In the past, some HIT people tried to distinguish between “true” muscle failure and other kinds of failure. But I don’t think there was ever a clear definition of what “true” muscle failure meant. It was just a way for them to suggest that the skeptics weren’t training hard enough. (If you didn’t puke afterward, did you really hit failure)?
To me, failure has always meant task failure, the inability to perform a specific movement with a fixed weight. That can happen with a low level of fatigue and inroad (heavy weights), or a high level of fatigue and inroad (light weights). Both can stimulate some muscular adaptations, but they are clearly not equivalent in all respects.
I have no idea what you mean by “allegations”. WTF are you even talking about. lol You are being obtuse for some reason.
For the second time, I used “pros” as an example even with the OP not being a pro. My point was: no one remotely serious about such training would use Heavy Duty. Looking at pros (especially naturals) is a good way to see what someone serious is doing.
Heavy Duty is simply stupid to do for any kind of Olympic training…especially going by Mentzer’s latest training suggestions and “findings” before his passing. Mentzer’s latest ideas were pure quackery.
Sub failure and multiple sets is the way to do Olympic training at any level. One set to failure with Oly training is a disaster for anyone half way serious about training.
I suppose it depends on how much you value deep inroad and the associated metabolic distress that comes with it. If you believe those are key enhancers of hypertrophy, then light weights to grinding failure would be the way to go.
If you instead favor accumulating volume at conditions of high muscle tension, while minimizing fatigue (and the associated recovery cost), then multiple sets short of failure might be preferred.
There was a thread over in BSL about a recent meta analysis which looked at how proximity to failure impacted strength and hypertrophy. If you looked at conditions of equal volume, going to failure produced more hypertrophy than leaving several reps in the tank. If you subscribe to Chris Beardsley’s effective rep theory, it makes sense. Sets to failure will likely contain more effective reps.
However, they did not look at how proximity to failure affected fatigue and recovery requirements. Going to failure likely limits the amount of volume you can do, which may offset whatever benefits you potentially get from taking a set all the way to failure.
And interestingly, another study recently showed that even going 5-6 short of failure had equal hypertrophy to going 0-1 RIR. Here is a short video, but the full study is easy to look up and read, but this does summarize it. It fits my own experiences also.
ATP- agree
Yep, there is for sure a difference in the adaptations between resistance training vs LIT or steady state activities. No one has to literally go ‘jogging’ , but lower intensity exercise does indeed induce different and beneficial adaptations that resistance training does not. There are some koolaid driven HIT camps that stick their head in the sand against actual proven observed adaptations, but they do exist whether or not some choose to listen. This subject came up so often that I ended up writing this article below last year to address this.
Do steady activities provide any health benefits that resistance training does not?
Short answer, Yes.
First…
When people talk about CV benefits, usually abbreviated as “cardio”, that very abbreviation sends the conclusions in a wrong direction. CV stands for ‘Cardio-Vascular’, heart and blood vessels. Arterial health is probably more important as we age than the heart itself. Most of the issues people have with age and their heart, are due to the blood supply ‘to the heart’. When people only consider their heart rate during exercise, they are missing specific adaptations directed at the arterial systems.
Explanation
Resistance training, regardless of the application (heavy or medium loads, high intensity or volume, slow reps or fast reps, etc etc) do provide many great health improvements. There is no question on that. The question that always comes up, is if there is any benefit to lower intensity steady state activities beyond those, or different than those, that occur with resistance training. There seems to be a complete false premise, driven by a few ‘training gurus’, that resistance training induces all the same ‘cardio-vascular’ benefits as steady state activities. What they are mostly missing, is cardiovascular includes the heart AND the vascular system. It’s not just about the heart rate level and/or the actual adaptations in the heart itself.
Mechanisms
Resistance training with heavier loads and higher effort (50% and above), cause muscles to contract very hard, that contraction, during the rep occludes blood flow. When blood flow is occluded, back pressure builds up in the system, the body is trying to force blood into that muscle. This causes systematic blood pressure to rise very high for a short time during that rep. The studies below are to point out that the higher HR during a rep, are pushing adaptations to deal with high pressure and force, in the cardiovascular system.
Skeletal muscle tension, flow, pressure, and EMG during sustained isometric contractions in humans
In other cases MTP would reach as high as 240 mm Hg before clearance was zero. In the deeper parts of the muscles MTP during contraction was increased in relation to the more superficial parts. The means values for the % MVC that would stop MBF varied between 50 and 64% MVC for the investigated muscles.
Blood pressure changes during heavy-resistance exercise
Extremely high blood pressure elevations of up to 345/245 mmHg were observed during the lifts. Squatting caused the highest pressure rises and single-arm curls the lowest.
This back pressure is trying to expand the arteries, it’s akin to blowing up a balloon, the internal pressure stretches and expands the balloon. The same effect occurs in arteries and the high pressure forces them to ‘blow up’ and expand. That mechanical stretch tension stimulates arterial walls to thicken and stiffen so they won’t ‘blow out’ (again, like blowing up a balloon to the point that it pops). This effect has been seen and measured in humans. So we know it occurs, it’s actually seen, not theorized.
Resistance training in men is associated with increased arterial stiffness and blood pressure but does not adversely affect endothelial function as measured by arterial reactivity to the cold pressor test
Carotid arterial β-stiffness index, and systolic and mean arterial blood pressure were higher (7.7 ± 0.7 versus 6.0 ± 0.4 arbitrary units, 116 ± 2 versus 131 ± 4 mmHg and 86 ± 2 versus 95 ± 2 mmHg, respectively, all P < 0.05) in the resistance training group compared with control subjects.
Effect of 4 weeks of aerobic or resistance exercise training on arterial stiffness, blood flow and blood pressure in pre- and stage-1 hypertensives
Central PWV increased (P=0.0001) following RE (11±0.9–12.7±0.9 m s−1) but decreased after AE (12.1±0.8–11.1±0.8 m s−1). Peripheral PWV also increased (P=0.013) following RE (RE, pre 11.5±0.8 vs post 12.5±0.7 m s−1) and decreased after AE (AE, pre 12.6±0.8 vs post 11.6±0.7 m s−1).
From the above, we see, what logically fits. Adaptations in the body fit the S.A.I.D. principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) . What, and how, something is stressed is what that system tries to adapt to. Stress the strength of an artery, it will strengthen via increased thickness and stiffness.
Now, if you instead stress the flow capacity, the arteries will enlarge in diameter to allow more blood flow. Not thicken, but enlarge in diameter.
Middle-aged endurance athletes exhibit lower cerebrovascular impedance than sedentary peers
Regular endurance exercise training favorably restores the deteriorated dampening function of the aorta and carotid arteries in older populations
Prolonged endurance training is associated with the improved cerebrovascular dampening function in middle-aged adults.
Muscular strength training is associated with low arterial compliance and high pulse pressure
Aerobic exercise training increases arterial compliance and reduces systolic blood pressure, but the effects of muscular strength training on arterial mechanical properties are unknown
(19 muscular strength-trained athletes)
These data indicate that both the proximal aorta and the leg arteries are stiffer in strength-trained individuals and contribute to a higher cardiac afterload.
Why is this important
As people age, the number one ‘heart’ issue isn’t even in the heart, it’s an issue in the artiers, and it’s known as atherosclerosis, which is the build up of plaque inside the artery wall, this narrows the artery, which reduces blood flow to the heart. When blood flow is too little to provide oxygen to that area of the heart muscle, the person experiences a ‘heart attack’ as that area of the heart muscle suffocates and dies. So increasing the internal size of the arteries would be a very good health benefit. Far and above any other benefits from any form of exercise.
Proof this occurs
Besides all the above info., we can look right at a group of people who do not use resistance training but do perform a lot of low intensity walking daily. The people of the Massai tribe perform a lot of low intensity activity. They walk a lot every day. Their activity is roughly almost twice that of even a highly active person and worlds above most very sedentary people.
The Maasai keep healthy despite a high-fat diet
Surprisingly, the measurements show that the good health of the Maasai is not due to intense physical activity all day long. It seems that moderate but constant physical activity eplains the health difference between them and Westerners.
“On average, the Maasai move 75 percent more than we do in the West,” says Christensen. “Our activity level is about 44 kJ/kg/d, while for Maasai women the figure is 75 kJ/kg/d and for Maasai men it is 78 kJ/kg/d.”
Key point: The Massai do get atherosclerosis, but haven’t been known to die of a heart attack, and they have it at the same level as Americans, but via autopsies, they see that the internal size of their arteries was so large, the plaque build up didn’t reduce blood flow enough to cause issues.
ATHEROSCLEROSIS IN THE MASAI
The hearts and aortae of 50 Masai men were collected at autopsy. These pastoral people are exceptionally active and fit and they consume diets of milk and meat. The intake of animal fat exceeds that of American men. Measurements of the aorta showed extensive atherosclerosis with lipid infiltration and fibrous changes but very few complicated lesions. The coronary arteries showed intimal thickening by atherosclerosis which equaled that of old U.S. men. The Masai vessels enlarge with age to more than compensate for this disease. It is speculated that the Masai are protected from their atherosclerosis by physical fitness which causes their coronary vessels to be capacious.
Can you alter the properties of your arteries via how you exercise?
Arterial properties of the carotid and femoral artery in endurance-trained and paraplegic subjects
changes in arterial pressure and blood flow initiate structural and functional arterial adaptations (15). The latter is associated with alterations in local wall shear stress, which has been shown to be one primary stimulus for vascular adaptations. Thus a chronic increase in arterial blood flow volume leads to an outward vascular remodeling (20)
So there it is, the medical and real life proof. It’s up to every individual how they use this info. but there it is, all laid out in order. It really seems evident that resistance exercise is great, but is only one of our two main attributes of fitness. Regular ‘movement’ (walking, sports, etc.) offsets and compliments our lifting adaptations for a fully balanced outcome. None of this though suggests we need to run for miles a day, in fact, there is some research showing (as anything for that matter) excess ‘cardio’ can lead to unwanted adaptations and adversely affect health. But regular activity, that stimulates higher free flowing blood circulation, is very positive for health attributes and actually does cause positive adaptations not seen from resistance exercise.
What is ironic is that for years now the HiT crowd (Body by Science, Super Slow, Baye, Trentine, etc.) we’re all enamored by a note or something similar which was written years ago by a younger Dr. Doug McGuff on the subject of cardiovascular training. He wrote of a peripheral dialation of blood vessels during the performance of high intensity resistance training. He also suggests such training increases venous return due mainly to muscular contractions “milking” the muscles of deoxygenated blood. The resultant cardiac output increase causes a “backlash “ of oxygenated blood flow into the coronaries arteries due to left ventricular contractions.
This is of course 180 degrees different from most of the experts viewpoints. Increased peripheral arterial resistance might cause increased coronary perfusion, but McGuff claims a general vasodilation leading to lesser peripheral arterial resistance.
Such a line of thought led many of the HiT crowd to think cardio was not needed. I gave up on such line of thought a while back. If a medical doctor is confused about cardiovascular conditioning in such a simplistic manner, who can we believe?
Oh yeah, I’ve researched that a lot in the medical journals/papers. It seems RT does increase the peripheral arterial diameters, but not in the coronal arteries. They have imaged the changes before and after so actually could ‘see’ the differences with RT vs steady state. These ideas are based on their ‘logic’ that if the heart pumps faster, it’s all the same. What they are missing is that when HR is up during resistance training, BP is also very high from the contracting muscles occluding blood flow, but during steady state, there is no muscle occlusion so blood actually flows freely and rapidly without internal arteral pressure. And just like the S.A.I.D. principle dictates, specific adaptations to imposed demands induces different adaptations.
glad it was informative for ya
Yeah and it’s not even the ‘heart’ itself, it’s the vascular part, (which is really the most important part of ‘cardiovascular’ as far as longevity, that varies with different forms of exercise. I don’t think many realize that arteries also constrict and flex, and what they sense, alters their adaptations. (thickening for strength against high internal pressure vs expanding in diameter for a higher flow rate).
Thanks for all the links and the thoughtful article.
It does seem that high volume/low intensity cardio is having something of a renaissance. Perhaps Peter Attia deserves some credit for that. His messaging about Zone 2 cardio for longevity seems to be reaching a lot of people.
Just a couple of random thoughts to add to the stew:
There is an evolutionary case for doing a large volume of low to moderate intensity physical activity: it is the hallmark of the hunter gatherer life style, which is how our species lived for millions of years, while we were evolving from tree dwelling primates to our present form. One of the “superpowers” of humans is energy efficient locomotion. We are very efficient at using energy while prowling about looking for food. More to the point of health: Herman Pontzer (and others) have discovered that as physical activity levels increase in humans, energy expenditure does not increase linearly, but rather plateaus, and behaves according to a “constrained energy expenditure” model. As a consequence, people that are more physically active partition a greater portion of their energy expenditure toward physical work, and less towards metabolic processes. With sedentary folks, the opposite happens. And we know it is sedentary people who are most likely to suffer from the diseases of affluence. So maybe directing too much energy into the metabolism is not such a good thing? Perhaps an argument can be made that high levels of activity are good for overall metabolic health because of how it affects energy partitioning. Perhaps, just as periods of fasting can induce some improvements in metabolic health, so can frequent extended bouts of low to moderate physical activity?
The impact of exercise on the mitochondria is different depending on the intensity and duration of an activity. High intensity contractions (lifting, sprint intervals) seem to improve the efficiency with which mitochondria operate, whereas a sufficient volume of low intensity work can increase the number and density of mitochondria. The latter may be more important for overall health.
Most of the research on exercise and cardiovascular conditioning focuses on cardiovascular output. That is certainly relevant for endurance performance. But when someone dies from a heart attack (clogged arteries) it isn’t always because the heart’s output wasn’t sufficient. It is because those short cardiac arteries which direct a small proportion of the heart’s output back to the heart muscle got blocked. You die because of insufficient myocardial blood flow. You can have a magnificent heart muscle, capable of high output, and those tiny little cardiac arteries can still get blocked and kill you. I think it is fair to say that there is less research on how exactly exercise of various types actually affects the size and condition of the cardiac arteries.
Speaking of using heart rate to assess the strenuousness of exercise: The key to keeping your heart beating is an adequate amount of myocardial blood flow. How much blood flow is required? It is said to correlate with the rate pressure product, which is heart rate x systolic blood pressure (the back pressure against which the heart pumps). The myocardial VO2 demand of the heart muscles increases with the rate pressure product. So driving the heart rate up, while also working against high systolic blood pressure (i.e., lifting) can create a very high oxygen requirement for the heart, even if cardiac output isn’t that high. So assessing the demands that exercise places on the heart muscle requires more that just looking at heart rate. You also need to consider how the activity affects systolic blood pressure. I’m told that shoveling wet snow is very good at taxing the heart muscle because it elevates both blood pressure and heart rate. Not good if you have heart disease…
You guys sure do know how to “hijack a thread”…If you want a bit of fun, go back and see what the original topic was…Not even CLOSE to where you took it
