Sustained Strength Mastery

The Key to Stamina, Vitality, Leanness, Heart Health, and Vibrancy

Sustained strength master Jón Páll Sigmarsson, shown in the featured image, demonstrates his absolute-strength credentials as he pulls 250 kilos, 551 pounds, with one hand. He has the time and presence of mind to hit a biceps pose with his unused left arm. I heard he had piled on 275 kilos, 606 pounds, using one arm and his fearsome hook grip.

The Three Strength Types

Whenever the discussion of strength arises, the first question should be: what kind of strength? Which type of strength? There are three definable strength types: absolute strength, explosive strength, sustained strength.

Briefly, absolute strength, including isometric and isotonic strength, is best exemplified by an elite powerlifter moving massive poundage for short distances with no regard for velocity. Explosive strength is best exemplified by the Olympic weightlifter pulling a moderate, relatively speaking, payload over an extended range of motion using maximum velocity.

Sustained strength, or strength endurance, is the purposeful inclusion of repeated muscular contractions into a cardiovascular format. Sustained strength examples might include extended kettlebell drills, wrestling, high-impact rugby, or MMA drills. The commonplace mistake is to fuzz the distinctions between the three types, or champion one strength type to the exclusion of the other two. Optimally, ideally, each of the three strength types receives its fair share of attention.

Sustained Strength: Where Strength Training Meets Cardio

Sustained strength is the intersection of strength training and cardiovascular exercise. Sustained strength is, as the name implies, the ability to generate a significant amount of available power for extended periods without “gassing out.” This ability to go harder longer without succumbing to oxygen debt is developed over time with repeated practice.

There are a limitless number of sustained strength modes and methods. The sustained strength commonality is the invocation of repeated muscular exertions over extended periods. When dealing with the realities of sustained strength training, the twin eternal variables are intensity, how hard, and duration, how long.

These two variables have an inverse relationship: dramatically increase intensity and duration shrinks. Dramatically increase duration and intensity must necessarily lessen. When seeking to increase sustained strength, continually bias these two variables to create contrast, i.e., go shorter and more intense, or lengthen the drill or session, dialing back the intensity.

Valid Sustained Strength Modes

Bill Pearl: Bodybuilding as a Sustained Strength Mode

Bodybuilding legend Bill Pearl once related to me that he did not engage in formal cardiovascular training because during his six-day-a-week, 120-minute training sessions, his heart rate never dropped below 120 and repeatedly spiked after grueling, high-rep sets.

He made the salient point, “Marty, does the heart really care how it gets elevated? As long as it gets elevated — does the heart care how?” Pearl’s two-hour training sessions famously ran from 4:30 to 6:30 Monday through Saturday. Bill hit every muscle three times a week and would work through 80-plus sets in a session. This is an irrefutable sustained strength mode. Bill sacrificed poundage for volume and pace. He would rotate performing the same exercise with training partners: one goes, then the next, and the next — add weight, repeat, never pause.

King Kaz Shifts with the Times

Bill Kazmaier came into the strongman game as a world champion powerlifter with a world-record bench press and deadlift. In the earliest days, when ABC Wide World of Sports ran the annual World’s Strongest Man competition, there were a wide range of events that favored the single-rep powerlifter.

In one memorable episode, the squat lift, Kaz dropped a platform full of Playboy Bunnies so hard, after posting the winning single-rep squat, that the impact caused one voluptuous Bunny to lose her top, to the delight of every onlooker and the horror of ABC. The winds shifted away from single-rep events and toward extended sustained-strength events.

Kaz shifted his training and would run stadium steps wearing a 50-pound vest while pumping two 40-pound dumbbells. His heart rate would soar. The point is not the exact number on the monitor; the point is that Kaz recognized a new strength demand and adapted.

Steve Justa: Sustained Strength OG

Before anyone else, Iron Savant Steve Justa grokked the need for, and significance of, strength endurance. Justa created a sustained-strength training method decades ahead of its time. Steve lived on a farm in Nebraska.

At a seminar, Justa saw a famous lifter do eight reps with 505 pounds in the bench press, then continue huffing and puffing long after the set. That sight sent Justa on an incredible journey of self-discovery, using himself as his laboratory. He walked with barbells, carried heavy rocks, worked hard manual labor, built a 100-pound chain-mail vest and turned real-world exertion into sustained-strength practice. His “Attack Plan” is priceless.

Mark Coleman and the Cost of Gassing Out

Mark “The Hammer” Coleman is a UFC Hall of Fame fighter. Early in his MMA career, and despite being an international-level wrestler, Mark would exhaust himself trying to overcome an opponent. Having burned every ounce of energy, his blood sugar would plummet to the point he was unable to raise his arms.

His solution was to spend less time on a stationary bike and more time running steep hills. Coleman related that he didn’t feel right unless he had run the session all the way into the red. Another Coleman sustained-strength enhancer was to head to the Ohio State wrestling room and proceed to wrestle for 30 straight minutes, rotating in a fresh opponent every five minutes. Mixed martial artists have been at the forefront when it comes to devising sustained-strength drills.

Integrating Sustained Strength into the Transformative Template

The sophisticated athlete seeks continual improvement and, to that end, apportions a percentage of available training time to strength training and a certain portion of available training time to cardiovascular exercise. One seamless way to incorporate strength endurance into the training template is to have sustained strength drills double as cardiovascular exercise.

While absolute strength training is best done infrequently, cardiovascular exercise is optimally done often. Rather than jog, ride a stationary bike, or engage in classical steady-state cardio, why not substitute burst or interval cardio and sprint, run hills, practice jujitsu, engage MMA drills, or perform an extended kettlebell session?

This strategy, melding sustained strength and cardio, is logical and kills two proverbial birds with one stone.

Safety Note for Sustained Strength Training

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW strength-training perspective and strength-history examples. It is not individualized medical, rehabilitation, tactical-training, combat-sport, strongman, cardiovascular, or programming advice.

Kettlebell snatches, hill running, wrestling, rugby, MMA drills, weighted-vest work, strongman carries, forced reps, drop sets, and extended sustained-strength sessions can stress the shoulders, spine, grip, hips, knees, ankles, cardiovascular system, and recovery capacity.

Build gradually. Warm up thoroughly. Match the drill to the athlete. Use safe terrain, secure equipment, appropriate footwear, enough space, proper technique, and conservative progression. Do not treat vomiting, extreme heart rate, dizziness, or collapse as proof that the workout was productive.

Stop or scale back for chest pain, dizziness, faintness, unusual shortness of breath, confusion, heat symptoms, numbness, sharp pain, uncontrolled implement movement, repeated technical collapse, dark urine, severe cramping, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

The useful lesson is not that every athlete should do every sustained-strength drill. The useful lesson is that the complete athlete needs enough sustained strength to keep expressing power after fatigue sets in.

Equipment Notes for Sustained Strength Training

Sustained-strength tools are simple, varied, and unforgiving. The lifter can use kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells, weight plates, and basic loading implements to blend strength demand with cardiovascular demand.

For repeated-effort strength work, readers and facilities can compare kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells, Olympic weightlifting bars, and weight plates.

A practical sustained-strength setup might include IRON COMPANY premium powder-coated kettlebells, an IRON COMPANY urethane barbell set, or IRON COMPANY urethane dumbbells, when those tools match the athlete, floor, room, grip demand, coaching, and intended drill.

The equipment does not create sustained strength. The repeated effort, the controlled fatigue, the intelligent progression, and the willingness to keep producing power under fatigue create sustained strength.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan: The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.