In the last article, I discussed that your body’s primary goal for gaining strength is to make it easier for you to lift a given weight. Your body will consistently achieve this goal under two conditions. The first condition is to train hard enough, but not too hard by using the training thresholds that I commonly refer to as precision points (this was discussed in detail in Keys to Consistent Strength Gains Part 1). The second condition is that you use an adaptation period where you keep repeating workouts with the same amount of weight and reps until they become they become easier to do (this was discussed in detail in Keys to Consistent Strength Gains Part 2).
Don’t Let the Training Stress Escalate
When you add weight at the beginning of each new adaptation period, your body has another goal for gaining strength; it wants to keep the gradual increases in weight from escalating into a severe training stress. This is the focus of this article. The basic concept is that the level of effort should always remain hard enough, but not too hard, even when small amounts of weight are occasionally added over time. Those small additions of weight should never feel as though they are becoming harder and harder to lift. We can look at an example of this in more detail.
Training Should Never Get Harder and Harder
Let’s imagine that you are a beginner who is using 135 pounds in the squat for five reps. We will also assume that 135 pounds is a training stress that is hard enough to help you gain strength, without being so hard that it is a severe training stress. This basically means that you don’t train past your marker rep where a steady even rep speed can be maintained from one rep to the next, and it means only repeating sets for a muscle group while you are at full strength. If you train like this and go through an adaptation period of several weeks by repeatedly using 135 pounds in the squat, then 135 pounds should feel easier to lift by the end of that adaptation period. You should have gained enough strength so that if you increase the weight to 145 pounds to start a new adaptation period, it takes the same amount of effort to lift 145 pounds, as it did when you started your previous adaptation period with 135 pounds.
Every time you increase to a new weight, you should keep training with that same amount of weight until it becomes easier. When it becomes easy enough to add weight, the added weight should take the same amount of effort to lift as the previous time you increased the weight. This should hold true every time you add weight, and it should never feel as though the additions of weight are getting harder and harder. Each addition of weight should put you right around your limit rep, or your marker rep, and it should feel like it did the last time you added.
The Problem with a Severe Training Stress
We could also look at the example of starting out with 135 pounds in the squat for five reps, but this time we’ll imagine that five reps is the most reps that you can possibly do (i.e. training to failure). Training to failure creates a severe training stress. If you gain some strength, you’ll be able to increase to six reps before you reach failure. If you keep training to failure every time you gain strength, the set never becomes easier; you start out with a severe training stress, and a strength gain leads to a severe training stress with even more reps or weight.
Use Strength Gains to Avoid a Severe Training Stress
Your body sees no benefit in gaining strength if it never helps you avoid a severe training stress that it wants you to avoid when weight is gradually added. When strength gains are used properly, they can help you avoid a severe training stress. In contrast, when strength gains are not used properly, they produce severe training stresses. The benefit (or goal) your body is looking for when it gains strength is to keep gradual increases of weight from escalating into a severe training stress. Training in contradiction to the goals that your body has for gaining strength is what produces the pattern that kills progress. It is far better to maintain the right level of effort, even when weight is gradually added over time.
The last key to consistent strength gains in this series will be in the next article on the importance of progressing at a realistic rate. Best of training to you.