Optimum Strength Capacity vs. Emergency Capacity
You have an optimum strength capacity. Your optimum strength capacity is not your ultimate capacity for how hard you can possibly push yourself until you can barely move. Your optimum capacity for strength refers to how hard you can push yourself while maintaining the ability to perform optimally in terms of strength. You can exceed this capacity by pushing to your emergency capacity; which is a suboptimal capacity in terms of strength.
Your optimum capacity for strength specific training consists of your capacity for strong reps and strong sets when using submaximal weights, and it consists of a strong lifting motion when doing heavy single reps with near maximal weights. Strong reps are forceful reps that can be repeated using a steady even pace from one rep to the next before you weaken and the pace of your reps start to slow down. Strong sets are simply sets that are done while you are at full strength before fatigue sets in and causes you to weaken. There is also an optimum capacity for the most amount of weight that you can use while maintaining a smooth nonstop lifting motion.
If you train to these capacities, your body is designed to expand its capacity of strong reps, strong sets, and a strong single rep lifting motion in order to insure that you don’t exceed it. On the other hand, if you exceed this capacity, you will transition into your emergency capacity. What is your emergency capacity? Glad you asked.
Emergency Capacity
Your emergency capacity is the capacity that is left over after your optimum capacity for strength is used up. It is a suboptimum capacity. When you exceed your optimum capacity for strength specific training, you are forced to use slower weaker reps at the end of the set, and you will be forced to do weak sets when you are no longer at full strength. If you exceed your optimum capacity for the amount of weight that you use for a single rep, you will not be able to maintain a smooth continuous lifting motion throughout the rep.
If you don’t train hard enough by pushing to your optimum capacities of strong reps, strong sets, and a strong lifting motion, then your body isn’t motivated to expand its capacity to the full measure that it is capable of. If you push past your optimum strength capacities, your body begins to focus on adaptations that are not specific to strength, or if it is overstressed, it altogether shuts down its desire to increase any of its capacities.
Lifting within your optimum capacity for strength specific training is within your body’s ability to manage. On the other hand, exceeding that capacity by pushing to your emergency capacity is difficult for your body to manage. If you continue to push into your emergency capacity with weak reps and sets in every workout as you grow stronger, your body is never able to reduce the emergency that it would like to reduce or avoid. Since it is already overstressed when you push to emergency capacity, it is likely that it will eventually make an intelligent decision to stay at the same strength level so that it doesn’t have to experience even more weight or more reps in an overstressed state. The bottom line is that if you want to keep gaining strength, train to the limit of your optimum strength capacity, but do not exceed that capacity.
The main reason that I say all of this is because it is a common belief (I recently read again) that repeating the same workout with the same exercises, the same amount of weight, and the same amount of sets and reps will not make you stronger, so the same workouts should never be repeated. People who say this are absolutely right if you exceed your optimum capacity for strength when training, but if you learn to train to your strength specific capacities, they expand which causes your strength to increase. In other words, you can get stronger by repeating the same workouts again and again for weeks, or even two or three months if… (and this is a big if) if you push to your optimum capacity for strength specific training without exceeding it. Best of training to you.