A question of strength
Q: Apart from milk thistle, do you know of any medicinal plants that athletes use for liver regeneration?
A: Yes, one of these plants is Picrorhiza kurroa, a small perennial plant that grows in the northwestern part of India in the Himalayas at an altitude of 3000 to 5000 meters. This plant is an important medicinal plant in the traditional Ayurvedic system of medicine and is used to treat liver and bronchial problems. Its root and root stem are used medicinally.
In an experimental setting, this medicinal plant has been shown to protect the liver from various stressors ranging from toxic fungi to Tylenol. This plant appears to be at least equivalent, if not superior, to milk thistle in many cases. In addition to strong antioxidant properties, strong liver regenerative effects have been demonstrated.
Picrorhiza kurroa is available in two dosage forms: tinctures and capsules standardized to 4% of the active ingredient cuctin. (However, if you are a real man, you will travel to the Himalayas and pick the plant yourself, as I used to do three times a year).
The normal dosage used is between 400 and 1500 mg. Many athletes report increased energy levels and gains in lean muscle mass after just 5 days of use. This is probably related to improved IGF-1 levels.
Swiss Ball use and abuse
Q: You have written a few articles in the past about the use of the Swiss Ball. Today it seems that stability balls and related products are being used incorrectly and far too often. Have you changed your mind about Swiss Balls?
A: The problem with Swiss Balls is that people start doing things with this equipment that their bodies are not made for. Doing squats on a Swiss Ball, for example, is pretty crazy. It's no longer a workout, it's more of a party trick. One of the problems is that you have to do squats with your legs bent. There is actually someone in the fitness industry who brags about demonstrating this exercise at a seminar. When he jumped off the ball, he tore his cruciate ligament. The problem is that you expose your ligaments to unfavorable stretching when you perform O-legged squats.
If you want to use a Swiss ball to modify the strength curve, as I do with some arm exercises, then that's fine.
For eccentric lean away curls, you start the exercise with your back against the ball and your triceps in front of a Swiss ball in a squat position. In this position, you perform the concentric part of the curl movement. As soon as the dumbbells are in the highest position of the curl movement, raise your hips so that your thighs are parallel to the floor. Your upper body should then lie flat on the top of the ball. Then lower the dumbbells down and away from you. Then lower your hips back to the starting position and repeat until you have completed the desired number of repetitions.
A Swiss ball is also good for certain core exercises. However, the problem starts when people say that Swiss Balls can cure cancer and perform infrared spectroscopy of the lower back. There are a lot of people out there making unsupportable claims.
Recent research has shown that Swiss Ball training for the core will only work for about 6 weeks. You will get more ab activation from squats and deadlifts than from Swiss Ball exercises - regardless of how difficult the Swiss Ball exercises are. If you are an untrained person, then you can use the Swiss Ball, but after 6 weeks you will have achieved the maximum gains.
About 70% of all Swiss Ball exercises are worthless. It's one of those things where people tend to take an idea too far. Swiss Ball training can have its benefits, but it's not a panacea.
Most personal trainers and strength coaches don't know how to make their clients stronger. I remember talking to a trainer who uses all these stability gimmicks. I asked him why he was using all this shit and he said "I'm not good and that's why I have to do all these weird things to get people to come to me."
I remember seeing him have a post-menopausal woman do one-arm split squats with a fat dumbbell. I wouldn't even let Adam Nelson - one of the best shot-putters in the world - do that. The risk of injury is simply too high.
The problem with using Duradisk and similar equipment is that you have to use weights that are so light that none of the primary muscles are activated. If a woman can do a 12.5 kilo overhead press, she will only be able to use 4 kilos if she performs this exercise on one of these stability training tools. Unfortunately, this will not overload her muscles.
I call this kind of thing "entertainment training" and not strength training. And every time I see something like this, I would like to kick the trainer in charge with a steel-toed shoe.
And the BOSU Ball? The BOSU ball is a Swiss ball for idiots! If you stand on it, you will always stand on your back. Why would you want to adopt a position that is not good for your knees and ankles? How about doing the whole thing on one foot? Then you would have to reduce the weight!
One of the stupidest things I've ever seen is doing dumbbell presses lying on a Swiss ball with only one arm. The heaviest an 80 kilo exerciser can use is about 20 kilos. Why? Because he would fall off the ball if he used more. The same exerciser can use much more than 20 kilos when doing regular dumbbell presses. So what's the point of training like this?
"It activates the core." Yes, and to what extent? All you're doing is activating a few stabilizers to prevent you from rolling off the ball, but you're not overloading the pressing muscles. Once again, this is nothing more than entertainment training. It's circus training, but it's not going to do anything.
Now, these pieces of equipment work well...as far as marketing goes. It's the same as running around pylons. How often do you run a perfect line in football or any other sport? It's never going to be perfect - especially when a 130 kilo defender is running at you in American football and trying to throw you off course.
The biggest training mistakes
Q: Apart from diet and lifestyle mistakes, what are the biggest training mistakes people make when their main goal is muscle hypertrophy?
A: The most common mistake is taking the easy way out, which means, among other things, choosing exercises that don't recruit the most muscle. Leg extensions instead of squats, hyperextensions instead of deadlifts, etc.
Basically, hypertrophy is a function of time under tension within a certain limit. It's always a question of how many motor units you can recruit. Bench presses with chains (adapted resistance) will always do more for you than the same number of repetitions on a chest machine. You need to choose the exercises that can give you the most bang for your buck.
Let's say you have ten pairs of identical twins that you divide into equal groups. One group does deadlifts with bands, squats with chains and pull-ups. The other group trains leg extensions, leg curls and chest presses on a machine. The difference in hypertrophy between the group with free weights and the group with the machine training will be monstrous.
Another example: Take one exerciser and have him do 10 hard sets of pull-ups for 6 reps each. Take his twin and have him do 10 sets of lat pull-ups of 6 reps. The difference in muscle mass will be like night and day, as you recruit more muscle during pull-ups than lat pull-downs.
The problem with machines is often that the lever ratios are simply too good. Any teenager can do chest presses on a machine with 5 plates, but they won't be able to use that weight on any barbell exercise.
Another problem with machines is the fixed movement sequence. For the same reason, I also believe that dumbbells are a better choice than a barbell for most exercises - especially if you are dealing with athletes and not bodybuilders.
When I was in the Soviet Union in the eighties, I was amazed at how little variation the athletes there used in their equipment. They had a lot of barbells and a lot of dumbbells, but there was nothing fancy. It's what you do with the equipment that matters. And yet I saw a guy there doing 5 sets of bench presses of 8 reps with 2 seconds rest with the weight on his chest at 240 kilos. And he wasn't a weightlifter but a wrestler! He had built up his strength with basic equipment.
All of these machines can be a good source of variation for the exerciser who is only interested in a good beach body. In bodybuilding, muscles don't have to be functional. They just need to look good. It doesn't matter if you use boulders or machines with fancy resistance curves - as long as you use enough load and the time under tension is long enough, you can achieve hypertrophy (just change the exercises).
I'm not dogmatic enough to say that machines are "evil". It depends on the population that uses them. The businessman doesn't care if he can do incline bench presses with a pair of 40 kilo dumbbells - he just wants to look good by the pool of his 5 star hotel. Whether he uses machines or dumbbells for this doesn't matter.
Bicep exercises that are not for wimps
Q: When I look at your programs, I see that you often use Scott curls. Why is that? Just like kickbacks, this is an exercise for wimps.
A: Allow me to disagree. There is a big difference between scott curls and kickbacks. If you look at EMG studies, the two biceps exercises that recruit the most motor units are incline bench curls and scott curls. The main reason for this is that you don't need to activate motor units from other muscle groups.
How much weight can you use in kickbacks for triceps compared to lying tricep presses with dumbbells? Maybe 10%. The reason this percentage is so low is that we are dealing with poor motor unit recruitment in this exercise. You simply can't move much weight. The two best exercises for triceps recruitment are one-arm French presses and triceps presses on a reverse incline bench, both of which are isolation exercises, but the weight is very high compared to kickbacks.
Even though I like scott curls for biceps, you should always change the angle and equipment regardless of how good the exercise is. You can perform scott curls at different angles with a barbell, a dumbbell or on the cable pulley.
Equipment from the past: the arm blaster
Q: Since you like Scott curls, I'd like to know what you think of the good old arm blaster that Arnold used.
A: There's actually a study on the subject that shows that this equipment increases the recruitment of the elbow flexors, which is probably because it makes it harder to gain momentum by moving the upper arms.
If you try to gain momentum, this training tool will cut uncomfortably into your ribs.
It therefore increases muscle recruitment, although an easier way is to simply lean your back against a wall or other fixed object.
The last word on barbell rowing
Q: You've questioned the value of barbell rowing in the past. Why? Isn't this the best mass building exercise for the back?
A: One problem with barbell rowing is that many people find it really difficult to use the latissimus and elbow flexors in this exercise. They always unconsciously start working with momentum from their legs and using their gluteus and lower back.
The second problem is that the bar hits either the abdomen or the chest, which limits your range of motion. A better way is to use single arm dumbbell rowing.
This also allows you to move the elbow up in different pathways. One month you could move the elbow straight up, one month you could pretend to punch someone in the face with your elbow. This allows you to recruit different parts of the retractors of the shoulder blades. Barbell rowing is not a useless exercise, but dumbbell rowing is a better alternative.
People often want to hear that one particular exercise is the only way to go, but that's simply not true. Barbell rowing is fine, but after a few weeks you should do something else.
Strongman training for beginners
Q: I don't want to compete in Strongman competitions, but I would like to use some of their equipment for my training. What should I start with?
A: The two exercises that are easiest to learn are the weight sled pull and the farmers walk.
If you do intervals using a weight sled then depending on the load pattern you will improve your performance on squats, deadlifts or whatever you are working on.
Tire flipping is probably the most impractical exercise. You will have to make big jumps in the weight used and this exercise also includes a technical component. Of all the strongman exercises, tire flipping is associated with the most injuries. Bicep tears have been known to occur due to exercisers using the wrong technique. Farmers walk and sled pulls, on the other hand, are pretty self-explanatory, which is why I would start with these.
One of the best tests of athletic ability is to ask the trainee to walk with the farmer's yoke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vc2WXGtk0Q)
Take an exerciser who uses a ton of weight on squats and lifts a whole house on deadlifts and ask them to run with a super heavy yoke. He'll look like an epileptic penguin who just had a seizure. We did an experiment where we had a previously strong person train for four months using only the Farmers Yoke. No squats, no deadlifts. At the end, their squat and deadlift weights had increased by one or two percent. That's true core training. Run 25 meters with a yoke and your abs will be activated like rarely before.
Many people say that you should use walking boots on the Farmers Walk to protect your ankles. I prefer to use running shoes so that you don't protect your ankles. I want the ankles to stabilize themselves and allow you to increase your ankle stability. Something like this works far better than a Duradisk!
Determining athletic potential
Q: What is a good way to tell if a child has good potential for weight training?
A: There is a study that was done with world-class Olympic weightlifters. If you have them do a hand dynamo grip test, you will find that their grip strength is only slightly stronger than it was at the age of 12. This is due to the fact that those who went on to become world champions in powerlifting disciplines were already 95% stronger than other children in their age group by the age of 12.
In other words, grip strength is a good selection criterion. Do you want to find a future world champion in weightlifting? Use a grip strength test for children aged 8 and 12. This will immediately show you who will be strong.
In China, they look for hairy upper arms in female weightlifters. If she is eight years old and has the forearms of a Lebanese cab driver, then she will be selected for weightlifting. This is because women with hairy forearms have higher androgen levels.
Source: https: //www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-33, Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-34
By Charles Poliquin