The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [171]
Can more volume build strength?
Of course. The iconic Smolov squat cycle, a 13-week nightmare, calls for a gruesome 136 reps per week during the first month! The cycle delivers beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. One man I knew added 105 pounds to his squat in 13 weeks of Smolov and peaked in the mid-600s, drug-free. His gains are not atypical. But it takes its toll. You will be so sore and exhausted that the only “sport” you could practice at the same time is chess. The Smolov is a specialized program for an athlete who does not have any skills to practice outside of the gym. An exception would be an athlete who must gain a lot of muscle mass in the off-season, such as a football lineman.
Canadian track coach Charlie Francis’s approach to strength training the infamous sprinter Ben Johnson is very illuminating. The sprinter stayed with low reps and low volume, e.g., to 600×2/614 (sets/reps) in the below parallel box squat and 385×3/2 in the bench press. The 173-pound Johnson eventually benched over 400 pounds, and Francis was convinced he was good for 440. But—pay attention!—to avoid injury, the sharp coach never maxed his athlete. This obviously did not prevent Johnson from breaking his personal records. Without maxing.
Francis’s in-season strength training was in line with the Russian school. Nikolay Ozolin, one of the founding fathers of Soviet sport science, recommends cutting back in-season lifting volume to 2/3 of off-season lifting volume without reducing weight. Francis downshifted Johnson from two sets of six with 600 in the squat to two sets of doubles or triples, a 1/2 to 2/3 reduction of the already low volume. This reduction allowed Johnson to get extra fresh for the season without losing his strength. Francis quipped that “Ben was never far from strength and speed.” Indeed, he was not pushing as hard, but he was still handling 600 pounds.
Francis did the opposite of most coaches: “Ninety percent of my time is spent holding athletes back to prevent overtraining, and only 10 percent is spent motivating them to do more work.”
2–3 is a great rep range to emphasize throughout an athlete’s program. 4–5 is where neural training and muscle-building meet, which means you could end up with some hypertrophy. This is out of the question in weight-class-based sports like boxing.
Steve Baccari, strength coach extraordinaire to top fighters like the UFC’s Joe Lauzon, agrees with the heavy but not hard approach:
“In my opinion, ‘easy’ strength training is the only productive way a competitive fighter can strength train.… But most people think if you don’t break a sweat, it must not work. This used to bother me a lot, but not anymore, because I think it is one reason why my fighters win so much.”
Concludes Baccari:
“Strength training is like putting the money in the bank to take it out on the fight day.”
Save the fatigue for your sport.
If you’re looking for an abdominal exercise well-suited to power development without bulk, look no further than the Janda sit-up.
Pavel has been able to register contractions in excess of 175% MVC (maximal voluntary isometric contraction) for the rectus abdominis at Dr. Stuart McGill’s laboratory performing the Janda sit-up with a device called, appropriately enough, the Ab Pavelizer. Some scientists theorize that the downward contraction of the hamstrings forces the hip flexors to relax, which largely prevents them from helping with the movement. Ergo, more than 100% MVC of the remaining workhorse: the rectus abdominis.
To perform the Janda sit-up without any equipment, do the following:
1. • Loop a towel around your calves and have a training partner pull on it lightly at a 45-degree upward angle, trying to lift your feet.
Or, less ideal but practical for solo use: