The link is the number and type of motor units recruited for the two types of contractions. In relation to the second part of your question this is related to the training stimulus you are trying to impose on someone. I am not sure what you mean by same capacity. To make a single lift that equates to the 1RM requires recruitment of all motor units (large and small) that thus engages all muscle fibre types in generating power. A reduction in the load but increasing the number of repetitions decreases the number of motor units recruited and thus the stimulus becomes specific to that population of muscle fibres. The mass of the athlete probably only becomes important if one is looking at the absolute weight being lifted as opposed to a weight that is related to an individuals body mass.

I fully agree with the answer that our collegue Derek Ball has presented. However, maybe you wanted to know if their is a relation between the maximum contractive capacity (isometric force; 1RM values) and the fatigue resistance of an athlete (neuromuscular capacity to undergo several repeated contractions or to produce a percentage amount of the MVC over prolonged periods of time). We underwent several measurements with amateur and elite athletes and our answer is: This relation can be very specific and we did not found a clear negative relation among absolute force and fatigability (see paper: Ullrich& Brügemann, Journal of Strength and Cond. Research 2008; 22; 1544-1555). However, there is evidence with "average subjects" that stronger subjects tend to show faster fatigability. This might be explained partly with muscle fibre spectrum and the amount of blood flow at high forces. However: This remains often speculative and we did not find evidence in out athletic testings for that.

Kind regards

The two previous responses are valid and complementary. Another part of the response is in the endurance time model (Rohmert W 1960, Monod H & Scherrer J 1960). Taking into account the previous information about the motor unit strength and fatigue, as intensity increases (standardized to the maximum) either static (time) or dynamic (repetition) performance decreases in a curvilinear fashion. In a general view, stronger you are, more endurant your are at an absolute load, because this load represents a lower percentage of your maximum. When using the same relative load to the maximum for all individuals, numerous factors are interacting (e.g. duty time or sexe or muscular typology or local metabolism...) and it is normal that none isolated factor determine itself the relative endurance.

Thisi is interesting topic!

The quality of the training will be focused on speed of the movement, in my opinion high number of repetition at low speed is useful for to improve the technique or recovery on high speed movement;

you can see my recent paper "Effect of different pushing speeds on bench press"

I confirm, very interesting topic. Further, a non invasive method has been proposed by Bosco base on repeated jumping task to have an estimation of percentage of rapid and slow muscles' fibers.

I suppose that the classic line between the percentage of 1RM and the number of repetition is underestimated for heavy loads and overestimated for light loads for athletes with high percentage of IIb fibers.

In my experience in training throwers and Power lifters these articles seem quite accurate.

Brzycki, Matt (1998). A Practical Approach To Strength Training. McGraw-Hill.

Baechle TR, Earle RW, Wathen D (2000). Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, 2: 395-425.

dos Remedios R (2007) Men's Health Power Training, Rodale Inc. 23.

Hi colleagues, I have attached a paper that may you find interesting. Big hugs!

Article Analysis of Factors That Influence the Maximum Number of Rep...

Hi all,

I think that this paper may help on this issue. The authors found that endurance performance in bench press was related to maximum strength, body mass and maximum power.

Please, note that this specific population of fire-fighters train very different physical capabilities so the training background -as commented- is another important variable for taking into account. I would expect other relationships in another population.

Best Regards,

Daniel

I think I force a more general maximum of endurance to contain the maximum power of a lot of link muscles in the body, but Endurance was correlated with many respiratory efficient circulatory system.

Great discussion. I like that the paper Edu referenced included measurement of the range of motion of the rep. Too often I see terms offered up like reps and fatigue without a clear definition of either. The clean way to measure functional performance is through work and power. You can only truly measure work if you are measuring the distance through which force is working. As muscle begin to fatigue, the range of motion of a "rep" often is reduced, thereby reducing the amount of work being performed within the rep. If these reps are continuing at the same pace or cadence, then power (work divided by time) is decreasing as well.

This leads me to a follow up question - how do you define fatigue? Is it exercise to exhaustion? Most subjects working sub-maximally, be they athletes or not, will bring in significant levels of biomechanical substitution as they fatigue - to the point that the quality of the data has to be questionable. I feel like a better threshold for fatigue could be obtained by looking at the degradation of power per rep over the course of time. For example, if you were to look at the power generated in rep one (or perhaps the average power over first three reps) and then power generation per rep was monitored until you we not able to achieve x% of this benchmark, that this would give you a much more consistent measure of time or reps to fatigue. My guess is that this threshold would be fairly high -say 50-75% before so much substitution would be brought to bear as to make the data useless. Clearly the starting load as a percent of 1RM would effect this too. Am I off target on this? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks Charles for this very interesting answer.

By fatigue, i mean exhaustion, in other words, the athlete is not able to lift the bar one more time. Indeed, with the fatigue, the vertical displacement decreases only a little, and stabilize a stable pattern. Only the velocity decreases when the percentage decreases.

At high percentage of the 1RM (between 75 and 95%), the number of repetitions did not differ between athletes, and the variability is very low. Several studies used the number of lift at a high percentage of the 1RM as a good predictor of 1RM. For instance, US football trainers used the number of repetition at 225lb bench press as a strong predictor of the 1RM.

But the predictibility decreases dramatically when the percentage is very low. Indeed, at 30%, the variability between athletes is very high, and some athletes are able to lift 3 or 4 times more than another.

This depends probably of the individual muscular profile of fast and slow twitch fibers.

I think all af you are forgotten something very important (under my point of view): acceleration. As Charles said :"You can only truly measure work if you are measuring the distance through which force is working". But in this definition we should define force, and force is mass x acceleration. So we could lift or push 30 repetitions but if the acceleration declines, we will not be doing the same work in every repetition. This is why I prefer to measure loads with power (work / time).

I have no scientific answer to the question but I'm sure that if you have to maintain your maximum acceleration in all repetitions (with a load of 75% 1RM), you'll do less than 10, but if you do it with a medium acceleration, sure you'll do more than 15!!!

Jordi, we are theorizing and validating such a theory, I hope a scientific answer will come soon...

Your point is valid. I already have observed such kind of relationship when a re-analyse graphical data of a published study.

Extracted from a table in Astrand and Rodahl (1977) citing Ikai (1964) Proc Int Congr Sport Sci, p109, 1964

Leg extensor max strength: average men 55 kp, middle distance runners 55 kp

No of contractions at 1/3 max strength: average men 48, middle distance runners 399.

Arm flexor max strength: average men 17 kp, middle distance runners 19 kp

No of contractions at 1/3 max strength: average men 75, middle distance runners 48.

Indicates a large endurance training effect.

The table includes data onm women where this effect is not seen, but in 1964 women were not allowed to race further than 800m, so the sample is not comparable with the men.

Graham, thanks for this data. We obtained similar values at 30% during bench press: between 37 and 60 repetitions, the variability increases dramatically with lower loads

Going back to your earlier answer, I'd speculate that it is not just the ratio of fast to slow twitch fibres but the ratio of slow plus fast oxidative to fast glycolytic. Endurance training will shift FG to FO.

If you have the opportunity, you might get an insight into the ratio of the different muscle fibre speeds from selective electrical stimulation of the appropriate afferent nerve fibres. I've not done this in anger myself, but I do recall from discussion with colleagues from those days that it is hard to get subjects to complete a study, as large involuntary muscle contractions are quite disconcerting to the subjects.

Dear Guillaume, the link between maximal force, estimated by one repetition, and endurance force, estimated by several repetitions with lighter load, is the capacity to elict adequately two complementary metabolic mechanisms of providing fuel for the required task the individual is involved in. This metabolic capacity is partly innate and partly trainable despite the metabolic configuration of the individual. Hope this answer may help you. Best regards.

Renata, I agree with you. Twitch Fibers as metabolic mechanisms are two main aspects for this concern. I add another one: the capacity of the hearth to carry bloog in the muscle. If this aspect seems not very important to lift a heavy load, it become veyr important to lift load since exhaution. Indeed, body builders with heavy muscular mass are able to make several repetitions with lighter loads for this reason. That's why correlational models between 1RM and x RM are highly predictive for few repetitions (

The mass of the athlete's arm has to be lifted as well so it would count proportionately more in lifting a lift weight many times and lots more in for example factory settings where very light weights are lifted hundreds of times in an hour.

I think to answer the original question:

Question: lift as Power lift or jump?

Probably, 1 or 100 lift are necessary a good stretch shortening cycle (SSC)

Firstly God give us all learn. The maximal muscular force and the endurance force train different types of muscle fibers. White or red muscle fibers training are differ. Presence of plenty of oxygen detrmine the way that the muscule use its energy. Aerobic or anaerobic ATP production detrmine the type of the muscular force produced. Maximal force train white muscle fibers + anaerobic energy use. Endurance training train red muscle fibers+ aerobic energy use. I think the both type of fibers can transformrd to each others. i wish i answer as you need and you can get benifits. Thanks Goodness