Introducing: strength endurance

One of the most often asked questions in weight training has to be: light weights, high reps, or heavy weights, low reps?

Well, the short answer is neither.

Lifting light weigths for high reps is almost equivalent to doing cardio, but with a few muscles only; and cardio produces no hypertrophy gains, as we all know.

Lifting heavy weights for low reps (fewer than 4) will produce primarily strength gains, though very limited due to the muscles not getting to failure.

In other words, light weights don’t stress the muscles mechanically enough, and heavy weights don’t stress the muscles metabolically enough.

(Mechanical stress is the muscles operating at the limit of their force-producing capacity, and metabolic stress is the muscles operating at the limit of their work-producing capacity, that is, at the limit of their total (force produced) x (times contracted)).

And why wouldn’t endurance training, namely, light weights-high reps produce optimal hypertrophy? After all, this gives you a massvie “pump“, doesn’t it?

Is high mechanical stress even necessary?

To answer this, we have to go back to the muscle-building principles post (if you haven’t read it, now is the right time to do so!).

We have to remember what muscle’s purpose is, and how it is stimulated to grow:

Thus, we see why this type of stimulus is insufficient: it doesn’t push your effort-making capabilities. Now, while you may not be able to contract your muscles any further with this method, due to “the pump“, this is mostly due to discomfort, cardiovascular exhaustion, and chemical depletion.

But just resting a few moments will have you able to perform the exact same set again.

Thus, while this form of training is tiring, it does not push one’s limits.

Being tired and sore does not mean you have achieved muscular failure.

On the other hand, you may think training for strength only will produce hypertrophy, since it pushes your force-exerting capacity.

However, this is not the whole story, and strength may increase while your overall effort-making ability remains nearly constant.

This stems from the fact that strength depends not only on muscle mass, not even principally on it, but is also strongly affected by technique, by the fibre-recruitment (how much of your muscles you can actually use and contract willingly), and by the genetic ratio of slow-twitch to fast-twitch fibres (having more fast-twitch fibres directly translates into more explosive strength).

Thus, if the only thing you do is push your 1-rep maxes, most of your efforts will be misdirected and growth will be hardly stimulated.

Now, increasing your strength is beneficial, of course, but the point is that it adds unnecessary effort and time-consumption, when in reality you could be gaining both strength and muscle at the same time, which is optimal!

Therefore, a two-sided effort is required to produce a real increment in your muscle mass.

With this in mind, let me introduce the key factor to be maximized to ensure muscle growth (it increases both of the above-mentioned aspects at the same time): Strength endurance.

What does this mean?

To gradually increase the amount of wieght and the reps you can do with it.

Namely, to increase the total work you can do (force x reps), while keeping the force close to your maximal effort.

If you let the force become too low, you enter into endurance territory, and if you let the total work become too low due to the required force being too high, you enter 1 rep max territory.

Lift with this mentality, and you are guaranteed to see results.

The reason this variable is key is because it represents your effort-making capacity, whose increase is exactly what triggers muscle growth.

An analogy/visualization should help:

Imagine for a moment that you have a circle on a plane, on the usual x-y axis diagram.

The x axis represents total strength, and the y-axis represents total endurance.

The total area of the circle would represent your strength-endurance, and thus your muscle-size.

If you expand only strength (the x-axis), you stretch the circle, but its area remains the same.

Similarly, if you expand only the y-axis (endurance), it stretches vertically, but its area still remains the same.

The only way to increase the size of this circle maximally is to expand in both directions at the same time, in order to not let gains from one aspect “steal“ gains from the other.

This may sound a little abstract in principle, so let me present an actual implementation in practice.

Let’s be honest: increasing weights and reps at the same time is almost impossible, you just don’t gain muscle that quickly.

The best approach I’ve found thus far is a kind of “staircase“ method. 

You increase the weigth and drop the reps, and then build the reps back up, and repeat.

For example, if you are benching 90kg for 8-9 reps to failure, you increase the weight to 95kg and aim to get about 5-6 reps (you’ll probably get to failure right there). Then, over the next few sessions you push the reps to 95kg for 8-9, then 100kg for 5-6, and so on until infinity and beyond.

The one “exception“ would be for shoulders, in particular, lateral and rear delts. Since these require more careful technique, you can’t go that heavy.

What I do here, and recommend, is to keep the reps a little higher, at around 8-15, instead of 6-10.

Even though this is a little less effective for hypertrophy, it is safer and allows for more consistent overload since the rep range is larger.

Of course, still use progressive overload, but without compromising your technique.

(It would be different, say, for tricep extensions, where going too heavy would, at worst, result in your failing the set (instead of twisting your shoulder)).

I belive this viewpoint on training is of fundamental importance.

Why?

Because it will allow you to never misdirect your efforts. It will allow you to have a better sense of direction and procedure, and save lots of time.

It also provides the best criterion for training to failure; failing a 1 rep max, or failing a 50 rep dropset will probably be extremely difficult, and yet this difficulty does not produce results of the same magnitude as the effort.

In other words, this approach, this variable-maximization, guarantees the best effort-to-results ratio.

Hope you enjoyed this post! Stay tuned for more every Sunday, and make sure to share and subscribe!