| Critical MAS
In the post Training to Failure or Training to Quit, I discussed the disagreement about training to failure that exists between my fitness mentors. Pavel and Arthur De Vany believe you shouldn’t train to failure, whereas Dr. Doug McGuff and the rest of the High Intensity Training community believe you should. If you haven’t read the initial post, go do so now. I’ve now had three months to think about a way to reconcile this disagreement.
I credit Pavel from rescuing me from the high-rep, multiple set, lower weight nonsense that is peddled by most trainers. All that did was leave me sore with minimal strength gains. However, now that I’ve had time to think about it, I realize that I was never the target audience for his style of training. I was an office worker that wanted to gain muscle. Although I did gain muscle at first, whenever I tried to ramp us his program using the Russian Bear method, I’d injure myself.
Power to the People! : Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American by Pavel Tsatsouline
The New Evolution Diet: What Our Paleolithic Ancestors Can Teach Us about Weight Loss, Fitness, and Aging by Arthur De Vany
The High Intensity Training crowd is clear about taking the muscles to total failure and then allowing time to recover as the optimal method for building muscle. I’ve read the science and experienced it first hand. It works. However, if I had to perform at a high level on a daily basis, I wouldn’t be doing this method of training. When I return from the gym, I’m toast. The next day I move in slow motion. By day three, I’m still below baseline performance. This is perfectly fine for me, as I push pixels. I would not want to train like this if I were a lifeguard.
Since my goal is to gain strength and muscle and could care less about day-to-day high level performance, HIT works perfect for me. I also could care less how many pounds I dead lift or bench. More muscle is my mission. Other metrics no longer concern me.
Now it may take four days to get back to baseline. Instead of immediately doing another HIT workout, Dr. McGuff mentioned that he may not train his clients for a full week, so that they spend additional time above baseline. In his interview on Conditioning Research, he said the same thing.
Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12 Minutes a Week by Dr. Doug McGuff and John Little
Confession time. I am heading right back into the gym every 5th day for another HIT workout. I am clearly spending more days below baseline than above baseline. This is intentional. I am weaning myself off the volume I used to do and the novelty of HIT is still exciting to me. Also, I suspect that I’ll see many of the gains from switching to this protocol in the first year. At that point, I’ll scale back to once a week lifting per Dr. McGuff’s advice.
My highly artistic attempt at explaining PTP vs HIT and baseline.
The above chart shows a week where the Pavel PTP lifter does 3 workouts, never to failure and the HIT lifter does one workout to failure. Both spend time above and below baseline, albeit in different intervals. The Pavel lifter never goes too far below baseline and is ready for a high level of performance on a daily basis. The HIT lifter, who less concerned with day-to-day performance, goes well below baseline and then (if they listen to Dr. McGuff) spend a few days above baseline before returning to the gym.
Understanding Pavel’s Motives
The target audience for Pavel is someone that needs to be at top performance at a moments notice. He works directly with law enforcement, military and in-season athletes. If you are in this group, going to total failure HIT style would clearly impair your performance. Power to the People (PTP) is designed in a way to recruit strength with minimal soreness. I did it for almost 10 years and found it did exactly that.I credit Pavel from rescuing me from the high-rep, multiple set, lower weight nonsense that is peddled by most trainers. All that did was leave me sore with minimal strength gains. However, now that I’ve had time to think about it, I realize that I was never the target audience for his style of training. I was an office worker that wanted to gain muscle. Although I did gain muscle at first, whenever I tried to ramp us his program using the Russian Bear method, I’d injure myself.
Power to the People! : Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American by Pavel Tsatsouline
Muscle Failure
It makes sense that Pavel and De Vany would favor lifting plans that avoid going to failure. For Pavel, his clients need to be ready to fight or perform at a high level on a daily basis. De Vany is a student of evolutionary fitness and I can see how the threats of nature would need to be addressed at all times. Going to failure on a regular basis could make you more vulnerable in battles where you did not have time to recover.The New Evolution Diet: What Our Paleolithic Ancestors Can Teach Us about Weight Loss, Fitness, and Aging by Arthur De Vany
The High Intensity Training crowd is clear about taking the muscles to total failure and then allowing time to recover as the optimal method for building muscle. I’ve read the science and experienced it first hand. It works. However, if I had to perform at a high level on a daily basis, I wouldn’t be doing this method of training. When I return from the gym, I’m toast. The next day I move in slow motion. By day three, I’m still below baseline performance. This is perfectly fine for me, as I push pixels. I would not want to train like this if I were a lifeguard.
Since my goal is to gain strength and muscle and could care less about day-to-day high level performance, HIT works perfect for me. I also could care less how many pounds I dead lift or bench. More muscle is my mission. Other metrics no longer concern me.
Neurological Failure
The real issue is determing if repeatedly going to failure sends a negative signal to neural pathway. De Vany and Pavel believe this to be true. Repeatedly sending failure signals is a concern. Jim’s comment in the previous post got me thinking more about this.From my point of view, it just looks too mentally exhausting to be able to continue for a prolonged period of time (e.g., five years). For me, this would outweigh any benefits over other protocols.Other than to state that many people have trained for years on HIT, I didn’t have an answer for this concern. Then I listened to a 2009 interview between Jimmy Moore and Dr. Doug McGuff. Dr. McGuff explains the concept of going above and below baseline. When we lift weights, our muscle breakdown and we temporarily go below baseline as our body rebuilds the muscle. After recovery, we are stronger than before and now above baseline.
Now it may take four days to get back to baseline. Instead of immediately doing another HIT workout, Dr. McGuff mentioned that he may not train his clients for a full week, so that they spend additional time above baseline. In his interview on Conditioning Research, he said the same thing.
Keep your training frequency such that you experience more days above baseline than below baseline.To be above baseline to me is a positive neurological signal of success. I think this would address the mental exhaustion concern Jim had. Pavel’s PTP sends the lifter below baseline for shorter, but more frequent periods. HIT combined with McGuff’s extended recovery goes deeper below baseline – followed by more days above baseline.
Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12 Minutes a Week by Dr. Doug McGuff and John Little
Confession time. I am heading right back into the gym every 5th day for another HIT workout. I am clearly spending more days below baseline than above baseline. This is intentional. I am weaning myself off the volume I used to do and the novelty of HIT is still exciting to me. Also, I suspect that I’ll see many of the gains from switching to this protocol in the first year. At that point, I’ll scale back to once a week lifting per Dr. McGuff’s advice.
My highly artistic attempt at explaining PTP vs HIT and baseline.
The above chart shows a week where the Pavel PTP lifter does 3 workouts, never to failure and the HIT lifter does one workout to failure. Both spend time above and below baseline, albeit in different intervals. The Pavel lifter never goes too far below baseline and is ready for a high level of performance on a daily basis. The HIT lifter, who less concerned with day-to-day performance, goes well below baseline and then (if they listen to Dr. McGuff) spend a few days above baseline before returning to the gym.
Thanks for pondering these matters.
I just don’t know what to say. I’ve been weight training off and on for about 25 years. Every protocol seems to work and yet nothing seems to work especially well. The one variable that seems to make the biggest difference is the quality and quantity of my diet. If I eat *a lot* of optimal food, I gain a lot of strength, and a modest amount of size. Something must be working because I can now leg press the maximum amount on the machine at my gym (400 lbs) with *one* leg, 12 reps. I can do that for 2 sets (both legs) and am OK to do it all over again the very next day.
First at a philosophical level: “In the life of the spiritual warrior, there is no failure, only feedback.” – Carlos Castaneda
Now let’s take it a totally practical level, in sports. Imagine you’re doing interval training with 100 meter sprints, separated (for example) with 60 seconds of rest. You’re trying to do six sprints, with each sprint faster than the previous sprint.
Here are your times: 0:16.0, 0:15.0, 0:14.0, 0:13.0, 0:12.0, 0:12.5. The last sprint was 0:00.5 slower the previous sprint. But it was also 0:03.5 faster than the first sprint. Is that training to failure?
It’s clear that in this session you are not going to go faster than 0:12.0. In my opinion, doing a sixth sprint at 0:12.5 isn’t failure; it’s training toward exhaustion. Not complete exhaustion but you can’t go any faster and it’s clear that performance is diminishing. But by going toward exhaustion, signals are being sent to the central nervous system and muscles that you need to be able to go faster.
The other thing I’d like to point out is that in the ancestral environment running very fast was likely to have been a more frequent requirement than lifting heavy things.
There’s a lot of talk in the paleo community about dragging animal carcasses around. Sure. But that’s quite a bit different than the short, intense “ballistic” sort of movements you get in power lifting, Olympic lifiting and Crossfit. In the ancestral environment it was more life “endurance lifting.”
RE: CrossFit and ballistic movements, I discovered this yesterday. I hate to be a PubMed warrior, but this study was interesting.
Check out this 2007 study.
http://faculty.css.edu/tboone2/asep/Bruce-LoweFeb2007.pdf (PDF)
“This paper reviews evidence relating to the effectiveness and safety
of explosive exercises, such as Olympic style weight lifting, other
weight training exercises performed at a fast cadence, and plyometric
exercises, that are commonly used in the strength and conditioning
training of athletes. Contrary to popular belief and the practices of
many athletes, the peer- reviewed evidence does not support the view
that such exercises are more effective than traditional, slow and
heavy weight training in enhancing muscle power and athletic
performance. In fact, such exercises do not appear to be any more
effective in this regard than weight training at a relatively slow
cadence, and some evidence suggests they are less so. Also, such
explosive exercises do not transfer well (if at all) to athletic
performance on the sports field, and present a significant injury
risk. Therefore, such exercises should not be recommended in the
strength and conditioning training of athletes, except those who need
to learn the specific skill of lifting heavy weights fast, such as
Olympic lifters and strongmen.”
When was the last time you saw anyone carrying two 50lb dumbells across a football field non-stop? But that’s Paleo!
And I insist that sprinting is the fundamental evolutionary/survival ability. We must all be the descendants of competent sprinters.
Soon I’ll post on why I haven’t started sprinting yet.
While hunting this past fall I helped carry 140 pound deer up a steep hill through some rough terrain. I was able to do this without need for rest. The 2 guys I was with who are pretty much couch potatoes had to stop every 20 steps or so. My ground based training over the last several years entailed power cleans, deadlifts, kb swings and cleans, and sandbag work. Probably not the optimal prep for the deer move but I definitely feel I was better prepared than I would have been doing body building isolation movements.
Speed has always been my strong point. I was sprinter growing up and at one point was the fastest on my college football team. Haven’t actually sprinted in a while though. I should get back on that horse while the weather coopertates. Btw, i only had 2 legs of the deer.