Skills of Maximum Strength: You May Have More Power Than You Thought

Advanced lifters understand that strength is a skill. Mobilizing maximum muscular force to move a heavy weight requires developing and regularly practicing the muscle control needed to put out full power.

This is a skill that only comes with focused practice. Merely showing up and flopping through a series of exercises develops little skill.

IMHO building this skill requires deliberate practice of some specific things.

However, the skill of putting out maximum force is a refined neuromuscular activity. It will erode rapidly if not practiced regularly.

 

Whole Body Tension

Every powerlifter who has trained for a while knows the necessity of developing full body tension before doing a squat, bench press or deadlift.

Developing the ability to get tight and stay tight is more difficult than generally acknowledged.

Once developed, it is essential to practice whole body tension every power training session or the skill begins to slowly diminish.

Whole body tension is the base on which lifters may build their ability to produce maximum tension during heavy lifting.

 

Max Tension = Max Force Potential

All of us know how to flex our muscles or tighten them to move heavy stuff.

However, there is potential to add even more force to what we believed our limit might be.

That comes when you consciously practice trying to tense your muscles harder and harder.

Example: Lie on a bench press bench holding an empty bar at arms length. Flex all your muscles as hard as you can.. Now try to flex even harder.

Do this in different positions of the bench press.

What you discover over a few workouts is that what you believed was your max intensity was actually a bit below what you could do.

In short, over a period of a few workouts you discovered that you could train your muscles to produce a bit more tension than you thought possible.

Learning to maximize muscle tension is not a simple process.

Focus on tightening your muscles beyond what you thought was your maximum tension.

Here is where consistent training is needed because it is our natural inclination to produce just enough tension to do a certain lift.

Over time, you train yourself to put out sub-maximal power.

But.if you know that this happens you can do some practice work to ensure that you are able to consistently generate maximum force.

 

Move Slow Under Control

Building your skill at putting out maximum power requires moving some weights that are 85-95% of your max.

The idea is to move them slowly and concentrate on maximizing your whole-body muscle tension throughout the lift.

In essence you are doing what a gymnast does when they assume the Iron Cross position. You are recruiting maximum strength possible to hold a very difficult pose.

Needless to say, you do this while performing single reps of a lift.

The purpose is to practice with a weight that provides enough of a challenge so that you must recruit more tension to complete the lift.

 

More Training Actions

You can do isometric poses without any weight at all to build up your skill at getting tight and then getting even tighter.

You can do different positions in the squat or deadlift and practice tensing your entire body as hard as you thought possible.and then tightening even more.

Hold this for 4-5 seconds and relax. Do 2-3 of these.

The cool thing is that you can do these when you are not in the gym. These can be done as a break after sitting at your desk for a while. I dont suggest you do them while out shopping in a storepeople who see you may may not understand that you are practicing developing maximum muscle tension.

 

Coda

One thing that has never changed since I began lifting 7 decades ago is that the weights never ger any lighter. We need all the tricks we can to beat Mr. Gravity!

Lift Big!

Richard