These days, the average lifter seems to think that super-heavy training
in the 1-3 rep range is useless for building muscle mass. That’s
nonsense! While lifting weights that heavy might not do much to
DIRECTLY stimulate muscle growth the way higher rep training does, it is
invaluable for your development in the long run. Read on to find out
why max effort training has a place even in a die-hard bodybuilder’s
routine.


Strength and Mass


If you’ve been reading the right stuff on building muscle, you probably
already understand that getting stronger and building muscle go
hand-in-hand – almost impossible to do one without the other! However,
there are still a few misconceptions about how to get stronger and how
to use that strength to build muscle.


If your main goal is to build as much mass as possible, you’ve probably
been focusing mainly on increasing your strength in the 8-10 rep range,
and maybe as low as the 4-6 range as well. Overall, that’s a good plan
to follow! However, constantly trying to get stronger in the same rep
range or same percentage of your maximal strength can get old, boring,
and stale. Your body won’t respond the same to one type of stimulus
forever. This is why you might want to consider tossing some max effort
training into the mix.


The reason super-heavy training is good for muscle building is that
raising your maximal strength tends to raise your strength in EVERY rep
range! Take the squat, for example. Let’s say you currently squat 315
for 10 reps, and you want to get to 405 for 10 reps. If you always do
sets of 8-12, you’ll get there eventually, but there might be a more
efficient way. What if you focused on your one-rep max for a while and
brought that up from 405 to 495? If you did that, you’d probably be
pretty close to getting that 405 for 10!


So, the idea behind such super-heavy training for building muscle is
that by focusing on increasing your max, you also end up increasing what
you can lift for higher reps. Once you take a little weight off the
bar and bump the reps back up, you’ll be able to lift more and build
more muscle! In the long run, this can be faster and more efficient
than always training with the “bodybuilding rep range” of 8-10, 12-15,
or whatever else is in vogue.


How to Incorporate Heavy Lifting Into Your Routine


There are three main ways to incorporate max effort training into your
lifting regimen. The first and simplest is to just lift heavier on your
main movements of each training day. If you’ve got a chest day, for
example, and you start with the bench press or incline bench press, you
just begin your session by working up to a gut-wrenching set of 1-3
reps. From there, you can do more heavy reps at the same weight, drop
the weight and do a higher rep set, or just move on to the next
exercise.


Another, arguably more effective way to increase your maximal strength
is to set aside entire training days for your heaviest lifting. Let’s
say you currently have days for chest, back, legs, shoulders, and arms.
If you want to focus more on strength for a bit, you might first
consolidate that higher-rep training into one day with chest, shoulders,
and triceps, one day for back and biceps, and one day for legs. Then,
you’ll add in two heavy days, one for upper body and one for lower body.
The upper body day might consist of really heavy bench presses,
overhead presses, and dips, and the lower body day should have some
massive squats and deadlifts. Overall, the idea is to just set aside
days for heavier lifting and arrange your training schedule so that you
can recover from everything optimally.


Finally, you can have entire phases of your training in which you focus
on strength. Personally, I don’t like doing this as much because
maintaining or gaining muscle mass tends to require at least some
lifting in the ranges of 8-10 reps or higher. Using only super-heavy
weights for every exercise also tends to wear on your joints. This kind
of training is best for powerlifters and other strength athletes who
spend their off season gaining muscle and then focus on strength on
specific movements come competition time.

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