Does Maxing Make You Stronger?

Training Powerlifting
41

[quote]Caltene wrote:

Well, you using the phrase “cns burnout” in a weight training article makes me question if it is even worth it. So does you insisting on me telling you why we sleep, lol.[/quote]

The leading theory on why we sleep is that we take our system “off line” to repair and rejuvenate our nervous system so it is actually a great example of how CNS fatigue accumulates from everyday activity which then needs to be addressed essentially daily. Strenuous physical activity increases this level of fatigue. Zatsiorsky talks about this concept of fitness vs fatigue extensively in the Science and Practice of Strength Training.

42

[quote]RampantBadger wrote:

Don’t bother Tim, check out any of his recent posts -non stop trollling and douchery.
[/quote]

I generally hesitate to label people as trolls but it appears you may be correct

43

If I might put my two cents into this topic: my personal experience is that max effort work has tended to lead to fairly significant strength inreases in the case that I have laid off a particular exercise for a while and am coming back to it for the first time in several months. I’m not sure if this is a result of my body’s general readaptation process to this movement or if I respond particularly well to this kind of training.

Of course I’m only talking about the larger lifts, here. I’ve found over the years that max effort is the only real way that I can make significant improvements to my deadlift and deadlift variations.

44

Lifters from the past such as Doug Hepburn and Paul Anderson utilized a lot of heavy singles, and got extremely strong off it. Doug does cycle in higher reps (3-5) when he feels he stalls with singles so I guess there are merits in implementing higher rep ranges in your training.

What I notice in terms of the big 3 though, singles helped my bench and deadlift TREMENDOUSLY. As for squat, I find the entire spectrum of rep ranges work, from singles to high reppers.

45

read up on the bulgarian way of training… they been the best for a lot of years…

46

[quote]spk wrote:
read up on the bulgarian way of training… they been the best for a lot of years…[/quote]

keep in mind they have been the best at olympic lifting which is a highly skilled sport and does not have an eccentric portion to the lift which changes the training loads that can be applied to the body.

47

[quote]Tim Henriques wrote:
Strenuous physical activity increases this level of fatigue. Zatsiorsky talks about this concept of fitness vs fatigue extensively in the Science and Practice of Strength Training.[/quote]

I’m actually reading this book now and he does spend a lot of time with this concept. He talks about the emotional toll that this takes on you and at one point talks about how athletes found that four weeks of hard training followed by a week or two away from the training facility was the best. But they were also training all day long.

The trouble with singles according to that same reference is that not all MUs are called into play. He really shows the science of why you need all rep ranges.

james

48

[quote]Doh wrote:
Lifters from the past such as Doug Hepburn and Paul Anderson utilized a lot of heavy singles, and got extremely strong off it. Doug does cycle in higher reps (3-5) when he feels he stalls with singles so I guess there are merits in implementing higher rep ranges in your training.

What I notice in terms of the big 3 though, singles helped my bench and deadlift TREMENDOUSLY. As for squat, I find the entire spectrum of rep ranges work, from singles to high reppers. [/quote]

And because it worked for two exceptional lifters it’s automatically going to work for all of us average lifters too? Also don’t forget that Hepburn used to take naps during his training sessions too so rest was not an issue for him.

james

49

[quote]atypical1 wrote:

[quote]Doh wrote:
Lifters from the past such as Doug Hepburn and Paul Anderson utilized a lot of heavy singles, and got extremely strong off it. Doug does cycle in higher reps (3-5) when he feels he stalls with singles so I guess there are merits in implementing higher rep ranges in your training.

What I notice in terms of the big 3 though, singles helped my bench and deadlift TREMENDOUSLY. As for squat, I find the entire spectrum of rep ranges work, from singles to high reppers. [/quote]

And because it worked for two exceptional lifters it’s automatically going to work for all of us average lifters too? Also don’t forget that Hepburn used to take naps during his training sessions too so rest was not an issue for him.

james
[/quote]

No need to be putting words in my mouth. I merely provided examples of singles used in training.

50


Myth?

51

[quote]Caltene wrote:

[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:

[quote]Caltene wrote:

[quote]Tim Henriques wrote:
They can definitely build strength. Remember, 3 keys to build strength according to Louie:

Lift maximal weights (ME day)

Lift submaximal weights as fast as possible (DE day)

Lift submaximal weights as many times as possible (RE day - best for size)

Finally, to avoid CNS burn out you can’t max out continually in the same exercise every week.

The short answer is yes, it does work but you can’t do it all the time because it stops working after a while. I don’t think anybody could say “no, it doesn’t work” and not have to qualify their answer.

The longer answer is that maximal effort doesn’t have to mean hitting a true 1RM as many posters have noted, I find that singles in the 87-97% range but doing multiple sets or clusters or however you want to set it, can all work very well because this keeps the all important intensity but builds in the needed volume for adaptations as well.

I agree, lots of good points in the discussion[/quote]

You can not “burn out” your central nervous system with weight training. That is an old myth that really needs to die. If your cns was really burnt out, you’d be lying in a hospital bed.[/quote]

I have been pretty fucking close on several occasions. [/quote]

Just eat more and you shouldn’t come close.[/quote]

Actual lol. Out of all the hilarious jokes and gifs and pics I have seen on the internet, this is the biggest literal laugh out loud moment I have ever had in front of my computer screen.

52

[quote]asooneyeonig wrote:

[quote]spk wrote:
read up on the bulgarian way of training… they been the best for a lot of years…[/quote]

keep in mind they have been the best at olympic lifting which is a highly skilled sport and does not have an eccentric portion to the lift which changes the training loads that can be applied to the body.[/quote]

Concentric portion more than makes up for the eccentric. If you think deadlifts and squats kills ya…try weightlifting, it double kills ya.

53

[quote]Tim Henriques wrote:

[quote]Caltene wrote:

Well, you using the phrase “cns burnout” in a weight training article makes me question if it is even worth it. So does you insisting on me telling you why we sleep, lol.[/quote]

The leading theory on why we sleep is that we take our system “off line” to repair and rejuvenate our nervous system so it is actually a great example of how CNS fatigue accumulates from everyday activity which then needs to be addressed essentially daily. Strenuous physical activity increases this level of fatigue. Zatsiorsky talks about this concept of fitness vs fatigue extensively in the Science and Practice of Strength Training.[/quote]

Since he wasn’t serious, and consequently trolling I’ll continue his possibly good debate.

Say I skipped a day of sleep, but ended up in a life or death situation that caused a megadose of adrenaline. Would I not be able to do my max from the day before? If I could, would this mean my CNS was not burnt out and it is something else that we could address on a daily basis? I.E coffee for excitablity

54

[quote]Airtruth wrote:
Since he wasn’t serious, and consequently trolling I’ll continue his possibly good debate.

Say I skipped a day of sleep, but ended up in a life or death situation that caused a megadose of adrenaline. Would I not be able to do my max from the day before? If I could, would this mean my CNS was not burnt out and it is something else that we could address on a daily basis? I.E coffee for excitablity[/quote]

Oh you definitely could. In fact, I can skip a night of sleep and get a good workout without needing a dire situation or stimulants or anything. Your body can function remarkably well with a lack of sleep… for a little while. The issue isn’t burning out your CNS from a night of missed sleep, it’s if you don’t sleep well enough often enough.

If you tried sleeping just every other day, you would be okay for the first two days, but after that you’d be fucked pretty quickly.

55

Thanks for the input everyone. I basically feel that high percentage training is great. Along with higher rep training too. A combination of different things really.

I still don’t know how I feel about maxing, true maxing. Probably best to not do it a lot. And stick to the 85%+ training, along with rep training, pause training and other variations.

This has been a very interesting thread and I look forward to more thoughts on the subject.

56

[quote]Airtruth wrote:

Say I skipped a day of sleep, but ended up in a life or death situation that caused a megadose of adrenaline. Would I not be able to do my max from the day before? If I could, would this mean my CNS was not burnt out and it is something else that we could address on a daily basis? I.E coffee for excitablity[/quote]

Everything is connected. For example if you skipped one meal how much would you lose off of your max? Likely nothing or just a bit. But that doesn’t mean food isn’t important. Skip 3 days of sleep and see how you feel? Remember too we have different motor nerves (or at least they fire at different rates), it is likely their firing rate is highly correlated (inversely) with recovery time. Ie the slow twitch MU’s recover faster but the type IIb(x)'s take the longest to recover.

Finally I also feel that some of this is related to how you believe your training will effect you. If every one around is working super hard and training all the time you are more likely to think you can do it. If it seems like you are working so much harder than everybody else and you start to believe you are going to be overtrained, I think that can have an effect as well. I am rambling a bit but hopefully there is something of use in there.