The biggest strength training mistake I have ever made was to believe in the philosophy that training must continually increase in difficulty in order to keep making progress. According to high intensity training methods, if I started with a moderate training intensity, I would make progress for a while, and then fail to make any more progress when my body adapted to the training intensity. I would then need to up my training intensity by training to failure until it quit working. In order to keep making progress, the next steps would be to advance to techniques such as forced reps, negatives, rest pause reps, giant sets, and strip sets. Not only did I see very little results, but I eventually reached a point where I was pushing as hard as I possibly could and had run out of torture methods.
It took years (two decades to be honest) to fully rid myself of the belief that I must train harder and harder to make progress. Eventually I realized that effective training revolves around using the right energy system within my muscles, which is the creatine phosphate system. The creatine phosphate system doesn’t function optimally when fatigued from pushing a set to exhaustion. Instead, I learned to lift forcefully when my muscles weren’t fatigued as this is what builds strength rather than to squeeze out reps that grow slower and slower at the end of a set when fatigue is at its peak. I found out that the beginning of the set should be emphasized not the end. The beginning of the set is when I had the ability to lift powerfully. I learned to eliminate the end of the set at the point where rep speed and rep rhythm started to slow down.
Along with this, I learned that my body actually wanted my training to become easier, not harder. The whole reason anyone becomes stronger is simply because their body is trying to make it easier for them to lift a given weight. I know that there must be an appointed time when weight or reps are added, which will make the workout harder, but in between these appointed times where weight is added, the whole idea is to keep training with the same amount of weight and reps until it becomes easier. If I’m training the right way, this is exactly what will happen, the weights will become easier to lift, the workouts will be easier to do, and my body will accomplish exactly what it’s trying to accomplish. Gaining strength when you keep training harder and harder doesn’t make any sense to your body; gaining strength in order to make workouts easier does.
Just how hard you should push yourself is based on training thresholds. Training thresholds are based on your capacity for strong training, and strong training is based on your capacity for strong reps, strong sets and a strong lifting motion. In other words, when rep speed slows down during a set, quit lifting. When you are no longer at full strength from repeating sets, quit lifting; and avoid consistent use of weights that are so heavy that it causes you to grind in order to complete a lift. Best of training to you.