I agree with your comments on the study above – outright “bullshit” it just goes to show that a Ph.D doesn’t mean you know much about “exercise”.

Lance Armstrong is currently in Australia bike racing, an article called “The Power Within” appeared in one of our national newspapers outlining his HR, VO2 max, muscular leg power, and the amount of watts he can produce. Lance Armstrong holds legendary status as an endurance athlete and I would never attempt to lessen his legendary status as an endurance athlete.

Doug McGuff in BBS “Global Metabolic Conditioning” (p.38-39), Greg Anderson in his article has addressed the Cardiovascular/VO2 max testing procedures. Doug McGuff statyed that, “The problem with VO2 max testing is that when your only tool is a hammer, the whole world becomes a nail”. I presume that all Lance Armstrongs Cardiovasular/VO2 testing is done on a bike.

The other point that I wanted to make from the article in this is statement, “Through the years of training, Armstrong muscles changed from 60 percent slow-twitch fibre to 80 percent”. Besides the endurance training required for ridng in races like the Tour De France I would presume that Lance Armstrong must do a lot of high power output training on leg extension machines but his muscles fibers are converting to slow twitch – to me the newspapaer article inferring that it is better to have more slow twtich fibers” – “confusing” is it better to have slow twitch or fast twitch fibers?

The newspaper article also states “A Better Alternative energy source? “If the electricity created by Armstrong’s 500 watts of power output over 20 minutes was converted to energy for you household he could power.” (many household appliances)…”When riding uphill Armstrong can generate almost 500 watts of power over 20 minutes. A healthy 25 year old can exert the same wattage over almost 30 seconds. A typical fit sportsman might be able to exert that pressure for three minutes before reachinjg the fail point”.

Is Lance Armstrong’s peak power output from slow contractions or from fast contractions – endurance is supposed to based on slow steady state training but here we have an athlete with something like 1000 times more peak power output than the average person. Is peak power output from slow twitch fibers or fast twitch fibers? I wonder if Roger Fielding could answer?

Thanks

I’d have to see the full text of the study to be able to provide a detailed response, but overall, it is bullshit. It is unnecessary to move quickly to recruit fast twitch muscle fibers. If a heavy enough weight is used, all motor units are recruited very early in an exercise regardless of the speed of movement, and a slow speed of movement is safer and provides more consistent tension over the full range of the exercise. Moving quickly during exercise will not produce better results, and is more likely to produce injury, especially in the elderly.

AMONG A TEST group of seniors, Fielding discovered that superfast contractions stimulated far greater fast-twitch fiber size and peak power output than slow contractions.

So hit the triceps, as it is predominantly (90%) composed of fast-twitch fibers, says Michael Bemben, Ph.D., director of the Neuromuscular Research Lab at the University of Oklahoma. Also, pound calves and forearms, which wither quickly for another reason: They’re routinely stressed less than muscles nearer the body’s core.”

I recently purchased Bill DeSimone Moment Arm Exercise book, Bill uses the term “Congruence”, “If the Resistance torque of an exercise is congruent with muscle torque of the targeted muscles, that is a good exercise. I would describe many functional type movements as “incongruent”.

In one of our National Newsapapers an article appeared called “Bust a move: Perfect Your Technique”, one of the exercises is called Band Rows (standing, feet shoulder width apart), Point 3 – Leaning back as you pull – This is an indication that you core muscles are not stabilising you through the movement. Ensure your core is engaged from the start.

In Moment Arm Exercises Standing Bicep Curl exercises Bill suggests a “semi-squat or split stance to help minimise the shift foward of your centre of gravity and relieve some effort from the deep back.”

Bill also outlines “Congruent Row Variations” one method Bill outlines, “positioning the torso to work with the deep muscles to oppose the line of resistance”.

In Professor Lederman paper he mentions re-examining some basic assumptions made in relation to “Core Stability”.

My questions, how much more strength would be required by the abdominals and TrA to stablise the upperbody in the standing Band Rows? Or to overcome the technique problem as outlined in the Band Rows could it be that simple to use a split stance to help maintain your centre of gravity.

The above article is not a one off by the author every week similar articles appear on Functional movement exercises and “Core Stability”.

What I see is that many people are being encouraged to do do lots of “Incongruent Exercises”, lots of inefficent and lots of ineffective exercises and The “Myth of Core Stability” continues.

The popularity of “core stability” training is just another an indication of how utterly clueless most people are about proper exercise. I’ve worked with a lot of people with a variety of back problems including some pretty severe ones (one grade three spondylolisthesis) and all improved considerably with basic, brief high intensity training routines made up of conventional machine and free weight exercises. No balance balls, Bosu, wobble boards, twist boards, or any other circus nonsense.