What is a "Heavy" Workout?

Dear Christian,

In your latest Question of Strength article you talk about CNS crash after a heavy workout. Here you give a couple of pointers on how to recognize this. Just wanted to know what a heavy workout is in your eyes? Is there a certain thershold you need to surpass in terms of 1RM of perhaps even volume?

Myself, I’m doing 80% of 1RM workouts four days a week for twice a day + one day of CrossFit at te moment. The problem arises that indeed on some days I can crash 2-3 hours later, but on other days I don’t. Can’t point out why that is. Other than tweaking the variables of the training, are there any other things I can do to avoind that crash? To be honest, I’d like to be productive during the rest of my day too, don’t we all!?

Thanks in advance!

Well it depends on both the intensity and volume. For example doing 1 set of 2 at 92% and the rest of the workout uses weights in the 65-70% range will be less demanding than a workout where the heaviest weight is 85% but there is a lot of work at that load.

But generally speaking when I talk about “heavy” it is above 85%. 85-90% would be heavy, 90-95% very heavy and 95-100% is maximal

1 Like

Thanks for the explanation! So it would be more a ‘rule of thumb’ than a hard number. With your clients Christian, do you use a tool to measure percieved intensity or fatique? Or is this something you just talk about and observate how the training went?

You can use tools like the HRV to monitor the neural stress of the session. During the session, when doing strength work, I normally use the RPE scale.

Awesome, thanks!!! :smiley: