If you’ve done functional fitness for any length of time, you’ll know that stronger athletes tend to do better during competition, WODs, and metcon sessions. Absolute strength is key for functional fitness athletes. Sadly, it’s a topic that isn’t well understood by most gym goers. This article is going to provide a concrete framework for thinking about strength training and volume, aimed at increasing overall functional fitness performance.
We are going to cover a lot of research on gaining strength. It’s critical for any coach to understand the current body of research so they can better apply it to their programs, and to their athletes. Before we get into the nitty gritty, we need to cover some basics on gaining strength. This way we can all start on the same page.
Variables That Affect Strength Gains
There are only a few key variables that have abundant scientific support for gaining strength. The first variable is training intensity, as a percentage of one rep max. An example of this is when you see something like 5 reps of back squat at 80% of 1 rep max. Obviously, this means you are squatting 80% of the max load you can move for one rep. Most research indicates that for optimal strength gain, training intensities between 70-85% should be used.
The next variable that we are going to talk about is training volume. This is the total amount of work performed during a training session, or training program. A training session with 5 sets of bench press is lower in training volume than a training session with 10 sets of bench press.
The last variable that must be present to gain strength, is periodization. Periodization is often overcomplicated by many. The term simply means a planned increase in total work, or intensity, for a given strength program. There are hundreds of different types of periodization methods from: undulating, linear, daily undulating, and many more. Most research indicates that there isn’t a clearly superior method of periodization, but it does indicate that periodization, over the long term, is better than not.
Now that we’ve covered the basics that any strength training program will need, we can now talk about how these variables need to be combined to create an effective strength program for functional fitness athletes. Remember, we can’t just become power lifters, or olympic lifters, if we want to do well in a WOD, or maintain our metabolic conditioning.
Your Program Depends on Your Goal
This sounds obvious, but I can tell you that in over a decade of functional fitness training and coaching, this is not well understood. Your overall training goal will ultimately drive your planning for smaller milestones along the way.
If you want to win a Sanctional Event, you will have a much different program than someone who wants to add the most strength they can without losing conditioning. For the Sanctional athlete, they might simply need to maintain their strength, and hammer their conditioning, where as the other athlete will need to maintain conditioning, and hammer their strength training.
Adjusting a strength program for these different goals is actually fairly simple. We know from research that to gain or maintain strength, we need to make sure the majority of our reps are between 70-85% of one rep max. There is some good research showing that programs that average 85% intensity relative to 1RM are the most effective. Intensities lower than 70% can still build muscle mass, but they are less effective at building strength.
Now we know what intensity our program must average, and we know we must increase our load overtime (periodization), then the only variable that we need to change, for different goals, is the program volume. This is the second area that confuses athletes the most. Buckle up. We are diving in!
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Training Volume: Minimum and Maximum Limits
It’s important to understand both how little work you need to do to make strength gains, and how much is too much. Most athletes don’t think about strength training in terms of the minimum effective dose, and the maximum effective dose, but you should, as it will drastically affect your progress, once you understand this concept. Depending on your current training goal, you may only need to maintain your strength, or you may need to gain as much strength as possible given your time constraints.
Minimum Training Volume
There has been some excellent research that covers the minimum effective dose for gaining strength in experienced athletes. Here is an excerpt from the research paper.
“The results of the present systematic review suggest that performing a single set of 6-12 repetitions with loads ranging from approximately 70-85% 1RM 2-3 times per week with high intensity of effort (reaching volitional or momentary failure) for 8-12 weeks can produce suboptimal, yet significant increases in SQ and BP 1RM strength in resistance-trained men. However, because of the lack of research, it is less clear as to whether these improvements may also be achievable in DL 1RM strength or in trained women and highly trained strength athletes.”
The authors of this study reviewed thousands of relevant studies and discovered that a program of one single set (6-12 reps), at 70-85% intensity, performed 2-3 times per week is enough to gain some strength in the squat and bench press. This is why you see many good programs such as Crossfit Invictus, Misfit Athletics and others, having athletes work to one heavy set fairly often. Research validates that this is enough to gain strength.
Some of you “Type A” go getters might be wondering why I’m even talking about doing the minimum amount of work necessary. The reason is simple. You have a finite ability to recover from training, in essence, your recovery is like a training budget. If you spend too much of your budget doing extra strength work, then you cannot focus those training dollars on more important areas of fitness, that will give you the biggest bang for your training buck.
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Maximum Training Volume
For athletes that do need to focus on gaining strength as quickly as possible, they will need to understand how much work will lead to over training, and under recovering.
Most research indicates that higher volume training does cause a greater increase in strength gains, compared to lower volume. However, this relationship is not one to one. You might put in 50% more volume, and only increase 5% faster than someone doing much less. This study demonstrates that 32 sets per body part (weekly) is about the upper range of recoverable volume.
I should point out that I do not recommend this type of volume generally. Most studies, like this one, indicate that 5-10 sets (weekly) is probably optimal for building strength the quickest, at least for longer than a few months.
Newer athletes would be smart to stick with the volume and more experienced trainees can go higher. I can tell you that some specialist high volume programs, like the Smolov Squatting program, will have you squatting with volumes as high as 26 very heavy sets. I can tell you from personal experience that you are borderline injured by the end of that program, but you will gain a lot of strength.
Now we know that performing two heavy weekly sets (per muscle group) is enough to make some strength gains, where as performing 32 weekly sets (per muscle group), is about the absolute limit. This is quite the wide variation, which leads us to our next point, how to combine strength training with functional fitness programming.
Combining Strength Programming With Functional Fitness
As I alluded to earlier, combining these two types of training isn’t well understood. There are a few reasons for this. First, there really aren’t any studies on this style of training yet, which leaves us to experiment as a community, on our own. There are studies on combining strength training and traditional conditioning though. Check out this article where I discuss combining cardio and strength training. This infographic will give you the key points.
This infographic covers how to combine cardio and lifting for hypertrophy, but these principles hold for all types of concurrent style training, where we are mixing traditional strength training with anything else. The more cardio you add in, the less progress you make with your lifting. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t combine them. It means we need to select the right amount, based on our needs.
For functional fitness athletes, we need to work broadly on three areas of fitness: strength training, conditioning, and WODs. Each athlete will have their own individual mixture that will ideally increase their overall fitness. Check out this template below for an example week of training.
I would advise following this style template for the vast majority of athletes. If you are newer to functional fitness, then you don’t need this much volume. In fact, it will probably injure you. This template covers intermediate and advanced athletes that are looking to really push their fitness. Beginner athletes would be well served with this style of program.
You’ll notice that conditioning sessions are kept to the minimum effective dose to increase aerobic/anaerobic power, and each major muscle group of the body will be worked at least twice per week.
We know from our discussion above that 10 sets per week, 5 per muscle group each session, will yield optimal strength gains for those focused on gaining strength, at the expense of conditioning and WOD ability.
As we get closer to our competitive season, we need to defer strength gains and focus on conditioning, and WODs. An example of this would be in the months leading up to the Open. There are some tests of maximal strength, but most often Dave Castro tests your energy systems and work capacity. For this style training I would follow this template.
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Final Thoughts
We’ve discussed a lot of info about strength training, and creating a realistic strength program for functional fitness. The important thing to remember is you need to modulate your total volume depending on your needs at the time.
If you are far out from your competitive season, then you can spend time, and training dollars, on higher volumes of strength training, which will yield better strength results.
As you get closer to your big competition, you need to focus on metabolic conditioning and WODs, transitioning to minimal strength training. I do not advocate neglecting it completely though. If you’ve got more questions, put your email in below to get my free training guides. Now get out there and start training!
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