ML Strength Performance - Articles

Many strength coaches, fitness influencers and gym rats rant about progressive overload and how your training needs to be progressive at the gym. Otherwise, you simply are not making progress. In a nutshell, progressive overload (PO) means that your training loads and volume is steadily creeping higher as you train more and more. Either you are doing more reps with same weight or more weight for same reps. But is PO really that important? Many pro bodybuilders claim they don’t care about progressive overload, they rather “train by feel”. They hit the gym. Train each exercise hard, close to failure or to failure, get a massive pump, flex, and bounce. No measured progression from session to session, week to week. Just lifting heavy iron. Yet, they are the most muscular people on the planet. How can this be possible? Are they just lying through their teeth?   Well, training volume is one of the most important drivers of hypertrophy (Sets per muscle group). The more train...

  Training volume and work capacity is a cute couple. They go hand in hand pretty much all the time. It’s a pretty toxic relationship to be honest. Work capacity is very controlling of volume, and they are very codependent of each other. If they climb up a mountain, and volume goes up too fast, work capacity can’t keep up and it will start slipping down. On the other hand, if work capacity goes up faster, eventually it will slow down and stale, unless volume catches up. Now, if you are not familiar with these concepts, that little analogy probably made no sense at all. So, lets look into what training volume and work capacity are.   Training volume is the actual amount of work you do within a certain amount of time. Training volume can be measured from a single session, from multiple sessions (usually one training week), or even from longer time periods, but the most practical measures come from single session volumes and weekly volumes. In strength training, volum...

CrossFit, or Functional fitness, is a very comprehensive exercise modality. Yet, it seems to have one glaring weakness. You can’t even count the amount of exercises the sport has in vertical presses and vertical pulls. Handstand push-ups, pull-ups (kipping counts, you just don’t know how to do it), jerks, muscle-ups, handstand walks, rope climbs… All of these are great exercises, but as you may imagine, these are in a very similar movement pattern. I didn’t mention push-ups and bench presses, which especially have recently gotten more love from competition organizers. However, horizontal pushing is the less involved movement pattern compared to vertical pushing in functional fitness. There is still one elemental movement pattern missing from all this. And you never see these in competitions. Horizontal pulling.   These include any type of rowing movements, where you are pulling the resistance towards your body. Even though pull-ups and its derivatives do work the back qu...

Complete guide to cluster training for strength and muscle size Using cluster sets for strength gains is one of my absolute favorite methods. Even though cluster training has been around for decades, they seem to be too much of a forgotten tool in modern strength training and with the rise of evidence-based strength training, cluster training is often overlooked, even though there is some research supporting its effectiveness. Most of that is on power development, but clusters have a massive potential in increasing your strength capacity as well. There are a tons of fitness tips and tricks that simply are gimmicks. Clusters are not one of them. Though it might seem like one for sure. Someone might claim: “Gain 5 kg on your bench press instantly!” promoting cluster sets and it wouldn’t be too far from the truth. Cluster sets do allow you to lift more weight, when compared to regular straight sets. And there is a simple explanation to this. When you lift something heavy and you lift it o...

How I hurt my back with Deadlifts, and how I fixed it. With Deadlifts. Part 2. This is a second part of the article How I hurt my back with Deadlifts, and how I fixed it. With Deadlifts. Read the first part here .  Once I had figured out what my issues were with my strength training and I was able to start training properly again, it was time to start building a program that would keep me intact a long time. After all, programming can make a big difference on how you can recover and keep on progressing.   “Proper volume and load management” When it comes to strength training, I believe proper load (weights) and training volume (sets x reps x load) management are the keys for long-term results and staying healthy. Whether you train too much or too heavy, most likely you are going to run into issues in a long run or every once in a while. Understanding how to fluctuate training volume and weights on the bar can set you up for long-term success.    “Loading…” ...

How I hurt my back with Deadlifts, and how I fixed it. With Deadlifts. Part 1. A few years back my training took a big hit. While warming up for deadlifts I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. It didn’t feel like any muscle soreness-type of pain that I was used to over the years of training. This was something different. And I didn’t even have that much weight on the bar yet, 140 kg, a weight that was merely 80% of my work set weight. I decided to leave the deadlifts and moved on with the workout without much concern. However, after this training session the pain didn’t disappear, rather it reminded me of itself daily every time I would bend over or if I did any lower body lifts at the gym. Minor aches and pains were a norm for me back then. I thought, “If you’re truly training hard, these things are inevitable.” However, these minor pains usually passed by after a short rest, and I would be back to training all out in no time. For few weeks, even a month’s time I dragged myself ...