A question of strength Part 22

Barbell bench press is no good, right?

Q: I've heard many trainers say that traditional barbell flat bench presses are overrated when it comes to hypertrophy of the pecs. Do you agree with that?

A: It depends on your body type. Some exercisers grow through bench pressing, others don't. However, if you go to the World Bench Press Championships, you'll see a lot of athletes with big pecs - and all they do for their chest is bench press.

However, if you're short on time, any type of dumbbell press will be more efficient. Some trainers recommend barbell bench presses with a very wide grip to put more focus on the pecs, but this only leads to sore joints. The widest grip you should use would be a 90 degree angle between your upper arm and your forearm when you are in the lowest position of the movement.

Training age and program changes

Q: Is it true that the more training experience you have and the longer you have been training, the more often you need to change your training program? Would really experienced exercisers never do a training session twice?

A: Yes, that is true. Very experienced athletes and bodybuilders may never do the same workout twice in a row. For example, when Adam Nelson won the world championship in shot put, he had previously completed an eight-week training cycle in which he did eight workouts before training the same muscle group again in the same way.

The average exerciser should focus on the 2% rule: You should be able to do 2% more weight or an extra repetition from training session to training session. If this doesn't work (anymore), then you need to do something else.

The most common strength imbalances

Q: You've written a lot about strength imbalances and how to correct them. What are the most common strength imbalances that hinder exercisers in their progress?

A: For athletes, I've had the most success correcting a weakness in the vastus medialis. This is the teardrop-shaped quadriceps muscle that crosses the knee and is essential for helping the kneecap stay in the correct position during movement.

This weakness is caused by people not going down far enough when doing squats. If you don't do squats deep enough, you'll never get to the vastus medialis. If you want to run fast or jump high, you need a well-developed vastus medialis and that means doing deep squats.

With the publication of their controversial book The Knee in Sports in 1969, authors Karl Klein and Dr. Fred Allman, Jr. started a nationwide paranoia about deep squats. Even though this controversy should have been settled by now, many coaches still shy away from having their athletes go further down than the position with thighs parallel to the floor during squats.

From a purely empirical standpoint, if deep squats were really that bad, Olympic weightlifters should have far higher rates of knee injury - which is not the case. Weightlifters have some of the lowest injury rates of all athletes. And not only do they bend their knees very low, they also spring upwards from the lowest position.

The second most common imbalance I observe is in the external rotators. When we have exercisers who come into our performance centers perform a rotator cuff program, their performance usually increases on the bench press, incline bench press and pull-ups because the external rotators are not inhibiting the internal rotators in length.

One of the primary reasons that athletes - and bodybuilders in particular - often avoid external rotator exercises is that they have to start with shamefully low weights.

Jim McKenzie is a professional field hockey player who was able to go from 280 to 380 pounds on the close bench press in less than four months. For the first three months, we didn't train bench press. Because his external rotators were so weak, we had to start with 2.5 kilo dumbbells for many of the exercises! He left his ego in the checkroom and the results speak for themselves.

Mood and overtraining

Q: What is the best indicator of overtraining?

A: Your mood is by far the best indicator of overtraining. In fact, mood is a better indicator than any known hormonal parameter. This is because the nervous system enters a state of overtraining long before the first signs of muscular overtraining.

In terms of the nature of the change in mood, depression is usually the best indicator. The athlete simply doesn't want to train anymore.

We have also found in national teams that morning body weight is closely related to depression caused by overtraining. In other words, you might come to my gym, train twice a day with a very intense program and then your body weight drops 3 to 4 kilos practically overnight.

When I trained with the national swimming team, the first thing we did was to buy everyone a digital scale. The athletes had to weigh themselves every day. If they saw a weight drop of 2 kilos or more, we reduced their training load by half.

Training for coordination

Q: Is there anything I can do in my training to improve my coordination?

A: By the time you turn 12 (give or take 2 years), you will have developed 90% of your coordination.

Coordination is specific. There is no such thing as a universal athlete. Michael Jordan couldn't play baseball. The only athletes who can switch to other sports are pole vaulters.

Pole vaulters are a combination of sprinters, gymnasts and weightlifters. They are pretty much the only athletes who can switch sports and still be successful. Swimmers, for example, can't walk and chew gum at the same time and they lose all depth perception on solid ground. You can ask any weight training coach.

Try showing a national team swimmer how to do lunges. Submit the video to America's Funniest Home Videos and you'll win. Even epileptic penguins could do better. To reiterate, coordination is specific.

I've worked with athletes from 23 different national teams. During the summer we sometimes do something like cross-training and it's really fun. I remember when we used to do leapfrog warm-ups outside with the national speed skating team. They just couldn't do it. They could set a world record on the ice, but they couldn't do leapfrogs.

So if you're a professional ice hockey player, finish your athletic career and decide to take up karate, you might be good at it. But you can never be as good as someone who started karate before they were 12 years old.

Over the course of 27 years, I have only trained one athlete who had the coordination to excel at two different sports. He was the Michael Jordan of volleyball. The day he made the national volleyball team, he also got an offer from the national basketball team. So he could have chosen which sport he wanted to play.

Bo Jackson was another exceptional talent, but he was probably also a kid who had played both football and baseball at a young age.

It's important to expose your kids to as many sports as possible before the age of 12. At age 12, they will be old enough to decide what is best for them. But you should never let children specialize before the age of 12. My own daughter trains in Kempo Karate, but she has also tried figure skating, gymnastics, ballet and swimming.

Hungarians have done the most research on this topic. The most important skills that children should learn are running, jumping, throwing and swimming in combination with some gymnastics. If your child has already practiced all of these by the age of 12, then they can become whatever they want.

Shoulder training - the last word?

Q: Some coaches say that direct shoulder training is not necessary because the shoulder muscles are trained during other exercises. They say that performing a few sets of side raises is sufficient. Others recommend complete shoulder specialization training sessions. What do you think?

A: I was one of the first to say that you don't really need direct shoulder training. I've been saying that for 20 years. But there are some exceptions, especially for cosmetic reasons.

If a guy has shoulders like pancakes, then I'll have him do direct shoulder training. Especially in bodybuilding, it's pretty hard to get to the top without direct shoulder training.

The front and back shoulder muscles usually get enough work when you train pull-ups, rowing, bench presses, dips, etc.. But a lot of people neglect their back, which can result in a lack of development of the back shoulder muscles.

What I think works best for shoulders are triple sets. The shoulders have intermediate type muscle fibers. They respond best to multiple exercises with short rest intervals, 8 to 10 repetitions and a variation of motor resistance.

Here, for example, is a quick solution for shoulders that are lagging behind in their development:

A1) Sitting side raises, 6 to 8 repetitions, 10 seconds rest

A2) Side raises on the machine, 10 to 12 repetitions, 10 seconds rest

A3) Side raises on the cable pulley, 15 to 20 repetitions, 120 seconds rest, followed by the next cycle starting with exercise A1

The lateral shoulder muscles seem to be the "forgotten" shoulder muscles, but it is a myth that there are only three shoulder muscles (anterior, lateral and posterior shoulder muscles). French anatomists showed years ago that there are a total of seven areas of the shoulder muscles that you can selectively activate. This is the reason why you can see the best shoulder development in the world of sport in gymnasts - they apply force to the shoulders from every conceivable angle.

The shoulders recover quite quickly from training. The shoulder muscles are made up of slowly contracting muscle fibers, so recovery can happen quickly. The frequency of training is important here. If you lack shoulder development, it may be necessary to train your shoulders three days a week.

All muscle, no mass building belly

Q: Is it necessary to build fat in order to build muscle? And can you lose fat and build muscle at the same time?

A: It is not necessary to build body fat if you are trying to build muscle mass. That's an antiquated idea. It's one of the dumbest things I see - guys eating candy bars and fast food when they're trying to build muscle.

One of the problems in the world of training with weights is that people don't give a sh...t about their health. I see training with weights as a lifelong activity. The cleaner you eat, the better. Bill Pearl and Dave Draper still train with weights today.

It is quite possible to build muscle while losing fat. I've seen this a lot with my athletes. I had a kid from the University of Southern California who had a body fat percentage of 25%. I got him down to 12% in 8 weeks and he built 25 pounds of muscle during that time.

A cheat day every 5 to 7 days (depending on your metabolism) is fine if you are trying to build muscle. I think it's hard to build muscle if you eat clean all the time. But there is a difference between a cheat day every fifth day and eating junk at every meal.

Even on cheat days, I tell my athletes to avoid trans fats because they can seriously damage the body. I'd rather see a skinny guy trying to build muscle be a bowl of rice pudding than eating fries.

Recruit more motor units

Q: It has been theorized that training a muscle with an exercise that provides a good stretch (like incline bench curls) leads to greater hypertrophy. Is this true?

A: No. Well, it can of course lead to hypertrophy, but for different reasons. It's like my isometric bicep training program where you use isometric training by pushing or pulling a bar into a rack. This training causes hypertrophy for a different reason than the reason traditional training causes hypertrophy.

People are too dogmatic. An exercise is only as good as the time it takes to adapt to that exercise. Provided you use enough load over a long enough period of time, all exercises can build muscle. It's just that some are better than others. It has something to do with what is also called the volume of recruitment of motor units.

For example, an exercise performed on a machine with a rigid guide will recruit fewer motor units than an exercise performed on a cable pulley. And an exercise performed on a cable machine will recruit fewer motor units than a dumbbell exercise. The more we stick to what our bodies were made for - lifting rocks, carrying loads and generally lifting things against gravity - the better off we are. This means that we should prefer free weights to machines.

Some people argue that any exercise should be done standing up if possible. However, if you look at scientific research, you'll find that the fewer muscles from other parts of the body involved in an exercise, the better.

In incline bench curls and Scott curls, for example, the recruitment of motor units is higher than with standing curls. When you stand and curl, your entire posture changes to prevent you from losing your balance and falling. When you perform curls sitting down, you can focus all your neural drive on the motor units of your biceps and achieve better recruitment.

And EMG studies conducted at the University of York have shown that the more you can isolate the exercise (in an isolation exercise) with a free weight, the more motor units are recruited. If you measure the recruitment of quadriceps motor units in leg extensions vs. squats over a given number of repetitions, then the recruitment of motor units will always be higher in squats. However, when we talk about isolation exercises, the more you can focus the neural drive on the target muscle, the better the recruitment will be. Scott curls will therefore recruit more motor units than standing barbell curls in the elbow flexors.

Activating "survival fibers" will also cause you to recruit more motor units. If you perform split jerks, then there will be additional recruitment of the triceps, as otherwise the bar would fall on your head. Snatches or power snatches will recruit more motor units than power deadlifts as these exercises involve more risk. Risk is synonymous with recruiting more motor units.

There are seven stages of muscle activation. One of the keys in strength training is to choose the right exercise - the exercise that will give you the most value for your efforts. Here is a modification of Dietmar Schmidtbleicher's chart on the level of muscle activation. My Swedish colleague Riccard Nillson and I have added the seventh level. You should dedicate most of your training to exercises at level 5 and above:

Multi-joint exercises vs. isolation exercises

Neuromuscular Activity - NMA

Level 1: Isolation exercises on machines with variable resistance such as leg curls or leg extensions

Level 2: Complex exercises on machines with variable resistance such as leg presses on a Nautilus machine

Level 3: Isolation exercises on machines with constant resistance such as scott curls on a cable pulley or tricep presses on a cable pulley

Level 4: Complex exercises on machines with constant resistance such as leg presses on a 50 degree leg press machine

Level 5: Isolation exercises with free weights such as barbell Scott curls or flying movements with dumbbells

Level 6: Complex exercises with free weights such as snatches and power reps

Level 7: Complex exercises with free weights such as power snatches, dips on rings, rope climbs, split jerks

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-39, https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-40

By Charles Poliquin