We know that in order to get stronger you must challenge the body. The human body is incredibly adaptive. It is through adaptation that we get more skilful, stronger and fitter. So we know that in order to become a better lifter, you must challenge yourself. We do this through training. We train the body and through this training we get better. That’s all straightforward. But we also know that as the body adapts to stimulus the same activities become less challenging. If we do the same thing the body adapts and the same method or stimulus becomes less effective. In order to keep progressing you must therefore work to continually challenge yourself. The most straightforward application of this is progressive overload. As you get stronger you simply add more weight. This is an extremely simplistic and one-dimensional approach. If you have tried this you’ll know it is effective to start with but fairly quickly gains slow and you then struggle to progress.

Let’s look more closely at the two elements I have just described- challenge and adaptation. One side of this is about doing something that stimulates and challenges the body- the other is about the body’s ability to adapt. Both sides of the picture are equally important. The challenge is what happens in the gym. The adaptation happens away from it or separately from it. But as you will no doubt know there are many factors that influence how you challenge yourself- what effects it will have and how this will result in specific types of adaptations. Other things will influence how you adapt, this is recovery, skill acquisition etc.

A long time ago researchers worked out that strength athletes require a variety of attributes. Going in and hitting 1rms might yield some results, but- aside from the issue of recovery- it’s been shown that in order to get optimal performance adaptations you need to build muscle, develop a range of general athletic attributes which establish a foundation for the development of power. It’s not that these things are equal, but rather than there are a variety of attributes that should be developed in order to achieve optimal strength development.

Work capacity will affect recovery and how well you train. If volume and intensity are key ingredients, then work capacity will most likely influence both how much you pack into a session, but also the quality of the session. It will also influence how much you can handle and how well you recover. So work capacity will affect recovery and how well you train. The amount of muscle you carry will also have an impact on how well you can handle weight- obviously. So developing muscle is also a part of the picture. Skill under heavy weight and the development of power are obviously extremely important as well. To be the best you can, you need to develop skill, work capacity and fitness, strength and power. There are a range of different ways to acquire these attributes.

This all forms part of the classic linear periodization approach.

The traditional periodization template breaks up a training cycle into blocks. It also aims to get the athlete to peak for competition. It uses the principle of super-compensation- whereby a person is challenged- becomes fatigued and then backs off allowing for recovery in a kind of ‘rebound’ effect. Mike Tuchsherer has described this as being like getting a beach ball and pushing it down into the water. The force pushing down is the fatigue imposed on the athlete- once released the ball comes back up with great force to momentarily go higher than the starting position. This high point is comp day. But the thing is that you need to get the balance right. If you push too hard you will not recover in time. If you don’t push hard enough you will not get optimal ‘rebound’. Just how much is a question we can’t answer categorically for all- but there has been research done and enough to give us good starting points. Hopefully by the end of today you’ll know enough to work this balancing act out.

But to return to periodization- it has blocks. Hypertrophy and conditioning- then strength- then power. This is normally put forward as something like this:
Sets of 12 or 10 or 8 reps for a number of weeks- for hypertrophy and conditioning, followed by sets of 6 or 5 reps for a number of weeks for strength followed by a number of weeks of sets of 3-1rep for power.

There are a number of ideas behind this type of cycle. One is that it covers all the required attributes for strength development. Another is that, while strength has been shown to be best developed over a certain % of your 1rm, because loading is also a form of specificity and the effects of using heavy loads are more conducive to strength development, athletes can generally only handle 3-4 weeks of loads over 80% before they start to experience CNS fatigue which negatively impacts on performance. So the first two stages lay the foundation for the strength development.

Periodisation works for many- there is no doubt about this. However, there are two common criticisms. Firstly, it separates out the different types of training into phases, when some will argue that all attributes are required simultaneously. The difficulty is how to manage all. The second issue is that in a 12-16 week cycle you may only get 3-5 weeks where you are in a strength development phase. Some argue this is not the optimal use of 3-4 months. What if you could double the amount of time building strength while also acquiring the same range of athletic attributes? This leads me to westside templates, which I will discuss in part 2.

By Stephen Pritchard

Go to Approaches to powerlifting (or getting strong): Part 2

Tags: weightlifting Stephen Pritchard