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Get Stronger
Get Bigger How To Get Strong
Get Leaner
Strength is at a premium nowadays. I remember about 10 to 15 years ago it was
Get more all about becoming more muscular (for guys) and losing fat (for women).
Strongman was still more of a spectacle than a type of training that was popular
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Seminars & Webinars among gym rats, powerlifting was a fringe sport at best and meets with 10-15
Free Resources lifters were the norm, and weightlifting (Olympic lifting) was even less common
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and mostly something that people were aware of for a few weeks, every four
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FAQ years.

Over the past ve years or so, things have changed and performance is now as
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popular of a goal, if not more so, than aesthetics. Why? I see several possible
factors that have driven that change of direction:

. CrossFit: Like it or not, I would say that nothing did more to democratize
heavy lifting on the big basics than CrossFit. It made the deadlift, clean,
snatch, squat and overhead press look “normal” to average gym rats. While a
large proportion of the people doing CrossFit to get in shape (not the
competitors) use less than stellar technique, they are aware of these lifts and
develop the mindset of lifting heavier on them. Take my wife for example:
when I trained her, we would almost get into an argument when I tried to have
her go from 30 to 35kg on the power clean. The rst week she did CrossFit,
she was super happy to tell me that she power cleaned 60kg during a WOD
and a few weeks later she did 70kg.

. Social media: Facebook and Instagram is not only about “glute shots”, you
can actually see some pretty good lifting being done. We used to see mostly
lifts from elite lifters, but now almost all recreational lifters post their bench
lifts on their social media. This is of course motivational for the people
posting the videos, but it also shows that deadlifts, squats, clean, etc. are not
some strange animals than only a select few can do. This increases awareness
of these lifts and makes more people want to do them.

. Athlete’s training: I remember when I started training athletes 20 years ago,

those of us who used strongmen drills like farmer walks, yoke, stone lifting,
sled pulls, etc. were few and far between. But nowadays, everybody is using
these exercises in the training of athletes. And, once again because of social
media, Youtube and television, we get to see elite athletes bench, deadlift and
squat heavy. And if there is one thing I learned over the years it’s that there a
lot more people who want to “be” or at least “feel” like athletes (IMHO, it’s one
of the reasons behind CrossFit’s popularity). This desire to be athletic will
drive many people to strength and power training now that they can see elite
athletes do it.

. Getting stronger is easier than getting more muscular: It is much easier to

increase strength than it is to build an impressive physique. And gaining
strength is also more rapidly achieved than building a signi cant amount of
mass. Building muscle tissue takes time. Under the best possible
circumstances, someone can probably achieve an average muscle gain of 1
-1.5lbs per month. While at the end of the year it will give you 12-20lbs of
muscle, which is a big deal and changes your look completely, at rst it can be
demoralizing to not see your body change. Furthermore, if you are over a
TRUE 12% bodyfat you can gain that 12-20bs of muscle and still not look
good. Getting stronger happens a lot more rapidly when you know what to do.
It is also objectively measured which can keep you motivated. As such, a lot of
people who are discouraged by their lack of physique change can become
easily attracted to training for strength.

I’m sure there are other reasons for playing a role too, but the fact is that getting
stronger is now one of the main goals of people who decide to train hard.

How can we achieve our goal of getting stronger?

The Four Ways Of Getting Stronger

Getting stronger is more complex than simply doing low reps and trying to lift
more weight every workout. While that can work in the short term, it never leads
to optimal long term progression and often leads to injuries.

If you want to get stronger, you must understand the various factors involved in
increasing your strength level. Then you need to know which factor to focus on
in your training.

There are four main ways of getting stronger and depending on your level of
development, one or two will be the ones you need to focus on.

Technical e ciency: Improving your lifting technique to be able to better

transfer your muscles’ strength potential to the barbell. I’ve seen a lot of guys
with a high level of muscle strength under perform on the big lifts because their
ine ciency didn’t allow them to showcase all of their potential.

Hypertrophy: Increasing the size of your muscles will increase your strength
potential. I say potential because simply getting bigger is not a guarantee that
your strength will go up. Imagine your body as a car factory: if you get a bigger
building and have more employees you have the potential to produce more cars.
But what if those employees are lazy? What if they don’t work together or if they
don’t do their job properly? The production will not increase up to its theoretical
potential. The same thing is true for strength. Bigger muscles give you more
strength in theory, but if you are not e cient at using those muscles your
strength will not go up as much as it should.

CNS e ciency: If muscle size is the factory and number of employees, the CNS
e ciency is the foreman that leads the employees. The better the foreman is at
directing the workers, the closer the factory will be at functioning at its full
potential. Improving CNS e ciency will make you better at utilizing the muscles
you already have.

GTO desensitization: GTO, besides being one of the sickest muscle cars of all
time, refers to the Golgi Tendon Organs. They are what we could call your
muscle/tendons protective mechanisms; the safeguard against excessive force
production. Basically, they are “sensors” that tell your nervous system when the
muscles are about to produce too much force for your own good. The intent is
noble: avoid producing so much force that you tear a muscle or tendon. But they
can severely diminish performance because they tend to be way too
conservative. The result is that the average adult can produce voluntarily about
30-40% of his force potential. A well-trained athlete might go up to 70% and a
world-class strength athlete up to 90%. Desensitizing your protective
mechanisms can increase strength simply by allowing your muscles to function
at a higher proportion of their full potential.

Working on the elements

Technical E ciency
Technique work is best done with moderate weights and non-maximal reps. If
the weights are too heavy (85-100% zone) you are likely to fall back onto default
or compensatory motor patterns, making it harder to voluntarily make
modi cations to your technique. On the other hand, if the weight is too light you
don’t really “feel” it properly and it will become harder to transfer the improved
technique to heavier sets.

The best training zone to work on technique is 70-80%. I recommend starting

closer to 70% and gradually adding weight while maintaining perfect form. Reps
per set should be in the 3-5 range and the number of sets should be fairly high
(5-6 or even more). But remember that none of these sets have a high level of
stress because you’ll be lifting at a RPE (rate of perceived e ort) of around 7. For
more on RPE read Alex Babin’s articles on the subject
(https://thibarmy.com/rpe-based-training-part-1/) and
(https://thibarmy.com/rpe-based-training-part-2-rpe-based-training-can-worst-
enemy/).

Ideally, the frequency of practice should also be very high because frequency,
not quantity, is the most important principle of motor learning. So, if you are in a
technical development phase, hitting each lift 3 times per week or even more is
recommended.

But remember it is important to practice the proper technique because practice

doesn’t make perfect, it only makes permanent. And practising the wrong
pattern will only make that bad pattern more di cult to correct.

TECHNIQUE WORK PARAMETERS

Loading: 70-80%

Reps per set: 3-5

Sets per exercise: 5-6

Rest intervals: 2-3 minutes depending on recovery capacities

RPE: 7 – 7.5

Muscle Hypertrophy
Making muscles larger via higher volume (creating more muscle ber fatigue) is
another way of becoming stronger. It does so via a few mechanisms.

The rst one is the thickening of the muscle bres themselves. This is done by
adding more contractile elements to the muscle bres. More contractile
elements mean more contraction strength.

Another thing that can impact strength is a change in pennation angle. This
refers to the angle of the muscle bres. When a muscle gets bigger, the
pennation angle becomes more pronounced spreading the tension over a larger
surface which can give you a mechanical advantage (along with a more
favorable orientation). However, this has some limits, if a muscle becomes too
large it can start to have the reverse e ect by giving the bres a less favorable
angle.

Lastly, hypertrophy work (higher volume, lighter weights, a longer time under
tension, more eccentric emphasis) can have a positive impact on tendon
thickening, making the tendons more resilient and sti er. The sti er tendons can
accumulate more potential energy making the stretch re ex stronger (helping
you lift bigger weights) and more resilient tendons will also have an impact on
desensitizing the Golgi Tendon Organs: the tendons being stronger, the body
feels “safer” and will allow you to use a higher proportion of your strength
potential.

Of course, we could talk about all the possible “bodybuilding methods” to

trigger hypertrophy (drop sets, pre-fatigue, post-fatigue, rest/pause, etc.) and
they do work and they have their place when working on low stress exercises.
But since this article focuses on getting stronger (presumably on the big basic
lifts) we will talk about how to train for hypertrophy using the big lifts. Since
these have a higher neurological demand than isolation, machine or cable
exercises, the typical bodybuilding methods might not be your best options.
Straight sets with as many good reps as possible (not going to total failure, but
getting to the maximum number of reps possible in good form) is your best
option here. For maximum hypertrophy, sets lasting between lasting 40-60
seconds seem to be the most e ective. So, a controlled repetition speed (3-4
seconds to complete a rep) is normally recommended.

HYPERTROPHY WORK PARAMETERS

Loading: 60-70%

Reps per set: 8-12

Sets per exercise: 3-4

Rest intervals: 90-120 seconds

RPE: 8 – 9

Nervous System E ciency

Big muscles with a lousy nervous system will only give you limited strength gains.
An e cient nervous system means recruiting more muscle bres, recruiting them
soon in a set, making them twitch faster (thus producing more force), having
better coordination between the recruited bres within a muscle and also
making the various muscles involved in a lift work better synergistically.

In other words, the more e cient your nervous system is, the better you can use
the muscles you have.

CNS is mostly stimulated by three types of work:

– Lifting heavy

– Lifting/moving explosively

– Doing high skill movements

When it comes to the strength lifts we will use mostly the rst two types
(heavy/explosive) and even more so the rst one (explosive work is most
e ective with neurotypes 1B and 2A).

This doesn’t necessarily mean maxing out. As soon as the load is around 85% of
your maximum, you will get a maximal muscle bre recruitment. So, neural work
is done in the 85-100% range. The higher the load, the less volume you can do
(when we are talking 95-100% weights we cannot do more than 2-4 lifts in a
session). This is why to develop the neural factors it is often better to train in the
85-90% range because that allows you to do more volume, and the higher
volume of work leads to more stable neural improvements. Work in the 95-100%
zone give you really quick gains, but they are much less stable.

Normally, I say that you build strength in the 85-90% zone and you learn to
demonstrate it (or peak it) in the 92-100% zone.

NEURAL WORK PARAMETERS

Loading: 85-100%

Reps per set: 1-5

Sets per exercise: 3-5

Rest intervals: 2-5 minutes depending on recovery capacities (and neurological

pro le)

RPE: 8 – 9 (9.5 – 10 only on test/maxing out days)

Golgi Tendon Desensitization

When you submit your body to very heavy weights, over time your body’s
protective mechanisms become less and less conservative, allowing you to use a
greater proportion of your potential. The great Dan John once said that “your
body already has the capacity to lift the heaviest weight you’ll ever lift, you only
need to convince it”. This is basically what we are doing when we are
desensitizing the Golgi Tendon Organs.

While all types of the heavy lifting will lead to a gradual desensitization of the
GTOs, and that even hypertrophy work has a positive impact (by thickening the
tendons), the method that has the greatest and most rapid impact is moving or
holding supramaximal loads (weight that is heavier than your max on a lift).

The best way to do this is to use overloads on a partial range of motion lifts. You
can either do a regular lift but only lowering the weight 1/4 or 1/2 of the way
down prior to lifting it or you can start the bar from pins (e.g. pin pulls from just
below the knees). High box squats and board press also t in that category.

Basically, by shortening the range of motion you will be able to use more weight
than you normally use in a certain movement pattern. While this will lead to
strength gains mostly in the range of motion being trained it also (over time) has
the e ect of desensitizing the GTOs which after a while will lead to strength
gains over the full range of motion.

Supramaximal overloads are very demanding on the nervous system, so the

volume cannot be high. I normally recommend 1 or 2 sets after the full range of
heavy work.

I use three main approaches:

. Partial range for reps: Here use 100-105% of your max on the full range lift but
only use around 1/2 of the range of motion. Do as many reps as possible for 1
or 2 sets.

. Partial range for weight: in this second approach, stick to low reps, 1-3 but use
the heaviest weight possible in the shortened range of motion. Only one
maximal set is done but you might need to use up to 3-4 gradually heavier
sets to reach that max.

. Supramaximal holds: I rst read about this method in Fred Hat eld’s program
80 days powerlifting cycle. After your heavy sets on your main exercise, you
would use 105-110% of your max (squat and bench), unrack the bar, slightly
unlock the knees or elbows depending on the lift and hold for 6 seconds then
you would rerack the weight. 2-3 sets of 6 seconds are used.

Another method that I really like (but requires a power rack with pins settings
every 1-2″) is a standalone one (you don’t do it after the main lift, it is the main
lift): Neurological Carryover Training method by Paul Anderson. In this method,
you start the lift from pins doing around a 1/4 range of motion. You load up the
barbell with 105-110% of your max and perform as many reps as you can from
the pin setting of the week. Doing 2-3 sets.

Every 1 or 2 weeks (1 week if your pins are every inch, 2 weeks if the pins are at
every 2″) you lower the starting position. You use the same weight every week
and still try to get in 2-3 sets of as many reps as possible. If you ever reach a
point where you can’t get at least 1 rep from the new setting, got back up one
step for 1-2 weeks, but it shouldn’t happen.

This approach works very well on the bench, deadlift and squat. BUT for it to
work you MUST maintain the exact same technique as you would in the full
range of motion exercise. This also means that you need to lower the eccentric
under control. A mistake that many people make when lifting from pins (a
mistake I made myself in the past) is to not pay attention to the eccentric.
Control the weight all the way down to the pins using the same bar path as you
would on the full lift.

This method will get the body comfortable at using a certain weight, one that
exceeds your current max. Your body will adapt to that load gradually and after
6-8 weeks you will be able to do it over a full range of motion.

Practical Recommendations
After reading this article you will be tempted to use all four methods at once to
get the fasted progress possible. This would be a huge mistake for most people.
A fully concurrent approach like that will only work with advanced athletes who
have a natural gift for recovery and who don’t break.

For more than 90% of the population, you should cycle these methods. The ones
that are right for you also depend on the level of experience. Here are some tips:

. With beginners, focus on technical e ciency and hypertrophy. These lifters

need to build a foundation rst and foremost. Using CNS methods will not be
optimally e ective with these people because they don’t yet have an optimal
amount of muscle, and CNS methods will merely make them e ective at
utilizing the muscle they already have. What they need is to make the muscles
and tendons bigger and develop top-notch technique.

. Beginners and intermediate lifters should stay away from GTO desensitization
methods. They don’t have the structure and CNS e ciency to handle that
type of training and progress optimally from it. Furthermore, they don’t yet
need it: the mere introduction of CNS methods will start the desensitization
process.

. I recommend focusing on 1 or 2 factors per block of training. When I say focus

I mean to put a large emphasis on it via work on the big lifts. For example,
once you are done working for hypertrophy using the big lifts for 8-12 reps
you can still include a small amount of hypertrophy work using less
demanding exercises. You also need to keep working on technique even when
it stops being the focal point. This means that you use the warm-up sets to
really nail perfect technique.

. The more “on the left” (refer to the graphic about the 4 factors) you are, the
longer you can do it in training, the more “on the right” you are the more rapid
the gains are but the shorter the training phases be. Basically, see technique
and hypertrophy work as a base that will give you slow and steady gains that
stay stable over a longer period of time; CNS and GTO desensitization
provide rapid changes in strength but that uctuate a lot more. CNS and GTO
methods can be used (normally) for 3-6 weeks whereas hypertrophy and
technique work can be kept in for 8-12 weeks or even more.

. The less muscle someone has, the more time and work he needs to spend on
hypertrophy. The more muscle someone has, the more phases of CNS and
GTO desensitization he should use.

-CT