The Year in Strength Science 2011

[IronMind]

great article idea sully. some of the NSCA ones you touched one I recall reading and thinking similiar th oughts about them, especially the football tackling one

with regards to the FMS study, it was also mentioned on the footballscoop S&C forum and discussed a little there. I did go to the 3 day FMS workshop, primarily for alot of CEU's and because my old job paid for it, but i guess I find it somewhat remotely interesting (?). while I think the study in your article is on par; the FMS doesn't correlate to performance, I think it is also worth mentioning the FMS is not intended for performance enhancement or correlations, its all about injury preventation. One could argue strength on basic core lifts prevents injuries, and based on my studies into russian literature I would say this is more accurate then FMS scores..I think somewhere in Supertrainign verkhonshansky says strength is the main predictor of injuries in athletics

I guess basically, what I'm saying is, I don't know about the FMS... I liked the whole idea alot more before I sat in a room with a bunch of pencilnecks for a weekend.. 600$ and I didn't even get a freaking tee shirt, lunch, or protein bar sample let alone the little FMS kit - they were on sale for 175$ though. I felt ripped off and I didn't even pay for it.

[IronMind]

i'll be honest, i didnt read any of the previous threads before i submitted my earlier post... and it hasnt shown up yet for me to edit, so here goes #2

our bodies are good at solving short term movement problems, at the expense of long term tissue health seems to be agreed upon by many, many experts in the field.

Athletic performance and health do not often go hand in hand, and to zone in on one may have direct influences on the other, these influences could be positive, negative, or neutral depending on the individual, intensity of your specificity, amongst a ton of other factors

just because they can sustain a high level of athleticism even with these issues, doesn't mean they wouldn't be a lot better without them.

Doesn't mean they may turn into a lower level athlete after you prioritize the FMS either..their deep squat hits a perfect 3 but the vertical jump is down 5inches, they get rocked by the opponents that squat, pull, and clean more than them yet only score a 1 or 2 on that FMS deep squat

When I took the workshop, Lee Burton several times said to me that you TRAIN by lifting heavy weights at low reps. They use the FMS as a screen to determine which movements the athletes aren't yet ready to load heavily (or at all), and to determine a corrective strategy to implement to allow them to get back to loading those movements so they can get stronger/faster/more powerful/whatever. I realize that is my personal experience with Lee, not emphasized in the official marketing materials - because they are, admittedly, definitely trying to hawk as much FMS product as possible. And emphasizing its role as minimalist wouldn't serve that purpose. But that is what he said, several times, over the course of the weekend.

I think this is great with extremely high level athletes whose lives are focused on improvement with regards to their sport. they have the time and resources to get to scoring 14+ while maintaining the physical parameters needed for optimal performances.

My big thing with the FMS is when a lower level athlete avoids key movements because their FMS score is low and then you lose valuable time actually training towards performance enhancement and injury potential - because while you balance out that straight leg raise to 2/2 you also avoid squats/deads so now the kids lower body and less stable so they get a blown knee without contact or just flat out suck at ball but hey they score 2/2 on the active straight leg raise so all is fine and dandy


I thnk as a S&C coach you should constantly be aware of limitations/restrictions and not need something like the FMS to put it all together. sure if I had the time/resources to screen everyone I worked with on top of the training program goals i would do it to get the baseline and be able to track that aspect but i just cant see sacrificing time to roll kids through the FMS..sure the atlanta falcons and indianapolis colts can but they also have the potential to do anyhthing they want with their employees. I would love to see a study showing how FMS scores and 1RM squat scores relate to injuries in the NFL, but I doubt that will ever happen


also, i believe in supertraining verkhoshansky discusses how removing functional asymetries can potentially ruin an athlete, and not only in positions where asymmetries are extremely important to performance..insane book if you want to take everything to another level

[Evenflow]

They gave the subjects 6 mg/kg and 5 mg/kg! For a 180# guy, that's 480 mg of caffeine: the same as 1.25 jumbo Starbucks or 6 Red Bulls.

Can people really not tell the difference between a placebo and the equivalent of 6 Red Bulls, especially after detoxing for two days?

[Mark Rippetoe]

When I took the workshop, Lee Burton several times said to me that you TRAIN by lifting heavy weights at low reps. They use the FMS as a screen to determine which movements the athletes aren't yet ready to load heavily (or at all), and to determine a corrective strategy to implement to allow them to get back to loading those movements so they can get stronger/faster/more powerful/whatever.

This is the part of this FMS deal that puzzles me. The squat, deadlift, press, and bench press are the movements he's referring to when suggesting heavy weights at low reps. The movements an athlete isn't ready to load heavy yet are the ones he's not strong enough to use with heavy weights. So he gets stronger on those movements by doing them, thus correcting the problem with the movement itself, one incremental increase at a time. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the FMS people postulate that you can prepare to do a heavy squat by doing something other than a heavy squat, and I'd like to know how often they've gotten an athlete to a 405 squat by means other than a 395 squat. They can spend a couple of weeks improving their FMS, while I can spend that same 2 weeks improving the squat by 60 pounds. Which is ultimately the most useful? I'd rather have a strong athlete with a poor FMS than a weak athlete with a good FMS, because I can correctly predict better athletic performance and better resistance to injury from the strong guy every time, FMS approval or not.

[Jonathon Sullivan]

They gave the subjects 6 mg/kg and 5 mg/kg! For a 180# guy, that's 480 mg of caffeine: the same as 1.25 jumbo Starbucks or 6 Red Bulls.

Can people really not tell the difference between a placebo and the equivalent of 6 Red Bulls, especially after detoxing for two days?

An excellent observation, Evenflow. Several of the many caffeine papers I read for this article noted that subjects did a pretty good job of being able to tell whether they were getting caffeine or placebo. It's one of the intrinsic problems with this area of investigation.

"Detoxing" (I prefer "depriving of life-giving essence") subjects for two days is a poor experimental design choice, as I hope I made clear in my analysis.

[Oats]

Sully,

Thanks for the article. You made yesterdays boring train journey, from a boring meeting, surprisingly interesting. More productive that watching my Sopranos boxset anyway!

As a side effect, you've also made tonights washing up more interesting. On the BBC view again I noticed a docuemntary on exercise that I wouldn't have watched previously based around HIT.

I don't think you can watch it outside the UK but there's a short article by the presenter here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251 and has a link to the reasearch "Using molecular classification to predict gains in maximal aerobic capacity following endurance exercise training in humans".

[Gene61]

Wow. Great article. As a regular reader of science articles in physics, I was disappointed in the relatively poor quality of the science being done. There is no good reason for the poor methods and analysis. Arguably science in the area of exercise and nutrition is more important than many other areas, but it seems that these areas are full of poor or suspect (special interest funded) science.