What the fuck is Chad smoking and where can I get some.
Can anyone explain this seemingly acid-induced insight?
When you are counting and thus concentrating for the tempo of the exercise, u lose concentration on the actual doing of exercise. This produces a sub-optimal performance which would reduce muscle growth.
I get my stuff from here. It’s called Spike. 
[quote]knuckles wrote:
The cerebral act of counting muscle action phases (tempo) does nothing more than clog up your neural tracts so there’s less descending neural input onto your precious motor neurons…And anything that reduces your neural drive is disastrous for hypertrophy.
What the fuck is Chad smoking and where can I get some.
Can anyone explain this seemingly acid-induced insight?[/quote]
[quote]knuckles wrote:
The cerebral act of counting muscle action phases (tempo) does nothing more than clog up your neural tracts so there’s less descending neural input onto your precious motor neurons…And anything that reduces your neural drive is disastrous for hypertrophy.
What the fuck is Chad smoking and where can I get some.
Can anyone explain this seemingly acid-induced insight?[/quote]
Acid induced? Spending more time thinking about how many seconds it is taking you to lift a weight takes away from visualizing the actual muscle working through the action.
Watching the spandex bunny’s ass while doing squats will severely fuck up your concentration.
Those two examples are exactly the same aside from one lacking the excitement of nearly naked ass.
When you count tempo (ie. 2 seconds lifting, 4 seconds lowering) you’re using neurons that could be put to use to help you lift more weight and, hence, more hypertrophy. That’s what it sounds like, anyway…
Counting distracts from moving the most weight you possibly could.
Forget counting, just lift a heavy weight as fast as you can (with control, naturally) and bunch of times.
It’s just like bandwidth on a computer network. The more you use it for different tasks, the less optimally each task can be performed.
DB
CNS buddy…look into it.
Oops…that’s Central Nervous System in case you didn’t know.
This may just be me, but I think an appology to chad would be in order.
That is, for insulting his clear knowledge of the human body, as opposed to all 160 lbs of yourself it took to insult him.
Do you guys really think counting takes away from your lifting? That you’re losing precious neurons that could be used for lifting the weight? I didn’t even know that the areas of the brain that control those functions operated together!
This type of attitude is retarded.
And, rrcj, I don’t see where you get off making cracks about my weight as you weighed LESS than I do sixth months ago. You were weaker too. Except on bench. And, oh boy, I’m also younger than you. Darn, looks like you’re fucked.
So according to that theory, all the brain’s neurons are required to lift that weight?
What if the counting part to the brain can run parallel to the part that’s telling your muscles to contract? Can’t anyone here walk and chew bubble gum at the same time?
Some coaches like tempo and swear by it; some don’t and think it detracts from maximal effort. As fas as I can see, coaches from both sides produce results in their athletes. So the question is not without merit, nor easily settled.
The right answer might be: it just doesn’t matter. That “don’t count” thing sounds to me a bit like that “don’t finish training a muscle with a lighter weight and high reps, as the muscle will remember the light weight and will adapt to that stimuli.” Yeah, right.
[quote]knuckles wrote:
Do you guys really think counting takes away from your lifting? That you’re losing precious neurons that could be used for lifting the weight? I didn’t even know that the areas of the brain that control those functions operated together!
This type of attitude is retarded.[/quote]
Then try Chad’s test:
"I’ve had a few trainees question the validity of this explanation. In an effort to stroke my ego, I immediately have them perform a 3RM for the squat. Once they finish the 3RM, I let them rest a full five minutes before repeating the task. But the second attempt requires an additional component: they must lift the original 3RM load while counting backwards, out loud, from 100 in pairs (100, 98, 96, 94, etc.) You know what happens? They can’t lift the load for all three reps! Try it if you don’t believe me.
The reason these poor, cynical bastards couldn’t repeat the 3RM is because their counting task was “robbing” neural processes from rushing down the descending neural path to fire up the motor neurons. In fact, when I have trainees perform this same test while counting backwards in series of 7, their strength decreases even further.
Obviously, counting a 4 second negative isn’t as cerebrally-challenging as counting backwards from 100 by sevens, but it accurately demonstrates that the amount of descending input onto motor neurons is reduced with additional cognitive activities.
Bottom Line: The first reason to avoid TUT prescriptions is that the counting action reduces your maximal strength."
Full article here:
http://www.t-nation.com/findArticle.do?article=05-152-training
[Warning: Contains some big words.]
[quote]dollarbill44 wrote:
It’s just like bandwidth on a computer network. The more you use it for different tasks, the less optimally each task can be performed.
[/quote]
Great analogy.
Remember, CW’s background is in neurophysiology (if I’m not mistaken) which means he knows more than you. But this advice comes down to:
… don’t get distracted. Just lift the damn weight.
Dan “hated all that counting anyway” McVicker
Edit: Changed “CT” to “CW”
[quote]T-Nation Admin wrote:
[Warning: Contains some big words.] [/quote]
The mod just pwned you.
Dan “in ur base, killing ur d00dz” McVicker
[quote]T-Nation Admin wrote:
Full article here:
http://www.t-nation.com/findArticle.do?article=05-152-training
[Warning: Contains some big words.] [/quote]
dictionary.com will help you if you need it knuckles
I’ll try it next time I’m in the gym, although I’ve never had counting interfer with my concentration.
As a side note, I wonder why Chad didn’t just have them count to 3 or 4? Maybe it was because this didn’t affect their results and he needed some snazzy new fact for his article. I’m calling bullshit on that one.
And, again, whats with gang up on the person who doesn’t agree with an author? I’m a smartass, but I’ve seen it done to people coming with a completely polite question. This mob mentality at T-Nation is really dumb. You guys need to stop, for lack of a better term, sucking each others dicks and think for yourselves.
Oh, and here’s a thought for the admin. Did you ever consider that there may be a difference between simply counting and vocalizing the numbers? This would use different parts of your brain, INCLUDING those controlling complex muscles called vocal cords. The two activities are unrelatable.
I’m sure if CW had a ‘background’ in neurophysiology, he wouldn’t design such a poor experiment.
Here’s an experiment for CW to try. Count backwards from 100 to 1. Now count fowards from 1 to 100. Which one was easier? Looks like a complication of the process so he got the results he wanted.
Well, what the fuck are your credentials or your experiment to back up your theory? It’s nice you get to sit back and question without any evidence for your own opinion other than “I didn’t even know that the areas of the brain that control those functions operated together!”
And it is perfectly fine to question the writers on this site, but saying "What the fuck is Chad smoking and where can I get some.
Can anyone explain this seemingly acid-induced insight?" is not questioning, it’s flat out calling them out without anything to back your own opinion up. Your attitude is the one that is lacking here. You can call us retards and claim you’re fighting against the mob mindset, but all you’re really doing is coming off as an asshole.
[quote]T-Nation Admin wrote:
The reason these poor, cynical bastards couldn’t repeat the 3RM is because their counting task was “robbing” neural processes from rushing down the descending neural path to fire up the motor neurons.[/quote]
Or maybe because they had just done a 3RM five minutes ago? How’bout if they count naturally (1, 2, 3, 4…) in their heads? Does that reduce performance.
Counting backwards or by 7s is not something you do everyday, it does requires you to concentrate on it. Counting naturally, in your head, probably requires a lot less concentration.
Counting tempo doesn’t require you to extract square roots or find large primes in your head. Why does someone test it’s impact using a different counting scheme than required?
Ask Chad or some other coach to try this:
1st set: 3RM while counting tempo normally, at whatever tempo best approximates the natural squat rythm.
5 minutes rest.
2nd set: 3RM, no counting.
If counting really interferes, you should fail on the 1st, but not the 2nd.
[quote]knuckles wrote:
I’ll try it next time I’m in the gym, although I’ve never had counting interfer with my concentration.
As a side note, I wonder why Chad didn’t just have them count to 3 or 4? Maybe it was because this didn’t affect their results and he needed some snazzy new fact for his article. I’m calling bullshit on that one.
And, again, whats with gang up on the person who doesn’t agree with an author? I’m a smartass, but I’ve seen it done to people coming with a completely polite question. This mob mentality at T-Nation is really dumb. You guys need to stop, for lack of a better term, sucking each others dicks and think for yourselves.
[/quote]
hey, knuckles…
relax man…people are just flipping you a little shit…it happens to everyone around here…
as far as the counting thing goes…counting reps is fine…but counting tempo is largly a waste of time…just lift the weight…