Maximal Strength Training
Get Big-Get Strong-Get Fast
How strong are you? I’m too strong! -Gerry Bertire, “Remember the Titans”
Starting Phase #2 Get Strong
While taking into consideration that due to an extremely successful Hypertrophy phase you now have cut the sleeves off your t-shirts and have hung several mirrors throughout the house, resulting in a high level of self motivation to begin phase #2. Get Strong or “Maximal Strength Training” will require you to increase your load. In doing this you will be required to set you repetition goal to 10, while using a weight that is much closer to your single rep max, approximately 85%. Moreover this may appear to be a barbaric task to accomplish and personally I believe this phase will require extreme discipline along with a superb self motivational mind set.
While increasing your load your body will scream at you to engage a greater percentage of fast twitch muscle fibres in order to conquer the weight task. With Maximal strength training an athlete becomes better at recruiting these fast twitch muscle fibres that enable the lifting of heavy loads. Your body is going to go through an aggressive amount of wear and tear, you will come to a point is this phase where you want to quit. It will be at this time where your true strength will show and allow you to continue your transformation to an elite athlete, keep in mind “pain is only weakness leaving the body”.
[Mike Barbour is a Certified Personal Trainer and RIVALUS Athlete. He is also a contributing partner in Nova Scotia off-ice training development of minor hockey, Junior and Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) level players along with being a CIS University Hockey player at the University of Windsor, Ontario.]
