holy trinity series:
INTENSITY

I am going to give a spoiler alert now: there are no definite truths and ‘best ways’ of doing things.

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If you are one of those people who need their videos to be cut every 20 seconds, be littered with jokes and be visually pleasing for you to watch them, quit reading.

 

This is not TikTok. This is rambling, sweeping take on topics that have no definite answers. This is philosophy, play of ideas and view of internal workings on some of the most studied, argued aspects of strength training.

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Now that 92% of people have quit reading, let us nerds continue.

 

Today’s sermon is about the source of ‘hardcore’ memes and the main emphasis of action hero training quotes, a the topic debated in bodybuilding and strength training circles alike…

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INTENSITY!

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To start, let us make definitions clear.

In exercise science intensity refers to the amount of weight relative to maximum, in essence the percentage of your maximum, or an absolute amount of weight.

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When discussing recovery and programming practically, intensity often also means how close to failure we go on working sets. Nowadays there many acronyms. RIR:reps in reserve, RPE: Rate of perceived effort, SOS, WTF, MIB etc. all tring to quantify (with limited success) how close to failure we go.

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Then there is the hardest to quantify definition: how hard you push yourself. How much you psych up, how much you take preworkouts, how deep you dig. In bro English: how hardcore the set is. Banging your head on the bar, sniffing ammonia, blasting death metal, thinking about your childhood etc.

It may sound silly, but I am going to make a case that this aspect may be more important than one thinks.

 

Intensity as weight on the bar:

Reading books, articles and blogs in the 1990s and 2000s, there was endless repetition about how ‘over 90% of your 1RM’ will ‘fry your nervous system’. Or how one ‘cannot train with loads of more than 90% for more than 3 weeks until results decline’. Everyone who wanted to sound learned repeated this mantra.

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This is mostly based on old Soviet studies. They recorded the lifts for weightlifters, and later powerlifters, studying how strength was developed. Their usual findings were that strength was best built and maintained when most of the training was done with weights within 70-85% of maximum. Their volume waves, training frequency (12 bench sessions per week for a powerlifter or snatching 3 times a day fora  weightlifter is not unheard of) had lot to do with this. Within their system, pushing intensity (in any of its manifestations) interfered with the recovery needed. 

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Bulgarian system and other weightlifting philosophies have since debunked this many times over. Even powerlifters have had success with training to 90% or over months on end, sometimes daily. On the other hand, many lifters of American school of thinking, or proponents of linear progression, touch 90% or more only a handful of times per year. And if they do it for any prolonged period, they burn out or injure themselves.​

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Where does this disparity come from? How do some people routinely use near maximal weights whereas some people can’t seem to tolerate it for any more than few times in a buildup of several months.

to put simply, it comes down to the amount of psych up needed and the overall volume.

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A powerlifter working up to ‘max of the day’, meaning an unpsyched, technically sound near max squat, is not a huge load on the body, not even done daily. Some people’s connective tissue might not hold up with daily heavy loads, but apart from that the only reason this pushes people to burnout is getting so nervous about having a big weight in their back that they cannot handle it.

Think of a cool-headed, technically proficient lifter with a competition PB of 300 kg on raw squat performing a top single with 250-290, say 5-6 times per week? Is that somehow harder than doing a full 90 minutes of volume squatting, continued by an hour of accessories done near failure, repeated twice a week? I would argue it’s the other way around.

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‘I SEE RED’

The emphasis is on keeping the ‘cool head’. If you need to get into the ‘fight or flight’ mode or to do a highly agitating psych up for even few sets per workout, it will take a toll on your system quickly. Of course, some anomalies can handle going bonkers routinely,  but most people will simply burn out.

The 80%, 90%, 100% itself doesn’t magically tax the CNS, despite the regurgitation of inherent dangers of high load training. Strength training by its nature does not put great demands on the nervous system, UNLESS you are triggering the adrenaline and other stress hormones (I am just calling it adrenaline from now on, even though my neuropsychology degree owning wife would kill me for such oversimplification) into overdrive.

 

Summa summarum, the weight doesn’t burn you out, being afraid does.

As much as you don’t like to admit it, all the preying of the bar, pulling faces, ‘yeah buddy’-shouts and other antics are distractions, to distance yourself from the fear inside. That is nothing to be ashamed of. It is healthy to be afraid of an actual maximum lift. Handled correctly, it is good for your performance.

It just isn’t good for your recovery!

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This is not to say that lifting daily maxes with a cool approach would be the best, or even a recommended way of building strength. It just illustrates how the intensity as weight on the bar is not the defining factor of how much work can lifter recover from.

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EQUIPPED IS DIFFERENT, BRO

Paradoxically, equipped powerlifters believe in this ‘90%+ crashes your CNS’ myth even more than others, yet many of them subscribe to conjugate training, maxing out twice (one lower, one upperm max effort) every week.

The core belief is that changing the lift weekly somehow makes it less taxing and prevents the mythical central nervous system burnout. That logic is obviously and fundamentally untrue. Switching exercises and throwing in a confusing amount of bands and chains does serve another purpose of preserving the adrenal fatigue though: with a new variation, you don’t automatically get amped up and afraid when approaching max as you have no preconcept of what that max might be. Hence you are less likely to burn yourself out. Of course, this comes with a trade-off of losing the specificity and technical skill of the actual lift, but let us not digress too far here.

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Back to the topic, equipped lifters are probably right about the demands of their discipline and being more prone to burning oneself out. Equipped lifting, to those who do not know, requires such unnatural strength curves, such durability under pressure, and such overcoming of the fear of weights, that it is by its very nature very likely to cause a huge stress response. It is almost (if not quite) impossible to avoid being agitated whilst performing a true 90%+ equipped lift.

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Likewise, even the coolest of heads cannot override the body’s response when handling weights that can be up to double of what the body would be able to lift unassisted. Add to this the longer time under tension, the internal pressure large enough to cause bruising and make your eyeballs explode, the inherent danger factor of even the slightest misgroove, and the toll these weights take on soft tissue. The demands are different, and thus the intensity, measure by load on the bar, is less tolerated in equipped powerlifting. And to double the effect, intensity measured by how agitated one is becomes almost a requisite to perform equipped.

 

Certain degree of normalisation does occur even with equipped poundages. As the craziest example, Jimmy Kolb routinely handles 1000lbs on the bench press TWICE a week for months on end. To him, 1000lbs is a standard load, and as he mentally treats it thus, he can get away with it and progress accordingly. One example hardly proves anything, and Jimmy is obvioulsy an outlier in all aspects. I doubt anyone else could handle those poundages on a soft tissue level either. But I had to add that example in, it is such a freaky thing to be able to do!

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For reference of a person with non-superhuman genetics, we can consult my own training diaries from late 2010s. When my equipped, multiply competition max on the bench press was 380kg, I handled bench weights of 320kg or more (not far from 90%) in 54 sessions per year, average top load being around 345kg per session.

This was partly made possible by most of the lifts being performed with less than full range (partial reps or board presses), partly by the fact that rest of the training revolved around equipped benching (less strain on ALL other aspects of lifting). Most of all it was possible because 340kg was a weight I considered ‘normal’.

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My training session usually had only one set where I got truly psyched up, oftentimes I didn’t get ‘into the zone’ at all. Focused, yes. Little bit of music turned up, yes. But a real switching on to perform at top level was done very rarely.

This helped (and still does) me train more often and to lift more in competition than in training. I have an extra gear for the platform.

I know, I know. Pun intended.

 

This competition day reserve is something certain types of lifters do not possess. They frequently go all out in the gym. With full psych up, with the whole session revolving around them and their needs, with their hype men and favourite spotters surrounding them, they perform their best lifts under these optimal conditions. In the gym, not in competition. This is especially true with beginning and novice lifters.

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Newbie intensity

 

This brings us to another common belief of maximum lifts and how well they are tolerated. Beginners can do it more often than seasoned veterans. This is a common statement and I would say it is, at least for the most part, true.

There is, of course the simple reason that beginners lift smaller weights. The toll on the whole body is thus different, even warming up for them is different. But apart from the actual weight being smaller, beginners are helped by other, more important, factors.

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Biggest factor is that their bodies and minds simply cannot muster as much out of them as those of seasoned lifters. Their power leaks, they lack tension, are missing in technical skill. Their motor units fire lazily and muscles do not work in unison.

On top of this they haven’t honed their minds into the sharp blades that top lifters wield with precision. The laser focus, rage, utter cockiness or feeling sexy. Whatever the ways are that a top lifter to harnesses the power of adrenaline and brings the best out him or herself, the beginner hasn’t yet mastered.

One could say that despite hitting a maximal lift, they are nowhere near the real physical limit of their capabilities.

 

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​​​​​​​​​​​​​Beginners are also in the great advantage of seeing people lifting more than they do. Daily. Rank beginning men are routinely outlifted by women, beginner women are outlifted by, well, everyone. The beginners have also never been injured, nor seen too many injuries and approach their max lifts like a puppy, full of hope and best expectations. They do not have to battle the dark corners of their mind or ward off the trauma created by the sound of ripping hamstrings, sight of detaching biceps or a full pectoral muscle disappearing into mass of bundled sinew.

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Beginners do not have as much skin in the game. They often try lifts for the first time, they have no pressure of being up to scratch with last season’s lifts, and nobody expects them to break records. All of these factors make the weights that for them are maximal feel very approachable. Normal.

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Assistance and accessories

Assistance and accessory movements that are meant to build muscle and strengthen weak points can also be a big taxing factor, and intensity in its all forms is to be considered.

If the chosen way of strength training for your discipline focuses mostly on main lifts and close variations, with any accessory being just for the sake of conditioning, rehab and prehab, these decisions never need to be made. If training powerlifting with more ‘powerbuilder’ approach, or otherwise relying heavily on accessories to get stronger and bigger, it is worth consideration.

 

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First choice in determining the intensity of accessories is the weight used.  I would say 90% of the REAL assistance (not rehab or flush and fluff) work should be done within 4-12 rep range, with moderately heavy weight. I don’t like to use percentages for assistance and accessories, but let us say that widely the earlier mentioned 70-85% works here.

 

The same truths about adrenal fatigue more or less apply to assistance and accessory work: going mad in assistance taxes you more, going less mad taxes you less. But there is always a trade-off, and there is nuance.

Let us say we have benched for good hour and are now doing triceps extensions.

We shall hypothetically compare doing 4x6 with good technique and limited arousal, with 6 reps taking us few reps below failure (cool kids say 2RIR), or doing one all-out, wham-whoosh-ouch set of 11 reps to utter muscular failure and beyond with the same weight.

Both have their advantages. That one big set of 11 done with focus and grind will surely be enough stimulus for decent muscular growth. But psyching up one more time and pushing through the pain also taxes one, mentally and physically.

4x6 on the other hand does no tax the adrenal system much and offers more overall volume. But the 4 sets take way longer to get done. Say 1 warmup to find the weight and 4 working sets with decent rest (it is still strength work) takes 20 minutes. One all out set with warmup being done in 4-5 minutes or so.

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At some point, especially with the classic ‘hour of benching and then some assistance’, approach, the trade between time spent in the gym versus pushing a bit harder on a set or two becomes a contested area. Long sessions that drag on just for the sake of getting all the ‘needed’ work done are sometimes even counterproductive, and seem to cause their own systemic fatigue. Also, we have to acknowledge that the fear factor, and thus adrenal fatigue, isn’t the same going to failure on a small assistance movement, such as lat pulldown or triceps extension, compared to a big whole body movement like bench, squat and deadlift.

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This partly explains why bodybuilders often go to failure and beyond every workout, even every exercise they do, and continue progressing, whereas doing dozens of sets to absolute failure on squats and deadlifts would be unlikely to work in favour of a powerlifter. As bodybuilding training by its nature aims to recruit mostly the target muscle of given movement and exclude other, auxiliary muscles, it is not really recruiting ‘all you got’. The ‘failure’ of maximising single muscle's output on a machine exercise is a very different thing than failing a max squat where the whole body is doing everything it can to stay alive.

Bodybuilding is also inherently focused on movements that are considerably ‘safer’ from the body’s perspective (think of the difference between a squat and a leg extension, or bench and pec flye). This allows bodybuilders to go to failure (and beyond with forced reps and such) relatively often.

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My personal preference is that if your secondary movements are still big, multi joint compound movements (think SLDL or Front squat), I would do multiple, easier sets. If they are things like tricep extensions, hamstring curls or calf raises, I would opt for 1-2 sets taken properly to failure and be done with it. The psychological demand of doing a set of 13 reps to failure on seated calf raise bears no resemblance of doing same on stiff leg deadlifts and thus is easily tolerated.

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Conclusion (is there any?)

This writeup has thus far been a complicated way of pointing out how different, even irrelevant, intensity the way sports science sees it: simply as the weight on the bar relative to your max, actually is in the grand scheme of things.

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A Greek weightlifter performing 6-8 mini training sessions a day cannot psych up or hit the top weights very often. He is too fine tuned to performing the dozens of perfectly executed sets daily to allow deviation like that.

 

A conjugate powerlifter, maxing out two times a week (one lower and one upper body max effort session), will routinely hit around 100% in training with full psychological arousal of himself and his peers.

 

An old Bulgarian school weightlifter will max out squat, clean and jerk and snatch 6 days a week, in a highly competitive environment.

 

A high frequency advocate of powerlifting will perform a ‘max of the day’ on squats and benches daily in relative calm.

 

These are all different animals. All can, and have, been successful. The biggest factor in recovery and success lies not in the actual weight on the bar, but on how close to real failure these sets are taken and how aroused is the physical and psychological state when performing the lifts.

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How does this affect planning your own and your client's training?

In a world full of easy fixes and bullshit peddlers selling one size fits all-certainties, what we are exploring here is conceptual knowledge. You need to know it, but there is no hard and fast way of implementing it in every situation. Situations change, that is where knowledge, wisdom and experience come in handy. Sometimes you need to get into back-slapping, froth foaming state of mind, sometimes you need to scale it back. Only you will know what is the right thing to do.

 

I will say few things as a guideline:

 

If you can do given sets without psyching up, then do. Leave the psych up for the next session.

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If you feel like your psych up is turning more into a theatre spectacle with growling, hollering, gnashing of teeth and jumping around like an ancestor few steps down on the evolutionary ladder, but you don't actually get the performance benefit, tone it down.

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If you need to dig deep and overcome your greatest fears several times per week on a regular basis, rething your programming.

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If your recovery is lacking, , check the overall volume first, then how much emotional overreach your program requires, and then focus on the weight being used.

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Don't be afraid of high loads. Without going into things like nutrition, genetics, recovery modalities or other factors beyond the scope of this article, apart from the amount of psychological arousal, there are three main things that affect the outcome considerably when using high loads.

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Time under tension of individual lifts (weightlifters max effort snatch takes about 1-3 seconds, whereas equipped squat or bench from start to finish is more like 10-30 seconds).

 

The overall training volume (think working sets within 2 reps of failure. Are you doing 15 per week or 75?)

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Frequency (soviet school powerlifter with a dozen 30 minute bench sessions per week versus some American raw bench record holders with their one 2 hour, assistance heavy session per week coupled with a deload every 4 weeks).

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Lifts performed being equal, it leaves the last two parts of the holy trinity: Volume and Frequency, to be debated on.

 

These will be tackled in the coming articles.

 

Now go and train!