70%

Ever wondered how sometimes you put in more than 100% and you seemingly get nowhere in your training, and you plateau? Or when every other person in the gym isn’t training as hard as you do but they seem to make more progress?

Let’s take a look at stress and recovery. The result you want from your training is to trigger a physiological adaptation in response to specific stress you imposed upon your body.

So what is stress and what does recovery mean? Stress can be the load you lifted, the energy you expended during your run, the mental and emotional energy you invested in a thought or event. Basically, anything that produces tension and/or strain in your body. As mentioned previously, you should be stressing your body in a specific way to produce a specific adaptation, which is also why you need specific goals for your training. Saying you want to get stronger is not enough. Adding 20kg to a squat in 6 weeks is specific. Back on track, every time you impose stress on your body, it needs to recover. Think of your body digging a hole into your recovery resources- the more and greater the stress the deeper the hole and your body has only finite resources from which to recover with. Sleep and nutrition are your main forms of recovery. There are also active recovery- exercise somewhat unrelated to what you were focusing on. If you did a heavy session at the gym lifting weights, going for a brisk walk for 15-20 mins is active recovery. Going for an hour long run is not. Active recovery is also performing the same movement but with considerable less stress, that is, with a lighter weight or effort.

So what it comes down to is managing stress and recovery. As the great weightlifting authority Vladimir Zatsiorsky says, “Train as heavy as possible, as often as possible, as fresh as possible…” and to do this there are several methods which you can use to your advantage.

The most important method you can use is training to 70% of your ability. This figure seems to be a recurring theme in many widely varied approaches. Steve Justa calls it the target zone, where he feels most strength is gained, at 70% intensity, or 70% of your 1 rep max. Who is Steve Justa? Only some guy who wrote the book on functional and endurance strength over a decade it became trendy. Look up his feats of strength, his words literally carry weight.

Most powerlifting programmes on average train at approximately 70% also. Though there are a lot of lifts performed from 50-90%, and on occasions at 95% intensity, you will find the intensity averages around 70%.

Training by some marathoners also revolve around the figure of 70%, although in this case, intensity refers not to 1 rep max but a percentage of the time it takes to a run a race distance. So if you can run 10km in a certain time, 70% for your training equals 7km of your race time.

Other methods include auto-regulation. You basically regulate yourself. This is done by creating rules for your lifting. If your rep speed starts slowing down, you’re starting to push into your recovery-ability. Or if your form starts getting sloppy, again, you’re pushing into fatigue. Three bad slips of form when you usually have perfect form means it is time to quit your session and come back another day. To maintain perfect reps is training within your recovery means. Otherwise you might be pushing into mild overtraining. If you do this every session, you are digging a massive hole in your recovery. Injury and compromised immune function are around the corner, all which eat into your training time and derail your training efforts. Productive training is consistent training.

So how can these methods be utilised in training? Try limiting yourself to 70% of your best efforts.

If you can lift a certain weight for 10 reps, only lift it for 7. Next session add a tiny amount of weight, like 5% or 2.5kg, whichever is smaller. Then hit 7 reps again. If that was easy next session add a tiny amount of weight. If 7 reps went up, add weight in the next session. If you don’t hit 7 reps then it’s too heavy. Either back track and use a lighter weight, or try again another day, but your training for the day is done. Every month or so try for a max attempt. See how many reps you can get. If you happened to lift it for 14 reps, this is now your new 100%. Here you have two options. Either calculate your 70% reps from this, which will roughly be 9 or 10 reps, or you can increase the weight that limits you to 10 reps.

This applies for other sports also. Distance orientated sports? Sure, in training cover only 70% of your race distance, or only do 70% of your best time. If your time is 2 hours, only go for an hour and twenty mins or so. The 70% figure doesn’t just apply to a once only training event. You could have two training sessions in the week, one with 60% intensity and the other performed at 80% intensity, to arrive at an average training intensity of 70%. Over the weeks or months, try to cover 70% distance in a shorter time, or cover a longer distance in the same time.

Again, this approach can be applied to any sport or event. Adapt it to your needs as you see fit, and let me know how you go. 70% training is optimal training. This is what the turn of the century strongmen called ‘reserve strength’. I guarantee that your training will be much more enjoyable, and most importantly, you will be pleasantly surprised at the results you produce when it matters.