Absolutely.
In regards to considering the nature of the training irritant I’d urge readers to think less of the exogenous character and more of the endogenous character.
High CNS effort, as a result of physical workload, is yielded by high force and or high velocity muscle contractions and from this point we must consider the number and size of muscles involved in the work, the amplitude of movement, the working intensity, magnitude of resistance, regime of muscle activity, rest intervals, and so on.
As it stands, many novice and over fat trainees struggle to manipulate their own bodyweight and, as a result, high force, relatively speaking of course, efforts (in the form of maximal efforts) are required to negotiate even a few repetitions.
gymrob I cannot urge you strongly enough to review the periodization and programming models of Verkhoshansky, Issurin, and Bondarchuk. All three have excellent texts available on the subject and each one of them will give you a far more complete picture of the entire process versus what you’ve mentioned you’ve read thus far.
The biggest mistake, in my view, the coach/manager of training can make is to delineate between technical-tactical training and physical preparation and this is EXACTLY, and tragically for the athletes, what the vast majority of texts authored by North American’s illustrate.
Sport training is an organic whole that is greater than the sum of its parts (ergo the psychological, technical-tactical, physical, and intellectual) and along with this we must remember that the alteration of one aspect of preparation always impacts another.