Over the years I’ve had formal training in a variety of eastern martial arts and enjoy reading about and comparing the principles and applications of different styles. I recently purchased  The Complete Guide to Northern Praying Mantis Kung Fu by Stuart Alve Olson, since my son studies Wah Lum Tam Tui Northern Praying Mantis and I wanted to learn more about it’s history and philosophy. Considering the book was only published a few years ago, I was very disappointed to find some of the worst misinformation on strength training for martial artists I’ve ever read.

Starting on page 60 Olson makes several erroneous statements about strength training and muscle size. I’ll address them one at a time.

“Big muscles do not equate or imply strength. They just have the appearance of strength.”

While the ratio of strength to size can vary between individuals due to a variety factors, all else being equal a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle. A stronger muscle is capable of generating more force, and although the delivery of force has a lot to do with proper body structure, coordinated movement, and range, between equally skilled people the stronger one has a definite advantage. [continue reading…]

I have received numerous e-mails from people with questions about fixed versus dynamic exercise order since I mentioned it in my interview with High Intensity Nation. Here is a brief overview of the system with a few examples of how to apply it.

Most people perform the exercises in their workout in a fixed order which they repeat each time they train. Since every exercise produces fatigue which decreases the effort one is capable of performing subsequent exercises, muscle groups trained earlier in the workout may receive a greater stimulus for strength and size increases than those trained later or at the end.

The solution to this is to vary exercise order so over the course of several workouts each of the major muscle groups is trained earlier when it can be worked more intensely. The method I learned from Joe Mullen uses prior workout performance to determine exercise order for the current workout, rather than cycling the order (1, 2, 3, 4 in one workout, then 4, 1, 2, 3 the next) or changing it randomly. The exercises are performed in order of the progress made on them the previous workout, from least to most. For example, if during your previous workout you added weight on exercise A and performed enough reps to be within your target range, performed one additional rep on exercise B, two additional reps on exercise C, and made no progress on exercise D, the order for the next workout would be: D, B, C, A.

Varying Exercise Order Within A Fixed Category Order

The system I use is a hybrid of Joe Mullen’s method and the traditional Nautilus method of performing exercises in order from most to least muscle mass worked. I divide exercises into six general catagories, which are performed in sequence, while the order of the exercises within the categories is varied:

1. neck isolation
2. compound (multi-joint movements)
3. torso isolation (shoulder and hip movements)
4. limb isolation (elbow, knee and ankle movements)
5. trunk isolation (lumbar spine)
6. forearm and grip

The exercise order is varied within these categories rather than between them across the entire workout, with the overall workout order following the categories.

If isolated neck exercises are performed they should be done first in the workout before fatigue has affected your ability to concentrate and maintain proper body position, since they have the greatest potential for serious injury if done incorrectly. Since the neck muscles are not very large, they will not have much of an effect on subsequent exercise performance.

The order of categories two through six is intended to prevent local muscular fatigue from being as much of a limiting factor on the weight that can be used for an exercise. Categories three and four may be combined if machines providing direct resistance are being used. For example, arm fatigue would be more limiting in a barbell pullover where the triceps must hold the elbow extended than in a Nautilus pullover machine where resistance is applied directly to the back of the upper arms.

The following is an example of this category order applied to a full-body workout, but the same can be done with any split routine including exercises from different categories:

Compound Exercises

1. Squat
2. Bench Press
3. Row

Torso Isolation

1. Lateral Raise
2. Pullover

Limb Isolation

1. French Press
2. Curl
3. Calf Raise

Trunk Isolation

1. Weighted Crunch

Forearm and Grip

1. Ivanko Super Gripper

Local Fatigue and Subsquent Exercises

When determining the exercise order you should also avoid performing two exercises in a row with overlapping muscle groups, for example, performing curls immediately after chin ups, or lateral raises immediately after presses (more on the problems with pre-exhaust, post-exhaust and similar methods in the book).

There are other exceptions and considerations for specific exercise combinations which are also covered in the book.

Traditional Category Order Versus Muscle Priority

This category system is for someone who has relatively well balanced and proportional muscular development. If you have a specific muscle group which is lagging or slower to respond you may train it with an isolation exercise earlier or even first in your workouts either every workout or as part of an alternate, specialization routines.

Results

What first piqued my curiosity in varying exercise order was an experiment Joe Mullen performed at a local personal training studio where the group that varied their exercise order made significantly greater strength increases than the group following a fixed order. I immediately started experimenting with this in my workouts and my clients’ and found it improved progress considerably. Although I was initially concerned it would make record keeping and progress evaluation more difficult, using the category system it has not. The only change I have had to make to record keeping has been to record the order of performance in addition to the weight and reps for each exercise.

If you’ve been training following a fixed exercise order, switching to a dynamic order will help you improve on exercises you may have been having difficulty progressing on, and make all-around faster increases in muscular strength and size.

In a post I wrote a while back about the ten biggest bodybuilding mistakes, I listed not training hard enough as the number one mistake. How hard is enough, though?

To stimulate increases in strength and size it is minimally necessary to 1. work your muscles harder than they are accustomed to, which means 2. always attempting to improve your form, lift more weight or perform more repetitions on each exercise than you did before. These are the two most fundamental principles of building muscular strength and size: overload and progression. If these two things are not the primary focus of your training, nothing else you do is going to make any difference.

To stimulate the greatest possible increases in strength and size it is necessary to work as hard as possible. Do not make the common mistake of confusing doing more exercise for working harder. Working harder means putting more effort into each exercise, and if your level of effort is high enough you will neither need nor be capable of performing a large volume of work.

To work as hard as possible simply means;

1. doing as many repetitions as you are physically capable of
2. in good form
3. with an adequately heavy weight

Physical Versus Psychological Limits

Most people quit an exercise for various psychological reasons long before they’ve reached their true physical limits. Beginners and others unaccustomed to training at a very high level of intensity often mistake a moderate level of fatigue for muscle failure, quitting when the exercise starts to get hard rather than when more reps become impossible. Many simply quit when the exercise becomes too uncomfortable for them, lacking the necessary mental toughness to push through the discomfort of burning muscles, a rapidly pounding heart and being out of breath. Some quit when an exercise becomes harder because they fear they will injure themselves.

The gap between psychological and physical limits narrows and the tolerance for muscular burning and exertional discomfort improves for most people after they’ve been training for a while, but even advanced trainees may quit far short of a true all-out effort if they’ve never experienced it. Even many advanced trainees overestimate how intensely they actually train and underestimate the level of effort they are capable of. A good solution for this is to work out with a trainer or partner that knows how to motivate you to go all-out. The judicious application of high intensity training techniques like forced reps and negatives can also help you develop the ability to push yourself harder during training.

If you quit an exercise when it gets harder due to fear of injury, consider it is not the amount of weight or how hard you are working but the integrity of your form that determines your risk of injury. As long as you maintain reasonably good form and use a competent and attentive spotter or the appropriate safety equipment when necessary there is no reason to fear injury.

Also consider no matter how fatigued you become, you are always much stronger holding or lowering a weight than you are lifting it. As long as you don’t just let go, you will not drop a weight on yourself.

Good Form

The goal of an exercise is not to make a weight go up and down. Lifting and lowering a weight is just a means to accomplish the real goal, which is to work the targeted muscles intensely enough to stimulate strength and size increases. To accomplish this you need to maintain the proper body position and move along the correct path over the correct range of motion to maintain a high level of tension on the target muscles while avoiding positions which may result in other tissues being exposed to potentially harmful levels of force.

As an exercise becomes harder do not significantly alter your body position or path or range of movement or attempt to yank, jerk or otherwise quickly move the weight to make it easier to lift. If you do, the work is either shifted away from the target muscles towards other muscles or leverage is changed reducing tension, and you are no longer accomplishing the real goal, or you increase the risk of injury due to the sudden, uncontrolled increase in force resulting from rapid acceleration. It is neither necessary nor beneficial and potentially dangerous to attempt to continue beyond the point where can not lift the weight in correct form by cheating.

Maintain your focus on the real goal – high intensity muscular work – and don’t sacrifice form and risk injury for the sake of a few more less productive reps. How you lift the weight is far more important than how many times.

How Heavy?

The weight should be at least heavy enough to be moderately hard to lift right from the start. It should not be so heavy, however, that you are unable to perform at least a few repetitions in good form.

Assuming a moderate movement speed, within reason repetition range doesn’t appear to make as much of a difference in muscular strength and size increases as the effort put into an exercise. Some people will find they do better with or prefer slightly higher or lower reps, however most people will get good results with any reasonable range from as low as three to as high as twenty, as long as they are working as hard and progressively.

I recommend a middle range of 6 to 10 repetitions as a starting point for most trainees and most exercises. A higher rep range may be more appropriate for beginners when learning a new exercise, and lower rep ranges would be necessary when using very slow repetition methods.

The High Intensity Mindset

High intensity training is as much a test of mental toughness as it is of physical strength, and your mindset going into the workout has a big impact on how hard you’ll be able to train. I have found the following to be effective in establishing the proper mindset for going all-out during your workouts.

Commitment

Although you may enjoy the mental and physical challenge of a hard workout, a workout is not an end in itself, but a means to accomplishing specific goals. Keeping your goals in mind will help you stay motivated. Think about how important those goals are to you and make a commitment to yourself to give your best effort, to not have any doubts after the workout as to whether you could have gotten another rep on an exercise or worked even just a little harder.

Focus

To put a 100% physical effort into an exercise you have to focus 100% of your mind on it. To prevent your mind from wandering or the things going on around you from distracting you during your workout, take a few minutes before you start to clear your head and get focused. Sit down, close your eyes and focus only your breathing until you are able to block everything else out and your mind is not wandering. Then take a few minutes to visualize yourself performing each of the exercises in your workout perfectly, easily beating your previous weight or reps on all of them. Finally, take a brief moment to think about your goals, your motivation for training.

Before each exercise, take a few seconds to close your eyes and regain your focus if you start to feel distracted.

Putting “Pain” in Perspective

Intense burning in the muscles, a rapid heart rate and labored breathing are normal sensations resulting from high intensity muscular work, and not real pain or an indication of physical harm. These sensations are not a cause for concern. What they do indicate is that you have reached the most productive part of the exercise.

When you begin to experience these sensations do not assume you are approaching your physical limits or the end of the exercise. Remind yourself the sensations are temporary and harmless, and the real exercise is just beginning. The burn in your muscles is your cue to work even harder, and the more they burn the harder you will work. Again, think about your goals and remind yourself they are worth working through the temporary and harmless discomfort.

This article is posted with the written permission of the author, Professor Eyal Lederman of CPDO Ltd. in London. Thanks to Steve Turner for making me aware of the article and to Professor Lederman for allowing me to post it here.

This is important reading for anyone involved in exercise, either professionally or for their own health and fitness, and especially for those who train individuals with or have lower back pain, as it addresses many of the myths of the current core and stability training trends.

The Myth of Core Stability

Professor Eyal Lederman

CPDO Ltd.,
15 Harberton Road,
London N19 3JS,
UK,

E-mail: cpd@cpdo.net
Tel: 0044 207 263 8551

Abstract

The principle of core stability has gained wide acceptance in training for prevention of injury and as a treatment modality for rehabilitation of various musculoskeletal conditions in particular the lower back. There has been surprising little criticism of this approach up to date. This article will re-examine the original findings and the principles of core stability and how well they fare within the wider knowledge of motor control, prevention of injury and rehabilitation of neuromuscular and musculoskeletal systems following injury.

Key words: Core stability, transverse abdominis, chronic lower back and neuromuscular rehabilitation

Introduction

Core stability (CS) arrived in the latter part of the 1990’s. It was largely derived from studies that demonstrated a change in onset timing of the trunk muscles in back injury and chronic lower back pain (CLBP) patients [1, 2]. The research in trunk control has been an important contribution to the understanding of neuromuscular reorganisation in back pain and injury. As long as four decades ago it was shown that motor strategies change in injury and pain [3]. The CS studies confirmed that such changes take place in the trunk muscles of patients who suffer from back injury and pain.

However, these findings combined with general beliefs about the importance of abdominal muscles for a strong back and influences from Pilates have promoted several assumptions prevalent in CS training:

1. That certain muscles are more important for stabilisation of the spine, in particular transverses abdominis (TrA).
2. That weak abdominal muscles lead to back pain
3. That strengthening abdominal or trunk muscles can reduce back pain
4. That there is a unique group of “core” muscles working independently of other trunk muscles
5. That a strong core will prevent injury.
6. That there is a relationship between stability and back pain

As a consequence of these assumptions, a whole industry grew out of these studies with gyms and clinics worldwide teaching the “tummy tuck” and trunk bracing exercise to athletes for prevention of injury and to patients as a cure for lower back pain [4, 5]. At that point core stability became a cult and TrA its mantra.

In this article some of these basic assumption will be re-examined. In particular, it will examine:

1. The role of TrA as a stabiliser and relation to back pain: is TrA that important for stabilisation?
2. The TrA timing issue: what are the timing differences between asymptomatic individuals and patients with LBP? Can timing change by CS exercise?
3. Abdominal muscle strength: what is the normal strength needed for daily activity? Can CS exercise affect strength?
4. Single muscle activation: can single muscle be selected? Does it have any functional meaning during movement? [continue reading…]

Fitness and weight loss “experts” like to recommend finding ways to incorporate more physical activity into daily life, usually exchanging efficiency or convenience for increased physical exertion, based on the mistaken belief that doing so makes a meaningful contribution to health, fitness, or fat loss. They claim these little changes add up to a lot of calories burned over the course of a week, however this is not the case. If hour-long “cardio” sessions barely burn enough calories to be worth doing for that purpose, a few minutes walking up the stairs or across a parking lot are hardly going to amount to any calories burned, while reducing your time and productivity.

Unless you enjoy these activities for their own sake, doing them to burn calories is not worth your time. You could accomplish as much of negative calorie balancein a single day with a few dietary changes as the typical recommendations for increases in activity would amount to over several weeks, without it costing a minute of your time.

In a recent post I mentioned a study from the 2009 European Congress on Obesity (Swinburn BA, et al “Increased energy intake alone virtually explains all the increase in body weight in the United States from 1970s to the 2000s” ECO 2009.) which showed a lack of activity is not the problem. Overeating is. If you want to lose fat, forget about spending a few extra minutes walking an extra block to work; you’ll barely burn the amount of calories contained in a few french fries. Instead, save yourself a few minutes and skip the french fries to begin with.

The following are just a few suggestions for dietary improvements that will make a much bigger difference in fat loss than adding a few minutes of extra activity throughout your day:

• Substitute a variety of fresh vegetables and fruits, especially leafy vegetables and berries for more calorie dense grains and starches.
• Choose moderately leaner sources of protein – certain fats (animal fats, butter, egg, coconut oil, etc.) are healthy but very calorie dense.
• Substitute water or other non-caloric beverages like tea for sodas and fruit juices.

This is not to say I believe people should be inactive. There are other benefits to getting up and moving around. However, doing so makes little or no positive difference in body composition.

The only worthwhile exercise for improving body composition is strength training. High intensity strength training in particular provides the greatest physical benefits relative to the time invested, including all of the cardiovascular and metabolic benefits of aerobics or “cardio”. Strength training directly improves body composition by increasing muscle mass and by preventing loss of muscle mass while fat is lost in people restricting calorie intake, and indirectly because more muscle mass equals a higher basal metabolic rate and more storage space for glucose (as glycogen). High intensity strength training also depletes muscle glycogen levels, so more of the carbohydrate consumed is stored as glycogen in the muscles than as triglycerides in the fat cells.

So, if you’re in a hurry to get to work or have better things to do with your time, go ahead and take the elevator or park in the closest spot – you’re not missing out on any kind of major calorie-burning or conditioning benefits. If you need to lose fat, focus on improving your diet instead.

My friend Anthony Semone informed me the ACSM have posted a press release titled “Experts Debunk Myth About Exercise, Weight Loss” in response to the Time Magazine article covered in my previous post. The following is the full text of their press release (inset) along with my comments:

EXPERTS DEBUNK MYTH ABOUT EXERCISE, WEIGHT LOSS
Research proves value of exercise, nutrition

According to John Jakicic, Ph.D., FACSM, “There is strong evidence from the majority of the scientific literature that physical activity is an important component for initial weight loss.”

INDIANAPOLIS – Leading experts in exercise and weight management have taken strong exception to assertions that exercise can inhibit weight loss by over-stimulating the appetite.

The “experts” can take exception all they like, but it does not change the fact increased activity stimulates appetite and if a person is not measuring and restricting calorie intake they are more likely to end up with a positive energy balance, resulting in an increase in body fat. While exercise burns very few calories, hardly enough to be worth doing for that purpose, a large amount of calories is very easy to consume.

General physical activity and the types of exercise commonly recommended for fat loss contribute relatively little to a fat loss program, and will make either no difference at all or even make things worse if diet is not being controlled.

Responding to a statement recently published online and in print, Jakicic added that “The statement ‘in general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless’ is not supported by the scientific evidence when there is adherence to a sufficient dose of physical activity in overweight and obese adults.” Jakicic chairs a committee on obesity prevention and treatment for the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and helped write an ACSM Position Stand on strategies for weight loss and prevention of weight regain for adults.

According to Jakicic and other experts, overwhelming evidence belies the assertion that exercise doesn’t necessarily help people lose weight and may even make the task harder.

“Again, it is clear in this regard that physical activity is one of the most important behavioral factors in enhancing weight loss maintenance and improving long-term weight loss outcomes,” Jakicic said. In fact, his own research, published in 2008, showed a high dose of physical activity ( 275 minutes above baseline levels) contributed to the greatest observed weight loss after a 24-month intervention. He noted that the scientific literature includes additional evidence to support physical activity, adding that a growing body of literature suggests the importance of physical activity to improve long-term weight loss following bariatric surgery.

Physical activity is definitely not one of the most important behavioral factors in weight loss. While being more active may be a minor factor, contributing to a reduction in energy balance, as I mentioned above it makes little difference unless diet is also controlled. Even then the effect is minimal at best, counterproductive at worst.

I have worked with a large number of people who had previously attempted to lose weight through increased activity, some with, and some without diet, and the increased activity alone has never made a significant difference. Those same people have no trouble losing weight even with a significant reduction in activity – typically dropping several hours of cardio for less than 40 minutes of strength training per week – once they improve their diet.

I recently trained a man who lost 34 pounds in two months, dropping from 263 to 229, with no exercise other than two weekly high intensity strength training workouts lasting less than 20 minutes each, and no additional physical activity beyond his usual daily routine. I have also trained a woman who lost 128 pounds in a little over a year, dropping from 245 to 117 and reducing her weight by over 50 percent using the same program, also without additional physical activity added to her usual routine.

Over the years, I have had clients who attempted to compensate for overeating by performing other activities in addition to their strength training workouts, but the additional activity never made up for their poor diet. In many cases, not only did the additional activity not help them lose weight, they actually got fatter. The ones that did eventually lose weight were able to because they started eating properly.

Diet is by far the most important factor in weight loss. Exercise, or physical activity in general, does not burn enough calories to be worth doing for that purpose, hardly enough to make a significant difference in energy balance alone. As I’ve stated previously, the proper role of exercise in a fat loss program is the maintenance of muscle while fat is lost, which can only be effectively accomplished with strength training, and the amount of weekly strength training required for this is far less than most believe.

Another noted expert and ACSM member, Timothy Church, M.D., Ph.D., described how his professional opinions were misrepresented in a recent news article. According to Church, the article should have touched on the following key concepts:

• Weight maintenance is different from weight loss, and should have been discussed. Virtually all people who lose weight and keep it off are exercising to maintain weight.
• Comments about children and physical activity were misleading. Studies have shown that kids are not necessarily more active after school (and therefore need good in-school physical education program), and that the focus with children should be on physical activity and prevention of excess weight gain. (Adults, however, more often must deal with losing excess weight.)
• Exercise and diet go together. Weight management is most successful when careful attention is given to both physical activity and proper nutrition.

All of these statements are based on the assumption exercise is being performed for the purpose of burning calories or that physical activity in general burns a significant amount of calories, both false.

It doesn’t matter whether a person is trying to lose or maintain weight, “cardio” or increases in general activity make little difference to either. Diet is the most important factor.

Preventing weight gain in children is more a matter of diet than physical activity.

Exercise and diet do go together if you understand exercise means proper strength training and not “cardio” or general physical activity for the sake of burning calories.

The biggest problem I have with these “experts” telling people physical activity will help them lose weight is it is very hard for many people to change eating habits, but much easier to spend a few hours a week doing some mindless activity like running on a treadmill or participating in a group dance or kickboxing class with a fun social atmosphere, and having been misinformed by these “experts” most people are going to take the easier path. Unfortunately, the easier path doesn’t work very well, and can actually make some people fatter as explained in the Time article.

Janet Rankin, Ph.D., FACSM, an expert in nutrition and exercise, supplemented the bountiful scientific evidence with a simple observation: “A practical response to the claim that exercise makes you eat more and gain weight is to look around. If this were the case, wouldn’t those who regularly exercise be the fattest? Obviously that isn’t the case.”

Gyms are full of people who exercise regularly but are still fat. Every gym I’ve been a member of has had at least a few fat aerobics instructors, and they’re spending more hours per week “exercising” than the members.

ACSM experts stressed that, particularly when so many struggle with the health consequences of overweight and obesity, it is important that Americans have accurate information based on science and evidence.

How ironic.

The  American College of Sports Medicine is the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world. More than 35,000 international, national and regional members and certified professionals are dedicated to advancing and integrating scientific research to provide educational and practical applications of exercise science and sports medicine.

They my be dedicated, but they’re wrong on this issue. Exercise doesn’t make you lose fat. Proper exercise, strength training, can prevent the loss of muscle while fat is lost, and can contribute to an increase in metabolic rate as well as improving many other aspects of fitness and health, but fat loss is almost entirely a matter of diet.

I recently posted a link on Facebook to Arthur De Vany’s Top Ten Reasons Not to Run Marathons, to which a friend who runs replied,

Everyone has their opinion. I run because I like to. Not because I want to run 26.2 miles every day or even 13.1 miles every day. I think it’s a stress reliever and I truly enjoy it. I’m sure this study was done on people who run extreme distances all the time. I’m sure you think your way of training is the best and I’m also sure it’s great for a lot of people. Exercise of any sort is better than sitting on the couch eating potato chips =)

Contrary to popular but uninformed opinion, something is not always better than nothing where physical activity and exercise are concerned. In fact, many activities people perform for exercise or health reasons do more harm than good.

The goal of exercise is to stimulate improvements in fitness, and should not undermine health in the process, as Dr. Doug McGuff stresses in Body by Science. However, activities like jogging, aerobic dance, plyometrics, and others exposing the body to high peak and impact forces are often recommended as exercise despite carrying a significant risk of injury or damaging health in some other way.

In the case of running, doing nothing would definitely be better. Since jogging is a very slow, very inefficient, very poor way of improving cardiovascular conditioning and burns few calories for the time invested, very little benefit would be lost by quitting, compared to the benefit of preventing long term damage to the feet, ankles, knees, hips and spine and associated degenerative joint conditions, not to mention the likely pulls, strains and tears.

If everybody in the world stopped doing what they consider to be exercise today, the net result would be an increase in average health over time and a decrease in traumatic injuries and joint problems, since what the majority consider to be exercise involves repetitive, high force or high impact movements, often done inattentively and with sloppy form.

A person’s enjoyment of an activity may justify performing it, but then they should call it what it is, recreation. While recreation is certainly a matter of opinion, exercise is not. Different people enjoy different activities, but the principles of exercise are the same for everyone, and I happen to know for a fact the principles my training is based on are the best. They produce improvements in all general factors of fitness equal to or better than any other method or activity, and they do so more efficiently and more safely.

Another popular but wrong opinion implied in her reply is people should base their exercise program on their recreational preferences. Exercise is the application of a physical stressor to stimulate an adaptive response, and should be performed in accordance with how the body handles and responds to stress and using movements based on muscle and joint function, and not in accordance with the conventions or movement patterns of some recreational activity. While a physical recreational activity may have an exercise effect, this is not the same as being effective exercise.

I suspect part of the reason for this is it allows people to tell themselves and others they’re doing something healthy, without actually having to engage in the extremely demanding physical and mental work characteristic of real exercise. Most people do not find real exercise to be fun. It is brutally hard work.

I am not saying people shouldn’t run, walk, cycle, or perform other activities they may enjoy just because they carry a risk of injury or are not relatively effective methods of exercise. I enjoy practicing various martial arts and doing parkour, both of which carry a significant risk of injury and neither of which I would consider exercise. Just don’t do something primarily for fun and pretend you’re exercising.

If you truly value some form of physical recreation, a separate, real exercise program will enhance your enjoyment of it by improving your performance and your resistance to injury. Exercise in accordance with proper training principles, then apply your improved fitness to the enjoyment of your chosen recreational activities, but don’t try to mix recreation and exercise – it takes the fun out of recreation and the effectiveness out of exercise.

Question:

The NSCA posted this article showing that studies have proven that multiple sets are superior to single set training programs at times and I’m curious what your thoughts are on this subject. Are there instances where more sets do elicit a greater response?

Here is the link:

http://www.nsca-lift.org/HotTopic/download/Single%20vs%20Multiple%20Sets.pdf

Answer:

Rhea’s paper is propaganda, not science. Richard Winett reported on this and several other recent meta-analyses in Meta-Analyses Do Not Support Performance of Multiple Sets or High Volume Resistance Training. Richard A. Winett JEPonline. 2004;7(5):10-20. and had the following to say about the Rhea paper,

“Rhea and colleagues (5) performed a meta-analysis that they claimed included all published and unpublished studies that were strength training interventions, though with different experimental designs, and where there was a pre- and post-training strength measurement. An examination of their extended reference list indicated that at least 26 studies meeting these criteria were not included in their analysis. These studies are cited in a recent critique of the ACSM’s Position Stand (19); 24 of these 26 excluded studies showed no significant difference between single and multiple sets per exercise (19; see p. 17 Table 4). The exclusion of specific studies can create a bias in the outcomes of the meta-analysis, particularly if the reported results are consistently at odds with the conclusions of the meta-analysis.”

In other words, Rhea only reported on studies which appeared to support his conclusions. An objective look at the majority of research will show no significant difference in single or multiple sets for the majority of people. After reading the Rhea paper, I suggest reading Winett’s paper, which disproves it’s claim of research proving the superiority of multiple sets or higher volume training.

For the majority of people (there are some exceptions) there is no benefit to performing more than one  set of an exercise, and in my experience people training with extremely high levels of intensity do worse with additional sets due to the greater recovery demands of the increased training volume. For more on training volume read The Minimum Amount Necessary.

I just received the following article from Ken Mannie, head strength and conditioning coach at Michigan State University, with permission to post it here.

Exercises, Equipment Modes and Rep Duration: The Question of Superiority

by Ken Mannie

The training landscape is in a state of continual flux, and the ongoing changes, updates, and emergence of proposed cutting-edge devices and techniques makes for interesting and thought-provoking debates among practitioners.

The inquiries I receive the most deal with lifting movements, equipment modes, and rep duration. Two recent questions are symbolic of the ones I receive on a regular basis:

What strength training movements and equipment modes would you classify as being the best, or most important, for athletics?

This has been a topic of much discussion over the years, with as many different answers as those giving them. Those with an affinity for the Olympic style lifts and/or their close relatives will adamantly profess their virtues.

Power lifting enthusiasts will expound their firm convictions on the “Big 3”: the bench press, squat, and dead lift.

Others will lean more toward the newer wave of “functional” training activities as being more specific to athletic movements.

And, of course, there is the seemingly endless diatribe regarding the superiority of either free weights or machines.

Coaches eventually develop their own unique training approaches and make personal determinations on lifting priorities. If they have covered all of the bases and constructed a strong rationale for what has been implemented, it is difficult for anyone to disagree with them.

However, it must be stated loud and clear that not only is the jury still out on some of these issues, they are all scratching their heads and rubbing their eyes trying to separate fact from fiction.

With all due respect given to the current multitude of training methodologies, here are some suggestions and perspectives from our corner. [continue reading…]