In Conversation with James Fisher and James Steele (part 2): This is why you might want to use heavier loads with your clients
In this post we are going to look at the impact that the load we choose to use whilst performing an exercise has on our results. This is the second in a series of blog posts inspired by and featuring recent conversations with James Fisher, Senior Lecturer Sports Conditioning and Fitness at Southampton Solent University, and James Steele, Principal Investigator at UK Active Research Institute; Associate Professor Sport and Exercise Science at Southampton Solent University. Read the first one on perception of effort and its impact on achieving true muscular failure. In research, the load used for an exercise is …
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In Conversation with James Fisher and James Steele (part 1): Do you train to TRUE muscular failure? Understanding perception of effort, discomfort and intensity
An Agreed Definition of Intensity? When conversing with a wider audience there can however be a challenge, potential for miscommunication, in the interpretation of the term used. As James Fisher, James Steele and others have pointed out, there are trainers and researchers who associate the term “intensity” with the percentage of a 1 Rep Max (%1RM) being used during exercise. A 1RM is the most weight an individual can lift for one single repetition of an exercise. A percentage of this load is then often used for a given number of reps in research papers and in training routines, …
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Doctor Doug McGuff Talks Fitness and High Intensity Training For The Over-40s
Doug McGuff MD, is a family man who successfully combines a highly intense career as an emergency physician, with a passion for high intensity exercise. A long-time strength training enthusiast and advocate, he has written four books on exercise including co-authoring the best-selling Body by Science. A fifth book, The Primal Prescription details how to navigate the modern healthcare system and when possible, how to avoid it altogether. For over 20 years Dr. McGuff has also operated Ultimate Exercise a personal training facility in Seneca, helping to keep South Carolinians and enthusiasts from all over the globe in peak physical …
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Getting the most out of Advanced Training Techniques
Popular strength training and resistance exercise is packed with examples of “advanced training techniques”. This is largely due to performance variations of exercises being limited only by imagination. It is however reasonable to query whether or not these techniques stimulate any more in the way of positive physical results beyond normal resistance training. By normal resistance training, I mean exercise that incorporates appropriate movements taken to momentary muscular failure (MMF). As for a definition of MMF, I like the combination of these two: …when trainees reach the point where despite attempting to do so they cannot complete the concentric portion …
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Physically Fit for Life Part 2: Resistance Training
In the last post, I covered the benefits of performing regular moderate intensity activity, specifically walking. As discussed in that post, walking is a form of exercise that helps to improve the first 7 factors on our list highlighting some of the most important benefits that can be attained through exercise. In this post I am going to address another type of exercise, one that can stimulate positive adaptations in the remaining 9 factors for being Physically Fit for Life, namely: Muscle tissue mass Strength, across your entire muscular system Bone mass density and the strength and integrity of your joints, …
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Performance Pins for Drop Sets
What are Performance Pins? What are drop sets? A drop set refers to the technique where an exercise is performed with a given load as per usual. However instead of finishing the exercise when the targeted musculature has reached MMF in the initial set, the weight is reduced by approximately 10-25% as quickly as possible and the trainee continues to perform the exercise with this reduced load. The person exercising will usually be able to achieve an additional 1-4 repetitions with the lighter load. Are drop sets useful? When would you use them? There are three circumstances that …
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High Intensity Training: Can you do it without a Personal Trainer?
High intensity training is an evidence-based approach to resistance exercise, an approach that is particularly attractive as it produces excellent results with relatively little time investment required. Not only does it stimulate hypertrophy of muscle tissue, it also concurrently improves strength, flexibility, bone density, metabolism and cardiovascular health. All of these improvements can be achieved and most likely optimized with just one or two, 10-25 minute workouts a week. This is obviously a hugely attractive proposition, so attractive that some think that it must be sales pitch or exaggeration that so little exercise can provide the full gamut of exercise …
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Momentary Muscular Failure better than Repetition Maximum: Protocol Differences (part 2)
Last week, I wrote about a new piece of exercise research (The effects of low volume resistance training with and without advanced techniques in trained participants), and what makes this research valuable. I covered aspects such as the basic protocol that the three groups performed and the similarities between the specific exercise routines performed by each group. In this post, I want to discus how the protocols studied, differed between the groups – in effect what is it that the research actually looks at and provides data about. Remember that the three groups were: ssRM: individuals in this group performed a single set to (self-determined) Repetition …
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Momentary Muscular Failure better than Repetition Maximum: Methodology and Participants (Part 1)
A new and exciting paper on resistance training titled, “The effects of low volume resistance training with and without advanced techniques in trained participants” has recently been published by Minerva Medica. Researchers include: Jürgen Giessing, James Fisher, James Steele, Frank Rothe, Kristin Raubold and Björn Eichmann. This a paper that will prove to be of great interest to personal trainers and those involved with or who partake in resistance training, strength training and exercise in general. Let’s see why now. Key findings The researchers found that single sets taken to MMF produced better results in strength and hypertrophy for …
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What is Momentary Muscular Failure, Why We Seek It Out… and How To Get There
Achieving Momentary Muscular Failure (MMF) has long been a key tenet of High Intensity Training (HIT): the goal, the pinnacle, the crowning achievement for each exercise performed in a routine. What is MMF and why does it occur? Let’s simplify things by looking at MMF specifically within the context of dynamic exercise consisting of concentric (lifting) and eccentric (lowering) muscle actions. In this context, momentary muscular failure refers to the moment in an exercise set, when the force output of the targeted musculature has been reduced to a level equal to the force of the chosen load, due to …
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