats are absolutely awesome tools to help a lifter learn about proper programming and gain insight into his/ her training. The structure of the routines can carry great insight, but it’s unlikely that the total volume does. In fact, just about the only thing the total volume tells you is how well that lifter him/herself could recover during that specific time in his/her career. Some lifters had a very impressive and extreme ability to recover from high volumes, but almost all of them would be the first to tell you that the only important variable about volume is what you can recover from, not them. So if you directly copy the routines of the greats, you risk doing so much work that you pass your MRV by light-years, and end up stalling or worse. If you really think you can hang with anyone, try Bill Kazmaier’s old powerlifting split (no refunds, exchanges, or lawsuits for rhabdomyolysis). When programing for yourself or adjusting an existing program from a great lifter, start with a much lower volume than they use, and ease in. Increasing volume when you’re recovered is MUCH easier and safer than decreasing volume when you’re already beat up. Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 164 T RY I N G TO K E E P U P W I T H T H E J O N E S E S This mistake is so blatant that the most we’ll mention of it should serve as a kick in the butt to remind you not to fall for it. And all of the authors of this book and just about every powerlifter on the planet has fallen or will fall for this error. Parlaying our discussion on copying routines of the greats, the only volume that matters is your personal MRV. You have different genetics than others. Your diet is different. Your sleep is different. Your family situation is different. Your drugs might be different or nonexistent (and some others use them). With all those differences, why in the world would you try to emulate the same training volume as someone else? Chapte r N o. 5 Sci e n t if ic P r in c ip les o f St ren g t h Tra in in g P 165 “THAT %$#$%* ON INSTAGRAM CAN DO 5 SETS OF 10 IN THE SQUAT? SO CAN I.” We’ve all been there. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good place to be. The only reason we powerlift is to get stronger. The only best w

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