048 The Minimum Effective Dose for Strength

Send us Fan MailMinimum Effective Dose for StrengthWhy this is important for CrossFitters: CF athletes often have multiple training priorities and a concurrent training approach. Knowing minimum effective doses allows athletes and coaches to maximize the return (gains) on energy expenditure (effort). Effort is the input, gains are the output. MED is the minimum training dose to produce meaningful gains. MEDs can maximize gains in a few ways: 1. MEDs leave more energy expenditure for other training priorities. At some point every type of training elicits diminishing returns. MEDs help athletes hit the sweet spot in that curve where the gains are meaningful, but before they level off. Once MED is achieved, the remaining energy expenditure can go toward other training priorities. 2. They prevent undertraining. MEDs help ensure that athletes train enough to elicit increases in the performance metric (in this case 1RM). 3. Longevity. The goal is to accumulate as much training as you can recover from over a career – not a single mesocycle. More training effort reliably produces more adaptations in short term studies (max out every day studies, volume hypertrophy studies with 30-40 sets per muscle group per week).Clinical and personal experience indicates that these volumes are beyond most athletes’ ability to recover if repeated in multiple mesocycles. Finding maximum recoverable volume (MRV) would be the opposite end of the spectrum – and one way to progress over a mesocycle would be to start at MED and progress to MRV over 3-6 weeks. MED for Squat, Bench, Deadlift~3–6 working sets of 1–5 repetitions each week per lift 1–3 sessions per week per lift What is a working set? Use loads above 80% 1RM at a Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) of 7.5–9.5 2-3-1 squat-bench-deadlift weekly training frequency Accessory WorkPL athletes typically utilize 1–3 accessory exercises per powerlift, at an RPE in the range of 7–9 and utilize a repetition range of ~6–10 repetitions(My note: Number of sets 6-20/muscle/week) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2021.713655/full?fbclid=IwAR3l34IpNhiEhKMwnPrmAQ_-5Qlu97B4PEXhsDY2FOxIv3sTSvTfy_6nUlU