I have a few questions about training stress 1. What’s the best way to measure training stress or volume? Many people use tonnage = weightrepssets. On the other hand, I’ve seen others such as Greg Nuckols suggesting number of sets to failure (or close to failure) as a way of measuring training volume. What are your thoughts?
2. How do you know how much stress a certain trainee needs to progress? Likewise, how do you know how much stress a trainee can handle before recovery starts becoming an issue, and performance is chronically depressed? i.e. how does one determine Minimum Effective Volume and Maximum Effective Volume? Is it just done via titration?
3. Can you talk about useful vs non-useful stress? How does one differentiate between the two? For example, you guys have mentioned that a trainee past the novice phase grinding out reps in a linear progression would be considered non-useful stress for the purposes of getting stronger. However, at a quick glance to someone who doesn’t understand programming, it would appear that squeezing out the last drops of LP is making one stronger. What principles and guidelines do you use to differentiate between useful vs non-useful stress?
Make sure you’ve listened to the last programming podcast we put out, and sit tight for the next two to come out. Hopefully they answer your questions, and if not, come back and let us know!
Yes, I’ve listened to the last programming podcast (Episode #22 The Programming Podcast (Part 1): Why HARDER does NOT = BETTER!), the discussion on stress brought up some interesting ideas, and was what prompted my questions. I’ll be sure to look out for the next two programming podcasts.