Strength and Singles
 

Ditillo:

"The need for single attempts as a training medium cannot be overlooked because they teach you, just as the power rack teaches you, to fight against heavy weight. And this is a requirement for continued success in any strength. Some may argue that all that is necessary is medium heavy resistance and the strength will come whether you perform singles or not, but I beg to differ. What happens in most of those cases is that the lifter becomes proficient at performing many sets of three and five reps with a medium heavy weight and he also gains in muscle size and density from the work but his limit single and double attempts do not come to par with his repetition capabilities. It is far easier to learn to do more repetitions with a given weight than it is to lift a heavier weight for the same number of repetitions. This is where we have so many guys falling by the wayside. They can squat maybe four hundred for fine repetitions and fail with four fifty for a single! This is almost assuredly caused by training with many sets of low repetitions but very little single repetition work being done."


My own training experience bears out this statement, as I train almost exclusively with singles and find that my maximum poundage is far above what I can do for lots of reps.

Thoughts?

Have you seen our Increasing Strength thread? Take a look. Lots of goodness.

http://muscleandbrawn.com/forums/tra...-strength.html

I live on singles right now. Basically the bulk of what I have done for the last 6 months. On 6 months my totals are up nearly 200 pounds, and I am closing in on Elite. I am sold on singles and heavy work.

I love singles

I did see that thread. And yes, singles are great!

Thanks for this post. I was on the fence with trying to incorporate singles and doubles but not anymore. Singles are definitely making their way in now.

Singles are excellent for strength development. The whole article is here: The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban: The Single Repetition Principle - Ditillo

Really good read, I believe in singles myself

I believe in singles too. But, I don't believe you can only do singles and stay in the game very long.

If you're only doing singles you are always on the edge of what your body and form are capable of doing. It seems almost inevitable that you will break down physically or make a bad form mistake and you will hurt yourself. Then injury recovery stalls progress while you rehab, etc.

So, I would say singles are great if you hitting them more than once and also if you are steadily increasing your volume with 80-90% too.

I guess I think it's a choice between hovering around 80-90% and increasing strength that way which is safer and somewhat slower, or jacking singles until something breaks and gaining top end strength faster, but having to accept some rehab as the price of doing business.

Which is better, a year to go from a 300 squat to 400, or six months to go the same distance, but then take six months off to recover from a bulging disc?

Obviously exaggerating, but that's what I think about the subject.

Just my .02

Hi!

Glad you like the Tan Slacks blog.

You may have already seen this, but there's some progressive ideas on singles training and weight selection at the Ground Up Strength site. Look for The Singles Scene article to start with. Or just Google "ground up strength the singles scene" and you'll come up with the pdf link. Lots of good stuff there and it's not a money deal.


Have a good one.

Depends at what intensity these singles are done. I don't think what you're describing can be said to be a problem of singles exclusively. Hovering at max effort work for far too long is the real problem. This can happen with any rep range.

Too much intensity for too long, adding on top of that a healthy dose of form degradation and that is the problem.