Amped Training

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 My Experience with LIfting Often

If you read my pieces on high-volume training (part 1 and part 2 ), you'll know that I've been toying around with a high-volume training block. Not so much doing a lot of work in each session, but doing a lot of workout sessions.

The schedule looked like this, more or less:

Monday - 2-board Press and Box Squat, 6 sets of 3 at ~70%

Tuesday - Incline Bench and Front Squat, 6-8 sets of 3 at ~75%

Wednesday - 2-board Press and Deadlift, 6 sets of 2 at ~80% 

Thursday - Speed Bench and Speed Box Squats, 10-12 sets of 2-3 at ~55%

Friday - Max Effort Bench and Squat exercises, 4-7 singles heavy as hell

Saturday - 2-board Press and Front Squat, 6 sets of 2 at ~70%

That's the on-paper plan, anyway. In practice, I ended up missing about three of these sessions. The first week it wasn't a problem, but by Thursday of the second week, I was feeling beat up pretty good.  

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A Closer Look at Cortisol

I wrote this the other day after seeing yet another esteemed strength coaching expert repeat an all-too-common myth: the idea that cortisol, a key stress hormone in our bodies, is harmful to the athlete. This is based on the idea that cortisol increases during a workout, and cortisol is catabolic, therefore this is Bad Juju. 

As you'll read, there's more to it than this simplified explanation.

Read it at the web link - Cortisol and You

Or read on below:

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High Volume: What's the Story? Part 2

In the last segment , I went over the concept of high-volume/high-frequency training.

To summarize briefly, high volume weight training as used by bodybuilders isn't very productive; but a high volume of work used by strength athletes can be of benefit.

 Why doesn't it work so well for bodybuilders? Bro-ish bodybuilders use high volume because they're after a pump. In their mind, the pump is more important than anything else; more important than progression, weight on the bar, or tension-time.

Since those concepts are the responsible factor behind muscle hypertrophy (aka, bigger muscles), these are what you should work on. Something like 5 sets of 5, or 3-4 sets of 10, or something along those lines will go a lot farther towards getting a muscle bigger than doing 10 variations of the same exercise for 5 sets of 12 each.

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High Volume: What's the Story?

 When we discuss weight training, one of the key things we talk about is the volume of work done. Volume can mean different things to different people.

To Mike Mentzer and the HIT gang, volume was the number of sets done. Most bodybuilders still think in these terms; the number of sets per body part.

To athletes and strength coaches, volume takes on a different meaning. In this circle, volume is generally measured as the number of barbell lifts done (NL), or as the tonnage of a workout (sets * reps * weight used). 

Volume is also manipulated by the frequency of workouts. If you lift once a week, you'll have less volume than someone lifting three times a week, all things equal (note that this isn't always the case; you can take the workload of a single workout and spread it across multiple sessions).  

There's a pretty wide gap between these two groups, not to mention in between them. The bodybuilders will argue over doing just a few sets (HIT) or doing a whole lot of sets to "blast the part" (the high-volume workouts you read in the muscle mags). As a rule, if you're after physique goals, and aren't using steroids to help things along, you're better off keeping the volume in check. This doesn't mean one set,  nor does it mean one workout every 21 days (this has actually been suggested, so I'm not making it up). It means keep things in check.

What about strength athletes? Here it gets a little fuzzier. Bodybuilding requires a specific set of conditions, and creates a specific kind of stress in the muscle tissues. Strength gains can overlap with this on occasion, but by and large pure strength training is a different animal. This is what I want to talk about.  

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Testosterone Spikes: Predictor of Performance? 

For a long time, I'd never really considered the hormonal aspects of training as being very important. It seems like a lot of wanking over what is, at best, a transient hormonal spike in response to a stimulus (in this case, exercise).

We're talking brief here, like 45-60 minutes of increased testosterone which is, at best, a slight elevation off baseline. Steroid cycles have to magnify this level many times over to see drastic results.

However, there has been some correlation between testosterone and cortisol levels with the condition of the athlete. The first group I'm aware of that really investigated it were Lon Kilgore and Glenn Pendlay, who determined that the ratio of testosterone to cortisol was an accurate predictor of the state of the athlete -- a marker of overtraining and overreaching, in other words.

Pendlay, G. and L. Kilgore (2001).  Hormonal fluctuation: A new method for the programming of training.  Weightlifting USA 19(2): 15.

Other (apparently unpublished) thesis research from Glenn Pendlay and Michael Hartmann has more or less confirmed that the test:cortisol ratio is depressed during hard training, but when unloading occurs it will sharply increase above baseline after adequate rest has occurred. 

It seems like there's definitely a correlation between testosterone levels and the athlete's condition, even if it's not responsible.

Is there anything more to it? There just might be.  

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So Bands Don't Work, Huh? 

The Effects of Combining Elastic and Free Weight Resistance on Strength and Power in Athletes

This study was undertaken to determine whether combined elastic and free weight resistance (CR) provides different strength and power adaptations than free weight resistance (FWR) training alone. Forty-four young (age 20 ± 1 years), resistance-trained (4 ± 2 years' experience) subjects were recruited from men's basketball and wrestling teams and women's basketball and hockey teams at Cornell University. Subjects were stratified according to team, then randomly assigned to the control (C; n = 21) or experimental group (E; n = 23). Before and after 7 weeks of resistance training, subjects were tested for lean body mass, 1 repetition maximum back squat and bench press, and peak and average power. Both C and E groups performed identical workouts except that E used CR (i.e., elastic resistance) for the back squat and bench press, whereas the C group used FWR alone. CR was performed using an elastic bungee cord attached to a standard barbell loaded with plates. Elastic tension was accounted for in an attempt to equalize the total work done by each group. Statistical analyses revealed significant (P < 0.05) between-group differences after training. Compared with C, improvement for E was nearly three times greater for back squat (16.47 ± 5.67 vs. 6.84 ± 4.42 kg increase), two times greater for bench press (6.68 ± 3.41 vs. 3.34 ± 2.67 kg increase), and nearly three times greater for average power (68.55 ± 84.35 vs. 23.66 ± 40.56 watt increase). Training with CR may be better than FWR alone for developing lower and upper body strength, and lower body power in resistance-trained individuals. Long-term effects are unclear, but CR training makes a meaningful contribution in the short term to performance adaptations of experienced athletes.

Well, this goes a long way towards clearing up that misconception, I'd hope.

Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell fame has been credited with bringing elastic bands to popularity in the training of strength athletes, but there's been a lot of resistance (haha) to the idea in some circles.

The big reason, of course, was a lack of clinical research on the subject. In all fairness, this is actually a valid criticism -- otherwise, we'd be taking the bro-route of going by how it feels, yo.

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I've been traveling around a bit lately, so it's been sparse on the updates as you can see.

I'll try to keep things more updated, but you see how far my promises go.

With that in mind, there's a new-ish blog that I'd highly  suggest you pay attention to if you're interested in strength & conditioning.

No gimmicks, no sales pitches, no Inner Circle -- just good, solid information from a real strength coach training real athletes.

You can have a look here: http://willheffernan.blogspot.com

Will's in Ireland, so you know what that means: he's drunk most of the day. Which is what lets him update his blog around 50 times per day.

Go have a look.  

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5-Dimensional Training!

Dear fitness friend,

Are you frustrated? Confused? Does your workout need a new kick?

That was me, two years ago.

I was in a rut.

But then I discovered powerful new secrets that changed my physique, packing on slabs of raw muscle and melting the fat off like butter in a lobster dinner!

Interested? You bet you are! READ ON! 

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An Open Letter to the IOC and WADA 

5 April 2008

An Open Letter to all members of the International Olympic Committee and all members of the World Anti-Doping Association:


I am greatly saddened by the recent news regarding the Greek weightlifting team and the positive drug tests from some of their number. This egregious violation is simply the latest in a long stream of constant dishonesty from the coaches and athletes of the world.

I want to commend the IOC and WADA for their efforts in screening out these unethical participants, those that choose to gain an unfair advantage over their competition.

However, I cannot help but feel that there is simply not enough being done to combat this problem. And make no mistake, this is a serious problem indeed!