Biology Forums - Study Force

Strength Competition- A trainer suggests to his competitor that all of the people who talk about light weight and lots of reps to “tone the muscle” are correct. In order to gain maximal strength, you should lift a load about 30 reps per set, feel the burn, and then do this about 5 times per week. Why is this bad advice?

Its not necessarily bad advice. There are basically  3 types of muscular performance.
1. strength: this is what we usually think of when we think of how strong someone is. How much they can bench etc. It basically is how much force you can generate in one push
2. Endurance: This is how long your muscle can work without fatiguing. For example the muscles in your hand and forearm have incredible endurance, vs those in your shoulders which tire very quickly
3. Power: this is how much force you can generate with motion. So you can think of this like a clean and jerk motion. Or sprints.

For overall strength you need all three of these components, it is useless to have a really strong muscle that fatigues really fast. It is also useless to have a muscle that can work all day but not generate that much force. To achieve ultimate overall force it is important to train all 3 aspects of strength. The 30 reps is correct, I would probably not do it 5x a week because your endurance will increase but not your 1 rep max. I would vary your workouts and train all three components to maximize strength gains.