[quote author="davan" date="1235733069"]Somebody should post the studies of the actual hormonal responses to training after exercise. Elevations of testosterone post-exercise are quite low once you consider duration of the elevation and rather insignificant.
I’m not against max strength work by any means, but I think there are a lot of people that may respond better once they have reached a fair level of maximum strength. Kind of hard to put a number on that, but maybe 2x bw full squat without a belt (or some other equivalent to that–maybe 2.2-2.3x bw to parallel, etc.) should be plenty. That has been my experience at least and what I have seen work for a number of others.
Davan:
Since I know you and I disagree on somethings, what do you think about max power and power development work having the ability to improve max strength? I know people are going to argue transferability and specificity, but the underlying neurological, biochemical, and structural changes that occur in muscles would have to impact sport training as well as they both have a functional basis in movement patterns. This runs counter to what many believe, but my kids all seem to have better success with a greater focus on power than strength.[/quote]
I think power development/max power type work can improve maximum strength. I’ve seen it in myself and others who have pretty decent levels of strength.
With that said, the improvements in max strength have not been as much as when using strictly max strength training. I also imagine that younger and less advanced athletes (with regards to strength) will be a bit indifferent to the exact strength training they do because they will respond to pretty much everything, which is why you have probably seen this happen to a greater extent than maybe others have.
I know star is going to come on here and talk about how powerlifters “only” get stronger doing sets of 1-3 reps, but I don’t know of any groups that used that type of training as a whole that really had any success. Even CF’s group never went above a 6RM.