IS TRAINING TO FAILURE REQUIRED FOR STRENGTH AND ATHLETICISM?

Common knowledge would tell you that you need to lift relatively heavy to get stronger. In other words, attempt to push as much weight as possible as often as possible with proper form. At least this is what your intuition and ego would tell you, especially when you are highly motivated to attack your lifts in the weight room. But is this approach of maxing out weight often the best road to getting stronger and staying healthy over the long-term? Of course not! Like everything, there are exceptions to the rule, but they are far and few between. A select few can get away with lifting heavy often, either because they have adapted to it (i.e., Olympic weightlifters), or because they have the genetic predisposition to tolerate such workloads. Odds are this isn’t you, and there are smarter and more strategic ways to get stronger quickly, according to science and how our body truly operates.

Let’s take a quick look at those reasons now...

The 85% of 1RM Rule

For as long as I can remember, many of your high-level coaches have used this guideline to get their athletes stronger. I know I sure have, and with great success to say the least. To recruit all of the available motor units in the body, you need to be training at your 5RM or 85% effort during your training cycle. This is the minimum to target maximal strength gains and is oftentimes less than what most athletes or coaches would deem necessary in strength settings. You can open up your exercise physiology as well, and it will tell you the same thing if you want to make it official.

Powerlifters

Now, who better to adopt practices and advice from than the strongest population of men and women on the planet? Detractors will automatically discredit powerlifter science and success for a myriad of reasons, but even the best athletic coaches use modified powerlifting templates if they are smart. With that being said, powerlifters utilize the entire intensity and rep spectrum, in which case so should you. The exception is during pure velocity-based movements (i.e. jumping, agility, and sprinting) where effort needs to be 100% to foster speed and athletic adaptations, mainly to override tightly regulated speed governors in your CNS, according to The NASM.

Force Plate Proof

Originally designated for research settings, the rise in force plate utilization has reportedly increased. There is no doubt that having access to this tool would be ideal for any coach or athlete. The tool determines how much workload is necessary to elicit the most force and pinpoint your training intensities and workloads. Fortunately, you can achieve this without going full bore every time a strength session rolls around. I mean, how exactly were we ever able to get people just as strong before sports science technology rolled into town? Russians alluded to this concept for decades, and we've finally gotten around to practically applying it on a mass scale in our society, as you will see in the video below.

In the training video below, you'll witness Philadelphia Eagles standout Cooper Dejean is squatting 355 lbs. with maximal concentric effort (CAT Principle), but we all know he could very easily squat well over 500 lbs. This deload tactic allows him to use all of his muscle and attempt to get stronger, or, in the worst case, maintain and preserve his strength, while also preserving his energy and limiting fatigue so he can perform at the highest level and minimize injury risk. Now I'll be the first to admit that I don't know precisely all the metrics that are detailed on the apparatus he is using for his explosive leg work, but it doesn't matter for the reasons I just detailed earlier. Remember its easy to get lost in the weeds. For those of us who opt not to purchase, or can't afford this type of equipment, it's perfectly ok, and using "buffered intensities" in the 60-80% of 1RM range will develop all of the metrics the pros are testing in the video below, and others at probably a slightly slower rate at the end of the day.

https://youtu.be/tmQU4Grk54s?si=XRLzEdtblZlthl5L

Motor Unit Nature

Continuing with powerlifters. If you’ve studied their sport, then you will notice they pioneered velocity-based methods, contrary to popular belief. Unfortunately, they get very little credit as others piggyback off of their knowledge

"Dynamic Effort" methods have been used extensively across several weightlifting cultures for decades to jack up speed, power, and strength levels. Moreover, motor units can increase in activity when there are frequent attempts to use them during training (rate coding). This is one of three potential ways we can get stronger using our motor units, which ultimately feed signals to our working muscles. The other two approaches are using bigger motor units or more of them through specific exercises.

Hypertrophy Influence

Another reason you don’t have to train to failure to get stronger is that endurance and size increases can do that for you. Also, keep in mind that novice—intermediate level lifters have a strength “block” in their nervous system called "neural inefficiency." This is just fancy jargon for saying that you lack coordination as weight or speed efforts increase because you are inexperienced or lack a single skill or combination of athletic skills. The only way to override this deficiency is to improve coordination, get stronger, faster, and more powerful, and potentially more mobile, and earn your body’s trust. Only then can you unlock your true strength potential. Conversely, moderate to higher rep ranges allow many to bypass the need for the aforementioned abilities and still find an alternative route to getting stronger in the process for the time being.