I was thinking about this while writing my last post The Return of the Sit Up?. It’s funny how trends change in the fitness industry. One day HIIT (high intensity interval training) is the best conditioning method ever, the next it’s the return of aerobic training. One day crunches and sit ups are the best ab exercises, the next we realize that it’s the worst thing ever.
You get the point. Trends change.
One of the main reasons is because we’re learning a little more about anatomy and physiology everyday, which make us change our mind on what the best training and rehab modalities are. Because of that, some things have disappeared (or will disappear) from our training programs and will likely never come back. Machines for instance. We have enough knowledge now to understand that training on machines is counter productive for anything that involves functional training or sports performance.
On the other hand, some things just come and go. In my opinion, it’s the result of pendulums swinging too far in one direction. When all everybody is doing in gyms around the country is high rep bodybuilding style weight training, and low intensity long duration conditioning, a trend starts to develop. But more importantly your body adapts. And when you do the same thing for years, you plateau and your progress slows down.
Then, a study comes out on the benefits of HIIT and how it improves VO2 max, and decreases body fat faster than low intensity long duration conditioning. All of a sudden, low intensity long duration conditioning is garbage, it makes you fatter and it’s completely useless. You hear strength coaches say: “look at all the marathon runners, they don’t have any muscles and they’re fat.”
Yea…very fat
We saw the same thing happen with weight lifting for hypertrophy development. One day we realized that working on lower rep range, using heavier weights and moving away from body part splits was waayyy more efficient than the typical bodybuilding approach. Because, you know, the only reason bodybuilders ware so jacked is because they’re all on juice.
Have you heard of natural bodybuilding?
Trends change. I get it.
We learn and discover new things constantly. I get it.
But in a lot of cases, the reason trends change so drastically is because pendulums swing too far. HIIT became the new shit for conditioning because people have been doing nothing else but low intensity long duration conditioning for years no matter what their goal was. You want to lose fat? Run. You want to get in shape for hockey season? Run.
Same thing with the bodybuilding trend in the weight room. Everybody was doing body part splits, everybody was doing sets of 10. And one day we realized that when you lift heavier weights you’ll put on some weight faster. That’s probably not because you’ve never forced yourself to lift a dumbbell heavier than 45 pounds before…
In both cases, just like with so many other things, trends change because we do too much of one thing. Your body becomes very efficient at developing one thing. In the meanwhile, there’s a bunch of other qualities or systems that are sleeping somewhere in your body.
By writing this post, I’m not trying to take a stand on any of those trends. I’m trying to make a point that sometimes when a pendulum swings too far in one direction, our first reflex is to swing it as far as possible in the opposite direction….
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Isolation training really doesn’t exist, whether it’s in bodybuilding or in rehab. The concept of isolating a muscle has long been associated with bodybuilding purposes to increase the size of the different major muscle groups individually. This has led the whole fitness industry to follow stupid training principles for years, and even today if you step foot in a commercial gym, 90% of people, including most personal trainers, use bodybuilding concepts (working every muscle separately, using body part splits, etc). But I digress.
Even Spiderman is following the trend
You can also notice a certain muscle isolation mindset in most rehab protocols. One of the most popular ones is the isolation of the VMO in knee pain and injuries. How many times have we heard “he has knee pain because his VMO is weaker than his vastus lateralis”. In an effort to cure every knee problem imaginable, we started isolating the VMO…or should I say “trying” to isolate the VMO.
Because of our understanding of the fascial system and how muscle interact together at this point, we now know that isolating the VMO is a flawed concept. But somehow we’ve managed to keep trying to isolate small muscles in the hope that it would cure our shoulder, low back or hip problem.
This guy clearly needs some VMO activation exercises
As Charlie Weingroff recently said: “If you don’t believe in isolating the VMO, why are you trying to isolate the serratus anterior?” To me this is a quote that makes plenty of sense. It’s just how your body works, you can’t isolate just one muscle, whether it’s your VMO, your biceps brachii, the serratus anterior or the lower trap. Isolation just doesn’t exist.
Does it mean that you can’t reinforce a certain movement pattern that will facilitate the recruitment of certain muscles? No. But you shouldn’t think about “isolating one muscle” and think more in terms of movements. And in the end, the goal is be able to perform integrated movement patterns with optimal joint centration and the right muscles will do their job- as long as we don’t have movement restrictions.
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Everyone who’s been lifting for a while knows there should be some ground rules about the way we should behave in a gym, some sort of etiquette. You know, the kind of rules that will help you be considered a normal human being even under heavy lifting conditions and more than aything else that won’t make you look like a douchebag in the gym. So that being said, I decided to put a list of my own. Here it is in no particular order.
1. Sleeveless shirt are not acceptable. I don’t care what your excuse is and if it is because you feel more comfortable with it, if you’re wearing sleeveless shirts to lift, you’re really just showing off.
2. On a related note, it’s not called an UNDERshirt for nothing.
I don’t care how jacked you are, you shouldn’t wear this to lift.
3. If you’re talking during a set, it’s not heavy enough. Females included. Period.
4. This is nothing new, but worth reiterating: doing curls in the squat rack is totally unacceptable. Bodybuilding enthusiasts need to understand this. I’m this close to exercising my vengeance and doing like this kid in every single commercial gym in America:
You think it’s ridiculous? So next time, stay away from the squat rack when you do curls, Johnny Baloney!
5. Speaking of curls, it seems to be every beginner’s favorite exercise. But honestly, if you can’t do 5 bodyweight chin ups, I don’t even know why you’re wasting your time doing curls.
6. Your cellphone should be turned off and put in your locker as you walk in the gym. It amazes me how it’s becoming such a plague among exercise enthusiasts to send text messages in between sets when they lift. How are you supposed to be focused and ready to lift heavy weights with such a distraction! Time between sets should be better spent doing stretches, corrective exercises and other “filler exercises” that are going to make your time in the gym more effecient and really help you in the long run. Plus, recent studies have clearly demonstrated that sending text messages between sets decreases your testosterone levels and makes you less attractive to members of the opposite sex.
7. You should be able to squat and deadlift wayyyy more than you can bench press. If that’s not the case, you know what you need to start doing more than once a week, right?
8. No crunches. I mean EVER! There is a time and a place for doing crunches; that time is never and that place is nowhere. Seriously, it’s 2010, and we know by now that there are far better options to work your core muscles other than doing crunches, which let’s face it are as useless as Kim Kardashian.
And no, crunches won’t shed off the fat around your midsection. Add to the fact that a hgh volume of crunches will make your posture significantly worse because of the attachement point of the rectus abdominis on the lower ribs. Also, crunches are really just a flexion of your lumbar spine, which according to the most knowledgeable researcher in the world on lower back, Dr. Stuart McGill, is one of the most common injury mechanism on the lumbar spine.
9. Unless you’re hitting a PR, there is no reason why you would grunt and moan on every single rep of an 8 rep set of DB chest press. Yes I’m talking about you Matt!
Granted on the video he’s hitting a PR (405 x 5, which is more than I can do!). But now imagine him, doing every rep of a scap wall slide making the same noise! Nothing will get you demoted faster at Endeavor. (Kidding Mat…not really!)
10. Proven fact, you need to include one or more of the following on your workout playlist if you want to make substantial gains: Slipknot, Rise Against, Marilyn Manson, Busta Rhymes, Eminem, DMX, Lil Wayne, Linkin Park, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down and Phil Collins (I might have forgotten a few acceptable options…)
