Yes.
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Luckily …more of the research is starting to shift towards more of the anaerobic side.
Fixed.
Also fixed.
I can research must-see vacation spots, hear about Michelin-starred restaurants, and read the Kama Sutra, but until they’re experienced in the real world, it’s just speculation.
You’ve said this twice but haven’t actually done it.
This issue here is the way you’re setting up the question, as if these two things exist in isolation and it’s an either or situation. This is a false dichotomy.
All evidence, rational or empirical, can be useful and in this context neither will ever be conclusive.
Say you hold the position that empirical evidence is always better than rational. Are you saying one training study conducted over 2 weeks with 4 participants would then be ‘better’ evidence than, say, 10,000 people following a particular training modality and every single one of them realising exemplary results?
Or visa versa, 2 huge gym bros say the reason they are huge is because they train HIT rather than high volume? Is that better evidence than multiple well funded and well designed studies, followed by a Meta looking at the breadth of literature on the subject over a decade, that says typical HIT leaves gains on the table?
Especially when it comes to training and nutrition both forms of evidence are going to be severely limited by the complete practical inability to completely isolate the variables, resulting in huge amounts of noise in the data.
In reality both feed off each other, real world observations result in people testing hypothesis. The HIT vs volume camps got people to test the theory. Good rational evidence usually holds up under empirical scrutiny. Strong empirical data usually holds up under real world testing.
So to answer your actual question, obviously both should be used, and it’s very difficult in practice to use one without even inadvertently using the other. Not all rational evidence is as good as all other rational evidence, likewise with empirical. Good rational evidence should hold more weight than weak empirical evidence, and visa versa. Rational evidence that is not reproducible by empirical evidence should be considered with scepticism. Empirical evidence that does not hold up under real world testing should be considered with scepticism because as a friend of mine once said " In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." (Actually Albert Einstein, not my friend).
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I think, realistically you need a fair bit of both to be successful in pretty much anything in (even moreso if you want to help other other people achieve their training goals).
Example A:
Science guy only ever does workouts which are heavily supported by scientific studies…FOOLISH!!!
Science often just confirms what many seasoned lifters figured out through years of trial and error.
Example B:
Experience guy pretty much never pays any attention to tried and tested training strategies…even more foolish than the science guy in some ways, especially if the experience only guy is pretty much a beginner.
Theory + intelligent experimentation (once you’ve absorbed and tried out the empirically proven strategies)= Success!
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“Internet coaches” (like any ewe tube bro) and Real Coaches who also train lots of internet clients(like Bryant or Greg Panora) are in an interesting spot to do research.
If they want to try something out they don’t need to design some kind of weird artificial study, trying to isolate one variable and coming up with a program nobody would ever do. They can just put a routine that features that idea out there and let this legions of guinea pigs try it out and get lots and lots of feedback.
Instead of 11 college freshman, they could have lots of cases, from 1 in a billion, world class lifters down to regular old ladies to experiment on. For months or years at a time instead of for 10 weeks.
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Here it is.
Empirical evidence shows a lifter adding 100 pounds to his bench press. Say, from 200 pounds to 300. Him and his buddies, because of that result, hailed his workout program as the ultimate program to gain 100 pounds to the bench press.
Me, a rational skeptic, say… What were the circumstances? Did his buddies do it too? Was he drug-free? Was his form/technique consistent? How do I know he’s presenting us his REAL program? Did he in fact bench 300 or was that pure fabrication?
And then I’d be like…
Alright bros, here’s a better method. Follow Doug Hepburn’s program. It’s better because Doug can’t do wrong because unlike those Broscientists, Doug is a legend in powerlifting…
So you see, my rational method, taking the stance of a supreme skeptic, destroyed empirical evidence.
[sigh] You didn’t. You moved the goal posts, sidestepped, and raised potential Strawmen.
We weren’t talking about how a program is marketed. We were simply talking about how to determine when/if a program is “good” (or GOOD). The guy’s bench went up… the program was good. Whether or not his buddies can get the same results themselves doesn’t change the results he saw.
To be clear, we’re saying this hypothetical guy got results from doing a thing, and part of your approach to refuting it is to say, “I don’t think that hypothetical guy really did that thing or got those results.” What?
So he’s a broscientist who set records. Cool distinction. Again, at best, all you can say with intellectual honesty is that a different program might’ve given those results.
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Big flaws in methods and conclusions man.
You look at the lifters program–sets, reps, diet, any recovery methods. After a thorough analysis you Should conclude that:
A. He’s a freakin liar.
- Roids!
If you don’t reach those you have lost your way and been bamboozled by the internet.
Not sure if this has been already stated here, but for empirical evidence there has to be enough data. So if one guy says that x does y, it is not enough for a general rule. But if majority of lifters have same experiences (like when you squat your legs get bigger), it is most likely true in your case too.
So the original example of one guys deadlift is not empirical evidence. It is just anecdotal. And there might have been a dozen other factors in play at the same time.
I still call for some common sense: If you have anecdotal evidence that something works/does not work for you even if it does not fit with rational or empirical. Go for it. But making new ground/decisions should rely on the latter two.
PS. Actually when I think of it, not sure that lifting can be purely rational. It either is based on empirical science or anecdotal experiences. But the theme stays:
-
if you’re stepping on a new ground. Science is a good starting point.
-
but adjust and individualize your training based on personal experiences.
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Sincerely, I was just talking out of my ass at that point. Not my best argument. But my point remains that what you see is not always reality. The senses can be deceived.
No excuses on my part.
But this goes to the idea of ‘what is knowledge?’ There are conditions. And you can easily fool a reasonable person into thinking that things are real if you can provide an illusion.
If Kate Upton visually bench presses 500 pounds in front of your eyes, what is the natural conclusion? You’d have to think deeper into it. Chances are, either she’s an illusionist or you are hallucinating.
In the future, I’ll show you my own syllogism (a method of logic) that, to put it boldly, ‘proves’ the effectiveness of high-frequency training. I’ve been knee deep in my philosophy studies (self-teaching) for nearly three years now, and this syllogism is my proudest work. I’ll present it soon in here. If I’m getting the definitions correct, the knowledge I gained from that syllogism was obtained through a process of REASONING instead of the easier route of just saying “it works because it produced champions”. Classic rationalism with how I understand rationalism to be.
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Bro, I absolutely love this!
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I’m in! For science!
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This sounds like a lot of the more recent CT stuff in the best damn series. Do you have any experience/ opinion on those? I don’t, so I ask out of curiosity.
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Ben Shapiro? Is that you?
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I’ve never done the program either but you’re right, it’s very in-order with that line of reasoning on muscle damage.
I do believe Paul Carter is moving in the same direction, although as a whole his programming lately is even lower volume than BDW
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Do you mean the home-training variants?
I think what CT has “recently” done with regards to hypertrophy training is ensure that somehow all pathways for growth are used. This can either be intra-session, spread out over the week, or even within a rep.
For instance, the video below illustrates what is allegedly the perfect muscle building rep. The slow eccentric is to increase mTor activation, triggering protein synthesis/muscle growth. And on that last portion of the eccentric phase, the trainee is trying to catch the stretch reflex, to lift more weight, and cause more muscle damage. But muscle tension must be retained!
It’s important to note that CT recently released a PDF around this rep style, and said it’s not for beginners/intermediates but for advanced trainees that can actually do it right.
Personally, I don’t really think about this in detailed second prescriptions while I’m in the gym but the idea appeals to me not high-brow intellectually but “that makes sense”-sense. As everyone has surely experienced lifting with normal reps, you’ll fail on the concentric before any other form of contraction and significantly earlier.
Given adequate nutrition & recovery (and not excess volume) the driver for my own progression has been “challenge”. If it didn’t challenge me, it doesn’t force adaptations within the body. And, to walk away with a greater growth stimulus it makes sense to me to challenge not only the concentric but also the eccentric motion. Either through making the eccentric on every rep take longer, or after failing concentrically doing assisted reps (jumping chin-ups/dips for instance) to burn through the negative component of the lift. I sure as shit ain’t thinking about mTor but if that’s how it happens, then that’s “cool” 
.
I’ll add as an observation that before PC left the forums he seemed to want to focus completely on growth and that strength and performance did not interest him anymore and CT has moved back towards being more performance-oriented (not to say he doesn’t know a lot about making people bigger). This “change” seemed to line up fairly well with their co-authored book.
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I’ll ask you all something.
If you’ve met really big bodybuilders in the 90s or early 2000s when it was still a “fringe” sport, has any of them ever struck you as rocket scientists or phds in philosophy?
There are fields of science and medicine which require intensive education and in-depth, multi-variant studies and large-scale, lengthy drug trials and whatever.
No one has ever cured cancer through trial and error.
Boderline retards have gotten big and strong reading muscle mags in the 90s.
Do you not see the absurdity of this topic?
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I was gonna say, this whole discussion is probably relevant to less than 1% of someone’s progress
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Yeah, I’m not against science at all. The whole intent should be to dig deeper and see how things can be improved upon. But over the last 2 decades, it seems like so called “scientists” who don’t even look like they’ve even touched a barbell with their clothes on have been using dubious studies or misinterpreting rather vague ones to discredit people who have been successful at this sport and also successful at training people.
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