The author agrees that athletes need to be strong - good. Discussions seem to be a lot more uniform once you can agree on such a basic thing. I am sure most coaches also agree that an athlete needs to be able to display good form on every lift to train efficiently and avoid injuries.
If we can take those two things for granted, then there is an objective way to measure progress in strength once in a while. Just determine a repetition maximum (1 rm - 8 rm) and see if it has improved compared to before and by how much.
Having established an objective way to measure strength, how to get to an adequate level is up to the means and preferences of the coach and athlete. In general, it is always better to get away with less work to gain the same profit (so that resources can be spent elsewhere). So if an athlete lucks out in the genetic lottery and has incredible strength per default, that is the easiest thing to work with (case A). You don't need to lift, you are fucking strong in the first place. The next best thing is training and taking performance enhancers (case B), followed by just training (case C).
When we are concerned with how to optimize only the training (in case C), then the question becomes how to get strong the fastest OR how to get strong investing the least amount of resources.
The question is however NOT what works at all, since a lot of things work to some degree.
So I cannot disagree with what has been said in the article. I do by no means think that going up to heavy singles would be the only method to improve strength. In fact, I have been a big fan of 5s and 3s and occasionally even 8s for strength training from the very beginning. But I think the article lacks an answer to the question that truly interests us. How do we, as athletes, get our squats to 600 ASAP. Instead it merely reminds us that methods other than ME help strength as well - as if people were foreign to this idea...
I think what hes doing is going after the newly popular "bulgarian" method of working up to a max single, then doing back off sets at 2's and 3's etc. I could be wrong, but hes a james smith intern, and evo sport/schroeder guy, and those camps worship russian methodics like no other. Russian method advocates dont particularly care for advocates of the bulgarian methods, and vice versa.
The problem with attacking the max effort method is, it does not ONLY entail max singles, it also entails a rep max such as 2 ,3, 4 etc, as used VERY successfully with athletes by guys like joe defranco, etc.
As far the injury woes, training with excessive VOLUME is imo WAYYYY more to blame than the rep range/intensity that you choose. You can get hurt just as easy doing too much with 10rm or with shitty form as you can with singles, just look at the injury rates of powerlifting compared to other sports... it pales in comparison, and thats a true max single, on THREE lifts.
I agree with several of his points and the guy is a good writer not claiming to coach or train anyone, but asserting that the "max effort method is KILLING our athletes" is pretty silly.... How many guys died last week at defrancos?
Max Effort Upper Body Day - The max effort method is the best method for developing maximal strength. In my opinion, max effort work should be the "nuts and bolts" of any strength-training program. If you're weak, you're dead!
Remember that most athletic qualities (sprinting speed, jumping power, etc.) rely heavily on your foundation of maximal strength. This is because maximal strength builds the foundation for all other strength qualities such as speed-strength and strength-endurance.
joe defranco
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