Charles Staley, Bodybuilding, Strength Training, 1
As my colleague Will Brink likes to say, “From Mentzer’s ‘one set to failure’ to Poliquin’s ‘German volume training,’ there is no program which recommends using progressively lighter weightloads from week to week.” Brink is of course, alluding to the universal requirement of all successful strength and mass gaining programs: progressive overload.

One well-known pro bodybuilder recently told me that as long as he was training to failure, he felt assured that he was using the highest possible intensity, and therefore, it didn’t matter what weights he used. Most people, after seeing his physique, would hesitate to argue with such convoluted logic.

(Incidentally, Matt Mendenhall jokingly calls this phenomenon the law of excessive mass: i.e., “I’m bigger than you, so I’m right!”) But I would remind such people that the individual in question possessed several attributes which allowed him to succeed despite his poor choice of exercise protocol:

1) He chose great parents for his avocation;
2) He was probably a dru… I mean, a recreational pharmacologist;
3) Perhaps most importantly, he possessed the ability to work extremely hard on a consistent basis for a long period of time.

With this in mind, you should immediately grasp the foolishness of “average” trainees (which the vast majority of us are) attempting to use this individual’s training methods.

Training is Stress!

Let’s start off with an analogy: If you went from a sedentary desk job to working as a lumberjack, your body would undergo some interesting adaptations as it struggled to cope with the unfamiliar environmental stressors inherent in that profession.

You would most certainly develop caluoses on your hands as a result of grasping axes, saws, and other implements for hours each day. These callouses, however, would be exactly the same size one year after getting your new job, three years after, six years after, ad infinitum. Why? Because after the initial shock, the degree of stress to your hands never changed over that period of time.

Training is no different. Most bodybuilders make great progress for the first year or two, but then never look any different from that point on. Many of these people understand the importance of progression, but lack the skills necessary to implement it properly.

The Training Load

In sports science jargon, the training load is defined as “the sum total of all training activities for a given unit of time.” The training load has two important components, both of which can be used to provide overload— volume, or the amount of work done, and intensity, or the difficulty of work done (Incidentally, as a rule of thumb, you should seek to establish a certain level of intensity first, and then add volume, rather than the other way around).

Before you can plan a certain level of progression, it becomes necessary to have a way of measuring each of these components. Volume is usually calculated as the amount of weight lifted multiplied by the repetitions performed with that weight. However, this traditional calculation is being called into question by some latter day thinkers. Charles Poliquin was the first to say that the actual time that a muscle is under tension (TUT) must be considered as well. If this seems too anal-retentive, let me ask you a question.

If you perform a set of 10 reps with 135 pounds, and your lifting speed (or tempo) is 6 seconds per repetition, and your training partner used the same weight and reps, but executed each rep at 3 seconds per repetition, did you each perform an identical amount of work? Clearly, no. This scenario illustrates the fact that the training load can be increased simply by gradually slowing down your lifting tempos over successive workouts. Reducing rest between sets also increases volume, since the workload will be performed in a shorter period of time. So, to use another example, if you and your partner both perform 3 sets of 10 reps with 135 pounds using identical tempos, but you rest one minute per set while your partner rests two minutes between sets, you achieved the greater volume.

Intensity is the second component of the training load, and it is normally expressed as a percentage of your 1RM (one repetition maximum), or the greatest amount of weight you can lift for one repetition in proper form. But here’s the catch with 1RM’s: they’re always changing. This means you never quite know for sure what your 1RM is for any given lift. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t test for 1RM’s every 8 weeks or so— you should. Doing so gives you a guideline to work with. It’s just important to realize that 1RM’s are a dynamic measurement. For this reason, I usually prescribe repetition bracketsrather than percentage of 1RM when I write training programs for my clients.

When considering intensity, it’s important to realize that any change in your exercise technique— no matter how slight— changes the equation altogether. For instance, if you normally use a 3 second tempo (meaning, you complete each repetition in exactly 3 seconds) when testing for your 1RM, and the next time you test you’re able to add 5 pounds to your 1RM but it took you an extra second to complete the lift, it’s not an accurate indication of improvement. Establish your testing parameters, and then stick to them so that you have a consistent protocol when testing. If you do not, you’ll have no real way of knowing whether or not you’re improving.

Incidentally many people use the phrase “high intensity” to describe workout that are actually high volume or high density (which refers to the work/rest ratio). So just to be clear about our terms, remember that intensity has nothing to do with how much pain you’re in, or the fact that you frequently experience reverse peristolisis and out-of-body experiences after your leg training— it simply refers to how much weight is on the bar relative to your current maximal ability. Using this definition, we could say that performing 315 pounds for 1 rep is more intense than 10 reps with 310 pounds, even though the latter effort is far more difficult to perform.

The Volume/Intensity Relationship

Volume and intensity are mutually exclusive concepts— you can’t have high intensity and high volume simultaneously. If this was possible, you’d be able to do three sets of ten with your current 1RM! Yet both volume and intensity are necessary to achieve results— high volume loads create more lasting adaptations, while intense loads create faster adaptations which are more temporary. This apparent paradox is one of the primary reasons for periodizing (or cycling) your training.

Although you can implement the principle of progressive overload by increasing volume or intensity, it’s important to realize that increases in volume are more sustainable than increases in intensity. In other words, for a trainee with 10 years experience who can squat 695 for a single repetition, it’s much easier to progress by adding reps and/or sets than it is to try to add weight to the bar during any given repetition bracket

Which Type of Progression is Best?

In his book Science of Sports Training, Thomas Kurz identified three distinct methods which can be used to increase the training load over time:

1) Rectilinear method: Loads are continuously and uniformly increased. An example of rectilinear progression is to attempt to add five pounds to the bar every time you perform squats.

2) Stepped Method: Load are sharply increased, then held at that level for a period of time, before being sharply increased again. An example would be using the same weight, say 185 pounds for five sets of five reps, for a period of four weeks, and then increasing to 225 pounds for four weeks for the same sets and reps, and so on. This method, when used by advanced athletes, can result in fast, but temporary strength increases. Not effective for beginning or intermediate lifters of less than 4 years of continuous lifting experience.

3) Wavy method: Loads are gradually increased for several sessions, and then decreased for one or more sessions, and so on. A classic example of this loading scheme is as follows:

While increases in load are slower than the previous two methods, this technique lends itself to more sustainable progress, and as a result more satisfaction, and fewer injuries from training.

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