The main reason that most people choose a specific training method is that they hope it will lead to progress. When it comes to progress, you can either push yourself to make progress, or you can program yourself to make progress. Pushing yourself to make progress is based on constantly going all out in order to outdo your previous best. In contrast, programming yourself to make progress is based on repeating workouts that are done using a sufficient amount of effort, but not a maximum amount of effort. The goal is then to gradually increase the weight without experiencing an increase in effort. The last two sentences are very important. Just to make sure you did not overlook them, I am going to repeat them as a single paragraph that you should carefully read:
Programming yourself to make progress is based on repeating workouts that are done using a sufficient amount of effort, but not a maximum amount of effort. The goal is then to gradually increase the weight without experiencing an increase in effort.
The only way you can increase weight without increasing the effort is to gain strength. In order to explain this, an example is needed.
Effort on A Scale of 1 to 10
We’ll imagine that the amount of effort that it takes you to lift 100 pounds for ten reps can be rated on a scale of 1 to 10 with one being the least amount of effort, and ten being maximum effort. We’ll also assume that the amount of effort that it takes you to lift 100 pounds for ten reps is an eight. This means that even though you stop at ten reps, you can do an additional two or three reps if you pushed yourself to max effort. In order to program your body to work at an effort level of eight, your goal is to lift 100 pounds for ten reps for as many sets per workout as possible without the sets becoming harder than an eight. The more workouts and the more times you lift 100 pounds for ten reps at an effort level of eight, the more you are going to program those conditions into your body.
Don’t Make This Mistake
It would be a mistake to keep repeating sets of ten reps with 100 pounds if you reach a point where it starts to get harder and it takes an effort level of nine or ten to complete the lifts. Doing this would program your body to lift 100 pounds for ten reps at a more difficult level of effort. You don’t want to teach your body that it must struggle to lift 100 pounds.
Goal: More Weight; Not More Effort. Stay at an 8
If you program your body to function at an effort level of eight, and you raise the weight from 100 pounds to 105 pounds, your body is going to want to keep lifting at an effort level of eight instead of a nine. Your body does not want the added weight to become harder to lift, so it is going to gain some strength in order to make it just as easy to lift 105 pounds for ten reps as it was to lift 100 pounds for ten reps. If you add five pounds every month, but your body keeps gaining strength so that you can keep lifting the added weight at an effort level of eight, then you will be using 160 pounds by the end of the year at an effort level of eight.
Program for Long Term Progress
In the beginning stages of training, pushing yourself with maximum effort to gain strength may work really well, but there often comes a point when it causes burn out. At that point, programming your body for strength will often bring more consistent gains than pushing for strength. I personally believe that programming your body to function at an effort level of a 7 or 8 is a more effective method for achieving long term progress than constantly pushing to an effort level of ten with max effort.
From what I understand, Ed Coan is an example of a lifter who programmed his body for strength by using a reasonable amount of effort instead of pushing with max effort to keep getting stronger. Ed generally used a fourteen week training cycle and would then repeat the same cycle with an additional five pounds on all his lifts. He was able to do this by planning a whole cycle according to weights that he knew he could already lift. Ed knew he wouldn’t miss any lifts because he never planned to do a set or a lift that required max effort, he only practiced success and never pushed to the point of risking failure. This enabled Ed to gain just enough strength to add five additional pounds to each fourteen week cycle, but the key is that the cycles would never seem to get harder. From one cycle to the next, the weight would gradually increase, but the current fourteen week cycle would never feel harder than the last fourteen week cycle; each cycle would feel the same in terms of the amount of effort.
Programming Will Work for You
Ed says he never really maxed out. This means he probably finished each fourteen week cycle at an effort level of an eight or nine. When Ed finished a cycle with an 805 pound squat, it felt the same as when he finished the last cycle with an 800 pound squat. By the end of the year he would be doing 825 pounds which required the same amount of effort that 805 pounds did at the start of the year. After five years he would finish with 900 pounds which took the same amount of effort that 800 pounds took five years earlier. This is the idea behind programming your body to want to gain strength. The strategy worked and Ed never missed a lift in his workouts. It worked for him and it will work for you if you will be patient, disciplined, and learn how to program your body correctly. Best of training to you.