Top 10 articles: Lon Kilgore

Most people will recognise the name of Dr Lon Kilgore from his role as co-author of Starting Strength with Mark Rippetoe.  However, Dr Kilgore has done more than just help Mark Rippetoe write the most well-regarded book about basic barbell training.  He has delved deep into the mysteries of CrossFit and asked himself some searching questions along the way.

I don’t necessarily believe that he finds the right answers or even asks the most interesting questions but the fact that he is asking questions makes him an great fitness writer in my book…

***

Here is a selection of his articles, from various sites:

1. The paradox of aerobic fitness prescription – in this thoughtful article, Dr Kilgore works through and questions the principles of aerobic training.  He starts by noting that it is commonly accepted that long-slow-distance (LSD) training raises VO2-Max and shorter distance, faster work raises the lactic acid threshold.
   1. What does he question? Primarily, he questions how LSD training can improve VO2-Max when it doesn’t comply with the General Adaptation Syndrome Theory (GAST).  The GAST decrees that organisms undergo changes in response to a stress.  Stress occurs when an organism is asked to do something that stretches the boundaries of what it is capable of doing.  So, VO2-Max, the maximum volume of O2 that can be consumed by the body at maximum effort, cannot be improved by LSD (unless GAST is not valid) because the amount of O2 being processed is very small.
   2. What does he conclude? Dr Kilgore therefore concludes that the correct prescription for developing VO2-Max must therefore be short, sharp intervals.
   3. Do you agree? I don’t agree with Dr Kilgore’s conclusion but I agree with his question.  I think that the fundamental problem with his conclusion is that it ignores the muscular adaptations, which is ironic, given that he is a self-confessed meat-head.  As I noted in my personal training notes about cardiovascular training, the adaptations that occur in the muscles caused by LSD are very significant.  It is clear that they are significant because cardiovascular training is movement specific.  So Lance Armstrong can win the world’s most challenging bike race but he can’t be competitive at a marathon.  If the majority of cardiovascular training effects were on the heart and lungs, this movement specificity would be a lot less significant.
   4. So what next? Well, in the spirit of Dr Kilgore’s questions, I think the next question should be “is it necessary to consider training the heart or should we be focussing on training the muscular adaptations instead?”
2. The measure of a man – the ever thoughtful Dr Kilgore advises to consider how the anthropometrics of lifters can affect how they set their form when doing fundamental barbell exercises such as deadlifts, squats and Olympic exercises.
3. Redefining fitness – I wrote about the different concepts of fitness during my personal training voyages.  In this article, Dr Kilgore discusses the various definitions that have been attempted over the years.  Interestingly, he refers to the evolutionary concept of fitness, as defined by Charles Darwin, which is a fascinating avenue for consideration.  He just touches on it and moves on, however.  Finally, he settles on three main principles: strength, endurance and mobility.  His interest is purely with respect to the general population, however, and he does not attempt to define “fit” in the context of any given sport or athletic pastime.
4. Physics, physiology and food – if, for some reason, you ever wanted a sensible defence of the Zone Diet that wasn’t foaming at the mouth, here it is.  Again, I think that Dr Kilgore is putting his great mind to work in order to make sense of some complex issues but I think he makes a fundamental assumption: that the requirements of a diet can be reduced to the needs of a training programme.  However, most of us accept that a diet can have health implications and that we want to maximise them.  In which case, we need to consider what data we have that helps us identify what a healthy diet might look like.  And since nutritional science has not really been very helpful in the last few decades, I believe that the Paleo Diet is really the only sensible option at the moment.
5. Practical programming for special populations – in this chapter taken from his book, Practical Programming, Dr Kilgore discusses special populations.  While he admits that women are not a special population but are in fact 50% of the population, he does start with a discussion of female training.  He then covers the specifics of programming for youth, masters and rehabilitative populations.
6. Starting strength for young people – in this important article, Dr Kilgore attacks the annoying myth that strength training should not be performed by young people for medical reasons.  He then gives detailed prescriptions for how to do it properly.
7. Seven deadly sins and the gym – you may be theologically challenged and not be aware of the seven deadly sins.  That is, of course, unless you are old enough to remember the great thriller Seven, with Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey.  In this amusing article, Dr Kilgore applies the seven sins to the gym and tells you what you need to stop doing.
8. Running the wrong way – Dr Kilgore wonders why, if the foot is so well-designed to cushion the impact of forces during walking and running, do we then reinvent the wheel by adding another shock-absorbing layer between it and the ground?  In other words, why do we bother with shoes?  I quite agree.
9. Genetic potential – Dr Kilgore muses on the impact of genetic potential on the ability of an individual to fulfil their athletic goals.
10. Interviewed by Dr Michael Hartman (parts one and two) – in this two-part interview, Dr Michael Hartman asks Dr Kilgore about his book, Anatomy without a scalpel, and gets into the detail of how he came to write it, why it was needed and what he hopes to communicate to people as a result.

***

That’s it.  I hope you enjoy reading them.  And if you would like to read more from Dr Kilgore, Iron Underground seems to be a blog that Kilgore posts to occasionally.