50 reps vs 5RM

[No insect]

So I have a 320 lb squat for five reps. When I'm challenged by these guys, who have maybe a 225 lb 5RM, to do 50 squats at 85 lb, I get tired much sooner than they do. Now, I get that if I'm going to do many reps at a decent weight, say 225 lb, then it's best to increase my max, rather than train for endurance on 225 lb. But if I'm lifting silly light weights, like 85 lb, I don't see how increasing my max would improve my performance. Is there a ratio where it is no longer beneficial to increase the max in order to improve the light weight? Although I much prefer to increase my max anyway in order to get stronger.

[Szymon]

You train and adapt to endurance just like you train and adapt for strength.

If a total novice start to train for 50 rep squat, his endurance in this event will go up and his strength will go up a little

If the same novice will train for strength his endurance for 50 rep at 85 will go up a little and his strength will go up a lot.

So if they have 225 5RM and they challenge you to 50 rep battle, you should challenge them to 10 rep @225 battle and call them a pussies if they fail.

[Frank_B]

It won’t immediately affect your performance on the 85 pound squat in terms of reps. At least, I would expect exhaustion fairly early. When you do 85x50, the way your body uses glycogen is entirely different than when you’re doing 315x3x5.

I’m grossly dumbing this down, but when you train heavy, your body is configured one way. When you train for high volume and endurance, it reconfigures itself another way. There’s an extremely detailed SS Coaches conference in which Drs. Sullivan, Baracki, Feigenbaum, and I think Morris give a talk about energy systems, glycolysis, Krebbs Cycles, injuries, etc... I recommend you watch it.

What Rip has always stated, or what I’ve always gotten out of his statements, be it direct or indirect, is that if you finish your NLP and decide to go back to endurance work, you’re going to perform far better after training endurance for a few weeks.

That is, once you let your body reconfigure itself to handle the endurance aspect (~3 weeks), you might be surprised at the boost you have from your strength training. What I’ve never understood him to imply is that you’ll walk off the deadlift platform and beat a marathoner in a 26.2 mile run or squat 85x50 without a problem. Maybe after some training, you’ll have the strength to do it, as well as the endurance, but your body doesn’t just “switch” that quickly. If you can squat 405x5x5 then, for some dumb reason, decide to do 85x50, it’ll be easier (after training for endurance) than if you went into it squatting 225x3x5.

[Hayden-William Courtland]

In my experience, the higher your max is, the easier it will be to do multiple reps at lighter weights without any preparation. I haven't seen any "limits" to this and for the weights most people would challenge each other on, there probably aren't any. The weight simply won't tax you as much, so you won't get tired as much. But again, it depends on how much higher your max is to the weight you are repping. Not also, there are still certain adaptations that will be needed for success at higher rep ranges and if you push into very high rep ranges it's still possible to fail due to not training muscular stamina no matter how high your max is, but you will generally get some benefit even without training.

[Dalton Rankin]

This has been dealt with several times previously throughout the site--although commonly referenced to force production of a cyclist's pedal stroke. If we hold a gun to the cyclist's head and force him to get strong under the bar while his squat goes from 100 pounds to 200 pounds, then his force production capacity has doubled. With this new increase in force production, he can pedal twice as hard or pedal as twice as long. In terms of your 320 pound squat, 85 pounds is roughly a quarter of your maximum force production; if you could squat 640 pounds, then 85 pounds is about an eighth of your maximum force production. That's how increasing your max improves the light weight, or you could challenge "these guys" to squat 320 pounds and put them in their place.

[PuliMorgan]

So I have a 320 lb squat for five reps. When I'm challenged by these guys, who have maybe a 225 lb 5RM, to do 50 squats at 85 lb, I get tired much sooner than they do. Now, I get that if I'm going to do many reps at a decent weight, say 225 lb, then it's best to increase my max, rather than train for endurance on 225 lb. But if I'm lifting silly light weights, like 85 lb, I don't see how increasing my max would improve my performance. Is there a ratio where it is no longer beneficial to increase the max in order to improve the light weight? Although I much prefer to increase my max anyway in order to get stronger.

Why can't you say NO, THANKS to such silly challenges in the first place?

I recently faced a similar challenge. My former running club conducted a fitness challenge based on the US Army Physical Fitness Test standards (the old standards with Push Up, Sit Up and 2 mile run, not the new ACFT). They invited me to participate because I had introduced APFT to them way back in 2015 when I was an avid marathoner and I was the champion with perfect 100+100 scores in push up/sit up in the past (only 95 or so in running, with a total of 295/300 back then). But I said a bold NO this time partly because I was recovering from Golfer's Elbow and partly because I didn't want the APFT training to interfere with my post COVID Lock Down NLP.

(PS: They then made me the judge for the event which was conducted online. I had to watch 116 videos of push ups and sit ups over next two weeks and give my comments on the form and suggestions for improvement - accepting the challenge to participate might have been easier than that )

[bobman]

I train to be able to be better able to do things I’m likely to come across in normal life.

In almost 70 years I’ve never had to lift anything 50 times to exhaustion, but there’s been many many times I’ve had to pick up something very heavy one time.