Joel Jamieson has done the world of conditioning a great service in his book “Ultimate MMA Conditioning.” He provides a very concise account of the energy systems of the body, their role in different types of activity, and how best to train them.
While the title suggests that he’s focused on MMA conditioning, Joel does a really good job of making his discussion general. Energy systems don’t change, and the best ways to train them may vary in the particular movement used, but not in their fundamental attributes/acute variables (intensity, amount of time per rep or set, etc.).
I bought the book looking for precisely this sort of expert-view on energy system training theory and methods. Jamieson has been training athletes for many years, and has studied or consulted with many of the top strength and conditioning coaches in the world.
One of Jamieson’s main points is in regards to the misguided notion that “explosive” athletes only need to train anaerobically. While he doesn’t go into the evolutionary history of energy systems, the aerobic system is the oldest, and it is the one we utilized constantly (as Jamieson says in his lecture to a VA State Coaches group – “If you’re sitting here, you’re using your aerobic system right now). Anaerobic energy systems are evolutionarily younger, and develop in individuals later (fully maturing anytime between 7 and 18 years of age).
To further support Jamieson’s ideas, a recent paper by Apanasenko (“Maximum Aerobic Capacity for Work as a Criterion of Optimal Ontogeny“) says that aerobic work capacity may be the best criterion for judging the health of a human being. Apanasenko makes the great point that energy usage – bioenergetics – is the main factor in the functional range of an organism.
If you have any desire to better understand the fundamentals of energy system function or development, and how to train (including testing/benchmarking) those systems – buy the book!
Some recent readings and viewings, and conversations with my good friend Charlie Reid, have brought up a bunch of thoughts on training methods for me, that I’d like to share here.
I’m starting to think that any use of hypertrophy rep ranges in weightlifting should be either athletic (position-related – i.e., for athletes who need more mass for their position – e.g., American football linemen, etc.) OR for bodybuilding purposes (again, mass-building).
Hypertrophy weight-training as a “general rule” seems to be justified only by the bodybuilding craze, and doesn’t really seem to contribute anything of value to the average person or non-mass-needing athletes (other than “physique” or “mass”).
Strength does not require specific hypertrophy work. For instance, take a look at the old programs of Paul Anderson and other pre-1960′s strongmen. They didn’t do hypertrophy rep/weight ranges. They did high weights/low reps or low weights for technique (still relatively low reps). Granted, Anderson was an enormous man, from his heavy milk, eggs, and honey diet. He was certainly “obese” by most standards (BMI or bodyfat percentage).
A good modern-day example is Ross Enamait, whose training (as far as I’m familiar with it) emphasizes static/isometric strength and the development of maximal strength and power.
Volume was what created any hypertrophy old-time strongmen had. By old-time strongmen, I don’t mean the “physical culturists,” like Eugene Sandow, who obviously did pursue hypertrophy-based repetition ranges. Just like with athletes pre 1970′s. If an athlete was “ripped,” it was because they did considerably higher volume. But most athletes pre 1970′s (or even 1980′s) weren’t ripped, and didn’t have huge physiques.
That said, the comparison of modern-day exercise to that done even by bodybuilders in the 1890′s is unfair. Mostly because the “bodybuilders” in those days also performed extensive physical and acrobatic stunts, like back- and front-flips, weighted back-bridges, etc.
“Physical Culture” was just becoming a “discipline” unto itself at that point, and embraced the development of all of the “purely-physical” qualities of the trainee – balance, acrobatic ability/coordination, strength, power, etc. But this was mostly done through practice of skills with a supplementation of weight training – a trend that is starting to return in certain circles (see Joel Jamieson’s training at 8weeksout.com), but is still relatively rare.
But back to hypertrophy. Does it actually transfer to improvement in performance? Not really.
Look at Barry Bonds pre-1993…he was still an MVP with the Pirates, and a relatively skinny dude could be a phenomenal baseball player. I don’t think the drugs were what helped him (at least, not 100%…check out this article – http://www.cosellout.com/2007/08/24/the-myths-of-756-bary-bonds-predictable-power-progression/).
Anabolic Wheaties anyone?
Another good example is George St. Pierre (“GSP”) – the UFC fighter, who said in an interview that he only lifts weights for looks (body-sculpting)…to quote:
“I don’t believe in strength and conditioning. I never do strength and conditioning. I do not believe that running on a treadmill or doing I don’t know what, so called machine. I don’t believe that’s going to help you have better cardio for a fight. I think everything in fighting is about efficiency…The only reason it is good to lift weights, to do bench press, and stuff like that, I believe, is because it is going to make me more marketable, and to keep myself looking more symmetric, with a better image.”
GSP also says in the article linked above that “I remember I had a Muay Thai instructor from France, that I even brought on the reality show The Ultimate Fighter. The guy smoked, I don’t know how many packs of cigarettes a day. He’s always drinking alcohol. He’s a real character, and he’s completely out of shape, but when he spars with us in Muay Thai, he kicks everyone’s ass. The reason is because he is more efficient than we are.”
Not a wuss.
“Sports scientists” will say (accurately) that maximal force production is directly related to the cross-sectional area of the muscle. That is, the more dense and thick the muscle, the more force it will be able to generate. However, as I mentioned above, hypertrophy also results from a high volume of work. This is why Olympic weightlifters, who usually stay far away from the hypertrophy rep-ranges, have incredibly large thighs. They do many sets of 1-3 repetitions. The training volume on their legs is incredibly high.
For O-lifters, they do this because that is their sport. That is, you can’t get good at the Clean & Jerk or the Snatch without learning how to squat and squat really well – which requires repetitive practice (i.e., volume).
But to say that just because O-lifters have big thighs and are incredibly strong squatters means that a person with big thighs is naturally more athletic at their sport (if it isn’t O-lifting) is ridiculous. Strength doesn’t impart skill…and often times, bulk doesn’t help at all, since it’s gained in a manner not-specific to the sport demands.
Just like with GSP, extra mass is more cosmetic (especially in baseball) than “performance-enhancing.”
Even in a sport like sprinting, the benefits of specific hypertrophy work seem far-fetched to me. Charlie Francis comments in one of his forum posts that the sprinters he saw who were strong in the gym were strong because they were good sprinters first, not vice versa.
Similarly, in his “Mastering the NFL Combine” DVD , Joe DeFranco outlines a preparation program that has no hypertrophy work at all. I know DeFranco has guys do hypertrophy work at times, but not having them do it in the Combine program points precisely to what I’m talking about – it isn’t necessary for performance (unless the athlete really needs it).
Charlie Francis was Ben Johnson’s sprint coach, which raises an interesting side-point to this post. Johnson was disqualified from the 88 Olympics for steroid use. Francis’ book “Speed Trap” talks about this a bit, and Francis was an outspoken opponent of the IOC’s steroid-testing regime.
Now I’m not saying that Carl Lewis (Ben’s biggest opponent) never did steroids. Nor am I advocating for their use (or disuse). Those are topics for another post. What’s interesting here is that Carl Lewis saw weightlifting as secondary to sprint training – something Francis’ comment alludes to, though his sprinters did lift heavy and often. There are plenty of forums on this, but check out Brian Mac’s page and Fred Hatfield’s if this topic interests you.
Heavy weightlifting does increase musculo-tendinous strength, power production, etc. An argument exists for heavy weight lifting with athletes (which was mostly the type of lifting Johnson did, btw), but limited to what volume is tolerable to the athlete within the demands of their sport-specific training.
The main idea I’m playing with here is that “strength” has been defined specifically as related to hypertrophy-based weight training, which in my opinion isn’t very important or necessary for superior health or athletic performance. The corollary of that concept is that many people believe that strength itself leads to better performance. This is especially true in the trainer/strength-coach world, of course…being a little biased toward strength.
I know it may seem very “basic” to many coaches out there, but in the personal training world it is more and more important to emphasize the proper use of weight training and especially of hypertrophy-based training methods.
And that’s the reason for this post – to attempt to start a discussion, and maybe help to change this trend that’s been going on for the past twenty years or so regarding the nature of superior physical development.
Hypertrophy is all well and good, but it should be an adjunct (at most) to the training of physical skill, which involves – coordination and balance (proprioception, nociception and vestibular sense), strength (maximal), speed and power, and – perhaps above all – movement quality represented through skill-development.
In the end, there is no “right” or “wrong” to this. There are different goals, and different means of achieving those goals. As John Wood of the Oldtime Strongman Site writes:
Lets forget everything about training for a minute and focus on you… your goals… your available equipment… your motivation levels… your training time… your willingness to “stick with it, — all that kind of thing.
What you “should” do depends on these factors, not how someone tells you you must train, and from that, the type of workout that is necessary should become quite clear. Once a week, every day, to failure, not to failure, basic, complex, weights, bodyweight, kettlebells, sandbags – whichever you choose, there’s going to be the correct way to do it for the results you want, and the not-correct way to do it, which will be a waste of time. ..
…But again, just like the training examples of the oldtime strongmen I mentioned above, of all you could do, it must fall in line with a few basic physiological principles otherwise nothing will happen – no improvement, no muscle growth – nothing.
Some styles of training are quite clearly “better” – but the real question is “better how?” Some take more time, some less, some use equipment, some don’t. Again, it comes down to you, and your goals.
Update:
I tracked down a paper by Newman, et al. (2006) called “Strength, But Not Muscle Mass, Is Associated With Mortality in the Health, Aging and Body Composition Study Cohort.”
Nice name, huh?
Anyway, the researchers found that muscle strength (especially of the quadriceps and hand-grip muscles (hand intrinsics and forearms) and not size to be correlated with decreased incidence of mortality (death). That is, people whose legs and grip were weak tended to die sooner.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the reasons behind this correlation. I’ll outline them in another post later.
It’s a fantastic piece of work, and if I remember correctly says that the aspect of muscular strength that fades with age is actually power – and that the development of power is greatest from ballistic movements in which the weight is actually thrown/propelled by the individual.
Having been part of EA for the past three years, and a member of the development team both for the video and trainer path, I’m incredibly excited for these first steps to be done.
Please go take a look, and buy the video! The EA games are fantastic games for many reasons (that I’ll be outlining in future posts) – but the best way to figure out their effect is to try them for yourself!
Joel Jamieson at 8 Weeks Out has put up a great video covering energy system training concepts. This is a little technical, but not super-technical. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in understanding what their body is doing during exercise (and perhaps, to help to inform their workouts).
Before getting into my review, let me just explain really quickly – there are three energy systems in the body, ways the body creates energy. Aerobic (using oxygen), Anaerobic-Lactic (production of energy without the presence of oxygen, producing and utilizing lactic-acid in the process), and Anaerobic-Alactic (which is the production of energy without oxygen, and without lactic acid use/buildup).
Usually, these energy systems are associated with certain types of effort. The aerobic system is usually associated with low-intensity exercise, where the body can constantly use oxygen as a main catalyst in energy production. Anaerobic-lactic system has traditionally been associated with high-intensity/longer-duration events, such as the 400m sprint, where all-out effort is made for anywhere between 10 seconds to 1 minute. The anaerobic-lactic system is associated with anything taking around 10 seconds to complete – very short bursts of absolute effort.
Joel’s main point is that the aerobic system is not only always “on” (you’re using it now), but is also dominant in many of the sports or events traditionally thought of as “anaerobic.”
Joel’s breakdown of training by energy-system and physiological markers is really appealing to me. Some of his big points in this lecture:
high intensity works in the short term, but eventually you hit a point where you can’t increase intensity anymore (…and I’d add, where the athlete breaks down)…tabata protocols work for about 3 weeks, then you have to increase intensity again somehow.
using high intensity without background/foundation work doesn’t make any sense…e.g. – depth jumps for a person who has a crappy squat max; or 1RM squat for someone who has never squatted before…lower-level intensities will offer much greater gains for those folks.
every major sport that’s repetitive/intermittent with short rest periods is largely anaerobic-alactic dominant…with an aerobic base…sports with huge rest-periods (8-minutes plus) are the “only” truly anaerobic-lactic sports [for instance, 400m sprints, rowing , etc]. For instance, Joel notes a 70-80% aerobic, 20-30% anaerobic split in MMA/Karate tournaments, etc.
aerobic fitness is not only duration, but also volume-related.
harder is not always better…lots of lactic work will kill an athlete eventually…and usually not really match the profile of their sport/event.
take a short term loss in some aspect of performance in order to get a long-term gain – e.g., focusing more on aerobic capacity in someone with crappy aerobic profile will increase recovery and give better gains in the long-term.
But what does all of this mean?
Popular opinion in the past claimed that all athletes needed an “aerobic base” in order to perform. Boxers would usually run three miles per day – “road work” – to build such a base.
Within the past ten or so years this concept was flipped on its head, with coaches claiming that no aerobic base was needed – instead, the athlete should train only in the energy system dominant in their sport.
With the rise of MMA (mixed-martial arts) and the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), and the popularity of the Crossfit ultra-high-intensity/volume training model happening around the same time, this led to an approach that was very high-intensity, very high-volume, and very low in aerobic base conditioning.
Athletes (and non-athletes) were encouraged to push the limits every workout, and usually in anaerobic-lactic efforts. What ends up happening is that focused or intentional development of the aerobic system is sacrificed. This results in poorer recovery times. The aerobic system helps to flush the body of the metabolic by-products of exercise, bringing oxygen and nutrients to the tissues.
As Joel says, this doesn’t mean that you have to go out and do 3 miles of running if you’re a boxer. That energy is basically “wasted,” since it takes time and effort that could be spent on technique. If you’re an athlete, instead, work your aerobic conditioning in by doing longer, lower-intensity technique-based sessions that also tax the aerobic capacity.
Joel makes some good comments about developing these systems, particularly with regard to athletes versus non-athletes. The non-athlete will pretty much respond to any stimulus relatively well. It’s not necessary to get super-specific for the average person to see gains in both the aerobic and anaerobic systems.
It’s when you start becoming better and better conditioned that tradeoffs have to be made. The energy systems are the ways muscles (and other tissues) create energy. Training one system (anaerobic, for instance) means that you physically cannot train the other (aerobic). That is, the structural changes in the tissues preclude one another. So you can get really good in both, but at some point, a choice has to be made (at least for a while).
This leads to Joel’s comments on periodization – first, you have to round-out the athlete, and pay attention to where they are now. Just because an athlete has a great anaerobic profile doesn’t mean that they’re ready to go. They may “gas out” early because they’ve neglected aerobic capacity. You have to always track people individually, and compare them against normative data, checking that against their performance. Joel uses the Omegawave system, which seems to be a fantastic tool.
The second point on periodization is that training in the most important system 80% of the time is best, but you can’t neglect that other 20%. It’s important to train up to an event to perform at your best, but when you’re done, in order to continue advancing, you should train in the other system.
Got the most recent entry from Steve Magness’ “Science of Running” blog. Aside from it being a great blog by a passionate learner and athlete, the videos, to me at least, are like visual music. It looks like a symphony. They’re truly beautiful! So, first, to Steve – thanks for filming and sharing these!!!
I just wanted to relate what I see/saw in these videos. What I notice most is less “exaggeration” in movement between the leaders and the followers.
The lead runners’ forms are “tighter.” Not in the sense of “bound up,” but in the sense of “economical” or “efficient.” The lead runners are still relaxed, but there’s no extreme movement of any kind. No extreme knee raise, foot movement, foot-lead (over COG), postural positioning, etc.
I’ve re-posted one of his videos below, but you should go check the others out!
Some folks appear to be very competitive at first, but change when things go south.
For instance, you may encounter someone who talks smack when you do poorly at a skill (and, of course, this person rarely offers any kind of assistance or coaching to help you to correct your form).
But then, when the tables are turned, and they are behind in points, or start to slip up in performance, they start the victim/blame game – “you changed the rules,” “the rules aren’t fair,” “my shoes are too small”…whatever.
The excuses start to flow, and the “competitiveness” has turned against the game itself, instead of against the other team.
Why? Well, if the person is still competitive against the other team, they have to admit that they are not good enough to win in that particular situation. They can no longer talk smack against anything – not the other team, not the game itself, not the equipment…maybe themselves.
The best coaches tend to nip this type of behavior in the bud. “Don’t blame the equipment,” they’ll say, “it’s just doing what you tell it to.”
The point of this post, however, is that I think competitiveness is important and necessary. It’s a part of every well-played game. If one player is not invested or interested in winning, the game as a whole suffers. No one can excel, no one can do their best, or be stretched to the limits of their ability.
The difference, I think, lies in how the person playing perceives the game.
If the game is undertaken in a win/lose mentality, where winning is all that matters, and each game is its own war, competitiveness breaks down into desperation. The player is no longer free to learn, no longer free to expand. They must win at all costs.
This type of player is often “extrinsically motivated.” They want to beat the other players, they want to win against them, they may feel the need to prove themselves in comparison to the other person.
As James Carse says – “If a person must play, they cannot play.”
This, I think, is what separates the athletes I’ve always respected and admired from the rest. The athletes I’ve always looked up to saw their life as the game. Their entire life…and each individual game or match as a single training session in that long game.
This type of player is often intrinsically motivated. They want to be better than they were last time. They are in relationship with the other player. They want that player to be at their best, so that they can find out where the flaws in their game lies, and better themselves.
The perspective shifts. Intensity overtakes competitiveness. Winning against another person becomes much less significant than becoming the vision we see in our own mind – of striving to become the best that we can become. And often, we want the other person to become the best that they can become – either through selfish (I want them to become the best they can so I have the best opponent) or unselfish (I want them to realize their full potential for themselves) motives.
In your play, play with competitiveness. Assume different competitive roles, to get a feel for what each is like…become the super-aggressive win-at-all-costs athlete…then become the crafty trickster/cheater…play with competitiveness, and feel the versions that suit you, and especially the ones that don’t. Why don’t they? What assumptions do you make about those roles?
A few weeks ago I commented on a blog post by my friend JR Atwood. He had posted a brief clip from the Uncommon Schools‘ teacher training methodology. My comment, essentially, was “That looks just like dog training!”
In a private response, he mentioned that it would be interesting to see a comparison of the two – teaching methods for children vs. dog-training methods.
True to my word, I hit the books over the course of the past couple of weeks and read two dog-training texts. One of them, was Lew Burke’s “Dog Training”
Burke's book is about very specific techniques...
Ready for the comparison?
The first rule of dog training is that dogs require clear (matching your training method with your desired outcome from the dog), concise (one word), and consistent (always the same command for the same desired outcome) communication.
Regarding this first video from Uncommon Schools, we can focus on the “clarity” bit. But there’s another point, I’ll share with you after you’ve enjoyed this video:
Reward is a better motivator than punishment. More importantly, it’s crucial to discriminate between normal communication (acknowledgment, above), and praise. This is true for dogs as well. Giving a dog a friendly word is different from giving a dog a treat.
Only give a dog a treat when it has done something to deserve it.
Dog training actually goes a little deeper than that, but you have to earn that lesson…
Strong Voice
It is important to use proper TONE when speaking to your dog.
NLP literature points out that 87% of communication is body language, 10% is the tone of your speech, and only 3% of your communication is conveyed in the actual content of your words. (I’m guesstimating those percentages…too lazy to look up the exact reference right now).
This lesson carries over to dog training as well. Your dog will discern a lot about you from the way you hold yourself. Raise a fist to strike it, and it isn’t going to respond kindly. Act wildly, and it will think you’re unreliable.
Tone is equally important for dog-training. Most people who have ever had a dog have used the old trick of saying a bunch of nasty names or things about their dog in a candy-sweet voice. The dog invariably wags its tail, not connecting the content to the tone.
Few dogs – showdogs, mostly – have the range of vocabulary to really understand that last 3% of human communication anyway…
Now watch this:
Eye contact is used here. In dog training, the books used for this post mention that either direct eye contact, OR removal of attention, can be used equally well to convey your “leadership” status.
For instance, when giving the dog food, you might look directly (and seriously) into its eyes as you give the “sit” command. Again, the dog must earn everything it gets from its leader (you).
Or, you might say “sit” and look away from the dog, removing your attention (a valuable thing to a dog). When it does sit, you can bring your attention back to the dog, lavish it with praise, put the food down, and leave it to eat.
Cold Call
A dog must respond to your command any time you issue it. It cannot be sporadic response.
That being said, once a dog has learned a skill, the best way to reinforce it is through random reinforcement.
More Thoughts
Now, before you go yelling at me, telling me how insensitive I am to suggest that children are just like dogs, think about this for a second. First, I’m not just talking about children here (read my previous post on the difference between “children” and “adults”). Second, and more importantly, I think it’s time we begin looking at how we actually behave, instead of how we’d like things to be.
The use of motivational tactics is nothing new. I’ve seen plenty of parents these days with leashes on their children!
I think what is (relatively) new in our culture is the lack of consistent understanding about how animals (dogs, pigs, cattle, human beings, monkeys, whatever) behave, and how to treat animals if you want something from them.
In older times (here I go, romanticizing the past…) we dealt with animals quite a deal more. We also had very real “survival” demands to take care of (for instance, if we were farmers). Now that we’re removed from those things, we think there is some sort of “distance” (real and figurative) between us human beings and the other animals in the kingdom of animalia.
Do you think so?
I’ll leave you with this, a quote from Nicholas Dodman’s book, “The Well-Adjusted Dog”:
“Think about it. You have removed your pet’s need to hunt by supplying food. You have removed his romantic interests by neutering him. You have removed his social needs by depriving him of pack interests and competition. He can’t even wander and explore his outside territory, let alone try to resolve his own problems – because there aren’t any…So what’s a poor dog to do? Channel his energy in unacceptable ways, that’s what.” pg. 136
I’ve said this for a long time now – that someone, somewhere, needs to put “the rules” of muscle physiology down in plain language, so that everyone can have a fair shake at strength, endurance, and physical health.
So I’ll do it here, now.
The Four Horsemen
There are only four rules that you really need to understand in order to exercise properly. They are:
1. Specificity
2. Progression/Overload
3. Acute Variables – Intensity/Volume/Frequency
4. Form/Technique
Let’s go over each.
Specifically nauseating
1. Specificity – I’ve S.A.I.D. It All Before
The first rule of physical training or conditioning is the SAID principle, coined by Digby and Sale, I think back in 1984. SAID stands for “Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands.”
The concept is this – the body is an incredibly efficient system. It will only respond to what it must, in exactly the degree it must, and only for as long as is absolutely necessary.
Therefore, you must train specifically, for the specific outcomes you wish to attain.
This is true in all of life. If you want a cheese sandwich, don’t get the peanut butter out of the cabinet.
Specificity applies not just to the type of movement you do, the muscles used, or to the type and amount of weight you use, but also to the metabolic demands placed on the body as a whole.
If you want to be a marathon runner, lifting very heavy weights is not going to help you. That is, depending upon how quickly you want to run that marathon. If speed isn’t an issue, but slowness is, maybe lifting weights is a good idea!
Blindfolding increases neural drive to muscles
2. Progression/Overload
The next principle to understand is progression/overload…or, let’s call it “the progressive overload principle.” Actually, that’s what Thomas Delorme called it in his book “Progressive Resistance Exercise,” back in 1951.
The principle is this (and is directly related to the SAID principle) – by allowing a muscle or system to grow accustomed to a stimulus, you have made it stronger. To continue making it stronger, you have to continue to increase the resistance the system must overcome.
Bam.
So, basically, keep adding weight. When it gets easier (and it will), add more weight.
Yeah? Ok then.
Now that's loading! What?!
3. Loading – Reps/Sets/Intensity/Volume/Frequency
This principle is, again, related to the SAID and Progressive Overload principles. Most people refer to this as “Periodization” – or the planning of loading based on some sort of organized schema.
First, for the sets/reps portion of this discussion, take a look at the chart below:
waryables
I made it really big on purpose. So you can see all the pretty things in there. Feel free to print this chart out and put it on your fridge, or wherever you’d like. This chart represents, to the best of my knowledge, an accurate depiction of how your muscles will respond, for the most part, to resistance based work. There are some exceptions. For instance, you can experience quite a bit of hypertrophy from high-repetition bodyweight work. Just look at a gymnast.
Further, people will differ in their responses. I, for instance, respond to 8-10 reps with hypertrophy. I’ve known some people for whom that wasn’t true. And, finally, strength itself is the combination of all of those factors – endurance, hypertrophy, maximal, and explosive strengths. Most athletes will benefit from following the 80/20 rule in their training – training 80% of the time in ways very specific to their sport, with the other 20% of the time spent in non-specific “crosstraining” type activities.
Intensity is next.
Intensity is defined as the percentage of a person’s 1-rep maximum being moved. You can see the “Load % 1RM” in column two in the chart above. That is, what % of a person’s 1-rep maximum is optimal to achieve the desired response in the muscle. It’s also directly related to how much weight a person will actually be capable of doing a certain contraction-type with. For instance, you can’t do 15 reps with 100% of your 1-rep max, by definition.
Isometrics and Explosive Work
I’ve seen people who have lifted incredible amounts of weight on their first-ever attempt at a particular weightlifting exercise, simply because they have always trained isometric (where you contract a muscle against an immovable object or opposing force – the muscle doesn’t change length during the contraction) and explosive strength.
Does that destroy the SAID principle? No, because these people also used progressive resistance in their isometric and explosive training. In fact, they were preparing their musculature in the same way that someone doing heavy lifts might, just from the other side.
So there’s another strength type to add – static/isometric strength. Train isometric strength with one set of 6-10 contractions of 6-8 seconds, anywhere between 60 and 100% of maximal contraction force – at the specific joint angle you want to increase strength in. For instance, a great use of isometrics is to get past “sticking points” in exercises. Let’s say you can’t do a pullup, you always get stuck halfway up. Start training isometrics at the end of your normal workout in that specific joint angle. Progress by adding more sets of contractions, but go slowly!
Finally, for this mini-section, the best training of explosive work is with ballistic movements – where the weight is actually physically thrown – or with plyometrics/shock-training. For ballistics, it’s fun to go to a field with a weight of some sort and just throw the hell out of it. Do squat-jump-throws, etc. For plyometrics, follow guidelines on plyo’s before beginning. Running around and jumping off and on things is not the same as plyometrics. Plyo’s are typically very specific, and involve progression to depth-jumps, and, sometimes, loaded depth-jumps. If you want more information on plyometrics, send me an email.
The last part of Number 3 here is training volume.
Volume (frequently expressed as “total sets x total weight”) is better-seen in A.S. Prilepin’s chart for training weightlifters:
Go Ask Prilepin, When He Was 10 Feet TAAAAAAALLLLLLL
Prilepin’s chart was compiled after years of charting elite weightlifters in the Soviet Union. But it works pretty well for the rest of us.
Basically, the higher the intensity (the more weight/explosiveness) of the lift, the fewer the total repetitions you do during a set, the fewer the total repetitions you do during a workout, and the fewer workouts you do during a week.
That being said, total training volume may be the same regardless of what intensity you’re training at. Total training volume is usually related to an athlete’s (or exerciser’s) level of experience with the type of training they’re doing. If you’re really experienced, you can handle a much larger total training volume (though, often, you don’t need to) than a less-experienced athlete.
While this particular version of Prilepin’s chart does not include weekly, monthly, or yearly values, you – I hope – get the idea. You can only overload the muscle so far, till it breaks. There is such a thing as “too much of a good thing.”
For the purposes of this post, it’s helpful just to remember this – the more difficult, demanding, or stressful a lift, exercise, or workout is, the more time you need for recovery.
The Soviets were, I think, the first to really emphasize the importance of recovery (physical, nervous system, and psychological) to the degree that it’s only starting to receive today.
So recover!
The Skeleton Man deadlifts!!!
4. Form/Technique
The final chapter in our list of things to know in order to succeed is this – perhaps the keystone of the four.
Form/Technique assumes, to some degree, a certain knowledge of how the body works. This is particularly true for heavy weightlifting, but can be just as true for things like Yoga and Pilates, where small, difficult movements, can cause big problems if not done correctly.
The best thing you can do is to learn how your body works. This is a fantastic book that covers just about everything you could ever need to know about this topic.
Doing, is another issue, though. When first learning how to do a particular exercise, movement, or technique, it is really important that you have a good instructor there.
As the old saying goes – Never Trust A Bald Barber.
If someone tells you they know everything about exercise and will help you to learn, but they have neither the credentials nor the physique to prove it, don’t trust them. Find someone who does. Preferably, find someone with both the physique and credentials, and a cheerful, sunny demeanor. That’ll make it easier on everyone.
