It is often said by futurists (those who study the past to predict the future) that there is an over-reaction to most new concepts in the short term, yet an under-reaction in the long term. We can all come up with countless examples of it – the high carb trend of a few years ago – which has become the zero carb trend recently. However, never has this concept been more apparent than in the strength and conditioning industry particularly in recent years.
This is part one of what I expect will become an ongoing series where I, or other writers, give their opinions as to the current attitudes towards different ideas in our world.
1) Aerobics
Over-reaction
Aerobic training has to be the single most over-reacted to, and thus overemphasized training modality in the history of our field. It started with Kenneth Cooper but I don’t think even he meant aerobic training to receive the almost religious type treatment it has. The only reason aerobic work even requires extra oxygen is because of demand from the muscular system. It doesn’t matter what activity you are involved in – aerobics or weight training – it is muscular demand that determines caloric burn. So you have to begin with that in mind.
Let’s think about it logically (I know this is hard for the strength coaching field). For example, you can run a mile in ten minutes and can swim a mile in twenty minutes. After a year of swimming every day and not running – you can now swim a mile in 16 minutes. Without running – how much has your running improved? Very little.
Why? We only have ONE cardiovascular system – so why doesn’t improving your swimming (and cardio system) automatically improve your running?
Because the ONLY reason your cardio system was involved in the first place was because of demand from your muscular system. So you adapted to the SPECIFIC MUSCULAR demands of swimming which by default then involves the cardiovascular system – it’s not the other way around as most people think. The muscles don’t move because of cardiovascular demand – the cardio system is elevated because of muscular demand. We need to program the body based on the movements it’s going to perform – not based on the cardiovascular system. That’s an upside down method of programming.
I think the over-reaction to aerobics peaked around 92. I can remember watching a weightlifter being interviewed at the 92 Barcelona Games (I’m sure most lifters can relate) – when after watching the athlete perform a few sets, the interviewer asked “What type of exercise do you do for your heart?”
Under-reaction
The under-reaction to aerobic training has been fairly recent. Perhaps I’m guilty of it also. The problem was that the emphasis on aerobic training had been so entrenched that in order to bring balance to the equation; coaches such as myself had to take a diametrically opposed position in order to even have a chance of being heard. The real message was that anaerobic interval training could provide all the benefits of aerobic training and then some.
However, it has swung too far the other way. The message heard was that aerobic training is “the devil” – a fat storing injury promoting muscle catabolizing monster that has to be avoided at all costs. As a result athletes have avoided all energy system work.
Back to center:
Aerobic training is beneficial – it’s healthy and it burns up calories. It won’t eat up muscle tissue like Hannibal Lecter after making weight, and despite it not living up to its miracle fat burning claims – any calorie burning activity can help in a weight management program. I think some form of moderate cardiovascular activity can be helpful regardless of your personal goals.
2) Tempo Training
Over-reaction
The idea of paying attention to rep speed was largely new to the fitness industry when Ian King and Charles Poliquin introduced the concept. They suggested a three digit formula to help coaches communicate as to how reps were being performed by their athletes. It’s not hard to recognize that a bench press performed with a controlled eccentric, a definite pause and an explosive concentric was different than a drop, bounce, and wiggle.
However, people went nuts. Websites ran articles with 30-0-30 tempos (that’s aerobics not strength training). I saw an article not too long ago that had different tempos within the set (i.e. rep one was 201, rep 2 was 515 – what the hell is that supposed to be doing?)
Under-reaction
A common argument is, “If I focus on maintaining a 301 speed then I can’t focus on just working hard”. The lack of good form in most people’s training programs makes that a moot point. For most clients - using anything to tighten up a rep will be better and lead to more results. There's no point in pushing "hard" if your form is garbage. But it’s the three digit formula that’s to blame here – not varying rep speed.
Recent comments against tempo training have mentioned that counting “reduces neural drive”. Really? Counting your reps too? But that is perhaps a valid argument against a three digit formula – but again it’s not a valid argument against varying rep speed.
Back to Center
Tempo prescriptions allow coaches to have another way to measure progress. For instance, if a trainee completes a set of five reps with an additional 5lbs, it's tough to ascertain whether or not the trainee actually improved if they actually did the set in less time. But if the trainee did the 5 reps with the additional load at the same approximate speed as before then we know they improved.
A rep is just pretty much a measure of time and distance (an object moved from point A to point B and back constitutes a rep). Most people only think of a rep in terms of distance.
If I wanted you to do bench presses and you were only doing half reps – then you’re not doing what I wanted. I’m assuming that you use full range. Similarly I’m assuming that you do all your reps at the same speed. But what if you don’t?
If I change your program from 6 reps to 12 reps I have effectively doubled your time under tension assuming your rep speed was constant. If your rep speed changes then I won’t get the training effect I’m looking for. For example, if you are doing 6 reps at 3 seconds a rep (18 total seconds), and then you progress to 8 reps with a 2 second rep speed (16 total seconds) – did you really improve? You are now being exposed to a shorter time-under-tension.
Research by Greg Wilson in 1991 showed that it took 4 seconds to dissipate the stretch shortening cycle in the bench press. In other words – you were still using momentum if the pause was any less than 4 seconds. All this tells us is that for pure muscle work – pausing makes it harder. For strength and speed work, we should exploit the stretch shortening cycle and have no pause.
And whether we realize it or not – telling our athletes to pause on the box, or to hold the top of a back extension for a two count is a form of tempo training. Even the most vocal critic of tempo would have to accept that doing back extensions with a 2 second pause at the top of each rep is an entirely different training effect than doing them without a pause. Wilson’s research is unequivocal: rep speed can be used as a source of training variety.
This is where it all got screwed.
95% of all concentric movements should be done as fast as possible (the 5% being rehabilitative concerns). So tempo variation should only ever have been to lengthen the eccentric component or exploit or diminish the stretch shortening cycle in the midpoint of the rep (the pause), NEVER to slow down the concentric portion. This means that the only reasonable uses were:
The overuse of the three digit formula and the mess that some coaches made of it has led to rep speed being ignored. I think this is a fallacy.
How can you use rep speed in your training? There are a couple methods to test your needs. These ideas were taken from Bill Hartman P.T.
Time your 1 RM (time includes both concentric and eccentric time)
3) Unstable Training
Over-reaction
I don’t even need to tell you when this happened. Every trainer in every gym around the country got his clients out of the squat rack and onto the stability ball. No one did a shoulder press anymore – they did a one leg one-arm eyes closed Body Blade wiggle-your-ass overhead reach.
The very idea of unstable surface training was to condition the working muscles in three planes simultaneously and to work the stabilizer muscles (you can do more reps on a machine than you can with a bar than you can with DB’s at the same load – that’s your stabilizer muscles). How this came to mean “balancing acts” is a perfect example of over-reaction.
Under-reaction
Right now the stability ball and the balance boards have become the Antichrist. What’s interesting to me is that as we have slammed the unstable surface, unstable object training (kegs, sandbags) has become the hot new thing, for the same reasons as unstable surface training was hot in the first place. So unstable surface training is useless but unstable object training is cutting edge? Huh.
Back to Center
If free weights are better than machines, it’s because they are less stable. If DB’s offer more options than barbells – it’s because they are even less stable. The research is pretty clear that wobble boards and stability balls can be used to great effect in rehabilitation. I am of the opinion that working with athletes is a balancing act between performance enhancement and injury prevention, so the use of unstable surfaces in small doses as a “prehabilitation” (although I hate that term with a passion) has it’s place. Also recent EMG research showed that abdominal training on the stability ball was superior to flat surface training. You can’t ignore the benefits.
And, if Louie Simmons does dumbbell pressing on a stability ball as a part of his program, that’s good enough for me.
What’s next?
Well as I said earlier unstable object training is hot – look for the backlash against it to begin circa 2007. Right now we are in the middle of a massive over-reaction to kettlebell training in the US also. I expect kettlebells (a very useful tool) will become the Swiss Balls of late 2006 and be ignored for a while.
Interestingly I think we are entering into a phase of under-reaction to actual strength training. We have over-reacted to strength training in comparison to other conditioning methods in the past (hence the term ‘strength and conditioning’ as if to suggest that conditioning plays merely a supporting role) and have ignored mobility, flexibility etc. As of this writing, there has been a trend towards more movement prep work with athletes – not a bad thing, but we mustn’t ignore the benefits of more traditional strength work.
Overall it’s easy to see the over-reaction and under-reaction in our industry. A good phrase to remember when evaluating or slamming any training method:
“Methods are many,
Principles are few,
Methods may change,
But principles never do”
Understand the principles and you won’t go too far wrong. And if you want to ask questions or post comments about this article – make sure you’re speaking from a center position!
Alwyn Cosgrove
www.alwyncosgrove.com
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