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...