High intensity weight training will throw your body into a condition that I sometimes refer to as the state of emergency. This is not a bad thing if you are in a hurry to make some quick gains. An emergency puts everything into high gear. When a house catches on fire, it’s an emergency. When a person is having a heart attack, it’s an emergency. Fire fighters and first responders move fast and travel fast in order to get to the emergency as fast as possible. Emergencies tend to get quick responses. But I want to also consider whether or not a state of emergency is the most productive state to be in for long term tasks. When it comes to weight training, throwing your body into a state of emergency is good for peaking, but in most cases, it’s not good for long term progress.
The State of Challenge
If it is not good to throw your body into a state of emergency during a strength training workout, then what state should your body be in? As I see it, your body should be in a state of challenge and you don’t need to throw your body into a state of emergency to challenge it to get stronger.
The Flow State
Anyone who seriously studies the science of learning and improvement for very long is going to run into a concept called, “the flow state.” When optimum learning is the goal, the flow state is often considered the best state. The flow state is a state of total engagement in which you are completely focused on the task you are doing. If the task is too easy, you will tend to get bored which can cause a loss of concentration. If the task is too hard and you are overloaded beyond your capacity for quality performance, anxiety takes over. You reach the point where you are bombarded with so much incoming information that it can’t be processed properly and the mind can’t focus on anything long enough to grasp it. Once again, concentration is lost in this state of overload.
The flow state is superior for learning and improvement. It usually occurs when enough challenge is presented, but the challenge is not excessive to the point of overloading one’s senses. In other words, the flow state is the sweet spot of challenge for learning and improvement. Not only is this true when learning knowledge or a skill, but I believe it is true in regard to weight training.
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Russian Training
In an interview in which Joe Rogan interviewed Pavel Tsatsouline who is a Russian strength training coach, Pavel tells of studies that were done on top weight lifters in Russia. The studies indicated that when performing a set of an exercise, it is possible to do too many reps, and it is also possible to do too few reps. The best results were obtained when lifters did one third to two thirds of the maximum number of reps that they were capable of doing within a set. For example, if the maximum number of reps you can perform is ten reps when pushing all the way to failure for a given exercise, it is best to do somewhere between three and six reps, not ten. Why is this? Pavel doesn’t have an explanation for why. He simply tells what has proved to work over and over again for the Russian lifters.
Training to Failure is not Necessary
The fact that the Russians found that three to six reps is the sweet spot for a lifter who is capable of maxing out with ten reps is just another example of finding the right amount of challenge in order to optimize improvement. In weight training, it is unproductive to train with an insufficient amount of challenge, but the same is true of too much challenge. The bottom line is that you don’t need to push for max reps to failure in order to improve. This is hard to buy into for someone who has been saturated with high intensity philosophy. At one time, I was convinced that high intensity training was the best way, and the only way to really succeed at weight training. After all, it did work really well for a little while, however, it stops working before you reach your true capabilities.
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3 Levels of Effort
In my way of thinking, there are three levels of effort that you can exert when performing a set of an exercise:
The first level is easy training.
The second level is training that presents a challenge.
The third level is all-out training that throws your body into a state of emergency.
If we go back to the example of a lifter who can perform a maximum of ten reps with a given weight, the lifter should not stop after one or two reps as the training is too easy. If, however, the lifter continues to push to the third through the sixth rep, he enters the state of challenge. This is sufficient to stimulate strength assuming the lifter repeats enough sets of three to six reps to accumulate a total of 20 to 30 reps. If the lifter pushes beyond the sixth rep and stops after seven, eight, nine or ten reps, he is putting his body in the state of emergency. The body does not like to be in the state of emergency.
Transition Out of The State of Emergency
I personally believe it is ok to push until you reach a small state of emergency, but not a big state of emergency. You can reach a small state of emergency by pushing to the initial border of where the state of emergency starts up, which would begin at the seventh or eighth rep when using a weight based on your ten rep max. The body does not like to be in a state of emergency and will attempt to gain strength in order to make it easier to do seven or eight reps. When strength is gained and the reps become easier, the body transitions out of the state of emergency into an easier state of challenge. This is because when you gain strength, the seventh rep will become just as easy as the sixth rep was before strength was gained. In this example, you can transition out of a state of emergency by repeating workouts with the same weight for seven to eight reps which will stimulate strength gains. When you gain strength, the reps become easier. When the reps become easier, you will eventually be able to do seven or eight reps without going into a state of emergency.
Creating an Easy Transition
Your body can easily transition out of the state of emergency if it only requires a small strength gain of five to ten pounds to make the transition. However, if the body must gain twenty or more pounds of strength to transition out of the state of emergency, it may not be motivated to gain strength and make the transition because it requires a big adaptation that the body finds difficult to make. This is why pushing to the ninth or tenth rep of a ten rep max often backfires.
The further you drive your body into a state of emergency, the bigger the adaptation must be in order to transition out. For example, if you push to the ninth or tenth rep of your ten rep max, your body wants to gain enough strength in order for the ninth or tenth rep to become as easy as the sixth rep. This is the amount of strength that would be needed to transition out of the state of emergency and it would likely require a gain of twenty pounds of strength. In contrast, if you stop at the seventh rep, a small increase in strength of five or ten pounds is enough to cause your body to accomplish its goal of transitioning out of emergency into a state of challenge. This is an adaptation that your body is willing to make because it’s a small adaptation. Small adaptations are easy adaptations for your body to make, and you want to make the process of adaptation as easy as possible.
Lifters often run into sticking points when they always push to the point of failure and always stay in a state of emergency in every workout. No matter how much strength their body gains, it can never successfully accomplish its goal of transitioning out of the state of emergency.
If the body keeps trying to get out of the state of emergency by gaining strength, but the opposite happens and the emergency increases when a lifter chooses to add more weight and intensity, the body will eventually fail to see any reason as to why it should get stronger. This is because getting stronger never makes workouts any easier or less stressful for lifters who always train to failure.
The Goldilocks Principle
My advice is to follow the Goldilocks Principle, and find the right training state that is neither too easy nor too hard, but is just right. You do this by developing a feel for the point at which the training stress suddenly starts to feel uncomfortable during a set. In my own case, a decrease of rep speed and an increase in body tension are the best indicators. For example, when my body, my face, and my diaphragm suddenly start to tighten up during a set, I know I have reached the beginning of the state of emergency. This is where I stop a set. I then go through an adaptation period where I simply use the same weight and reps for enough workouts to gain enough strength to transition out of the state of emergency. When I transition out of the state of emergency, I enter the state of challenge. After training in the state of challenge for several workouts, I add a little weight and repeat the process.
The bottom line is to train hard enough, but not so hard that you stay in a state of emergency during your workouts. This is what causes your body to eventually shut down its desire to gain strength. If you want to keep making strength gains as long as possible, learn how to train with the right amount of intensity. Best of training to you.