HIT and New Research

entsminger,
could you elaborate on what you felt unsafe with a 30-15-6 protocol?

It wasn’t the 30-15-6 part , it was the cheating part that I didn’t like. I often cheat just a tad at the end of a set to get another rep but the cheating I was doing involved much heavier weights than I would normally use. I felt if I kept it up I might injure something. It was a workout promoted by Bioforce. Who cheated quite a bit. I have to say though that it did seem to work. I’ve noticed many top bodybuilders cheat quite a bit with their reps . I guess I’m more of a stickler for strict reps. I love the 30-15-6 reps though, after one of those sessions my arms were pumped to the max!
Scott

As for the strict reps, I was once in a barbarian type gym with these big guys throwing around huge poundages. One guy was using 40 or more pound dumbells for side laterals and swinging them to get them up. I stood near him with my 10 pound dumbells and slowly rose the weights up and down concentrating very hard on the feel. I remember one guy came up later and said I was sure using some baby weights but commented I had some serious delts there! That’s when I knew it wasn’t so much about the weight you used as how you used them.

Ok, once again I wrote this long post and all that posted was the first sentence! What the heck is wrong??
Here it is again if I can remember. I was in a hulk/barbarian type gym and these big guys were throwing huge poundages around . This one guy was doing side laterals ( swinging them up) with something like 50 pound dumbells. I stood near him and grabbed my little 10 pound dumbells and strictly did my set going slowly up and down concentrating very hard on feel all the way. Later this other guy came up and said I was sure using some baby weights but I sure had some serious delts there! That’s when I knew it wasn’t so much about how much weight I used but how I used it!
Scott

Nothing wrong with the post. When there’s a tab/indented space at the start of a paragraph, the forum formats it differently. That’s all…

 It still appeared, it just looked messed up but the entire thing could be seen when scrolling. But I went in and edited the post to remove the indent, so the previous post could be seen. No problem.

I guess you didn’t read my reply the last time

Sorry but I didn’t see your first reply. I’m not sure which it is but I’ll try different things next time. I’ve never had this kind of trouble on a forum before .

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When/if you see it happen again next time just edit the post and remove the leading tab/spaces.

I do think you have to have some belief (or hope) in any kind of training you perform. Even if doing volume training to sub-failure, you still need decent enough effort/intensity, dedication, concentration, etc. with sufficient loads, tension, fatigue, etc. Half-assed approaches to working out (even if doing cardio) of any kind are never going to work optimally. The power of the mind is important…which we see even in placebo effects.

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Some months ago I made a try, I increased up my volume to what is reccomnded by the people who do this so called studies, Mev “minimum effective volume” is considered to be 10 sets per bopdypart…the results? Shrinkage and loss of overall fitness. . “Minimum effective volume”… I say “minimum effective bullshit”

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In the past, studies on exercise response have tended to report just the average response for the study group. But lately, I’ve seen some studies where the distribution of individual results is also reported, and these typically show high variability in individual responses, including cases where a small percentage of the study group lost size or strength, even thought the group averages increased. It reflects what I think many believe: not everyone responds in the same way to a given training regime.

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Average Al,
I saw that round table. What I like about James Fisher and James Steele is that they remain open minded and do not try and dig themselves into a hole, while trying to defend a position that is becoming clear to everyone else is indefensible.
Also there was an agreement by both him and Brad that set totals for strength gains were less than what was needed for hypertrophy. Even Brad said that his recommendations were based on “optimising” hypertrophy only, and that MOST people would do fine with lower set protocols.
So I took from that, if, after the first six to twelve months, it is clear that you won’t be a mass monster and if you have other things to do with your life, then low / single set protocols will be enough.

Average Al,
As I’ve said elsewhere. We are a.prisoner of our genetics. Some may respond badly to ANY weight training protocol, but who’s to say that they wouldn’t be awesome with cardio work.
As Lyle McDonald once wrote somewhere…If you respond badly to a low volume resistance training program, what makes you think that you will fare any better by increasing the number of sets that you do?

sgg,

I assumed you meant Fisher and Schoenfeld.

What surprised me was they were not that far apart on many issues. It does seem that trainers who don’t come from the HIT tradition are coming around to the idea that lower volume routines (one set to failure or similar) can be pretty good, give excellent bang for the buck, and are good enough for most people.

Where it goes off the rails is when people enter the debate with rigid, all or nothing positions: one set is useless, you’ll never get jacked that way vs more than one set is a complete waste of time, and not a single person in the universe should ever do more than one set.

It does seem that one of the biggest weaknesses of using existing science to guide design an exercise program is that most of the studies look only at average response, and assume most or all will respond in the same way. But the individual doesn’t care what the average response was, only what his or her response will be. Perhaps some day, there will be ways to determine a priori what kind of responder you are, and that will make it easier to find the right kind of program. Until then, N=1 trial and error, and an open mind, are what we have…

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Is your beef with the idea of 10 sets per bodypart per week that you can’t grow with that amount of sets, or that you didn’t? Because, rest assured, you can grow, you just can’t train like you would if you were only doing 1-2 sets.

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Average Al,
Yes the video conference was James Fisher and Brad. James Steele is James Fisher’s research partner on many papers.
Like I said what I like about Fisher and Steele is that they have a high level of intellectual honesty. Steele recently spent a lot of time retracting papers that he had worked on and published with Brazilian researchers, because it came to light that the data in at least one of them was very suspect. He even enlisted the help of Brad to do this. You have to admire that level of honesty and willingness to keep an open mind. There have been examples in the past of researchers who’ve basically dug themselves into holes trying to defend an untenable position.

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Sorry, but James Steele claims without factual evidence, and with empirical evidence contrary to his stated views, that resistance training is the safest and best way to increase the cardiovascular system.

This is rubbish! No endurance training athlete uses resistance training as a primary means of improving the CV System.

There is zero evidence that resistance training is superior to traditional cardiovascular training methods for training the CV System. Sure, any exercise is better than none, but do not be misled by two supposedly educated men that lifting weights is all one needs for CV fitness.

As Mark Twain stated: There are 3 kinds of lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics!

Looks like Mr. Steele is familiar with all three.

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I think you may be overstating what James Steele has said. Interested parties can review his conclusions and evidence for themselves via the following paper:

Resistance Training to Momentary Muscular Failure Improves Cardiovascular Fitness in Humans: A Review of Acute Physiological Responses and Chronic Physiological Adaptations by Steele, Fisher, McGuff, Bruce-Low, and Smith

Also, what competitive endurance athletes do to excel in their sport may far exceed what the average person needs to do to remain generally fit and healthy.

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@ AA,

I do not care what you think. We all think!
It is considered intellectually dishonest to make a statement that someone is overstating something without stating WHERE they are doing this!
It is common knowledge that elements of the HiT community promote resistance training as a stand-alone training modality. Mr. Steele is not the first, and certainly will not be the last, to promote this false view.
I never said or promoted resistance training as making no changes to the CV system. It is Mr. Steele who expounds on cellular ATP energy production as one of the reasons steady-state aerobics are not needed. He fails miserably to not account for other significant body processes accounting for CV improvements.
Resistance training is NOT the best or safest way to improve CV fitness.

I am passionate about the truth of exercise, especially cardiovascular conditioning.
James Steele is wrong about cardiovascular conditioning. He discredits the whole HiT community with his erroneous message. I will call him out!
Marc