Strength 101: Part II - The Methods of Strength Development

Lifters interested in becoming as strong as possible need to maximize their muscular and neural factors. In Part I, we looked over a few ways to achieve this:

Train with intense movements: Training heavily-loaded or explosive movements recruits all available motor units, especially the fast-twitch motor units that are essential to maximizing strength.

Increase your work performed over time with demanding weights: The body can respond to increased weight training demands by getting stronger through neural and muscular gains.

Train Technique: Rehearsing your technique in a competition lift (for professional lifters) or in a lift similar to your sport (for all athletes) can improve the nervous system’s ability to perform a movement.

The first two factors figure into the traditional model of judging loads by intensity and volume. Intensity is the relation of a load to a lifter’s one-rep max, while volume is the total amount of weight moved during a set, lift, training session, or series of training sessions. Both factors can be intertwined, as increasing your intensity by adding weight to the bar (while maintaining sets and reps) will increase your volume.

Now let’s dig deeper.

The Types of Strength

Imagine three lifters. Each has roughly the same size, proportions, muscle mass, and training experience. They seem quite the same until their squat ability is tested in three different ways: a one-rep maximum test, a one-rep maximum jump squat test, and a thirty-rep maximum test.  Despite their similar builds, the first lifter has a much better max squat than the other two, the second has a much better max jump squat than the competition, and third lifter blows the other two lifters away in the thirty-rep max test, even though he was easily the weakest competitor in the other two tests.

These lifters showed different abilities in three unique types of strength: maximal, explosive, and endurance strength. Before moving along, I should note that these are rough definitions, and each type of strength can be divided into subgroups (and completely new groups added on) but these three are enough at the moment. Maximal strength is the ability to apply peak force over a short duration, explosive strength is the ability to apply force extremely quickly, and endurance strength is the ability to apply force over a period time. Explosive strength is generally the first type of strength to lessen due to aging, which is a factor in why powerlifters tend to compete longer than explosive-focused athletes like sprinters or Olympic weightlifters.

Though it varies depending on the activity, on average it takes the body about 0.4 seconds to reach its maximal expression of strength.[i] This means if you decided to push against the side of a sturdy building, you’d likely be at your strongest point after 0.4 seconds of futile shoving. Increasing overall maximal strength is obviously important to sport, though it can be just as important (or more so) to decrease the time it takes to reach a given level of maximum strength, which is the essence of explosive strength. Echoing our earlier example with the three squatters, this is one reason why an excellent squatter isn’t always the best jumper in a gym or on a sporting team; he may have good maximal strength, though his body can’t get his muscles firing fast enough to beat gravity with the same ease. Endurance strength (and other forms of endurance) also has a place in improving performance, even for the powerlifter, though it’s most specific to strongmen, as many of their events test endurance strength.

Gaining Strength: Primary and Secondary Methods

The majority of strength programs rely heavily on three general lifting techniques: the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repetition method. A lifter uses multiple techniques because the body has many different modes of adaptation, or adjusting the body in response to a stimulus. For an athlete, there are many positive forms of adaptation to strength training: increased neural drive, larger muscles, increased ability to recover from demands, lost body fat, and more efficient energy production at the cellular level, just to name a few. Of course there are negative adaptations, too, ranging from fatigue (loss of strength) to injury. Balancing these adaptations -and the methods that lead to them- is essential to developing a solid strength program.

The Maximal Effort Method

If you perform a loaded movement that’s heavy enough to recruit all possible motor units in the active muscle, and is also heavy enough that you have to grind through it, then you’re using the maximal effort method. If you were to work up to your one-rep max on a barbell curl, at about the point you had 80-85% of your one-rep max on the bar, you would be recruiting all of the muscle fibers in your biceps, and so would be engaging in the maximal effort method.

The maximal effort method is essential to powerlifters, as it gets your nervous system to positively adapt to a load better than any other method, and is obviously competition-specific. In fact, there’s evidence many athletes would benefit from maximal effort training; even endurance athletes can improve their work economy after exposure to max effort training.[ii]

On the other hand, it’s the most demanding method, and can be the quickest to lead to problems. [iii] This is due to the intense effort that goes into maximal effort lifts[iv] (especially when getting in the 90%+ range). Maximal effort training also puts the body’s protective mechanisms on alert, which can limit progress, and it can just as easily overwhelm those same protective mechanisms and a lifter’s technique, which can lead to injuries.

Finally, it seems that the amount of time spent under the bar with the max effort method isn’t optimal for hypertrophy. Coupled with the fatigue factors, it’s easy to see why max effort methods are used sparingly, even in powerlifting programs; when it comes to hypertrophy programs, 5x5 variants are the most common, with the general rule being that the heaviest lifts should hover around 80% of a lifter’s 1RM.

The Dynamic Effort Method

The dynamic effort method involves lifting a relatively light weight as fast as possible in order to facilitate explosive strength. You might remember our jogger from Part 1, who we last left panting from exhaustion after a strenuous bout of sprinting and bunny-hopping; if he had been jumping to improve his explosive strength, his jumping would’ve been the execution of the dynamic effort method, with his body serving as the weight. Developing explosive strength is important for the general athlete because so many sporting movements -whether running, jumping, throwing, kicking, or swinging- require applying maximal speed against minimal resistance, which is an ability dynamic effort training can specifically develop.

Strength athletes routinely perform competition-specific dynamic effort work, whether it’s an Olympic lifter practicing cleans or a powerlifter performing explosive box squats.  At first glance, the dynamic effort method might seem wasted on powerlifters. Sure, Olympic lifters compete with dynamic movements, so they need to train explosively, and strongmen throw kegs and stuff around, so they need some burst. Powerlifters, though, grind through every movement in competition. How does it help them?

The first point in favor of dynamic effort training with weights is that it’s less stressful on the body than max effort training. Someone training the deadlift maximally multiple times per week could end up a worn-out puddle in no time, though the same lifter pulling maximally one day and dynamically the next could avoid fatigue longer while still stimulating all needed motor units. The second point is that it rehearses near-perfect technique in terms of the movement, while providing variety by changing how force is applied to it (especially if bands or chains are involved). Finally, training for speed is an excellent method for getting through sticking points, or the hardest part of a given lift. On the other hand, the dynamic effort method is still draining, and by its very nature can’t be done with significant volume.

The shock method is an important kind of dynamic effort training that was developed by the Soviets. The method involves using explosive movements to rapidly stretch muscles and connective tissue in order to facilitate (and strengthen) their rebound strength. It’s not as effective for powerlifters as it is for other athletes, and is one of the most-fatiguing methods of training around. For general athletes, though, it can be a major tool for improvement.

Note: “Dynamic training” (as opposed to the dynamic effort method or dynamic effort training) describes any kind of training involving movement.  Also, “plyometric” training methods (an Americanized-term that includes just about any quick activity these days) can incorporate shock methods, though the terms aren’t interchangeable.

The Repetition Method

Up until now we’ve discussed voluntary muscle fiber recruitment where more fibers are recruited by pushing yourself harder. Additional muscle fibers can also be recruited to assist an action as fatigued muscle fibers slow down. To give an example, when you rep-out at the gym on the leg extension machine, you may be using controlled reps of only 75% of your one-rep max, which initially puts you below the threshold for activating all of the muscle fibers in your quads. As you near failure, slower fibers weaken and faster fibers activate to help carry the load. By the point where you’re grinding through reps, all of your fibers have contributed to the action. This method is called repetition to failure, and is quite fatiguing, though it’s been proven to increase neural strength and hypertrophy.[v] HIT and Doggcrapp programs rely on repetition to failure as a primary training stimulus.

Programs that feature repping to failure generally don’t include many other strength methods because going to failure is so demanding on the body. This is why most strength programs drop the failure part and use only repetitions, as it turns out that maximal fiber stimulation isn’t necessary for causing a training effect in terms of either hypertrophy or even neural gains. The classic model of bodybuilding uses multiple sets of controlled repetitions loaded at about 60 – 75% of a lifter’s one-rep max at a given lift; the sets provide a low level of fatigue that enables multiple muscle groups or body parts to be exercised during a session (or for one group to be hammered). Generally, the repetition method also allows for fairly precise technique rehearsal to be done in large quantities, which is great for a bodybuilder targeting certain muscles or for a lifter rehearsing a movement.

Just by charting the attributes of these methods, you can guess how many strength programs are set up:

The repetition to failure method doesn’t bring anything unique to the table and is rough on the body, so it plays a small part in most strength programs (if it’s present at all). The maximal and dynamic effort methods are both high-intensity, so they’re limited in volume and often performed separately from each other or arranged during the workout to hit lifters before they get too tired; the preference of one over the other depends on sport specificity. The repetition method rounds out the training period as it has low demand level even at high volume, and also has the ability to bring about hypertrophy and adaptations to workload.

Though these methods are the main ones, there are other ways to facilitate strength gain.

Focused Motor Skill Improvement

Getting back to the importance of movement, you need to know the lift before you load the lift, whether it’s building up the flexibility needed to position for a lift or rehearsing enough to gain better technique. These improvements are the core reason for warming-up, where a lifter will use little or no weight to groove a movement pattern, and for engaging in clinical techniques like Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation stretching, which is essentially a movement-focused combination of stretching and weightless isometrics. Something like a toe pull/squat-to-stand (where you use your hands to assist yourself into a good squat position) grooves a movement pattern with almost no use of the muscles that are active in the squat. Because any athletic movement involves multiple muscles providing varying amounts of force over time, working on these motor skills increases intermuscular coordination, or how the nervous system gets different muscles to work together. Intermuscular coordination is extremely important in explosive lifts where a muscle most go from maximum contraction to near-complete relaxation in an instant.

Of course, performing an actual lift enhances your ability to perform the lift, as long as you maintain technique. This gets back to the idea that “practice makes permanent.” Practicing 10,000 rounded-back squats will get you good at performing rounded-back squats and not much else. There are also some indirect methods of motor skill improvement that include techniques like massage and stretching; we’ll talk more about these later.

GPP

General physical preparedness (GPP) is about getting in shape for the demands of training that go beyond a single rep or set of an exercise. At its simplest and earliest form, GPP involved a conscious effort by an athlete to increase his training volume over time as part of a specific training phase (a lifter would lift more, a runner would run more, etc.), though GPP methods can also include any form of focused endurance or strength endurance work, whether it’s hopping on the treadmill for an hour or doing car push sprints. The Soviets frequently used games to build up their athletes’ GPP, with basketball teams playing soccer as just one example;[vi] EliteFTS followers will recognize Prowler work, car pushing, tire flipping, rope work (whether jump rope or heavy upper-body rope work), and other methods as common for lifters. GPP volume can be increased and maintained with much more regularity than the main three strength methods. If we were to put strength-style GPP work on the chart above, its demand level would be classified as “low.”

Electrical Muscle Stimulation

The end action of neural stimulus in a muscle is the creation of an electrical shock that causes muscle fibers to contract. You can bypass this neural action just by strapping an electrode to a muscle and using a battery or wall outlet to supply the charge. In fact, producing the true maximal force from a muscle can only be done by running an external current through it; not surprisingly, this is why electroshock patients and electric chair victims are physically restrained during their respective stimuli. Using shocks for strength is known as Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS). The method has fallen in and out of the spotlight over the years, whether as a legitimate training stimulus or as a late night infomercial product. The benefit of EMS is that it induces strength gains while bypassing neural limitations; its followers included track coach Charlie Francis. Beyond this general statement, though, we aren’t really sure how EMS works best.[vii] Given that it also involves expensive equipment that requires more supervision than weight training, it’s not the most popular method. EMS, therefore, has been mostly relegated to things like rehab and preventing muscle loss during illness.

Occlusion Training (Kaatsu)

A recent innovation from Japan, occlusion training (also called kaatsu training and ischemic training) involves inducing hypertrophy by mechanically restricting a working muscle and then exercising that muscle with a light weight. Imagine lifting weights while wrapped-up in heavy-duty inflated blood pressure sleeves. The “occlusion” name comes from the fact that blood flow to the target muscle is largely blocked-off, or occluded, by the sleeve, which prevents the muscle from receiving optimal amounts of oxygen. The lack of oxygen appears to stimulate greater hypertrophy gains with a given weight[viii] and increased subsequent blood flow to muscles.[ix] Beyond that, we aren’t sure just how effective it is on its own, much less when compared to more traditional methods, or even how it really works.[x] We also aren’t sure just how safe the mechanical restriction is, or if it can be mimicked by manipulating muscle tension to reduce blood flow, or by loading, which assumes that the occlusion effect is unimportant, and that the stimulus is the physical resistance of the sleeve.[xi]

Isometric Training

Isometric training involves trying to move an immobile object or holding weight in a particular manner over a short period of time. Isometrics became a bit of a training fad in the US during the 50’s and 60’s, though their rise was fueled by the creation of Dianabol; when the steroid connection was discovered, their popularity waned.[xii] Because the main component of isometric training is time (and not weight, as it is with movement-based methods) and it has different effects on the body than normal training, it’s helpful to consider it a unique method of gaining strength. Still, usual rules of exertion and fiber type recruitment are relevant: if you apply a lot of force (or hold a very heavy weight) during isometrics and fatigue quickly, you’re basically doing max effort work. If you do it for a longer stretch of time, the effects are more similar to the repetition method or GPP/endurance work.

Isometric training promotes strength around the particular joint angle that’s being held. Using the bench press as an example, if you hold a heavy weight close to lockout, your lockout will be strengthened. If you hold the same weight close to your chest, the bottom of your press will be strengthened. There’s some variation depending on how tightly the active muscles are contracted, as the more-closed the joint is, the narrower the effect of the isometric activity. As an example, an isometric leg extension done with lower and upper legs pulled closely together will strengthen the leg largely in that position; conversely, isometric work done with the leg closer to extension will build up more leg strength through a greater range of motion.[xiii] Because isometric work mainly strengthens the position it’s performed in, the technique is good for sticking points. It’s also particularly effective in reinforcing postural changes, whether for daily life or while lifting. The method is largely comparable (though not identical) in its ability to cause fatigue when compared to dynamic lifts of similar position and intensity.

Ergogenic Aids

This could be a series of articles unto itself, though here I’ll present three unique and proven aids. In the broadest strokes possible, anabolic androgens, caffeine, and creatine have all been demonstrated to improve strength in a meaningful manner. Even in the absence of strength training, anabolic androgens increase muscle mass and improve neural factors in both the long- and short-term, which makes them hands-down the most effective performance-enhancing substances around; they’re also saddled with a host of legal, ethical, and health issues. Caffeine provides a short-term neural boost, though being a stimulant it’s also a diuretic and a substance the body builds a tolerance to; it can be harmful if overdosed, though the negative effects of overstimulation that precede toxicity mean that (idiotic) recreational use is the only realistic path to truly harmful side effects. Creatine (which can also be considered a nutrient) mainly improves strength indirectly by boosting work capacity, though there are some hints it can have a more-direct effect as well; though we’ll be untangling all of its mechanisms for well into the foreseeable future, creatine appears to be safe. It should be noted that many ergogenic aids (particularly short-term aids like caffeine) are most effective if the increased work they allow is balanced by recovery.

Common Factors Limiting Strength Gains

Gaining strength requires minimizing factors that will stall or reverse your progress. Let’s look at some of these barriers more closely.

Short-term Fatigue[xiv]

Exhaustion during a set of squats isn’t the result of muscle damage or energy depletion, and is only indirectly caused by things like heat or cold. Short-term fatigue appears to be rooted in muscle/nerve interaction, and is caused either by a change in signaling to the muscles or a change in the muscles’ ability to respond to signals. The signal-related nature of fatigue is a good thing for lifters, as it protects us from injury: imagine what would happen if, instead of fatigue, we terminated sets because of complete energy depletion or because of a mechanical failure in the joints, bones, or muscles. The relation of fatigue to the nervous system is also why stimulants like caffeine improve lifting performance. Just as a warning, those seeking practical applications may want to move on to the next section; the details of fatigue might be even less-clear than hypertrophy mechanisms.

Fatigue can be broken down into two distinct kinds. Central fatigue (or CNS fatigue) involves the brain and spinal cord (and maybe a few other nerves, depending on who you ask) that make up the central nervous system. The depletion of either brain glycogen[xv] or neurotransmitters like serotonin[xvi] have been noted as hypothetical culprits for central fatigue. Local fatigue involves all the remaining nerves, muscles, and other body parts that can be impacted by training stress. Changes to the calcium ions that cause muscles to contract at the microscopic level, or changes to how muscle responds to these ions,[xvii] may explain how local fatigue is triggered. The uncertainty lies in the fact that the processes of fatigue are really hard to observe in living, breathing humans; we may find that many of the fatigue mechanisms we observe in the lab with tissue samples are in fact superseded by other unknown or misunderstood mechanisms in real life.[xviii]

There’s also some debate over where to draw the line between local and central fatigue as they’re likely interconnected and feed into each other. To understand the interconnectivity, it’s important to remember that nerves are two-way streets: the brain transmits signals down to the body parts, and the nerves in the body parts send signals back to the brain. Both central and local fatigue have been clearly observed (if not quite defined) at their extremes, with isolated muscle tissue and local nerves being shown to fatigue,[xix] while exercise has been shown to change CNS activity,[xx] though no such study exists that shows the two clearly going on at the same time. This is again due to the problem in observing the trends in living subjects.

The science is also too hazy to show how this cooperation works, [xxi] though there’s most likely a chemical alteration within the muscle during exercise that triggers the resulting neural slowdown (perhaps the same change in calcium ions noted earlier),[xxii] with the end result being that the local and central nerves work cooperatively to protect the actual muscle tissues from damage by limiting the work they perform.[xxiii] Add to this the other likely theories about changes in muscle signal substrates and their responsiveness to these substrates, and we have a complicated and integrated model of fatigue that could feature many signal chemicals, pathways, and processes.

While we can barely get a good idea as to if an athlete’s fatigue is local or central (and then only by hooking said athlete up to a suite of monitoring equipment), a review of fatigue research suggests that local fatigue appears to be the product of intense, short-term activity, while central fatigue is the result of longer-duration work.[xxiv]

Overtraining

So imagine post-exercise fatigue, the full-on kind that just saps your strength even a day or two after training. Now stretch it out over a period of time - days, weeks, or months even. Maybe throw in unexpected feelings of apathy towards training and/or life in general that grow towards feeling like depression. Your sex drive goes to hell. You might get sick for the first time in forever. The worst thing is that when you finally give up and stop going to the gym, the symptoms don’t go away for several weeks. Welcome to overtraining.

Getting a result from training requires pushing your limits: if the body doesn’t have a new training stimulus to adapt to, your performance will stall or regress. Overtraining occurs when you push too hard for too long, and is associated with changes in all sorts of brain chemicals and hormones (and the resulting mental havoc these changes wreak).[xxv] There seems to be some sort of physical product in the body that triggers the nervous system to go out of whack; one theory that has some traction states that overtraining is a response to cytokines, which are small proteins that react to tissue trauma accrued during excessive training by causing inflammation.[xxvi]^{, [xxvii], [xxviii]} Whatever the cause, we’re likely a long way away from really understanding overtraining.[xxix]^{, [xxx]}

Returning to the nervous system may help explain how the entire body is impacted by overtraining. The peripheral nervous system can also be divided into two main components: the somatic nervous system, which controls conscious activities, and the autonomic nervous system, which handles the rest. The autonomic system has two divisions that might be of interest to lifters: in rough terms, the parasympathetic nervous system is largely responsible for putting the body into a relaxed state, while the sympathetic nervous system ramps the body up for activity.  Just using blood flow as an example, the sympathetic nervous system increases blood flow to the muscles and lungs in anticipation of physical activity, while the parasympathetic system diverts blood flow to the digestive tract for food digestion in anticipation of a relaxed situation.

When one of these systems is playing a larger role in the body than the other, that stronger system is considered dominant. It’s easy to see the theoretical importance here, especially since these systems control adrenal responses. A parasympathetic-dominant athlete may have problems performing intensely, while a sympathetic-dominant athlete could be burned-out by constant stress. The research isn’t quite solid enough to address this theory (and its applicability to overtraining), though the popularity of new screening tools means a large body of anecdotal and scientific assessments are underway.[xxxi]

Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness

We can count Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), which is muscular pain that occurs within several days after training, as a short-term factor. Again, this isn’t something we can quantify too precisely, though DOMS looks to be the result of tiny tears in the muscle tissue (probably induced mostly by the eccentric portion of a lift or exercise) coupled with inflammatory responses that accompany such damage; the inflammation takes time to rev up, which is why pain can occur well after a lifting session ends. Many GPP exercises have little or no eccentric component, which is a major factor in why they can be performed more regularly than lifts.

Inhibitive Mechanisms

As mentioned above, fatigue is a major reason why lifters don’t shred their muscles, tendons, and ligaments to pieces every time they push themselves in the gym. Another factor is the presence of dedicated nerve units that act as watchdogs in our joints, muscles, and tendons. Joint receptors monitor joint movement, muscle spindles tell the muscle to tighten during excessive stretching, and the Golgi tendon organs in tendons react to excessive muscle contractions and tell muscles to relax when problems are sensed.[xxxii]^{, [xxxiii]} A healthy person has likely run into Golgi tendon organ-limited activities when a bar won’t even budge during a heavy lift attempt. A person with ligament laxity in a given joint is more likely to run into limitations from the joint receptors. As someone with capsule laxity in both shoulders, I can attest to how quickly and thoroughly joint receptors can shut down an entire limb during exercise.

Unfortunately, protective mechanisms take time to work, and even a moment measured in milliseconds can be long enough for a muscle to tear. Strength coach Buddy Morris came under fire for the pec tears his players on the Cleveland Browns endured. Given the innate reaction rates of these protective mechanisms, though, there’s little Coach Morris could’ve done differently. If there is blame in cases like these, it is generally on the athletes themselves for arm tackling and performing other reckless moves on the field, or on the position coaches for not correcting these habits.

There also appears to be a less-specific (and less-understood) inhibitory mechanism that can impact our ability to move. Most-accurately called neuro-myofascial restrictions, these problems appear to be caused by reciprocal issues shared among muscles, nerves, and fascia (the thin layer of connective tissue that helps hold the body together), and can be evident as either painful and poorly-moving areas across an entire muscle or groups of muscles, or as localized areas of pain within a muscle called trigger points that can correlate to movement restrictions in related muscles.

The cause of these restrictions generally appears to be rooted in the overuse or injury of a given muscle or muscle group; interestingly, cytokines are not only related to overtraining, but seem to be important factors in causing neuro-myofascial pain.[xxxiv] Massage, foam-rolling, ultrasound, stretching, and magnetic stimulation have all been noted as methods of reducing or eliminating problems with restrictions. These techniques may work on the cellular level of the soft tissues by encouraging proper recovery, and on the nerves by quieting over-signaling that can cause chronic contractions.

Inadequate Basic Recovery

Much like ergogenic aids, recovery is too complicated for an article like this to responsibly address in any detail. I’ve written a 40 page piece on recovery/healing that’s growing into an even longer piece, and it still barely scratches the surface. As an overview, though, not attending to recovery needs can lead to underperformance even during optimal training and will worsen overtraining. I won’t belabor items like sleeping and eating, other than to say that, anecdotally, pro athletes sleep more than just about anyone, and that when your body doesn’t get enough protein and calories, performance tanks. Shooting for eight hours of sleep every night and eating maintenance-level calories and between one-half to one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight every day are time-proven techniques for maintaining positive adaptations to strength training; consuming even more of both may be warranted to ensure that nutrition is not a weak link when pursuing hypertrophy. In the same manner, getting at least your RDA of common vitamins and minerals will likely help recovery, with calcium and Vitamin D being perhaps of particular importance to improving bone density in strength athletes. I won’t make any specific supplementation recommendations, as they’re practically worthless given how different people are in terms of diet and environmental exposures. Simply covering your bases (sleep, calories, and nutrients) is the main thing; the evidence supporting going beyond the common recommendations on any one of these factors, e.g., super-dosing zinc, almost invariably proves to be inaccurate or equivocal.

Sticking Points

The contributions of muscles and muscle groups vary throughout the execution of a lift. The “bodybuilding style” barbell bench press (performed in a controlled manner and with a moderate-or-less arch) is a pec- and delt-dominant lift near the bottom, and becomes more triceps-dominant near lockout. Users of this style generally experience a sticking point near the bottom where the chest muscles are the weakest link in the chain. In a healthy lifter, the sticking point is due to the chest muscles being in a poorly-leveraged position. Individuals with different builds can have different sticking points and resultant performances in different exercises. The classic example is the monkey-armed fellow who has a great deadlift thanks to being able to start the lift with his hips high, but has a wretched bench because he has an angular disadvantage as well as a longer movement pattern; interestingly, he can improve his bench by gaining weight (which increases his stability and shortens the bar stroke), though the extra weight—particularly if it’s mostly fat and accumulated around the torso—could actually hinder his deadlift.

Sticking points can also be attributed to muscle imbalances, movement restrictions, neuro-myofascial restrictions, or outright injuries, with the separations between each cause being somewhat fluid. Picture a pec deck-obsessed lifter whose bodybuilder-style bench press fails near the top of the lift. He may suffer simultaneously from triceps that are weak from being underworked; pectoral muscles that are overly-tight, riddled with trigger points, and can’t contract efficiently; and inhibited shoulder stabilizers that prevent additional loading, but don’t prevent his humeri from over-approximating. Finally, sticking points can be a technique issue. This is especially true in the strength sports, where small adjustments in foot or hand position can significantly improve a lift.

In addition to the usefulness of dynamic effort and isometric work, maximal work (to adapt to a new load or learn to tolerate a stagnant load) and repetition work (to enlarge the muscles involved in the sticking point) are also equally valid in fixing these various issues. I should note that depending on how you address sticking points, the strength gained can be very specific to a certain lift (as in gaining weight and increasing your arch to help your bench press) or more general to a variety of lifts or athletic endeavors (such as by strengthening your glutes via a variety of exercises.)

Stimulus Stagnation

On some level, all programs manipulate short-term training variables to promote gains in size and strength. We know that once the training effect levels off from consistent work with an exercise and load, the nervous system will adapt by recruiting fewer motor units to perform the same amount of work.[xxxv] Note that this is different from rotating maximal effort exercises, as rotating max effort exercises (as per the Westside Method) is done to combat fatigue while still giving the lifter consistent practice at grinding through heavy weights. We also know that changing the loading parameters of an exercise can lead to increased strength and muscle gains.[xxxvi]^{, [xxxvii]} While the research isn’t quite as good at specifically looking at the importance of changing exercise variety, anecdotally there seems to be agreement that changing between similar lifts could lead to greater gains when compared to sticking with the same lifts for extended periods of time.[xxxviii] On the other hand, the large body of evidence presented in successful Olympic lifters (and in the followers of programs like 5/3/1) who vary their training almost exclusively by changing volume and intensity suggests that exercise variation isn’t the most important cure to stimulus stagnation, and is much less desirable than current fitness marketing catchphrases like “muscle confusion” suggest.

Mass Inefficiency and Limitations

Strength doesn’t increase linearly with gains in muscle mass, which is why strong, smaller athletes like gymnasts can so ably move their bodies during competition, while a heavyweight Olympic weightlifter of the same competitive level wouldn’t be able to perform the same movements even if trained for them.[xxxix] This isn’t to say that adding muscle mass can’t be advantageous: it’s just that there’s a limit on how much the extra mass can help, and that the limit is relative to the activity being performed. Also of note is how bone mass predicts (or perhaps regulates) muscle growth, with several formulas existing for using factors like height or joint circumference to predict muscle growth.[xl]

Poor Physical Preparation

A lack of physical preparation can extend beyond low work volume and the related ability to avoid fatigue and overtraining. Strength training increases the thickness of heart muscle; this is a needed adaptation, as the heart must contract with greater force to pump blood into tightened muscles. On the other hand, strength training doesn’t increase the volume of blood the heart can pump, which can limit the work performed in a lifting session—it’s hard to do anything when gasping for breath. Enlarging the heart’s volume through moderate cardio can help overcome this problem directly by increasing the amount of oxygenated blood that reaches muscles,[xli] or by reducing unnecessary tissue such as fat. GPP can also build up our tolerance to muscle acidity, which causes the nausea and localized burning sensation that often accompanies strength endurance work.

Detraining

Neural and hypertrophy gains peak at a certain point after a training stimulus and then decline.  This decline is detraining, and is the fear of many lifters. Fortunately, strength gains are resilient, and even layoffs of many months (such as after injury) can be overcome. Also fortunate is the fact that the stimulus necessary to maintain strength gains is much smaller than the stimulus needed to create those same gains, with losses requiring weeks (or months) of lessened/stopped activity in most individuals.[xlii]^{, [xliii], [xliv]} Just as important is that lost muscular and neural adaptations generally return quickly in healthy populations, with the former likely due to the fact that, as discussed in Part I, while some components of muscle tissue can be reabsorbed into the body, new myonuclei formed during hypertrophy aren’t.

Injury

This is an obvious one, with chronic injuries being the result of long-term training problems (such as shoulder degeneration from benching) or acute injuries being the result of sudden trauma (such as an otherwise-healthy bicep tearing during a deadlift). Many injuries begin as one type and evolve into the other, and often have characteristics of both, e.g., the frayed quad tendon that gives out when catching a clean, or the ankle sprain that never fully heals and becomes a chronic hindrance.

I do want to note one particular kind of injury that’s appeared in the news. Rhabdomyolysis is a condition where so much muscle tissue is broken down that it literally begins poisoning the rest of the body. Unbelievably (and inexcusably) several morons in both the high school and collegiate coaching ranks have worked their teams so stupidly hard that large groups of players have been hospitalized for rhabdo.[xlv] Before these bozos came along, mass rhabdo was known only as the result of large-scale disasters that featured crush injuries, e.g., falling buildings or car pile-ups. I can’t over-emphasize how irresponsible you have to be to put your athletes in this spot. It’s like a coach beating his players with a baseball bat to toughen them up.

Looking Ahead

What does all of this add up to? You should train hard, because increased work causes positive adaptations. But not too hard, because that leads to overtraining. So you should take breaks. But breaks can lead to detraining, or be inefficient, so you can’t break for too long. On top of these factors, you have to know how to balance out goals, utilize different strength methods, and make sure you’re at your best during competition. In Part III, we’ll talk about how lifters plan their training to accommodate all of these factors.

[i] Zatsiorsky, V.M. (1995).  Science and Practice of Strength Training. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

[ii] Hoff, J., et al. (2002).  Maximal Strength Training Improves Aerobic Endurance Performance. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, October 12(5): 288-295.

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Linamo, V., et al.  (1997).  Neuromuscular fatigue and recovery in maximal compared to explosive strength loading.  European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology, 77(1-2): 176-181.

[v] Willardson, J.M.  The application of training to failure in periodized multiple-set resistance exercise programs.  Journal of strength and conditioning research, May, 21(2): 628-31.

[vi] Yessis, M., and Trubo R. (1988).  Secrets of Soviet Sports Fitness and Training.  New York: Arbor House.

[vii] Siff, M.C. (2000).  Supertraining.  Denver: Supertraining Institute.

[viii] Nishimura, A., et al. (2010).  Hypoxia increases muscle hypertrophy induced by resistance training.  International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, Dec, 5(4): 497-508.

[ix] Evans, C., et al. (2010).  Short-term resistance training with blood flow restriction enhances microvascular filtration capacity of human calf muscles.  Journal of Sports Sciences, 28(9): 999-1007.

[x] Loenneke, J.P., et al. (2010).   A mechanistic approach to bloodflow occlusion.  International Journal of Sports Medicine, Jan, 31(1): 1-4.

[xi] The body of relevant current research is greater than suggested here, though much of it is only available as limited abstracts that I can’t accurately or conclusively comment on.

[xii] Starr, B. (2010).  The ultimate strength exercise: Isotonic-isometric contraction.  The Aasgaard Co.  Retrieved from http://startingstrength.com/articles/ultimate_exercise_starr.pdf.

[xiii] Siff

[xiv] For a more-detailed look at the mechanisms of both fatigue and fatigue research, I suggest the following article, which is also available online in full text:  Allen, D.G., et al.  (2008).  Skeletal muscle fatigue: cellular mechanisms.  Physiological Reviews, Jan, 88(1): 287-332.

[xv] Matsui, et al.  (2011).   Brain glycogen decreases during prolonged exercise.  The Journal of Physiology, April, 26.

[xvi] Davis, J.M., et al (2000).  Serotonin and central nervous system fatigue: nutritional considerations.  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Aug, 72(2), 5735-5738.

[xvii] Quinonez, M., et al. (2010).  Effects of membrane depolarization and changes in extracellular [K⁺] on the Ca²⁺ transients of fast skeletal muscle fibers: Implications for muscle fatigue.  Journal of Muscle Research and Cell Motility, Jan.

[xviii] Vandenboom, R. (2004).  The myofibrillar complex and fatigue: a review.  Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology, 29(3): 330-356.

[xix] Ibid:  Note that this report dismisses the possibility of CNS fatigue, which I believe to be in error; I do not believe this view invalidates the experimental evidence produced by this team.

[xx] Sidhu, S.K., et al. (2009).   Locomotor exercise induces long-lasting impairments in the capacity of the human cortex to voluntarily activate knee extensor muscles.  Journal of Applied Physiology, Feb, 106(2): 556-65.

[xxi] Boyas, S., and Guevel, A.  (2011).   Neuromuscular fatigue in healthy muscle: underlying factors and adaptation mechanisms.  Annals of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Mar, 54(2): 88-108.

[xxii] Macintosh, B.R., and Shahi, M.R.  (2011).   A peripheral governor regulates muscle contraction.  Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, Feb, 36(1): 1-11.

[xxiii] Amann, M. (2011).  Central and peripheral fatigue: interaction during cycling exercise in humans.  Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Apr, 14.

[xxiv] Boyas

[xxv] Slivka, D.R., et al.  (2010).  Effects of 21 days of intensified training on markers of overtraining.  Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Oct, 24(10): 2604-12.

[xxvi] Smith, L.L.  (2000).  Cytokine hypothesis of overtraining: a physiological adaptation to excessive stress?  Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Feb, 32(2): 317-31.

[xxvii] Angeli, A., et al.  The overtraining syndrome in athletes: a stress-related disorder.  Journal of Endocrinological Investigation, Jun, 27(6): 603-12.

[xxviii] Smith, L.L.  (2004).  Tissue trauma: the underlying cause of overtraining syndrome?  Journal of Strength Conditioning Research, Feb, 18(1): 185-93.

[xxix] Purvis, D., et al.  (2010).  Physiological and psychological fatigue in extreme conditions: overtraining in elite athletes.  PM & R: The Journal of Injury, Function, and Rehabilitation, May, 2(5): 442-50.

[xxx] For a deeper look at overtraining, I recommend Lyle McDonald’s excellent series on the subject: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/overtraining-overreaching-and-all-the-rest-part-1.html

[xxxi] As a side note, the fatigued feeling that follows a large meal is most-simply explained by parasympathetic phenomena.

[xxxii] Siff

[xxxiii] Purves, D., et al. (2001).  Neuroscience: 2^nd Edition.   Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.

[xxxiv] Metzler, K.R., et al. (2011).  In vitro modeling of repetitive motion injury and myofascial release.  Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, Apr, 14(2): 162-171.

[xxxv] Ploutz, L.L., et al. (1994).  Effects of resistance training on muscle use during exercise.  Journal of Applied Physiology, Apr, 76(4): 1675-81.

[xxxvi] Prestes, J., et al. (2009).  Comparison between linear and daily undulating periodized resistance training to increase strength.  Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Dec, 23(9): 2437-42.

[xxxvii] Miranda, F., et al.  (2011).  Effects of linear vs. daily undulatory periodized resistance training on maximal and submaximal strength gains.  Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Apr, 14.

[xxxviii] Cormie, P., et al.  (2011).  Developing maximal neuromuscular power: part 2-training considerations for improving maximal power production.  Sports Medicine, Feb, 41(2): 125-46.

[xxxix] Zatsiorsky

[xl] McDonald, L.  (2009)  What’s my genetic muscular potential?  Bodyrecomposition.  Retrieved at http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html.

[xli] For more on cardio for strength athletes, I suggest Ryan Hagenbuch’s article “Echocardiography Evidence of Cardiac Output Training,” available at https://www.elitefts.com/documents/cardiac_output_training.htm.

[xlii] Bickel, C.S., et al.  (2010).  Exercise dosing to retain resistance training adaptations in young and older adults.  Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Dec, 1.

[xliii] Jelena, Z., et al.  (2011).  Triceps brachii strength and regional body composition changes after detraining quantified by MRI.  Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, May, 33(5): 1114-20.

[xliv] Mujika, I.  (2010).  Intense training: the key to optimal performance before and during the taper.  Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, Oct, 20: 24-31.

[xlv] Taylor, J.  (2011).  Hospitalized Hawkeyes diagnosis? ‘External rhabdomyolisis.’ Retrieved from http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/01/25/hospitalized-hawkeyes-diagnosis-exertional-rhabdomyolysis/.