The Rested Effort In Strength Training (part VI)

All-Out Strength Requires a Fully Rested Organism

Increasing all-out strength or all-out speed requires an all-out effort on the part of a fully rested organism.

Overtraining and the Walking-Through-Mud Feeling

Any in-depth discussion of strength training eventually veers into related discussions on overtraining, i.e., training so hard, so long and so often that the body breaks down and is unable to regain homeostasis in time for the next training session. Too much of a good thing, training, becomes a bad thing.

When over-tonus, overtraining, takes hold, it creates deep fatigue and a tiredness that cannot be overcome. In the aftermath of an intense, hypertrophy-inducing training session, overtrained athletes complain that all movement feels like “walking through mud.” Fatigued, lethargic, the overtrained become slow-witted and mentally dull.

Bodybuilders can experience a different flavor of overtraining. The bodybuilding template uses much higher training volume: more sessions, more sets, higher repetitions, forced reps, drop sets, and similar intensity amplifiers. If taken too far, this type of resistance training can induce a debilitating, sore-to-the-touch syndrome where touching or grabbing an overtrained muscle causes a jolt of pain. This may involve inflammation, fluid, soreness, and a recovery debt that has not been repaid.

Recovery, Food, and the Old-School Under-Eating Argument

Concern about overtraining naturally leads into discussions on rest, recovery, nutrition, and the various aids, modes, and tools used to stimulate and accelerate recovery. Old School strength athletes had a clichéd saying, “There is no such thing as overtraining — only under-eating.” There is much truth in this, as there is in most clichés; that is why they become clichés. Still, it is not universal medical truth. Some athletes are underfed. Some are under-rested. Some are doing too much. Many are doing all three.

If you are training hard enough to trigger hypertrophy and then starve the organism, in relation to the severity of the effort, the organism breaks down. In the wake of a successful training session, an infusion of calories provides nutritional building blocks: glycogen, amino acids, and dietary fat required to heal, recover, and grow. The cleaner the calories used to fuel recovery and growth, the less likely the recovery nutrients will end up as body fat: 500 calories of roast chicken, salmon, or a recovery shake are superior to 500 calories of ice cream, donuts, or Doritos.

Another novel approach: why not strength train less? Train only when completely healed and rested from the previous session.

Why Not Strength Train Less?

The conventional thinking is to strength train often but “spread the effort” by using split routines that rotate targeted body parts or lifts: train legs on Monday, chest on Tuesday, back on Wednesday, shoulders on Thursday, arms on Friday, hamstrings, calves, and abs on Saturday, take off Sunday, and repeat.

I mentored under a world champion superheavyweight powerlifter that trained twice a week and set world records, won the world championship and created a fleet of national and world champions, myself included. It was a badge of honor to have survived Hugh “Huge” Cassidy’s twice-weekly powerlifting slaughter-fest training sessions.

When modern strength coaches are presented with the proposition that optimal gains can be obtained training twice weekly, they think this sounds preposterous. At best, training twice weekly might be expected to maintain that which had already been attained. Improve? No way!

Hugh Cassidy’s Twice-Weekly Slaughter Sessions

You had to experience the intensity of this style of training to understand it. You had to feel it to grok it. If you trained as hard as Cassidy prescribed, there was no way you could train more than twice weekly unless you slashed the poundage 50%. We would perform all three powerlifts, plus two backoff sets done with higher reps and lighter poundage. The backoff sets were the hallmark of his approach.

After barbell squats, benches, and deadlifts, we did seated pressing and finished with supersets of biceps and triceps. In the aftermath, walking up the basement stairs was difficult. When the session was done, we headed to the nearby all-you-can-eat buffet to stuff our faces before taking extended power naps. To survive the Cassidy approach, between sessions, you had to eat like a plague of locusts and sleep like a hibernating Kodiak bear. We needed to regain homeostasis before the second weekly slaughter-fest session 3 to 4 days later. Calories and sleep were critical.

Everything was periodized and preplanned. Every workout over a 12-week, three-month macrocycle was penciled in at the start of the cycle. A realistic end-goal was established before we commenced. The cycle was reverse-engineered back to a starting point. We began every cycle using high reps and light weights to groove technique and spark some hypertrophy. The periodized elephant was eaten one bite at a time.

In the 1980s, elite strength athletes had to cut the Cassidy template in half: they were not recovering. The classical power template became train each major lift, squat, bench press, deadlift, and overhead press, once weekly.

The Problem with Split Routines

The question I would pose of all these split routines: is the body ever trained when truly rested?

If I knock the dog-piss out of my legs on Monday, sure, my pecs, shoulders, and triceps are “fresh” for the Tuesday bench workout. After all, pecs, shoulders and triceps are not involved in the squatting and leg assistance work done Monday. But is that body, blasted squatting the day before, truly, fully fresh and rested for benching on Tuesday? I think not.

The Rested Effort

If the goal is to improve human strength or speed in a measurable, quantifiable way, a 101% effort needs to be generated when the athlete is 100% rested, i.e., completely recovered. Rested results are always superior. How could it be otherwise? No matter how well you performed when 79% rested, performance would have improved if you had been 100% fully rested.

My thought is, perhaps the surest way to improve recovery is to eat more clean calories, sleep deeper, and train less. There is an eloquent simplicity to this primal solution to an eternal problem.

Safety Note for Overtraining, Recovery, and All-Out Effort

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW perspective on the rested effort, overtraining, recovery, nutrition, Hugh Cassidy’s powerlifting template, and high-intensity strength training. It is not individualized medical, nutrition, rehabilitation, powerlifting, bodybuilding, speed-training, or programming advice.

All-out squats, bench presses, deadlifts, overhead presses, backoff sets, forced reps, drop sets, high-volume bodybuilding, twice-weekly slaughter sessions, calorie surplus, calorie restriction, and major recovery changes are not automatically appropriate for every lifter.

Age, injury history, cardiovascular health, blood pressure, medications, sleep, job stress, training age, recovery capacity, food intake, hydration, technique, and available spotters or safeties all matter. Build gradually. Warm up thoroughly. Use appropriate equipment, safe loading, secure collars, rack safeties, or spotters when needed.

Stop or scale back for chest pain, dizziness, faintness, unusual shortness of breath, sharp pain, numbness, uncontrolled bar path, repeated technical collapse, failed warm-ups, persistent soreness, sleep disruption, unusual fatigue, mood changes, appetite collapse, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

Equipment Notes for Rested-Effort Strength Training

Equipment does not create the rested effort. The plan, the effort, the food, the sleep, the recovery, and the willingness to wait until the body is ready create the rested effort. Equipment simply gives the lifter a safer and more measurable way to impose the stress.

For barbell-based rested-effort training, readers and facilities can compare barbells, Olympic weightlifting bars, weight plates, weight benches, dumbbells, and squat stands and modular racks.

Specific options such as the Legend Fitness 3904 Continuum quarter cage squat stand, PowerBlock commercial PowerBench, CAP Barbell 7-foot black Olympic weight bar, IRON COMPANY premium rubber bumper plates, IRON COMPANY urethane hex dumbbells, and the IRON COMPANY urethane barbell set may fit certain training spaces when the lifter, room, floor, rack setup, coaching, and intended use align.

The equipment supports the session. It does not replace recovery.

Related Rest and Recovery Reading

For companion Marty Gallagher articles on recovery and the rested strength effort, read Reassessing Recovery and The Rested Strength Effort.

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.