I think if you consitently moderately overtrain for an extended period of time (4+ weeks) your body will adapt to be able to handle greater workloads. Use Muay Thai fighters, Olympic gymnasts as an example. Most people that analyze them from a traditional bodybuilding standpoint fail to realize the most basic concept: the human body is adaptable like no other.
Interesting thread.
If I may chime in- Nothing simply explodes in to a discipline or field of science. It is developed over time. All of the theories and laws of the natural sciences that we take for granted and use as examples of breakthroughs were actualy products of centuries of work. Especialy our most recent ones. Exercise science will be no different. What the guys on this site and others that have been working in this field have been doing is advancing their discipline bit by bit, just like the ones that went before them. They are creating the body of work that will some day be the empiracle evidence that people cite in their hypothesis to prove something else.
If you like flow charts, logarithms, and what not, why not start to collect this data, create the abstracts, and develope a conclusive body of work that can be used to advance the field?
It sounds like you have the curiosity and enthusiasm for it.
[quote]mindeffer01 wrote:
Interesting thread.
If I may chime in- Nothing simply explodes in to a discipline or field of science. It is developed over time. All of the theories and laws of the natural sciences that we take for granted and use as examples of breakthroughs were actualy products of centuries of work.[/quote]
A top-of-the-head list of “explosive” single works in science:
Elements by Euclid of Alexandria
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Sir Isaac Newton
A Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claud Shannon
The chemiosmotic-coupling hypothesis of ATP formation by Peter Mitchell
Louis Pasteur’s thesis on crystallography
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid by Watson and Crick
Schrodinger, Bohr, etc., etc.
I’ll concede that some of these had some groundwork in front of them, but some of them were totally out of left field and the respective area of study wasn’t the same since.
How earthshattering and mindwarping are you looking for?
If only it were so easy, I don’t exactly have the background or access to do it. Somebody like CT or JB (no offense to others, I choose these two based on the literature they cite and data proferred) is a little bit more “in the know” than I am (okay maybe a lot more). They probably have access to the data that exists, have patients/subjects/clients and equipment/ facilities to fill in the gaps, and general financial wherewithal to generate funding. Not to say they’re rich, just that they’d be much better finding “investors”.
Excellent, thought-provoking thread.
Most will come to their own conclusions based on a study with a sample size of 1–themselves. Regardless of what Poliquin or Louie Simmons or Joe Weider has to say, trainees can usually tell what works and (I would assume) will not stick with something that doesn’t work.
Granted, I’m a newbie and I recognize this means I’ll make larger gains on most lifts based on basic ‘muscle learning’ or intermuscular development. Nevertheless, I’ve done the old 4 X 8-12 by body part (from Arnold’s encyclopedia) and noticed ok gains for a few months. Then I moved to low-rep, total body workouts and made vastly superior strength gains. I will therefore stick with this method.
One last point: this site seems to stick to the ‘heavy weights, low reps’ party line. Reenforces what we just read in a previous article on the same site which makes the reader feel good about the consistency of the info. Not always the best thing to have many like-minded individuals discuss something. Leads to a statement and lots of affirming nods. Nice to hear some dissenting opinions.
Ok here goes nothing hope I can help.
Evidence is a tricky subject and you cited medicine as an example and it was a good one to cite because it allows me to make an interesting point and these are quotes from some articles in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics:
?For those authors who have previously applied this research method,21,22,25-36 the stimulus in asking what proportion of medical care is evidence based came from previous observations, which estimated that only approximately 10% to 20% of all procedures currently used in medical practice have been shown to be efficacious by controlled trials.20,37 However, the studies on which those 10% to 20% estimates were based ?used clinical maneuvers rather than patients as the denominator for their rates, [so that] treatments rarely used received the same weight as common ones.?21 A recent evaluation of health technologies using that method concluded that only 21% were based on evidence.38? (1).
?The study by Gill et al,22 assessing the proportion of interventions in general medical practice that were evidence based, is a case in point. That study’s inclusion criteria for what counts as evidence in support of an intervention’s effectiveness were set such that they included nonexperimental studies. The study authored by Nordin-Johansson et al36 went even further when, in studying the extent to which internal medicine was evidence based, they allowed the inclusion of the consensus opinions of national expert panels to count toward calling internal medicine evidence based.
As a result of the very loose criteria they employed, Gill et al22 were able to claim in the conclusion to their study that 81% of interventions used in general practice are evidence based. However, had the authors of that study set their inclusion criteria in accordance with the industry standard as promulgated by the proponents of EBP, thereby only allowing RCTs to count as evidence of an intervention’s effectiveness, the proportion of interventions used in general practice that could be claimed to be evidence based would have dropped to only 31%. Very probably, had the authors of that article taken the time to appraise critically the supportive RCTs they located, and to exclude RCTs of poor quality, the proportion of care provided in general practice may have been less than 31%. Interestingly, chiropractic, which has come under ongoing criticism for its lack of research, fares comparatively well (see Table 6). Of the care provided by the chiropractor in this study, 68.3% was deemed evidence based when examined with a similar, if not more stringent, methodology than that used in assessing the extent to which a number of medical specialties are evidence based.?(1).
?First, it is important to recall that only 15% of medical procedures have been found to be supported by any literature references at all3?and only 1% of these are deemed to be scientifically rigorous.4?(2).
Now I did not scour the literature base but regardless you can see that even medicine is not as evidence based as one might think with regards to medical procedures. Does that mean we should only use procedures proven in RCTs? If we did than how many procedures would not be able to be done? 50-80%? Exercise science like medicine is an art and science and only recently are we beginning to apply the rules of evidence based care to medicine. In some aspects it helps in others ways it hurts because clinical experience is falling by the wayside.
Now does that mean that there is no right way to apply training to reach a specific goal? The answer is no. There is one principle that you must abide by called the SAID principle or specific adaptation to imposed demand. A very simple concept, in fact you may have heard of it before. The SAID principle is the science part of training, the art is learning how to use your training to impose just the right amount of demand in the right areas to promote whatever training affect you are looking for. Too much demand and you regress, to little and there is no progress. IMO there is only two ways that can be done, one is by yourself using a training log and monitoring your progress, 2 would be to actually hire a qualified trainer or coach who has done this with a broad cross-section of trainers time and time again. IMO it is a lot more complex than just changing your program every 4 weeks and eating one gram of protein per lb of body weight and anyone who says otherwise is probably someone who has great genetics whoops! did I take the genetics ?cop out.?
With all of that said I am still pondering how to get the gains I want and I think to some degree we all are.
Jeep
- Is chiropractic evidence based? A pilot study Wenban AB., Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics - January 2003 (Vol. 26, Issue 1, Page 47)
- Evidence-based clinical guidelines for the management of acute low back pain: Response to the guidelines prepared for the Australian Medical Health and Research Council Rosner AL.,Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics - March 2001 (Vol. 24, Issue 3, Pages 214-220)
Good thread!
There are quite a few different lines of thought going on here, but there is one in particular I would like to touch on.
It is true that all real learning and knowledge about training comes from training itself, not by reading about training. To illustrate my point I wanted to use an old analogy I remembered from a philosophy class I took years ago. I think it’s from something Plato wrote, but who knows:
The example is meant to illustrate the difference between a belief and knowledge. What does it actually mean to say we “know” something. Say you are travelling somewhere and you’re not sure which path to take (or in our case what training program to use). Since you’re unsure of the way, you stop and ask for directions. Let’s say the first person you ask doesn’t really know, but he believes that you take the path on your right. You follow this path and happily he was right. Surely we can’t say that he “knew” which way to go, but he had a belief which turned out to be true. Now, let’s say the fella had a map, but he had still never actually been to the town itself. Because he is now basing his answer on something tangible, Plato (or whoever it was) wants to refer to this as a “justified” true believe, but not yet true knowledge. For someone to actually “know” the way to this town, he/she has to have actually been there and travelled the road him/herself.
I think this analogy is very relevant to learning about training. I can read an article on this site and because I have some training experience and I may have tried a similar program, I can judge it’s merit a lot better than someone who has just started training. Back to what you said in you original post about inexperienced trainers making recommendations about programs. They are like the first guy giving directions. They have a belief, and it may turn out to be true, but they don’t “know” shit!
[quote]lucasa wrote:
mindeffer01 wrote:
Interesting thread.
If I may chime in- Nothing simply explodes in to a discipline or field of science. It is developed over time. All of the theories and laws of the natural sciences that we take for granted and use as examples of breakthroughs were actualy products of centuries of work.
A top-of-the-head list of “explosive” single works in science:
Elements by Euclid of Alexandria
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Sir Isaac Newton
A Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claud Shannon
The chemiosmotic-coupling hypothesis of ATP formation by Peter Mitchell
Louis Pasteur’s thesis on crystallography
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid by Watson and Crick
Schrodinger, Bohr, etc., etc.
I’ll concede that some of these had some groundwork in front of them, but some of them were totally out of left field and the respective area of study wasn’t the same since.
How earthshattering and mindwarping are you looking for?
If you like flow charts, logarithms, and what not, why not start to collect this data, create the abstracts, and develope a conclusive body of work that can be used to advance the field?
It sounds like you have the curiosity and enthusiasm for it.
If only it were so easy, I don’t exactly have the background or access to do it. Somebody like CT or JB (no offense to others, I choose these two based on the literature they cite and data proferred) is a little bit more “in the know” than I am (okay maybe a lot more). They probably have access to the data that exists, have patients/subjects/clients and equipment/ facilities to fill in the gaps, and general financial wherewithal to generate funding. Not to say they’re rich, just that they’d be much better finding “investors”.
[/quote]
It’s not that I’m looking for anything mindblowing. I’m pointing out that even the works that you cited were not the product of an epiphany that came from nowhere, they were developed through a long process of learning and teaching. Even Euclid with Euclidian geometry had to learn the fundamentals of his discipline before he could create his own. They were the product of several lifetimes of work.
Next- Your response to why you are not involved in developing the information you request is typical of someone with no appreciation for what you are asking. Those guys have dedicated years of their lives to learning and working in the field of exercise science to develope what they have and reach the point that they are at.
Are you saying that you are not willing to invest a decade or two of your life to seeking answers to the questions that you demand answers for?
These guys have.
All you have done is started a thread accusing them of “shuffling the deck and not dealing”, under the guise of stimulating thought. A discipline of thought that you admittedly are not willing to undertake.
What exactly is that supposed to mean? “shuffling the deck and not dealing”. If you are going to cast an aspersion like that, especialy upon the learned and accomplished folks that you have targeted, be a little more clear. State your accusation and provide some substantial documentation to back it up. That would be productive argument. All you have done here is thrown an articulate tantrum.
Also, taking a response and just composing a question doesn’t make you look smart. It does make you look argumentative. My challenge to you is this- Take one question that you have of any of these guys work, and answer it completely. Create a definitave work on the subject in question. If you can do that, Then you will be in a position to question their application of methods. Then you will understand the challenge they face. Spend a little more time looking for answers than asking questions.
In closing I think it is only fitting to conclude with- Shut The Fuck Up and Hit The Weights.
[quote]mindeffer01 wrote:
Next- Your response to why you are not involved in developing the information you request is typical of someone with no appreciation for what you are asking. Those guys have dedicated years of their lives to learning and working in the field of exercise science to develope what they have and reach the point that they are at.
Are you saying that you are not willing to invest a decade or two of your life to seeking answers to the questions that you demand answers for?
These guys have.[/quote]
So, I’m not misunderstood, I fully appreciate the amount of effort it would take to do what I’m asserting. Maybe even more than yourself. I’m almost of the mind that it can’t be done by a single person, especially not someone like myself who would, admittedly, start out behind the likes of Charles Poliquin, CT, JB, Dan John, Staley, and the like.
True, I accused them of “shuffling the deck and not dealing”. False, I started under the guise of stimulating thought, as other posters will atest, I have actually stimuluated thought. My intent was to stimulate thought, and I’ve succeeded (in Bodybuilding’s Think-tank, wierd), no false pretenses involved. False, the discipline of thought we are all currently undertaking, the mode of action I and most others here (maybe not AlbertaBeef)are unwilling and/or uncapable of undertaking for a variety of reasons.
To clarify, if I ask for the single best routine that T-mag has ever produced I’ll get every single one of them back. I’ll even get large numbers of routines that T-mag didn’t produce. Others have asserted that “everything works for a little while” and “there’s nothing totally new”. So, why is another HST, ABB, or Rennaisance Bodybuilding needed? If it’s up to me to find what’s best, if I should switch routines every two weeks (never repeating?), another routine is exactly what I DON’T need. If I’m looking to pull a royal straight flush from a deck of cards, I only need five cards to be in the deck. Right now, most of us (unless you’ve all read something I haven’t) don’t even know exactly how many cards we need in our hand.
[quote]State your accusation and provide some substantial documentation to back it up. That would be productive argument. All you have done here is thrown an articulate tantrum.[/quote]Look up the word accusation and the word assertion and determine for yourself which I’ve done. As for productive, I’ll let the thread speak for itself.
I’ve thrown no tantrum, and in my interpretation of others posts this has been pretty congenial.
Funny, I asserted NO intelligence, knowledge, or education on my part and DID assert my argumentative nature. Buyer beware! 
I’ve already admitted to being unfit and/or unable to create a “definitive” work. And I have a great appreciation for the challenge they face, believe me, I know the manic depression that scientific research can be. As for being in a position to question their methods, in true capitalist style, every dollar of every client of theirs puts that client in a questioning position without that client having the slightest training knowledge. Every dollar spent at Biotest puts that customer in a questioning position. I’ve made purchases from pretty much everyone I’ve questioned (I think CW is the exception, and given the appropriate opportunity, I’ll rectify the situation). I haven’t claimed superior knowledge, skill, or talent (In fact, I’ve asserted the opposite.) merely asked questions that others seem to find interesting, which was my intent (as an added bonus, I have garnered information that, at least I, have found interesting). If it were merely a “life’s work” pissing contest, Joe Weider wins hands down.
As I said before, my capacity for questioning far exceeds my capacity for training and the applicability of my answers to others is conceivably worthless anyway (which again, is part of my point). If you reread everything that’s been posted and learn nothing, I’ve failed.