In another exclusive article from expert coach Dan Simons, he tells us why lifting more regularly might just be the best thing you decide to do in 2022.

If you want to get good at something – should you do more of it, or less?

What if someone told you that you had to learn a brand-new skill, let’s say learn a song on guitar – but you’d never played a guitar before. You have 6 weeks to learn how to play the guitar and how to strum these five chords. Would you only pick up the guitar once a week?

Sounds silly, doesn’t it? And yet, this is the approach many of us take with our training schedule. You might be eyeing that elusive three plate bench but how quickly are you going to get there if you only train bench once a week and have every fourth week off?

Legendary strength guru Pavel Tsatsouline coined the term ‘greasing the groove’ for the concept of training more regularly for success. In his words “specificity + frequent practice = success”.

In layman’s terms “focus on what you want to improve + do it regularly = take the W”.

The scientific term for this concept is ‘synaptic facilitation’. Essentially, repetitive and moderately intensive stimulus of a motoneuron can increase the strength of connections and even make new synapses which can help you get big and strong.

Dr Pavel tells a story of a powerlifting record holder who set up a bench press in his kitchen and every time he entered the room, he’d hit a rep or two. This is obviously an extreme case, especially if you live with someone who wouldn’t appreciate a bench in the middle of the kitchen floor, but there are lessons we can all take from this.

There are five factors to success in this mode of training, and I’ll examine each of them in turn below.

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Lifting more regularly: Intensity

Training balls to the wall every day may sound like fun, especially if you are young and full of rage, but the reality is that lifting maximal weight every day relentlessly will just lead to fatigue, injuries and death (OK maybe that’s an exaggeration – but as Jon Pall Sigmarsson said “there is no reason to be alive if you can’t do deadlift”)

The recommendation from Dr Matveyev, the Russian scientist who invented the concept of periodization, is to train with 80% of your max if you intend to have an impact on your 1RM. This may sound scary to you, but as we will see going through the article, that doesn’t mean doing 10 sets of 10 reps with 80% every day.

If you are looking to improve on your ability to hit a certain number of bodyweight exercises, maybe push ups or dead hang pull ups, then stick to bodyweight. You don’t need to overload the movement as you can judge your intensity in other ways.

Lifting more regularly: Repetitions

lifting

So now we know how heavy we need to train, how many reps should we hit? Well, if we are lifting somewhere between 80-100% with greatly increased frequency then we should think about what our end goals are. If you are looking for a better 1RM then lifting sets of 8-10 isn’t going to have direct impact on that.

The most important part of lifting very regularly with intensity is to not train to failure. If you can bench press 80% of your 1RM for a tricky 5, then stick with a comfortable 3 reps. If you can bust out 10 perfect pull ups and 1 slightly cheating one, then stick to sets of 7 or 8. The stimulus requires regular work with heavy weights but that doesn’t mean you have to flog yourself! Keep some reps in the tank.

Lifting more regularly: Volume

Simply put, do more!

According to Pavel Tsatsouline “High volume” on the synaptic facilitation power plan means maximizing your weekly tonnage with heavy weights.

Tonnage – or poundage if you prefer – simply refers to the total quantity of weight moved in a period of time; be it a session, a week or a training block.

Let’s say hypothetically that you deadlifted 200lbs for 3 reps 5 times a week, that would be a weekly poundage of (200×3)x5 or 3000lbs. Now the following week you add 5lbs to your bench but can “only” manage 205lbs for 2 reps 5 times that week because you’re feeling beaten up. You’re moving a total poundage of 2050lbs, considerably down on the previous week. Poundage is a useful measure of progress in a session because if you’re moving more, you’re getting stronger.

Look back at the quote from Pavel: heavy weights are a must. Achieving the same poundage with sets of 10-12 isn’t going to help you here.

As your strength improves, you should aim to increase both intensity and volume but don’t rush to do both immediately. Your body will panic and you’ll set yourself back. Be patient.

Lifting more regularly: Frequency

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“Big” Jim Williams. A man deserving of his nickname

This is probably the most controversial of the five tenets of ‘greasing the groove’.

We are in a lifting culture where rest and recovery are prioritised almost as much as the work you put in with the bar. This has not always been the case. Tsatsouline references an 80s study by Gillam where he found that training the bench press 5 times per week improved performance. This has been borne out by many of the great lifters of the past century.

Arthur Saxon lifted weights every single day. Big Jim Williams benched 700lbs in the 1970s because he was in PRISON and had nothing else to do!

We live in an age that freaks out regarding overtraining – and it does exist, but chances are that you are nowhere near close to reaching it. If you are smart with your training, you can hit the lifts you want to improve regularly and hard and still have enough time and energy to go about your business. Pavel refers to a Russian study where they found that 1×5 every day is more effective than 5×5 every 5 days.

Grinding out a maximum effort squat 5 times a week is stupid. Hitting a moderately challenging triple 5 times a week is the definition of greasing the groove.

Lifting more regularly: Exercise Selection

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Maybe you should think about dropping the seated bosu-ball dumbbell presses

The final aspect of this mysterious and possibly scary method of training to consider is which lifts to use.

Tsatsouline recommends dropping all assistance work while you work towards your goal and just focusing on the big ‘bang for buck’ exercises: squat, bench, deadlift, clean and snatch.

If you think about it logically, constantly seeking gains in intensity and volume is only going to leave a limited amount of capacity in your ‘rest and recovery’ bag. Is it better to use this to hit another set of three deadlifts? Perhaps.

Remember, this is not a mode of training that you will employ all year round. It is a modality which will allow you to attack with laser focus a personal goal. There will be time for assistance work and rear delt flys later. For now, you need to get stronger, and to get stronger you need to practice.

Lifting more regularly: Conclusion

Much in this article might seem contra to everything you’ve been taught about training. Because it is. But it also works, has worked, and will continue to work.

If you have a strength goal that you are committed to hit, then maybe employ the five aspects above in your training for a 4-week period and see what progress you make. You may feel like you will lose your gains if you don’t do your 4 sets of 10 assistance exercises but it will all be psychological, and you stand to make some very serious strength gains.

Besides, if you are deadlifting 8000lbs a week for a month you’re not going to be getting any smaller – are you?

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