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Pure and unadulterated lifting
- Charles Poliquin explains why high pulls are a useful exercise. I have been interested in high pulls since I watched Andy Bolton’s DVD and saw him doing them.
- Dave’s Gym blog valiantly attempts to shore up the failing bodybuilding system that is HIT, with this well-written history and defence. However, it seems odd to say that “volume is not the place to go” when recent research shows that it clearly is exactly the place to go.
Personal training and coaching
- Scott Abel wades in and joins the debate on CrossFit. Needless to say, he is not impressed with what he sees.
- Zach at Thoughts of New Strength Coach writes well about his experience at a seminar that Charlie Weingroff presented. I thought there were some very good points made there.
- This observation is more “business of fitness” than personal training or coaching, but I have been interested to see some of the posts that have been flying around from some of the bigger luminaries recently. You can tell that points are being made, and scores settled, but you can’t quite see who they are aiming at. In this line, you can see an undercurrent of disgruntlement in Alywn Cosgrove and Jason Feruggia’s post at Elite FTS about marketing and capability and a similar defensive tone in Mike Robertson’s post about who he trains. When you consider how infrequently the above three experts write these days, it must have taken something quite substantial to get them typing…
Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations
- Jonny Bowden explains why Tim Ferriss drinks yerba mate all the time and why it might be a better drink than coffee, for those of us still addicted to caffeine.
- And J Stanton at Gnolls continues the quest to understand why we ended up so much cleverer than we were.
- While Dr Phil Wagner explains that it is perfectly possible to eat large amounts of protein at one sitting and digest it. There is no need to split the same meal up into several smaller meals throughout the day.
Sleep, stress and health
- Everyone is talking about the myth of the 8-hour sleep at the moment. You can read about it briefly at Boing Boing and in more detail on the BBC.
- And more from the BBC, which has run an interesting article on obesity. The title is somewhat misleading, as it implies a “false choice” between diet and surgery. In fact, the article discusses diet as part of a number of lifestyle changes, including exercise. Anyway, the point is that the NHS are not happy with people throwing up their hands and claiming they can’t lose weight and demanding surgery, so they are pushing them out to do 6-9 months of lifestyle changes, with help, before they admit them. I dread to think what they consider to be “appropriate nutrition advice” but at least it will be better than what they are eting at the moment…
- The Global Sociology blog reviews a recent book about the change in working practices between 1970 and the present day in the US. There have been big changes there and one wonders how they impact on stress, health and obesity. The author asserts that the changes have “magnified social problems such as poverty, work-family conflicts, political polarization, and disparities by race, ethnicity, and gender.” Michael Marmot would tell you that this sort of thing causes serious health problems. It often frustrates me that political arguments often neglect discussion of such data-driven externalities in favour of unproven theory.
Other interesting stuff
- I love talking about the confirmation bias. It reaffirms my strong belief that human beings are basically sheep and most people have about as much control over their lives as a leaf on a tree. So I was pleased to read this great article at Este es James Fisher.
- And if you want to see Nietzsche worked into an article about strength and conditioning, look no further than this interview with Philip McSorley.
- I once planned to do the popular cycling route, Land’s End to John O’Groats, which I will probably never do now, as I took in the North East coast of Scotland on another cycling tour, so I feel I’ve done the interesting bit already! Anyway, I remember the thought process well, so it was fun to read Cameron McNeish going through the same chain of thoughts.
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That’s all folks!
Some interesting articles there, thanks for sharing!
One thing I’d question – The study you link to in order to debunk HIT is measuring the effect of volume on strength gains.
I’d argue that most people doing HIT are doing so for hypertrophy, rather than strength.
A large part of strength is skill – A barbell squat for example (the exercise tested in the study) takes a huge amount of skill to perform correctly. It therefore makes sense that the more sets you do, the better you will become at it, I think few people would argue with that.
Unfortunately the study makes no mention of comparative hypertrophy gains, nor weather there was any difference in strength gains for other movements/skills aside from squatting – I.e. was there any difference in vertical jump for example?
If the trainee has no interest in squatting more weight, might not the extra time taken for those extra 7 sets be better devoted to practicing their preferred sport and/or getting extra recovery/relaxation time?
Simon, thanks for your comment and I am glad you liked the links. It was not my intention to debunk HIT, as (under very specific circumstances), I believe it really does work. However, I also believe that for the vast majority of trainees looking for long-term gains in strength and/or hypertrophy, volume is a better way of progressing than intensity.
I think that if you are accustomed to resistance training (i.e. not a novice) but are not strong yet then hypertrophy will follow strength (and therefore volume is the answer). On the other hand, I think that if you are already strong (e.g. 200kg squat, 250kg deadlift, 150kg bench), then hypertrophy-specific training (such as HIT) is a good option. Training for hypertrophy before you are strong is probably the worst kind of mistake and it can be seen in gyms up and down the country. As Dan John says (for hypertrophy), “the answer was never high reps / low weight or low reps / high weights. The answer was always high reps / high weights.”
On the study, the scope was limited but important. It is ultimately up to the coach to decide what qualities to develop. The study merely shows that if you want to develop strength (i.e. if the coach has decided to focus on that quality), then more volume is the place to go. Clearly, speed and power would be developed in different ways than just squatting.
If the trainee has no interest in squatting extra weight, then (a) this study probably won’t be of interest to them, and (b) they are either already an advanced lifter who has built a good level of strength and is now concentrating on hypertrophy or athletic development as you rightly suggest. Alternatively, they could be deluded and think that they can gain muscle or athletic ability without getting stronger (and sadly this happens quite a lot).
As a final aside, I would note that some people use HIT very effectively to retain muscle while dieting. This can yield great results because of the low-stress approach. This should not be confused with gaining muscle, although the resulting transformations can look like the individuals concerned have become more muscular because of the added definition.
You think that someone should build up to a 200kg squat before considering an HIT/Hypertrophy program?
I would argue that if a person is only interested in muscle, why devote the time, effort and risk involved in squatting, when muscle growth can be achieved by other much safer and quicker means?
Squatting aside, you have a lot of good points in there, and I think all but the most dogmatic of coaches would agree that there is no “perfect number of sets”
The optimum volume is going to depend upon an individual’s Goals, Genetics, External Stresses, and Exercise Selection to name but a few.
I totally agree however that this study should be of interest to anyone looking to up their back squat, but just questioned its pertinence to an article on HIT, which was the context within which you posted it.
Simon, the article on HIT (which I enjoyed and thought was very well written and researched) made a comment to the effect that “volume isn’t the way to go” hence I cheekily refered to this study, which shows that volume can be a very effective way to go. That was all that was intended, to justify the use of volume as an appropriate method for increasing strength (and therefore size). And I don’t think the study is tied to the back squat. I think it could easily apply to other exercises.
And yes, at the risk of appearing provocative, I think that if you can’t squat c. 200kg (just a random number I pulled out of a hat) you probably aren’t very big and you probably aren’t likely to be very big in the near future. You have to build the house before you can put the decorative touches on it. And no, I don’t believe there is a quicker way to getting big than squatting a lot and frequently. Safer, perhaps, but not quicker.
In fact, I think you could leave everything else out and just squat three times a week and you would get better results for strength and size than doing just about anything else whatsoever.
Thanks for sharing.
The Ferrugia, Cosgrove, Robertson bit is quite interesting in a “voyeuristic” sort of way… I wonder who could have done the Tennis program (and maybe even published it on the Internet).
Concerning Yerba mate(I liked when I tried even if I don’t really like the traditional use of the same “pot” and straw among strangers), the danger of these kind of articles is to add confusion in a realm already very confusing (caffeine is bad so one reads, but BSP writes coffee is good, and Poliquin says big amounts of caffeine help with strenght….).
Now Yerba mate becomes a “superfood” when one is detoxing of caffeine but wants a caffeine “kick” nonetheless… Also the though of adding stevia or coconut milk to YM is a little strange to me.
Thanks for sharing your experience of Yerba mate, Ramon, I have read about it before but never tried it myself.
Thanks for the link, Chris! I also just got your first edition of Strength and Conditioning Research and it is great! I am really looking forward to these.
You’re welcome, Zach. And I am very glad you are enjoying the first edition of S&CR. We put a lot of work into making it as awesome as possible.