Quote Originally Posted by Sivarias View Post
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CNS == Central Nervous System?
Yep, basically there's a few ways you can improve your ability to lift weights:

A.) Building more muscle fibers, this involves getting bigger and stronger. So basically for this to happen you have to be at a caloric surplus, or at least have enough stored fat to build some muscle mass. Generally you just put your muscles under tension for enough time or do enough volume of work that the muscles tear and your body remakes them bigger. This is pretty much the core of bodybuilding, that's why they do gobs and gobs of volume (unless you're Dorian or Mentzer but that's a different story, they also executed slower reps to keep tension on the muscle). This is also somewhat the easiest one, if you're damaging the muscles and getting a caloric surplus you will get bigger muscles.

Of course, since a lot of people who are doing competitive lifting are in weight classes this isn't always desirable. It also takes a lot of dietary effort and puts a lot more strain on you in terms of time spent in the gym and what-not. (Unless you're Dorian or Mentzer, but again they did some really unusual stuff). Although this has a lower risk of injury than CNS improving stuff does.

B.) Improving your form. Basically this translates to doing less work to get the movement done. Unfortunately once you have a fairly good grip on form, the things you can do to mitigate the amount of work you'll be doing will be fairly sparse.

C.) Improving your CNS system, basically this helps your nervous system recruit a greater percentage of your existing muscle fibers more rapidly. It's also some of the most miserable kind of training, since CNS fatigue is absolutely awful. Generally this sort of training is the focus for Oly weightlifters, and powerlifters in fairly small (light) weight classes. Usually the best way to train this system is by doing really heavy singles or all kinds of exotic things (like band work, or trying to pull a weight that's heavier than you can). Like for deadlifts for example, I would do a negative at about 10-15% heavier than I could possibly lift, or even heavier whatever I could lower to the floor safely. Then I'd try to do a pull at the bottom of the rep once it came to a full rest. Basically a deliberate failure that involved recruiting all the muscles so that they're firing and not able to move the weight.

This kind of training is typically higher intensity and can be more likely to cause injuries because you're spending so much time at the top end of your capacity.

Generally you can't do the first on a caloric deficit, but you can do the other two, at least a little bit.