Dead Serious About Strength

In every gym when someone decides to place an unreasonable amount of weight on the bar you'll get an increased viewership 👀. People quietly doubt that you can move that weight and will simply hover around, pretend to be practising active recovery while sneaking in a few gawks until you make them believers. I love that feeling, but to get it you have to actually BE strong enough to pull it off. This is how I go about it:

Go hard, then go soft 
Weekly cycling of heavy lifting with lighter, more 'pump' based lifting optimizes your strength potential. The reasoning is simple, the different stimulus forces adaptations while allowing you to recover sufficiently before going BIG again. I used to lift heavy every chance I got until I plateaued. I was both mentally and physically cooked. I switched it up, enjoyed my sessions, recovered better and started increasing how much weight I could move. This is the general outline of my programming for compound lifts (squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press).

Eat big, to lift big
I'm a committed intermittent faster and during my eating window I eat BIG,  with particular emphasis on carbohydrates (bananas, berries, rice, oats and sweet potatoes) to top off glycogen stores and protein (animal meats, eggs, cow milk) to facilitate muscle recovery. Any downward adjustment in food intake i.e. low carb diet will make heavy lifts difficult. You have to put in what you want to get out.

Creatine and caffeine
Probably the only two things a natural, recreational strength athlete needs to get a small boost in lifting capacity. I take them as a basic strength supplement stack and it works well for me. 

Mental recalibration
Ever gotten under a bar and worried about not getting back up if you go down? It's common with high risk lifts like bench press and squat. If you're smart about your lifting and you opt to progressively overload then that gradual progression can help you eliminate any fear of a mishap. You have built yourself up to handle that load so fear not.

Get ugly, get aggressive
Max lift, pretty face? Unlikely. Heavy weight, composed approach? Not a chance. When you're churning out maximum output you have to, quite literally, get ugly and aggressive. Embrace your inner savage to get the most out of your lifts.