Dr. Layne Norton

Like there's a lot of things.

It's technique.

A lot of things go into it.

And strength is a specific skill if we're talking about strength as assessed by a one rep maximum, right?

So if you take untrained people into a lab and you have them like work up to say a squat max, right?

What you'll find a lot of times is somebody will just smoke something.

You go up five kgs and they get stapled with it.

And it's like, wait, well, what happened?

Because they don't – they haven't practiced that skill and they don't know how to – one, they just don't know how to grind a rep and be uncomfortable.

But two –

As you go higher to a one rep max, you're recruiting more muscle fibers.

Fibers tend to be recruited in order.

There's some challenge to this research, but they tend to be recruited in order from smallest oxidative up to middling kind of hybrid fibers up to your glycolytic large, right?

And so if you do high reps with low weight, you'll still eventually recruit those larger muscle fibers as you get close to fatigue.

But if you're doing a one rep max and it's a true one rep max, you're having to get everything you possibly can, right?

So it's a very specific skill.

So when it comes to reps and sets for powerlifting, you do – the number of sets you – let me go back.

So let's talk about building muscle first because it will help frame it better.

What seems to be important for building muscle is a few things.

The first is mechanical tension and understanding that mechanical tension is cumulative throughout reps and sets.