Article: "Exercise Form Doesn't Matter... At All", Thoughts?

Keith gets quoted a lot in climbing circles but mostly studies the patellar tendon, right?

I have no idea. He was cited in the NY Times article as follows:

According to Keith Baar, a physiologist at the University of California, Davis, who studies the molecular properties of cartilage and other connective tissues, the cells in cartilage respond positively to exercise for about 10 minutes.

Keith Baar is a smart dude. His realms of study are in fields related to collagen synthesis. This includes studies in engineered tendons, living tendons and living cartilage

Connective tissues are adaptive. If provided the right intensity of stimulus, in the correct volumes, with the correct recovery, they can adapt to almost any stimulus.

Athletes’ ACLs get thicker during the competitive season, rowers’ intervertebral discs become stronger, runners often have stronger cartilage, sprinters’ tendons are stiffer, powerlifters’ bones are denser. The list goes on

Fishing lines are non-biological, non-adaptive tissues. They cannot be compared to a living body.

UCL tears in throwing athletes are nearly always associated with a long history of throwing volumes exceeding that ligaments recovery capacity. Interestingly though, post-UCL tear, athletes who never return to throwing will have ligaments less stiff than those of athletes who progressively increase their throwing volume and intensity.

I would argue that the deviation in “form” resulted in you loading new tissues/positions that were not prepared to be loaded at that magnitude. This is, again, a load management issue. If you had prepared your body to deal with load in that position, then you would have been less like to be hurt.

You’re talking about the FIFA-11 protocol. Three of the issues with evaluating the effectiveness of the FIFA-11 are:

  1. It is very difficult to track the training load of the study’s sample. Therefore, these studies attempt to account for the effectiveness of the FIFA-11, but have a poor ability to track load management
  2. It can be difficult to ensure good implementation of these protocols
  3. These protocols are not athlete specific, and may underload some athletes whilst overloading others. I would argue that they mostly underload athletes
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That’s the one they mentioned!

At least for the climbing IPP they’ve included one element which is at a relative difficulty, namely hanging at 70% of your max hang (fingers).

I’m guessing a lot of these protocols lack a suitable progression. As an illustratory example, if a person could do say 50 Inverted rows, maybe that’s not a good warmup anymore. Maybe they should do ten to feel if everything is okay and the n do single-arm Inverted rows instead.

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That’s exactly the issue. Although most of the popular protocols (including FIFA-11) do include “levels” which athletes can progress through, but after a certain period of time even the top level stops providing any form of stressor. I think the two biggest reasons these occur is because because protocols must consist of exercises that are:

  • equipment-free (other than field/court and ball)
  • easy to teach and understand by coaches who may not understand anything about strength and conditioning

In my eyes, this massively limits the outputs that can be achieved in such protocols

of course tissues adapt, that’s not the point, a tissue has a current tensile strength that ‘can’ be exceeded. That’s why we see injuries. Baseball players icing their shoulders, sprinters laying on the track with torn hamstrings, etc.

Apologies, I misunderstood

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I suppose you could make that kind of argument, but where does it lead you? Am I supposed to identify every way that a dead lift could go bad, then progressively load each kind of lifting error or bad position in order to build up my ability to survive that? That would be wildly impractical.

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Yes, start practicing every bad position or form variation so you are prepared for any deviation from good form , this is pretty funny!!
Scott

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Typically expected BS. But keep moving nautilus threads when the guy has written numerous books about the subject. Your “criteria” is a joke. As long as the enhanced pretty boys (used VERY loosely) chime in and take over all is good! It is Testosterone Nation after all. I’m glad Wood is getting the real Darden info off of here.

Feel free to join him/them.

I’m intrigued who you’re talking about here? I can’t think of many on this site that fit this category. Actually, I can’t think of any.

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I agree, it could go too far. Personally, I train my trunk through a full ROM (including flexion) with various assistance lifts. Main options I use are:

  • Jefferson curls (train deep flexion +/- rotation)
  • Deep side bends (train deep lateral flexion)
  • GHR sit ups and back bridges (train deep extension)

Loaded carry options may be useful because the spine naturally moves through multiple planes when walking, so loaded carries could be a way to train trunk muscles through a relatively wide ROM

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I don’t know exactly who you’re speaking about here, but I’ll take one for the team and claim credit for ‘enhanced pretty boys’.

P.S Why go through the trouble of creating an account, reading through a whole post, then showing everyone your ass (metaphorical)? If you don’t like what you’re reading, then don’t fucking read it…? :man_shrugging:

I found this thread mostly interesting tbh, i suggest finding a thread YOU find entertaining as well as it appears it is not this one.

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I’m glad you have someplace else to talk HIT since you’re done here. I’m done with people pissing on my doorstep and complaining their shoes are wet.

So, about exercise form (since my earlier questions were taken as rhetorical)… does the exercise itself matter? In other words, is it “never use loose form on anything ever” or is it “never use loose form on big exercises with higher risk, but swinging weights on pressdowns or calves is fine”?

If it’s the latter, then the topic really becomes “Exercise Form Doesn’t Matter… Sometimes”. Agreed?

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Sounds like something an ugly fucker with no gains would say.

I can agree with this. If your form is shit for squats, deads, Clean Press, etc. - those are all recipes to get hurt. But if your form is shit for curls, there is virtually no harm… Probably even a significant increase in intensity at the sacrifice of form, so long as the reps are being performed in such a way to still produce heavy tension.

Cheat curls with negatives have been used by every big lifter under the sun.

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One of the innovations of Nautilus was to use a cam to ensure that the resistance curve for the exercise was better matched to the strength curve of the muscle being exercised. With free weights, the strength curve often doesn’t match the body that well. The result is sticking points, which tend to limit the training load. With bicep curls, you have to keep the load low enough to get through the right angle/forearm horizontal position. But cheating (or the use of momentum) can also be used to get through a sticking point. I tend to think of this as an alternative to the use of cams - controlled use of momentum to manipulate the load in other parts of the ROM.

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No disrespect to Nautilus, i simply don’t use much for machines - and i dont feel like I see many high-level bodybuilders heavily using machines either. Training with Nautilus equipment is probably better suited for training the muscle itself, but it is extremely equipment reliant… If you have to change gyms and they dont have exactly the same equipment, it still feels different.

I think the drawback of having a more consistent resistance curve is that it doesn’t apply with freeweight lifts. Effectively, it’s like watching someone use the machine bench with 4 plates and then asking them to do a free bench at 2 plates - and they struggle to do it. Not saying this of everyone, I just think it doesn’t have enough practical application outside of that specific piece of equipment. They are better used as complimentary pieces because of their ability to isolate muscles that receive far less stimulation from freeweight exercises IMO.

I’m going to get flamed here… This is the Darden Forum :grimacing:

It would be interesting to gather some statistics on this.

Back when I trained at a big box gym, it seemed like most of the guys who looked like bodybuilders spent a lot of time on machines. Not exclusively, but still a fair amount of time. Of course they also would do a lot of benching (and then bitch about torn up shoulders). I’d see some of them occasionally dead lift or squat. But most of the guys squatting and deadlifting heavy looked more like power lifters or athletes interested in GPP.

In terms of high level bodybuilders, take a look at some of Jay Cutler’s training videos. In one recent video, he did promote free weights. But then he goes and spends 75% of his own training time on machines… go figure!

Edit: You also see lots of free weight folks using bands or chains to alter resistance curves. And, of course, people change the angle of exercises to manipulate the resistance curve: drag curls vs preacher bench curls vs regular curls.

I don’t use machines right now, because I train at home with limited equipment. But if I was in a gym that had machines, I’d certainly put them into the mix.

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