Strength Maintenance Guidelines?

Greetings BBM crew!

I am wondering about guidelines for the minimum amount of training required to maintain general strength for a non strength-sports athlete.

With one slot per week for squatting movements, one slot for pressing movements, and one slot for deadlifting movements is it even possible to preserve strength on the basic lifts if they are only being performed once every other week as would be the case in a rotating schedule?

Assuming RPE’s between 8-9, would hitting the minimum ranges recommended on Prilepins Chart once per week do the trick?

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It’s pretty difficult to give “general guidelines” like this, tbh. I got asked about this the other day; the gist of my answer:

The amount of training required to “maintain” strength will depend on 1) How trained you are, 2) How much of your strength you want to maintain, and 3) Your general training sensitivity (which itself is impacted by #1).

The more trained / advanced of a lifter you are, and the more of your strength you want to maintain, the more training will be required. For example, if I want to “maintain” my ability to squat 600, it’s going to take A LOT of training. Whereas if I wanted to maintain my ability to squat 500, I could afford to do a lot less. To squat 400 or less, I’d barely have to train at all.

As a corollary, the more sensitive to training you are (either genetically, or because you’re young / male / healthy / untrained), the less training will be required to maintain strength. Conversely, the more training resistant you are (entier genetically, or because you’re old / female / acutely or chronically ill / highly trained), the more training will be required to maintain strength.

Hopefully this makes sense, and helps to illustrate why we can’t really give you clear recommendations on this. You can try your idea of one slot per lift per week … and if your strength is maintained to your liking, great! If not, you’ll know you have to add more training.

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Thanks for this, I was wondering my self.

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