Max

If you want to get stronger, you need to get bigger. If you want to get bigger, you need to get stronger. These statements are often issued to skinny and weak lifters who would like—and need—to get both bigger and stronger. Individually, these assertions can be helpful to experienced lifters who understand how improving one quality can positively influence the other. However, when the two statements are combined and delivered to inexperienced lifters, they create a paradox that regularly causes novices confusion and frustration.

Some beginners hear these statements and believe that their training must be centered around developing one quality (size/strength) in order to achieve the other (strength/size). Thus, they employ specialized methods far too early in their training careers and wonder why their low volume strength cycles or their high volume hypertrophy routines aren’t leading them to the promised land of size and strength. Newbies who aren’t progressing and find themselves switching programs regularly must heed these words: If you clearly have significant amounts of both muscle mass to build and strength to gain, focusing exclusively on one quality for extended periods of time isn’t the most effective long-term strategy.

Beginners thrive on simple, progressive programs that allow them to lift fairly heavy and accumulate a fair amount of volume. This is why programs centered around sets of five are so popular for guys who are just getting started. Fives represent the happy medium between lower reps, which primarily impact the nervous system, and higher reps, which mainly affect the muscular system. On the sliding scale of reps per set and training effects, sets of five are assumed to be the hypothetical point where neurological and morphological effects meet.

Nevertheless, while sets of five are good for both objectives, they aren’t necessarily great for either. As trainees gain some size and some strength and progress to the intermediate stages of lifting, they often need to use slightly more specialized methods in order to continue to make progress. Heavy triples, doubles, and singles in a max-effort method framework prove to be highly effective for lifters at this point in their development, as they have built a base of new muscle mass that they can exploit with these neurologically focused methods.

However, despite the need for increasingly potent methods, these trainees must continue to accumulate a fair amount of volume in order to get bigger and fulfill their lifting potential. Neurological improvements are short-lived, and in practice, maximal strength tends to stall when the muscle mass of underdeveloped lifters remains constant for extended periods. Thus, high-volume hypertrophy training is necessary for sustained maximal strength improvements, but it must be properly integrated into the larger context of a high-intensity strength training program.

There are a number of ways to accumulate volume that can be paired with the max effort method. Lifters who adhere to a Westside style get their volume from lots of work-up sets, use of the dynamic-effort method, and a host of higher rep assistance exercises. Other lifters who stick to more traditional powerlifting programs simply do a lot of bodybuilding type work after their main lifts. A protocol that is also effective but used less often in powerlifting circles involves following max-effort lifting with back-off sets. I’m a big fan of this protocol, and I would like to explain how to use it and offer some insights regarding why it can work.