all posts post new thread

Barbell Should we put a cap on our strength?

Status
Closed Thread. (Continue Discussion of This Topic by Starting a New Thread.)
Personally, since I've more or less taken my own route for programming and train at home I have never given myself more than a tweak here and there.

I'm much more liable to hurt myself doing odd jobs or perfectly ordinary stuff than I am while exercising.

Most recently strained a hip flexor while brushing my hair, and gave myself a brutal case of golfer's elbow braiding paracord. I'm safer with cast iron or sand.
 
@North Coast Miller, sounds like you planned your strength practice wisely. The only times I've injured myself were due to doing too much too soon. For example, I hurt my left wrist (De Quervains) when I became obsessed with learning how to do a deep goblet squat. I shot up to using the 32kg bell and had the bright idea of doing curls at the bottom.

The other minor injury was a sore muscle near my right oblique. This occurred just when I got to using the 40kg on all my TGUs. I wanted to see if I could do them in 10 min or less (overconfident) and hurt myself a little when going to the elbow. I wasn't owning that weight yet and adding a time limit... which hurried me up... was well... a lack of good judgement.

@Bro Mo, the key is to be balanced. Strength should enhance your life and not prevent you from living.

One of the reasons why I enjoy Simple & Sinister and kettlebell training in general. A kettlebell turns any home into a dojo.
 
Last edited:
Definitely agree about the point of diminishing returns. Getting my deadlift to about 140kg caused a huge improvement in my ability to do all sorts of things....getting from there to about 170kg had a noticible but unremarkable carryover to everyday life... from there to 205 (my pr) just made me better at deadlifting, and did not do much else for me.
 
SuperGirevik said:
I've had this debate in my mind for some time. When strength training, do we as humans reach a point where trying to get stronger will lead to smaller gains while the risk of injury increases significantly? For example, I could do a strength program like PTTP or SS and take my deadlift to 500-550lbs. That's definitely impressive and I think we can all agree that a person that can lift +500lbs is strong. But would trying to reach +600lbs be advisable for someone who does not compete?

In other words, should we limit our strength in order to increase injury prevention? I realize that getting strong is a form of injury... but how strong is strong enough?
Click to expand...
@SuperGirevik, I recommend you read Easy Strength, where this is discussed, if memory serves correctly.

The short answer is, "it depends." It depends on many things, and first among them would be whether lifting, competitively or not, is your top physical priority, or whether it might be something else, e.g., soccer, baseball, running, field events - there are many possibilities. Both the nature of your lifting and its logical endpoint will depend on where lifting fits in into the rest of your athletic/physical life.

IMHO, a fine starting point, all the "what's a good power clean?" articles and tables on the Internet not withstanding, would be StrongFirst certification requirements. None of them require world-class performance. I recall Pavel saying, at the first US SFL, that none of us should mistake the standards for "strong" - "not weak" is how he recommended we think of them. A double bodyweight deadlift, for example, for a single and 5 reps at 1.5 times bodyweight is "not weak." 100 snatches @ 24 kg in 5:00 is "not weak." And so on.

Those things achieved, we should be talking specifics and not in general terms.

-S-
 
Steve Freides said:
I recommend you read Easy Strength
Click to expand...
Thanks for the recommendation. Apologies if the book explains this and if it does, just let me know... but when Dan John discusses the program in his Even Easier Strength blog post (link) he mentions...
“Easy Strength” for an Experienced Lifter
Week 1
Mon (1) 2 x5 Tues (2) 2 x 5 Wed (3) 5-3-2 Fri (4) 2 x 5 Sat (5) 2 x 5

Week 2
Mon (6) 2 x 5 Tues (7) 6 Singles Wed (8) 1 x 10 Fri (9) 2 x 5 Sat (10) 5-3-2
Click to expand...
Is there a program for non-experienced lifters in the book? I thought the basics of the program was to grab 5 lifts and do them 2x5 at a relatively light/moderate load... period. But I noticed in his T-Nation post (link) and in his blog post mentioned above, he talks about sessions of 1x10 and 5-3-2.
 
T-Nation seems to have all sorts of conflicting information going on. There's some good research behind a lot of what's there but it can be a bit inconsistent and sometimes they put their own twist on a program.

I'd rather follow a program the way it's been designed by the original author and make my own tweaks if I hit a plateau.
 
Last edited:
Easy Strength is above far-from-max lifting. All the rep/set schemes are about keeping the reps to 10 and under per lift. 6 singles, 5-3-2 is 10 reps, 2 x 5, 3 x 3, etc.

-S-
 
Anna C said:
Programming becomes more important as absolute strength increases. I'm fairly convinced (hat tip to Barbell Medicine) that most lifting injuries are due to poor programming and fatigue management, and not due to absolute weight or even poor form... although those can certainly factor in.

There's certainly some validity to the argument of finding the cost of adaptation and deciding there is a "strong enough" point (as @Alan Mackey has, since he's actually been to "strong" and decided to back off a bit to build other attributes), but I think most people are far short of it. It can become an easy excuse for people who don't know how or won't work hard enough to actually get strong.
Click to expand...
I guess it depends on how serious we are about it and how motivated, how much time we're willing to devote and $ etc. My little dip into "serious lifting" with one cycle of the Reload program (of just deadlift and press) taught me a huge amount of respect for "serious lifters". Aside from lifting strength there are other respectable athletic qualities out there like endurance, mobility and balance that seem to be easier and safer to attain without too much science or planning, and these are probably alright goals for many of us. I'm just thinking philosophically here. S&S, which I follow involves a certain level of strength but it's capped I think by the fact that it's an endurance program - it's about doing 100 swings and 10 getups at whatever weight (of at least 32kg) you can handle. I've been between the 32kg and the 40kg for 3-ish years now and it seems this is my cap, but it's an endurance cap as I can certainly swing a much heavier bell once and even do a heavier TGU, once. I crank out 7 or more one arm pushups nowadays in the GTG fashion. Probably, mastering up to my own bodyweight is likely attainable and "good enough" for anything non-weightlifting specific like judo or most any sports and of course general life and health.
 
@Steve Freides, I do like that it's a "Park Bench" program (similar to S&S). I'm currently doing the deadlift singles program (on week 5) but after I'm done, I will give this a try.

I wanted to compete in the Fall TSC but I'll be out of the country during that time, so I'll be shooting for Spring 2020. I'm thinking of doing Easy Strength/S&S until a couple of months before the TSC and then switch to a "Bus Bench" program geared towards the TSC.
 
This is a great question and the answer of course is...it depends. I would say unless you are lifting competitively standards such as simple or the ROP are great for most. While beast tamer, or Sinister, or big barbell numbers might be still be considered useful (increase power, reduce injury, hormonal benefits, connecting the body) amounts of strength for even an amature level athlete the risk reward spectrum shifts. And of course there's always the joy of pursuing a strength goal.

Personally, this question is what make q and d as well as a +a work so appealing. Once one becomes "strong enough" whatever that means, other qualities such as power, endurance and conditioning might be more worthwhile for many.

After all, if the school is know as Strongfirst the question of "When is it time to address the quality that comes second?" is a big one.

This is my relatively uneducated take and would love to hear that of others...
 
Last edited:
I like to think of the upper limits of my strength to shoot for in practical terms. For example:
(1) The strength capacity to haul a member of my immediate family to safety. (If Andre the Giant were still alive, I couldn’t imagine ever trying to haul him to safety.)
(2) Once my delayed CPR training is completed, I would like the strength to roll over a person who is not breathing onto their back. (And yes, I know I would not want to do this if there was neck/spinal injury.)
(3) The strength capacity to move furniture around my place as needed.
(4) The strength capacity to haul heavy items home on foot from local stores or from the mail room.
 
Timmer C said:
I like to think of the upper limits of my strength to shoot for in practical terms. For example:
(1) The strength capacity to haul a member of my immediate family to safety. (If Andre the Giant were still alive, I couldn’t imagine ever trying to haul him to safety.)
(2) Once my delayed CPR training is completed, I would like the strength to roll over a person who is not breathing onto their back. (And yes, I know I would not want to do this if there was neck/spinal injury.)
(3) The strength capacity to move furniture around my place as needed.
(4) The strength capacity to haul heavy items home on foot from local stores or from the mail room.
Click to expand...
This is how the majority of people should look at it unless you're a competitive powerlifter. For most people their 'sport' is just living a long,healthy and useful life. Chances are a 500lb deadlift isn't going to benefit you that much.
 
Adam R Mundorf said:
This is how the majority of people should look at it unless you're a competitive powerlifter. For most people, their 'sport' is just living a long,healthy and useful life. Chances are a 500lb deadlift isn't going to benefit you that much.
Click to expand...

Interesting! I have always associated a very high level of strength with better efficient movement patterns/ athleticism, injury resistance, hormonal benefits and increased body composition (although this would be a side effect). Feel free to agree or disagree here.

Based on this thread, would it be fair to say that these benefits are less significant after a certain level of strength is obtained and therefore not always worth the risk, at least compared to power/ endurance work?
 
njrick1 said:
Interesting! I have always associated a very high level of strength with better efficient movement patterns/ athleticism, injury resistance, hormonal benefits and increased body composition (although this would be a side effect). Feel free to agree or disagree here.

Based on this thread, would it be fair to say that these benefits are less significant after a certain level of strength is obtained and therefore not always worth the risk, at least compared to power/ endurance work?
Click to expand...
Yeah, the issue is defining where the high level is. Lifters often have issue calling it quits before they get injured/need joint replacements. They never have a why for their lifting and lifting then becomes their be all, end all. Going to the gym becomes their sport. As you move up in weight the risk to reward becomes skewed. Most people should spend more time on direct mobility and active flexibility work, less on lifting. Be reasonably strong but nothing extreme. Enough to live your life and a little more. Allot of walking as well.
 
Adam R Mundorf said:
As you move up in weight the risk to reward becomes skewed.
Click to expand...

I think this statement is a bit overly simplistic, though I wouldn't say it's entirely wrong.

I think it varies a lot by person. Some people are naturally gifted in terms of strength, and for them it isn't that costly to build or maintain impressive strength levels. There's no need to hold back just because of an assumption that it's too costly to be really strong.

Also it varies a lot by programming and approach. Pushing too hard or too fast or just unintelligently can be costly and risky. But pushing hard at a good pace and on a good program, intelligently, is not necessarily costly or risky, at any level.
 
njrick1 said:
Interesting! I have always associated a very high level of strength with better efficient movement patterns/ athleticism, injury resistance, hormonal benefits and increased body composition (although this would be a side effect). Feel free to agree or disagree here.
Click to expand...

Consider Usain Bolt's professional sprinting career. His muscles and strength helped him sprint really fast. But if he had, say, focused on extreme hypertrophy, he might have reached a tipping point where the effort required to move the extra body weight might have cut into his edge. This is not to say that hypertrophy is bad but that context is important.
 
Status
Closed Thread. (Continue Discussion of This Topic by Starting a New Thread.)
Back
Top Bottom