There seems to be a lot of confusion over what exactly the word “intensity” means in a weight room setting. What exactly differentiates “high intensity” training from “low intensity” training? Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t about how big the sweat stain on the back of your shirt is or how hard you had to grunt on that tenth rep with 315 lbs in the squat rack. It isn’t about how hardcore the music in the background is or how loud your spotter yelled in your ear, “All you, Billy, all you!”
Technically, intensity refers to the amount of weight lifted. That’s it. If you increase the weight on the bar, you’re increasing the intensity of your workout. It’s important that we distinguish the weight room from everywhere else because everywhere else intensity refers to the relative intensity of effort. There isn’t any load to define intensity anywhere but the weight room. With that being said, there are many misguided programs out there claiming to be “high intensity.” With the definition of intensity as the load on the bar, there isn’t any such thing as high or low intensity for the general population. There is just increasing or decreasing intensity.
A 315-lb bench press may be highly intense for an intermediate lifter who can only get two repetitions with this weight but not for an advanced powerlifter who uses 315 lbs as his warm-up set for his eventual high intensity max set of 500 lbs. So now you can understand why programs claiming to be high intensity don’t make much sense because they usually don’t specify percentages from which to work for lifts such as the bench press and squat. Without these percentages, intensity can’t be individualized.
Any program that tells you to do 4–6 reps on a given set and claims that set to be high intensity is assuming you know what weight you use for roughly 85 percent of you 1RM. Nine out of ten times, the average lifter doesn’t know this number and will simply give his best estimate, which is wrong nine out of ten times and is either too heavy or too light. These programs assume that because the reps they designated are supposed to be pretty heavy, the person executing the program knows what he’s doing, which is just ignorant.
With the definition of intensity as simply the load lifted, one could argue that increasing the volume of a lift will increase intensity. But what that person doesn’t understand is that by increasing the volume, you must account for a weight reduction, which balances out the original intensity level. For example, if a lifter does 225 lbs on the bench press for 10 reps and then goes down to 185 lbs for 20 reps, which lift is more intense? If you think the first lift is more intense, you’re correct. Yes, both lifts are bringing about maximal muscular failure, but going by the definition set in the beginning of the article, the first lift has a greater load and is therefore more intense. Every potential program adjustment relates back to the load involved. If you’re comparing a load with no load, the movement with the load is of a higher intensity.
Many people assume that intensity is much more superficial than it really is. They believe it to be more of a mental function rather than a scientific principle. They think that because they had more of a passion for the weights on a certain day compared to the day before, they had a more intense workout. This is fine for them to think, but a strength and conditioning professional needs to go beyond this layman’s way of thinking in order to create effective programs and stay true to the principles of the profession.