Things I believe but can't prove...

[Hardartery]

For most folks, what is commonly known as "powerbuilding", i.e. combining getting strong on the classic compound lifts with more hypertrophy orientated movements, is the most effective way, is the most effective way to make long-term progress.

Agree 100%.

Could maybe even argue that Ronnie Coleman and Stan Efferding prove this.

Zavickas. No powerbuilding, still doing Masters stuff when he feels like it, pushing 30 years as a pro Strongman. Personally, I think "Powerbuilding" is a dumb fad and a terrible idea for most people in most ways long term. Outliers like all three names above prove nothing, massive drug usage aside. Too much time at 95% ! RM to failure weights = bad. Too many reps = overuse injuries and tendinopathy/joint deterioration. Frankly, the thing I believe but can't really prove is 1+ RIR training plus listening to your body (Cutting sessions or volume when you are getting beat up) is the best strategy long term. Ronnie was always balls to the wall even when he was told to rest by doctors and recover.

Agree, those things generally are bad, but why do you have the idea that they necessarily are involved in powerbuilding?

So, my understanding of Powerbuilding is that you are trying to be in both worlds, which means you achieve neither effectively. I also infamously do not subscribe to the theory that a bigger muscle is a stronger one by default and that seems to be a cornerstone of the powerbuilding concept. I know that repetitive use injuries are a real thing, and although ultra-high volume with ultra low weight results in specific strength gains over time (farmers, masons etc..) it also results in prohibitive arthritis in various forms and at times debilitating tendon and joint conditions over time. I feel that the idea of powerbuilding is Ronnie Coleman, it's what he did plus plenty of drugs. PLer converted to BBer that never left the PL training completely behind. If you are going to do things like try and squat 800 for reps of any count in training, you probably need to give things a break to heal afterwards and not proceed to a million reps on leg press, leg extension, Hack sqat and whatever other machine is in front of you times several times a week. And then keep doing that right after back surgery just because you can't keep your ass home for a few weeks and recover. That is my general take on the concept, which I am sure is incomplete and flawed.

Edit to add: I think Platz is walking around fine because he squatted every two weeks and knew when to leave well enough alone. Sure, the session was brutal, but then he let it recover before he trashed himself again.

[GlasgowJock]

A second set closer to failure is 'redemption' for the guilt you feel not going a rep further in the first set for your accessory/ hypertrophy work.

Pure bro science concerning 'effective reps'.

[DanCR]

For most folks, what is commonly known as "powerbuilding", i.e. combining getting strong on the classic compound lifts with more hypertrophy orientated movements, is the most effective way, is the most effective way to make long-term progress.

Agree 100%.

Could maybe even argue that Ronnie Coleman and Stan Efferding prove this.

Zavickas. No powerbuilding, still doing Masters stuff when he feels like it, pushing 30 years as a pro Strongman. Personally, I think "Powerbuilding" is a dumb fad and a terrible idea for most people in most ways long term. Outliers like all three names above prove nothing, massive drug usage aside. Too much time at 95% ! RM to failure weights = bad. Too many reps = overuse injuries and tendinopathy/joint deterioration. Frankly, the thing I believe but can't really prove is 1+ RIR training plus listening to your body (Cutting sessions or volume when you are getting beat up) is the best strategy long term. Ronnie was always balls to the wall even when he was told to rest by doctors and recover.

Agree, those things generally are bad, but why do you have the idea that they necessarily are involved in powerbuilding?

So, my understanding of Powerbuilding is that you are trying to be in both worlds, which means you achieve neither effectively. I also infamously do not subscribe to the theory that a bigger muscle is a stronger one by default and that seems to be a cornerstone of the powerbuilding concept. I know that repetitive use injuries are a real thing, and although ultra-high volume with ultra low weight results in specific strength gains over time (farmers, masons etc..) it also results in prohibitive arthritis in various forms and at times debilitating tendon and joint conditions over time. I feel that the idea of powerbuilding is Ronnie Coleman, it's what he did plus plenty of drugs. PLer converted to BBer that never left the PL training completely behind. If you are going to do things like try and squat 800 for reps of any count in training, you probably need to give things a break to heal afterwards and not proceed to a million reps on leg press, leg extension, Hack sqat and whatever other machine is in front of you times several times a week. And then keep doing that right after back surgery just because you can't keep your ass home for a few weeks and recover. That is my general take on the concept, which I am sure is incomplete and flawed.

Edit to add: I think Platz is walking around fine because he squatted every two weeks and knew when to leave well enough alone. Sure, the session was brutal, but then he let it recover before he trashed himself again.

Efferding too, has written about squatting once every two weeks when he was at top weights.

Anyway, correct me if I'm wrong, but some of your comments seem geared toward the idea of competing in either powerlifting of bodybuilding, in either of which the argument certainly can be made that specificity rules. Speaking only for myself, I have no interest in either. I want muscles, and I'd also like to not be a pussy (not that lifting any particular weights on three particular exercises makes one a non-pussy, but you follow - I don't want to be all show and no go) and chasing numbers a bit keeps the gym interesting/fun and adds a sense of accomplishment beyond the mirror. Further, there's a helpful symbiosis. Lifting more on the powerlifts contributes to me being able to lift more on bodybuilding movements. More weight on those movements, with the same reps and with (reasonably) good form gets me bigger muscles. I understand your position re: strength / muscle size, but I doubt that you'd disagree that someone who can curl 100x10 almost invariably is going to have bigger biceps than someone who can curl 50x10. (The same is not necessarily true with the powerlifts, to an extent.)

Yes, what Ronnie did to himself was bad, but there is no tenet of powerbuilding that requires one to do a million reps on three dozen exercises. In fact, Efferding specifically discouraged high volume, in favor of limited intense sets. This gives me the excuse to again post this great article by him, which never gets old:

https://npcnewsonline.com/powerbuilding ... gym/63930/

[hector]

For most folks, what is commonly known as "powerbuilding", i.e. combining getting strong on the classic compound lifts with more hypertrophy orientated movements, is the most effective way, is the most effective way to make long-term progress.

Agree 100%.

Could maybe even argue that Ronnie Coleman and Stan Efferding prove this.

Zavickas. No powerbuilding, still doing Masters stuff when he feels like it, pushing 30 years as a pro Strongman. Personally, I think "Powerbuilding" is a dumb fad and a terrible idea for most people in most ways long term. Outliers like all three names above prove nothing, massive drug usage aside. Too much time at 95% ! RM to failure weights = bad. Too many reps = overuse injuries and tendinopathy/joint deterioration. Frankly, the thing I believe but can't really prove is 1+ RIR training plus listening to your body (Cutting sessions or volume when you are getting beat up) is the best strategy long term. Ronnie was always balls to the wall even when he was told to rest by doctors and recover.

Agree, those things generally are bad, but why do you have the idea that they necessarily are involved in powerbuilding?

As I understand it, power building means you still do the big 3, but you also throw in some bodybuilding movements.
At the times when I generally thought I was doing powerbuilding, there was generally near zero time spent at > 90%1RM.

No reason you couldn’t go super intense if you wanted to, but I don’t think there’s a requirement.

[DanCR]

For most folks, what is commonly known as "powerbuilding", i.e. combining getting strong on the classic compound lifts with more hypertrophy orientated movements, is the most effective way, is the most effective way to make long-term progress.

Agree 100%.

Could maybe even argue that Ronnie Coleman and Stan Efferding prove this.

Zavickas. No powerbuilding, still doing Masters stuff when he feels like it, pushing 30 years as a pro Strongman. Personally, I think "Powerbuilding" is a dumb fad and a terrible idea for most people in most ways long term. Outliers like all three names above prove nothing, massive drug usage aside. Too much time at 95% ! RM to failure weights = bad. Too many reps = overuse injuries and tendinopathy/joint deterioration. Frankly, the thing I believe but can't really prove is 1+ RIR training plus listening to your body (Cutting sessions or volume when you are getting beat up) is the best strategy long term. Ronnie was always balls to the wall even when he was told to rest by doctors and recover.

Agree, those things generally are bad, but why do you have the idea that they necessarily are involved in powerbuilding?

As I understand it, power building means you still do the big 3, but you also throw in some bodybuilding movements.
At the times when I generally thought I was doing powerbuilding, there was generally near zero time spent at > 90%1RM.

No reason you couldn’t go super intense if you wanted to, but I don’t think there’s a requirement.

I’ve seen this formulation, and also the idea of using the big three and their variations for bodybuilding purposes (e.g. higher rep sets of bench for muscle growth, versus pushing one’s 1RM). Either way, right, no requirement to be hitting near max weights (or go full Ronnie).

[quikky]

I think it depends on how powerbuilding is defined. If it's pursuing powerlifting and bodybuilding at the same time, I think it's not very efficient. Specifically, there is no reason for a bodybuilder to do any 1RM work or hyperfocus on SBD, and there is no reason for a powerlifter to do most bodybuilding work.

However, if powerbuilding is essentially bodybuilding but with a desire to more broadly, i.e. not just 1RM, improve SBD performance, then it is a reasonable way to train. SBD can be used for hypertrophy purposes, and if hypertrophy is achieved, SBD performance will go up over time as well.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

I agree with @quikky that the definition is important. Actually I think the term 'powerbuilding' is quite bad because it sounds like you are trying to do powerlifting and bodybuilding at the same time. Both powerlifting and bodybuilding are competitive activities. If you do lateral raises and gym selfies with a tank top you're not a bodybuilder. To be a bodybuilder you have to step on stage with a mankini at 8 percent body fat. Same thing with powerlifting, posting your gym 1RM on instagram is not powerlifting. To be a powerlifter you need to go to meets and set totals. This is why doing both at the same time creates interference: the process that you go through to step on stage makes you weak, and vice versa.

What regular people mean by powerbuilding is first perform basic barbell exercises in the 3 to 5 rep range with the goal of increasing how much weight you can do and then subsequently perform lighter exercises with the goal of building muscle mass. To me this has nothing to do with either powerlifting or bodybuilding or whatever this is litterally just lifting weights. This is meathead training. This is basically the way everyone training initially before this nonsense in which people felt the need to have a label and be a 'strength athlete' or a 'physique competitor' (lol). We're just meatheads.

Its funny to me because when you look at the so called 'natural bodybuilders' on youtube, most of them are not bodybuilders at all. Even Allan Thrall (whose videos I greatly enjoy) calls himself a bodybuilder now. Is he training his posing ? When is his next show ? When is he starting his cut ?

So yeah meathead training is optimal for most people because most people are meatheads. We want to lift more weight, get bigger arms, be able to run without passing out, look good, and even sometimes have fun in training (sounds insane right).

Also I think that Ronnie Coleman (or Tom Platz or anyone who is not natural) is irrelevant to try to predict what style of training is most injurious for a natural trainee. The supernatural strength and size that you derive from the celltech makes lifting weights in itself injurious, because your body structures were never designed for you to have that level of strength. Ronnie damaging his back hips and knees squatting 800 for reps doesn't tell you much about what is going to happen to the natural dude squatting 500 (or whatever arbitrary amount). Its like putting a Ferrari motor in a Fiat Punto.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

Today's noodle armed benchers can bench more than those guys did, though.

The people I mentioned were all benching more than 600 lbs raw. Who is benching 650 lbs with noodle arms ? I m not saying its impossible but it sounds rather exceptional.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

Had a thought today that I think goes here. My opinion of high rep sets (by which I mean more than ten reps) always has been that they’re for dudes:

1) with great genetics;
2) on gear;
3) who already are big; or
4) some combination of the above.

I realized that I had been conditioned to think in terms of barbell movements, for which a set of, say, fifteen reps, requires a weight with which the initial rep is like @2 and the next few not much harder. In other words, junk. (Twenty rep squats are a notable exception because they’re done as breathing squats, i.e. rest/pause work. Idea is to use your 10RM, not a joke weight that you actually could lift twenty times uninterrupted.)

That is because with a barbell, some weak link quits first. That isn’t the case with machines, which isolate a muscle or muscles sans what otherwise would be the weak link. As such, with a machine - and this has been my recent experience - you can select a weight with which even the first rep is reasonably hard, and yet still bang out a set of twelve.

Bottom line, I think bodybuilders get results from and promote higher rep sets because (in addition to the genetics and gear) a lot (most?) of the work that they’re doing permits those sets to be nearly entirely made up of “effective reps,” and why wouldn’t you prefer fifteen effective reps over five.

I'm not sure about that, because in compound movements, some things suggest that the way that each muscle group is involved in lifting the load can change depending on the weight on the bar. For instance if you are squatting say 65% your quads will do most of the work and if you increase the load to 80% the other muscle groups will provide the additional force required to lift the load but your quads might not work much harder. So if you re only interested in contracting your quads as hard as possible working with 65% might be useful (I am assuming that we are talking about squatting for quad hypertrophy here).

Also 70% is lighter than a 10 RM usually, but many people mention strength gains from work at 70%.

Now I am also pretty sure that this is individual, you probably have people who respond to lighter work and people who do not.

I also believe that effective reps dont really exist but that the topic for another discussion.

[hector]

Had a thought today that I think goes here. My opinion of high rep sets (by which I mean more than ten reps) always has been that they’re for dudes:

1) with great genetics;
2) on gear;
3) who already are big; or
4) some combination of the above.

I realized that I had been conditioned to think in terms of barbell movements, for which a set of, say, fifteen reps, requires a weight with which the initial rep is like @2 and the next few not much harder. In other words, junk. (Twenty rep squats are a notable exception because they’re done as breathing squats, i.e. rest/pause work. Idea is to use your 10RM, not a joke weight that you actually could lift twenty times uninterrupted.)

That is because with a barbell, some weak link quits first. That isn’t the case with machines, which isolate a muscle or muscles sans what otherwise would be the weak link. As such, with a machine - and this has been my recent experience - you can select a weight with which even the first rep is reasonably hard, and yet still bang out a set of twelve.

Bottom line, I think bodybuilders get results from and promote higher rep sets because (in addition to the genetics and gear) a lot (most?) of the work that they’re doing permits those sets to be nearly entirely made up of “effective reps,” and why wouldn’t you prefer fifteen effective reps over five.

I'm not sure about that, because in compound movements, some things suggest that the way that each muscle group is involved in lifting the load can change depending on the weight on the bar. For instance if you are squatting say 65% your quads will do most of the work and if you increase the load to 80% the other muscle groups will provide the additional force required to lift the load but your quads might not work much harder. So if you re only interested in contracting your quads as hard as possible working with 65% might be useful (I am assuming that we are talking about squatting for quad hypertrophy here).

Also 70% is lighter than a 10 RM usually, but many people mention strength gains from work at 70%.

Now I am also pretty sure that this is individual, you probably have people who respond to lighter work and people who do not.

I also believe that effective reps dont really exist but that the topic for another discussion.

You’ve captured my interest, sir.

[Hardartery]

I agree with @quikky that the definition is important. Actually I think the term 'powerbuilding' is quite bad because it sounds like you are trying to do powerlifting and bodybuilding at the same time. Both powerlifting and bodybuilding are competitive activities. If you do lateral raises and gym selfies with a tank top you're not a bodybuilder. To be a bodybuilder you have to step on stage with a mankini at 8 percent body fat. Same thing with powerlifting, posting your gym 1RM on instagram is not powerlifting. To be a powerlifter you need to go to meets and set totals. This is why doing both at the same time creates interference: the process that you go through to step on stage makes you weak, and vice versa.

What regular people mean by powerbuilding is first perform basic barbell exercises in the 3 to 5 rep range with the goal of increasing how much weight you can do and then subsequently perform lighter exercises with the goal of building muscle mass. To me this has nothing to do with either powerlifting or bodybuilding or whatever this is litterally just lifting weights. This is meathead training. This is basically the way everyone training initially before this nonsense in which people felt the need to have a label and be a 'strength athlete' or a 'physique competitor' (lol). We're just meatheads.

Its funny to me because when you look at the so called 'natural bodybuilders' on youtube, most of them are not bodybuilders at all. Even Allan Thrall (whose videos I greatly enjoy) calls himself a bodybuilder now. Is he training his posing ? When is his next show ? When is he starting his cut ?

So yeah meathead training is optimal for most people because most people are meatheads. We want to lift more weight, get bigger arms, be able to run without passing out, look good, and even sometimes have fun in training (sounds insane right).

Also I think that Ronnie Coleman (or Tom Platz or anyone who is not natural) is irrelevant to try to predict what style of training is most injurious for a natural trainee. The supernatural strength and size that you derive from the celltech makes lifting weights in itself injurious, because your body structures were never designed for you to have that level of strength. Ronnie damaging his back hips and knees squatting 800 for reps doesn't tell you much about what is going to happen to the natural dude squatting 500 (or whatever arbitrary amount). Its like putting a Ferrari motor in a Fiat Punto.

[Hardartery]

Crediting probable extra damage to the juice is fair enough, it probably does that in virtually all partakers to some extent. I would not blame it for all of Ronnie's issues, but it certainly is a factor. I don't think the weight lifted is much of a factor, hear me out on this please.

He did not miss lifts with heavy weights. Any training to failure that he did appears to have been with lighter stuff and I don't think he went 800 lbs heavy all that often. He did, by his own words as well as others, go to the gym and lift when he was supposed to be resting and recovering from injuries or surgeries and the botched back surgery did not help him out. By comparison, I routinely squatted 400-500 lbs in training for years, I pulled 500+ for reps on DL's, I did walkouts with 1000+ regularly. I did a lot of relatively heavy stuff and absolutely no hypertrophy or "BB" type stuff. None. No serious injuries, I still train heavy with no major issues and am in better shape than most people in my age group. I am n=1, so that doesn't necessarily mean anything but I fit into your description. 51 and fine, heavy training and all. And can add that when I do any of that higher rep stuff volume stuff I wish that I hadn't. Tendons get cranky, joints get pissed off, stuff hurts that I didn't know was involved. You get it.

[Hanley]

I also believe that effective reps dont really exist but that the topic for another discussion.

Same. I think that model was/is so seductive and compelling because it's internally consistent. But I REALLY don't think it maps to physiological reality. Valid, but not sound, yadda, yadda.

The model gets super hand-wavy when it comes to applying the force-velocity curve in relation to a rep's "efficacy". On a very fast rep at 70% (on any movement), you're going to have contraction velocities that are very, very slow compared to max contraction velocity. But I think the model would suggest that RPE -2 rep @ 70% is ineffective because contraction velocity is too fast. Meh. Don't buy it.

[5hout]

1. Athleisure/stretchy clothing is an unnoticed, but substantial, factor in the obesity crisis. If you work from home, have a casual job or otherwise can get by wearing high stretch pants it is very, very easy to gain 10-15 lbs and not realize it until you go to a put a suit on or some other fixed size garment. Shower thought corollary implementation of this is get an unfinished leather belt, put 1-2 holes in it for pre-noon/post-noon and wear it with all clothing.

2. Time under tension works just fine as a way of planning training b/c it convinces people to shut up and lift. You need to provide a stimulus, and people spend way too much time doing anything but providing stimulus to their muscles. Same for tonnage. Same for "real volume". Some of effective reps. Anything that convinces people to go in the gym and lift, instead of sit around with weights on the bar/phone in hands.

[DanCR]

Had a thought today that I think goes here. My opinion of high rep sets (by which I mean more than ten reps) always has been that they’re for dudes:

1) with great genetics;
2) on gear;
3) who already are big; or
4) some combination of the above.

I realized that I had been conditioned to think in terms of barbell movements, for which a set of, say, fifteen reps, requires a weight with which the initial rep is like @2 and the next few not much harder. In other words, junk. (Twenty rep squats are a notable exception because they’re done as breathing squats, i.e. rest/pause work. Idea is to use your 10RM, not a joke weight that you actually could lift twenty times uninterrupted.)

That is because with a barbell, some weak link quits first. That isn’t the case with machines, which isolate a muscle or muscles sans what otherwise would be the weak link. As such, with a machine - and this has been my recent experience - you can select a weight with which even the first rep is reasonably hard, and yet still bang out a set of twelve.

Bottom line, I think bodybuilders get results from and promote higher rep sets because (in addition to the genetics and gear) a lot (most?) of the work that they’re doing permits those sets to be nearly entirely made up of “effective reps,” and why wouldn’t you prefer fifteen effective reps over five.

I'm not sure about that, because in compound movements, some things suggest that the way that each muscle group is involved in lifting the load can change depending on the weight on the bar. For instance if you are squatting say 65% your quads will do most of the work and if you increase the load to 80% the other muscle groups will provide the additional force required to lift the load but your quads might not work much harder. So if you re only interested in contracting your quads as hard as possible working with 65% might be useful (I am assuming that we are talking about squatting for quad hypertrophy here).

Also 70% is lighter than a 10 RM usually, but many people mention strength gains from work at 70%.

Now I am also pretty sure that this is individual, you probably have people who respond to lighter work and people who do not.

I also believe that effective reps dont really exist but that the topic for another discussion.

Regarding effective reps, I’m talking solely in terms of hypertrophy; I’ll leave strength to people much stronger than me. That said, I subscribe to Dan John’s concededly hand wavy idea of heavy weights, a lot of times (as opposed to light weights a lot of times or heavy weights a few times).

For me, that always has meant, and success mostly has come, in the 6-10 rep range, for a few sets at or near failure depending on the movement. I think a lot of folks would see more muscle sitting there in a double progression over an extended period of time, versus the very large majority of what’s on the internet. Fewer reps is heavy weight a few times (and lots of extra sets never did anything but put me to sleep); more reps is light weight a lot of times. YMMV.

I understand that there are studies regarding the use of much higher rep sets to failure. I unscientifically dismiss them as horse shit for the reason provided by someone above: if that worked, successful bodybuilders would be doing it. I also understand that brick layers and whomever get some very impressive forearms, for one example. Unfortunately, doing, say, 5x20 wrist curls is not the same thing as eight or more hours a day of work for a decade.

All that I’m suggesting in my initial post above is that machines, either for the reason that I suggested or some other reason, do allow for useful somewhat higher rep sets in that they permit a set of a certain number of reps (again, say 12) to begin with a comparatively more difficult weight than one would be able to select with a barbell or dumbbells in attempting that same number of reps. I’m curious as to @dw’s opinion on this idea. I think a lot of folks suggest higher reps on machines just because you can - there’s no danger of injury with form breakdown - but I think that there may be more reason for it.

@CheekiBreekiFitness, I think that you make an interesting point regarding the use of different muscles at different points in compound movements. (If one has never felt one’s glutes during squats, a few sets of 20 will be eye opening.) That said, if one has a hard time leaning on their quads throughout a set, I think it would be far more efficient to hammer them with something more pinpointed, whether front squats or any number of machines, rather than hope for the best on the first few easy reps of a set in which you know they’re gonna lag.

Time under tension works just fine as a way of planning training b/c it convinces people to shut up and lift. You need to provide a stimulus, and people spend way too much time doing anything but providing stimulus to their muscles. Same for tonnage. Same for "real volume". Some of effective reps. Anything that convinces people to go in the gym and lift, instead of sit around with weights on the bar/phone in hands.

[broseph]

What regular people mean by powerbuilding is first perform basic barbell exercises in the 3 to 5 rep range with the goal of increasing how much weight you can do and then subsequently perform lighter exercises with the goal of building muscle mass.

More or less.

To me this has nothing to do with either powerlifting or bodybuilding or whatever this is litterally just lifting weights. This is meathead training. This is basically the way everyone training initially before this nonsense in which people felt the need to have a label and be a 'strength athlete' or a 'physique competitor' (lol). We're just meatheads.

I also agree that trying to find a label for every little thing is stupid.

Regarding shunning the term powerbuilding; within the context of being a hobby, powerlifting is just trying to get stronger on SBD, and bodybuilding is just trying to change your body shape and composition. I don't think you have to be competitive in those things to call them your hobbies.

You don't have to train for and compete in sanctioned races to call yourself a runner. Same with golfing, fishing, etc. I can call bodybuilding a hobby of mine since I want bigger muscles and lower bodyfat. Period.

[Hardartery]

This goes to something I was trying to say in a different thread a while back, and why I do not believe in hypertrophy training for strength gains. He doesn't post a reference in the credits, unfortunately, but when considering that studies measure gains in calculated cross-sectional size as being significant but not hypertrophic gains measured otherwise it bears consideration HOW how you building those size gains.

[Zak]

9. Strength athletes should read Steve Magness, Matt Fitzgerald, Tim Noakes, and other distance running coaches. They understand polarized training and long-term development better than most of the strength community. A lot of their ideas are very applicable to strength and very underutilized/poorly understood in our community.

10. Kind of related to the above, peak load is more important for strength gain than most lifters think. Most of the time, the heavy work should be organized to permit the highest peak load in a given week in the lifts you care about.

11. Most of the other work with the big lifts (the work that isn't really heavy) should be pretty easy and crisp. The middle ground of not too heavy but still kind of heavy and grindy is not where you want to be.

12. In contrast, any "assistance" you feel like doing should be hard as hell, but joint-friendly and high rep. Single-joint work isn't going to do shit unless it's to failure or close. The worst programs are the ones where you grind your way through gut busting fives on squats or tugs for an hour, then go fart around with mindless easy assistance. Worst of both worlds.

[DanCR]

10. Kind of related to the above, peak load is more important for strength gain than most lifters think. Most of the time, the heavy work should be organized to permit the highest peak load in a given week in the lifts you care about.

11. Most of the other work with the big lifts (the work that isn't really heavy) should be pretty easy and crisp. The middle ground of not too heavy but still kind of heavy and grindy is not where you want to be.

12. In contrast, any "assistance" you feel like doing should be hard as hell, but joint-friendly and high rep. Single-joint work isn't going to do shit unless it's to failure or close. The worst programs are the ones where you grind your way through gut busting fives on squats or tugs for an hour, then go fart around with mindless easy assistance. Worst of both worlds.

This all speaks to me. What are your thoughts on the 1@8 followed by a bunch of back offs at 70% or so zeitgeist? Do you generally find weights around that percentage to be “still kind of heavy and grindy” or “pretty easy and crisp”?

[DanCR]

This goes to something I was trying to say in a different thread a while back, and why I do not believe in hypertrophy training for strength gains. He doesn't post a reference in the credits, unfortunately, but when considering that studies measure gains in calculated cross-sectional size as being significant but not hypertrophic gains measured otherwise it bears consideration HOW how you building those size gains.

Got around to watching this. It’s the converse of your point - he’s arguing that strength training is mostly useless for hypertrophy - but a lot of food for thought. Thanks for linking it.