How often should I max out?

The temptation can be huge. Your heart will tell you 'go for it' or 'lets just see where we are at'

In the early days you'll be hitting personal bests (PBs) every week as all the improvements tend to come from technique. Once your technique catches up with your strength things will be a little different...

Often the urge to test a 1RM is purely ego based. Sometimes competitive and sometimes just through total over excitement in a session that's going well. 

Why maxing out too often isn't a good idea:

Lifting your absolute maximum comes with inherent risk. It's more likely that your form isn't going to be 100% perfect just by the very nature of it being the most you've ever lifted. It's heavy. It's hard. That isn't a bad thing once in a while, and ideally competition day is when it all comes together to happen on the platform. However, we don't really NEED to max out in training all that often. If our best double or triple is going up then most likely so is our max.

Doubles and triples, or even short complexes, with 85% and more will keep us improving. It will make us stronger and our technique will get tested in a way that 60% doesn't. We just don't need to push to the point of failure, injury or exhaustion to get better.

So how often?

Usually I'll programme true 100% max effort day (or a single test if you like) about every 3-4 months. If a lifter is competing it is a good idea to know what their 90-95% looks like about 2 weeks out from the comp. Heavy singles in training can accomplish this and if there have been big strength increases in the training phase then a new PB is entirely likely. 

Remember that at the end of a training phase, before any deload or tapering for competition, any new max is likely to be only some of what is to come. You are tired from the phase and yet to peak so expecting more at the competition 2 weeks later is ideal.

This isn't to say don't work hard and try your best of course! Max effort and max singles are different things. We still try to hit PBs fairly frequently to keep getting better but be smarter and use multiple reps (2s/3s even 4s!) and don't try to push all lifts to max all the time.

Limit the risks

Using complexes, pauses, variations like hangs and blocks we can make certain lifts harder than normal and therefore self-limiting. In this way we can keep working really hard but with weights that are slightly lower and so take less of a physical and neurological toll on us. This is where a coach can come into their own and programming can get clever.

Some days it’s on, and you feel great to chase those bigger numbers. Other days you know deep down it’s not going to happen. A quick honest assessment during your warm ups and early working sets is usually enough to figure that out. Just don’t be silly about it and get hurt chasing a PB when there was really no point.

We'd love to hear from you on this. How often do you max out? Bulgarian style?