the meaning of intensity

Hey Guys,

I dont really understand the concept of intensity.

It sounds silly and I thought I did but in retrospect I may have mistaken something.

I mean, intensity is king for building strength. But when is something intense in terms of sets and reps in FBEs?

Or in concrete terms: Is it better for building strength to do 3 sets of 5 front lever pulls (for example) if your max for front lever pulls is 5-6 or to do 5 sets of 3 front lever pulls?

The first alternative FEELS intense and afterwards I feel quite exhausted but the second alternative is intense TO THE MUSCLES but wont exhaust me that much.

I just wonder whether it is optimal and necessary for building strength to be quite exhausted after your workout (except you are doing a back off week) or if it is a better approach to terminate your sets and workouts before going close to your max effort and feeling like you could have done more.

As a side note, I once read that it takes only one set of an exercise to trigger a growth response. Doing more would only delay recovery. Is that true?

Please keep in mind that Im solely talking about FBEs as I know this topic has been adressed for FSPs already

In strength training the terms volume and intensity have very specific meanings, which differ from their common usage in everyday life.

Intensity basically refers to the load, in other words how much is on the bar if you're lifting weight, how difficult the variation is if you are doing GST.

Volume refers to the total number of reps done.

So for Front Lever high intensity would be doing a low number of reps at full lay. High volume would be doing many reps in tuck.

The general thought with training is high intensity builds strength, high volume builds muscle. Both are good. we make the muscle we have stronger, then build more and make it stronger.....

This is simplified of course and there are people here like Josh and Nic who have written some great stuff on this in the GB fourms.

Thank you,

following your advice I have browsed through some of Joshs explanations and found the general misconception in my programming and an explanation why I didnt notice the strength gains I should.

I thought intensity also meant that your FBE set should feel intense and so I often pushed the envelope (not going to failure, but still going close to it) and didnt realize that you can have the same intensity while doing less reps. Therefore my body never had time to consolidate my gains.

So now I will keep the number of reps constant for a while which might - in the long run - also enable me to add a fourth training day per week (to explain that: my body was only able to sustain 3 workouts per week when pushing really hard every single workout) to further increase strength.

Still, I didnt find any answer on the forum considering my last question:

gastar91 said:

As a side note, I once read that it takes only one set of an exercise to trigger a growth response. Doing more would only delay recovery. Is that true?

Please keep in mind that Im solely talking about FBEs as I know this topic has been adressed for FSPs already

What is your opinion on that?

That's a good question.

A lot of research has suggested that multiple sets cause more hypertrophy than single sets, so the one set to ultimate failure concept that Mike Mentzer advocated is not really the best way to go for growth.

There is probably an ideal number of sets, but no one knows exactly what that is. There are an awful lot of variables. As a general rule, 3 sets to failure of good form always works well.