Microloading?

[OITW]

Concur that that brain perception isn't what matters. The implication, though, is that if the muscle/CNS doesn't "perceive" (bad word since I'm not talking about the lifter's brain) an increased stress, no adaptation would occur. But since we see the adaptation occur even under miniscule increases in stress, this just seems to be a thought exercise with no useful application.

[gman]

I guess I don't get it. Even if you were to add only 2.5 lbs to your squat every time you lift, over a 3 month period it will add up to an additional 90lbs. How can you argue with that?

[LCN]

This is getting kind of silly.

Any argument that using sub-2.5 pound plates is inherently bad could just as easily be extended to 5 pound, 10 pound, or 25 pound plates.

Why not just load only in increments of 90 pounds?

The reason obviously is this would lead to a very inefficient progression because 90 pounds is such a large increment that playing around with rep ranges would never get you there.

Likewise sometimes you want to increase a load by 20 pounds, sometimes by 10 pounds, and yes, sometimes by 2.5 pounds or less.

And yes eventually you would get to an increment so small that it would be more efficient to give up linear progress altogether than to continue it with such small increments. But to draw that line at 5 pound increments because the smallest commonly found plate is 2.5 pounds seems pretty stubborn to me.

[eekrazyk]

Concur that that brain perception isn't what matters. The implication, though, is that if the muscle/CNS doesn't "perceive" (bad word since I'm not talking about the lifter's brain) an increased stress, no adaptation would occur. But since we see the adaptation occur even under miniscule increases in stress, this just seems to be a thought exercise with no useful application.

I think you're blurring the boundaries of the brain's circuitry and the "mind".

The stress from the load is what provides the stimulus for adaptation, not the mind's perception of the load.