Progress on pressing movements

[Joe Jaloszynski]

I had three points:
1. Intensity doesn’t increase during the NLP
2. Changing one variable isn’t the only way to get good data
3. RPE isn’t inaccurate

Perfect. Thank you sir.

[coldfire]

A lifter with a 365lbs deadlift might have a 5RM around 315lbs. He could do hundreds of sets at 255lbs and not improve his 1RM or 5RM. In fact, he would just de-train. De-training is what happens when more advanced programs are used by less advanced lifters.

I think that this is why older lifters (by biological age) are "volume sensitive and intensity dependent." It is just not that likely that an older trainee's 1RM will be heavy enough that 70% of it is a stress that will elicit an adaptation.

And you know this how?

[Rob Waskis]

Perfect. Thank you sir.

Happy training

[Les Hahn]

But Les, your an advanced lifter. I don't think anyone is arguing that RPE, 70%, and volume are inappropriate for an advanced lifter.

This is from Matt Reynold's essay:


I think this is the solution to a lot of the confusion around the role of volume in programming.

The point might be made clearer by noting that it is not only the lifter with a 175lbs deadlift who won't make progress with sets at 70%, a lifter with a 365lbs deadlift will not make progress doing sets at 70%.

A lifter with a 365lbs deadlift might have a 5RM around 315lbs. He could do hundreds of sets at 255lbs and not improve his 1RM or 5RM. In fact, he would just de-train. De-training is what happens when more advanced programs are used by less advanced lifters.

I think that this is why older lifters (by biological age) are "volume sensitive and intensity dependent." It is just not that likely that an older trainee's 1RM will be heavy enough that 70% of it is a stress that will elicit an adaptation.

I think it really depends on the context of the program. But I've trained women to an LP deadlift of 225 (or something around that range) and then moved them to more advanced programming where they would be doing certain sessions with something like 70%. Not all sessions are like that, and you would also have heavier pulls in the form of singles in there. But I had one girl get her deadlift up to 315 before she stopped training. Another hit around 275. I don't train a lot of people, but I do think that a day like 70% can work in context with the program.

[Mark Rippetoe]

And no, I didn’t have a particular paper I was thinking of. So, you truly believe that there is not one single paper in the entirety of exercise science literature that provides meaningful insight into how to train? If you say that’s true, I’d just like to ask you to give me any respected organizations you know of, excluding government and religion for obvious reasons, that reject all the scientific literature of its field.

Professional research publication in exercise physiology is not my field.

Not Devyn, but do you consider all the papers reviewed here useless?

I haven't read them, and I'm not going to read them all, because having read them for 35 years and having obtained nothing of value from them for 35 years, I don't have the time. If there is a particularly useful paper here, again, please tell me what it is. PLEASE.

[Devyn Stewart]

Professional research publication in exercise physiology is not my field.



I haven't read them, and I'm not going to read them all, because having read them for 35 years and having obtained nothing of value from them for 35 years, I don't have the time. If there is a particularly useful paper here, again, please tell me what it is. PLEASE.

You seem to be speaking from a place of authority quite often and quite conclusively about something that is not your field.

EDIT: I realize I may be coming off as a young twit who can't get his point across w/o sarcasm, so I'll say what I mean. There are some very strong coaches in organizations with very strong lifters who use scientific papers, even those without completely perfect methods, to make initial decisions about testing new coaching ideas. Greg Nuckols would probably be the best example of this and the person I would point to for the question about good research papers. He's an expert; I'm not. I would agree that pragmatic experience is the best indicator of what will work for strength training, and any SSC and clearly you Rip have worlds more than I do, so you'll do a better job every time of getting people strong under your coaching eye. I'm just skeptical of the wholesale rejection of science since many other respected organizations have used it to great success as a tool. But of course, that's my opinion, and those can be dangerous.

Anyway, no disrespect was meant, and I hope that productive discussions can be had here because I enjoy the discourse.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Does it make you uncomfortable that I criticise something that is transparently flawed, whether it is my field or not? Do you have an opinion on the Mueller Investigation?

EDIT: And this is very important, what is Science??? Do you know the difference between science and professional research publication? Because they are certainly as hell not the same thing. "Scientism" is your problem. It's the problem of lots of otherwise intelligent people. Think about this.

[Devyn Stewart]

Does it make you uncomfortable that I criticise something that is transparently flawed, whether it is my field or not? Do you have an opinion on the Mueller Investigation?

I take no issue with specific criticisms. I understand that there are many mistakes made in scientific papers, but the road to a good understanding isn't paved with all perfect science. If everyone's methods had to be perfect to get a sense for a general trend, we would get nowhere because science is messy, even the hard sciences. That's why the throwing away of exercise science as a whole is suspicious to me.

I do have an opinion, but I'm not one to, say, write an article about it. Do you see where I'm coming from?

[Mark Rippetoe]

I take no issue with specific criticisms. I understand that there are many mistakes made in scientific papers, but the road to a good understanding isn't paved with all perfect science. If everyone's methods had to be perfect to get a sense for a general trend, we would get nowhere because science is messy, even the hard sciences. That's why the throwing away of exercise science as a whole is suspicious to me.

I do have an opinion, but I'm not one to, say, write an article about it. Do you see where I'm coming from?

I sure do. You're coming from the position of Scientism. If you read The Journals, you're doing "science."

The Phenomenology of Barbell Training | Mark Rippetoe

The Problem with “Exercise Science” | Mark Rippetoe

[Devyn Stewart]

Does it make you uncomfortable that I criticise something that is transparently flawed, whether it is my field or not? Do you have an opinion on the Mueller Investigation?

EDIT: And this is very important, what is Science??? Do you know the difference between science and professional research publication? Because they are certainly as hell not the same thing. "Scientism" is your problem. It's the problem of lots of otherwise intelligent people. Think about this.

I do understand that there is a difference. I'll make an analogy to chemistry, as that's my area of study moreso than exercise science. With experience alone, chemically, you get blacksmiths and cooks. That's useful, but they may never become the best blacksmiths and cooks that they could be because they don't fully understand why what they're doing works the way it does. Without chemistry research, we never learn about the existence and charge of the electron. Perhaps that isn't necessary to the blacksmith right now, but many discoveries like that lead to models that lead us to a better understanding of how to program as a whole that we could have never discovered with simply experience alone.

I know I may be comparing apples to oranges with this case, but I think there are things that experience alone cannot tell us about strength training that research can. Exercise science is a particularly flawed area of research atm, I'll concede, but I don't think that warrants throwing it out completely.

I also think that heuristics based on experience can be useful but can also drive you off a cliff. The "lift heavy things to lift heavier things" mantra repeated around here ad nauseam clearly isn't true at all times for all people, but for some reason the idea of training with loads <70% for a good portion of your training is ludicrous.