[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Besides, EVERYONE can lift at 85% 1RM, or 90% 1RM, or what-have-you.
But the rah-rah definition of intensity allows one to supposedly be doing things that just about no one else, except the greats, is doing.[/quote]
This is why mathmetics and precise defintions do not work for psychological purposes.
Everyone can lift at 85% of 1RM, or 90% of 1RM, but intensity can vary greatly.
For example, an average housewife taken to the gym, could perhaps deadlift 95lbs. Yet there has been a few cases of an average housewife lifting a car (taking up the slack of suspension), when their family member was trapped underneath. In the second case, she showed an immense amount of intensity (great concentration).
I am willing to bet, if a strongman was faced with a similar situation, his strength would not vary as greatly, because he has practiced in summoning intensity over the many decades of his training, and his body can only go so far (Using intensity to describe a % of a 1RM may be more accurate in this case).
When someone describes intensity, sure, you can come under the conclusion that they are just a mindless meathead, determined to prove their superiority over you. Glossing over their own personal defintions, just assuming that they meant screaming/fist pumping and pretending to be a silverback gorrilla in mating season (Case in point: your picture of CM punk),
OR…
You could understand that I am saying that the mental aspect of weight lifting and controlling your muscles does not boil down to 85%, or 90% of a 1RM.
Which brings me to this:
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Is it even a relative term?
Take the videos from Kevin Levrone’s comeback.
Is he training “more intensely” (rah-rah definition) than some other person?
How are you going to tell? By his face? By how rapidly or slowly the weight moves, or whether he gives the appearance of strain?
Maybe he is firing a higher percentage of muscle fibers and applying more will than the guy turning red in his face, screaming, and then pumping his fists after the set will ever know.
Or maybe he’s not. (But I would guess that he is.)[/quote]
I’m not sure if you are trying prove your arguement against me with this statement, because it fits in to what I was trying to say initially (I was not expecting to be picked apart so meticulously).
Kevin Levrone has been weight training for decades, [u]he has developed a great level of concentration (intensity)[/u], so yes, he probably is applying more will than the oaf who is impersonating a gorilla will ever know (which again, is not what was being described when it was being talked about in a ‘rah-rah’ sense).
Additionally, in his comeback videos, one could say he is not training as hard as he could (from observing his older videos, when he was younger/less prone to injury), simply from observing his percieved effort. Another fact is that he is using much lighter weights than he was once used to, again demonstrating that he does not need to muster up as much intensity as before.
So I would say it is not relative, you are either training with intensity, or you are not. But the PERCEIVED level of your intensity to others, is relative.
Now, just because I use the word with a very loose defintion, does not mean that I am less intelligent (which you seem to be putting across, by using the term ‘rah-rah’, as if I am some chest beating caveman), perhaps it does mean I am less OCD/pedantic, because like you said, people can choose whatever definition they want.
I personally feel using the world this way is more useful, because like get_ate said, it’s like art, you can’t label it with precise terms, but you can understand the complexity of it.
