The papers that are contained within this collection form the basic structure of this projects literature review. The review will begin with the early work that lead to the development of the concept of an optimal load. It begins with the work of Berger, primarily one of his first papers in 1962, which studied the training stimulus provided by manipulating the number of repetitions and/or sets. It then goes onto his 1967 paper, which took the concept of training specificiy a stage further by exploring the training stimulus provided by isometric, dynamic and explosive resistance training and their effects on vertical jump performance. The latter paper appears to have been an inspiration to Kaneko who in 1983 published his seminal paper, which really did give birth to the concept of an optimal resistance training load for the development of powerful muscle function. Briefly the paper investigated the influence that load manipulation had on arm flexion strength, velocity and mechanical po (less)