1. Re: Full Vs. Parallel Squats
by: <DrewBaye@aol.com>
2. Re: Knee Rehab, Leg Extensions, and Shear Forces
by: <DrewBaye@aol.com>
3. Re: SuperSlow Questions
by: <DrewBaye@aol.com>
4. knee problems
by: Steve Raymond <Steve_Raymond@cpqm.mail.saic.com>
5. Was creatine implicated in the deaths of those college wrestlers?
by: Josh Salmanson <jsalmans@syssrc.com>
6. Cybex machines
by: Berserker _ <berserker78@hotmail.com>
7. Attitude determines Altitude
by: <JaccoMan@aol.com>
8. Deadlift questions
by: Jeffrey Hall <chainsaw@cs.stanford.edu>
9. Abbreviations
by: Erkki Turunen <eraturu@mail.dlc.fi>
10. Re: Using set duration rather than rep count for measuring progress.
by: <DrewBaye@aol.com>
11. Re: Strength Training and Cardiovascular Conditioning
by: <DrewBaye@aol.com>
12. Re: Aerobics, superslow cadence
by: Erkki Turunen <eraturu@mail.dlc.fi>
13. Re: Exercise is (not) supposed to be fun
by: Erkki Turunen <eraturu@mail.dlc.fi>
14. Re: Swiss Ball Nonsense
by: Erkki Turunen <eraturu@mail.dlc.fi>
-------------------- 1 --------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 12:03:25 EST
From: DrewBaye@aol.com
Subject: Re: Full Vs. Parallel Squats
One of the reasons not to perform full, ass to heels squats, is that when you
are in the bottom position, the axis of rotation moves from the knee to the
point where the calves contact the back of the thighs, and your calves act as
a fulcrum. The force tends to pull the knee joint apart somewhat in this
position.
Place your left forearm across your right bicep. Slowly begin to bend your right arm. As you begin to bend your arm, you'll notice that your elbow joint is the axis of rotation. At the point where your right arm is flexed far enough to touch the left forearm, the forearm becomes a fulcrum. If someone were to assist you in bending your right arm past this point by applying pressure to your right wrist in the direction of flexion, the right elbow would no longer be the axis of rotation, instead, the new axis would be the point of contact between your right and left forearms. When this happens, the force acts to stretch the tendons and ligaments across the elbow joint, prying it apart. During a full squat, your calves are doing the same thing that your left forearm does in the previous example: prying the knee joint apart.
Andrew M. Baye
www.superslow.com
-------------------- 2 --------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 11:41:34 EST
From: DrewBaye@aol.com
Subject: Re: Knee Rehab, Leg Extensions, and Shear Forces
Regarding the use of knee extensions in rehabilitation of ACL injuries: I recommend reading the article on Shear Forces (third article) at
http://www.superslow.com/es22.html
"In the early 1980s, Frank Noyes, MD, popularized the notion of shear force in knee function. He and his physical therapy staff performed and published cadaver studies that convinced the physical therapy and orthopaedic communities that force on the cruciate ligament (particularly the anterior cruciate) increases exponentially as the knee attains complete extension.
More specifically, Noyes states that the force on the anterior cruciate
increases exponentially as the knee is extended its final 20-30 degrees. Given
the function of the anterior cruciate to constrain the tibia to an arced
motion rather than to an anterior translation, I am not surprised at this
finding. However, I am alarmed that Noyes' work was taken out of the context
of a cadaver study and taken by the orthopaedic community as conclusive with
respect to the in vivo experience.
>From these findings, Noyes and others further concluded that knee
rehabilitation subsequent to cruciate repair should avoid extensional
positions at or near (within 20-30 degrees) anatomical zero. Anterior cruciate
repair is a delicate matter that deserves this benefit of doubt, although I
believe that in most cases, this dictum is taken too far. There are other
greater, looming, issues to consider that are almost
always ignored in rehabilitation. Herein, I will elaborate.... (for the rest,
see http://www.superslow.com/es22.html)";
Andrew M. Baye
www.superslow.com
-------------------- 3 --------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 14:38:42 EST
From: DrewBaye@aol.com
Subject: Re: SuperSlow Questions
<<I'm confused about superslow training. Maybe Andrew Baye can clear things up
for me here.
1. First of all, if one wants to do things slowly, than why not do only one
rep,
at say, a 15/15 cadence?>>
While a 15 second positive may be more demanding than a 10 second positive,
people tend to perform somwhat jerky, segmented movements, constantly starting
and stopping, rather than slow continuous movements if they perform the
repetitions too slowly, which defeats the purpose of moving slowly in the
first place. For example, Nautilus used to have some people perform one-minute
chins. Instead of being a uniform, slow speed, these tended to be performed
with a segmented movement, people going up one inch, then stopping, then going
up another inch, then stopping. The slower one moves, past a certain point
(depending on motor skill) they tend to perform segmentation. 10/5 or 10/10 is
adequate to minimize momentum and force.
<<2. What does one do when momentary failure is near? With regular training, you push against the weight to complete the rep, disregarding the rep tempo. But with SS, you can't speed up, because then you will defeat the purpose of superslow exercise in the first place, right? So, if say, the 5th positive rep takes longer than 10 seconds to complete, should the set be terminated?>>
You should continue to perform the exercise until further movement with proper form becomes impossible, and then continue to contract as hard as possible for another 10 seconds or so, without jerking or heaving into the weight or sacrificing form. It is simply a matter of controlling ones form.
Andrew M. Baye
www.superslow.com
-------------------- 4 --------------------
Date: 30 Jan 1998 14:58:26 -0800
From: "Steve Raymond" <Steve_Raymond@cpqm.mail.saic.com>
Subject: knee problems
Thanks to everyone who has responded both through the digest and directly to
my questions about lifting weights with a rebuilt knee. I will be having
surgery monday. FYI they will be putting a piece of tendon from my hamstring
where my ACL used to be.
The overwhelming opinion seems to be that leg extensions and hamstring curls
should be avoided. It'll be interesting to see what the sports medicine
people prescribe after my surgery, not only exercise types but frequency and
repetitions etc. This might be an exception to the HIT rules. I am planning
to return to deadlifts and squats as soon as possible. I WILL NOT be standing
on a swiss ball when I do them.
spr
-------------------- 5 --------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 21:01:07 -0500
From: "Josh Salmanson" <jsalmans@syssrc.com>
Subject: Was creatine implicated in the deaths of those college wrestlers?
My mother-in-law is the school nurse for a high school in Pa. The booster
club wants to provide creatine in some form or another to the football
players. Both of us agree that it is not necessary. But she wants some
reliable information to use as evidence against its purchase. I thought I
saw something in one of the past editions of the digest but could not locate
it tonight. Also, if anyone could provide locations/titles/authors of
relevant creatine research to prove/disprove its efficacy that would be
greatly appreciated.
thanks in advance
Josh Salmanson, MCSE MCNE Compaq ASE
Senior System Engineer
System Source - www.syssrc.com
jsalmans@syssrc.com
-------------------- 6 --------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 16:27:22 PST
From: "Berserker _" <berserker78@hotmail.com>
Subject: Cybex machines
I was just wondering if there was anybody out there out besides me who
thinks that Cybex machines are horrible. Why is it that every gym buys
these things, particularly the VR-2 line (dumbbell simulation)? There is
no negative resisitance on those things! Why? I swear that I could
probably leg press 3,000 pounds and fall asleep in the contracted
position.
Berserker
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
-------------------- 7 --------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 22:46:38 EST
From: JaccoMan@aol.com
Subject: Attitude determines Altitude
I've seen a few comments, ie.:
From: DrewBaye <DrewBaye@aol.com>
> ...It is hardly something I enjoy doing. The workouts are so brutally
intense that I
> often become nauseous before I even begin to work out, due to the anxiety
> caused by thinking about what I'm about to subject myself to. Why do I do it
then?
> Because it is safer and more effective than anything else out there. Nothing
> worthwhile comes easy, and exercise is no exception...
> From: rselectric@mindspring.com
> My PUSH comes from stupidity and not
> knowing when to stop. It depends on my day (good/bad and health and
> partner), with out a challenge from a partner i am not much. you only see
> the side of me that does not want to fail in front of my partner so he (you)
> will not accept failure. You are not only my partner you are my dive partner
> and posible life dependant in a bad situation, I do not want you to think i
> will back down in a tuff situation do to pain or pressure. You are also
> competition, (the animal in all of us says we must be one of the strong or
> die to ensure the strong survive and our offspring will be strong). This is
> all people, some have just gotten used to saying "I'll do it tommorrow....
> Why hurt myself.... It does not matter.... Where is the remote.... It hurts
> .... and why do i need to do that..." Its called learn response and
> conditioning. We do not have to hunt for food or work with our brains and
> muscles to live. We both have the ability to do anything we want, we just
> have to remind ourselves "we want" at the right time. and i am just to
> stupid to know when to stop.
> Thank you for your vote.
As for me, I do it becase I love it. I ab-soul-utely LOVE it.
Anyone else?
Jack Melon
-------------------- 8 --------------------
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 18:35:22 -0800
From: Jeffrey Hall <chainsaw@cs.stanford.edu>
Subject: Deadlift questions
Howdy all,
I've heard a lot of great things about the deadlift, both from this mailing
list and on the Cyberpump mailing list, so I finally decided to add it to
my workout. Yesterday I actually tried it for the first time, and that
experience raised some questions that I'm hoping somebody on this list can
answer for me.
1. What is the deadlift supposed to target, the upper back or the legs? I've read conflicting reports, some saying the deadlift is the ultimate upper back exercise, others saying it targets the legs.
2. Since I've never deadlifted before I decided I should play it smart and
safe and begin with very light weights to work on form for a while. So,
yesterday I was using just the bar (a mere 45 lbs.) and I was surprised to
find that I felt the strain not in my legs OR upper back, but in my lower
back. Since I had never heard that the deadlift works your lower back, I
figured that either: I have weak lower back muscles that I need to
strengthen, or I am doing the deadlift incorrectly. Did anybody else feel
the deadlift in their lower back when they started?
3. Finally, I kept having problems with the bar hitting my knees as I lowered the bar. Could this be because I'm not leaning forward enough? Or, perhaps, is it just because I have really longs legs (I'm 6'5")?
I realize that form questions are difficult to answer over email, sight
unseen, but I'm hoping that the symptoms that I've described will allow one
of you old timers to think: "Ah, I remember waaaaaay back when...I knew a
guy who was doing the same thing. The solution was..." or something to
that effect.
Thanks.
Jeffrey Hall
chainsaw@cs.stanford.edu
(415) 497-4246
First Rule of History:
History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat
each other.
-------------------- 9 --------------------
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998 13:19:19 +0200
From: Erkki Turunen <eraturu@mail.dlc.fi>
Subject: Abbreviations
>From: "Couch, Mike" <couchm@DSD1POST.DAYTONOH.ncr.com>
>Subject: The best of both worlds
>
>Since you can great results by working out with BFS or HIT philosophies, how
>can you combine them into one?
What's BFS? I hope that if abbreviations are used it would be correct to express them as complete when they appear for the first time. I don't think that all members on this list are aware of every abbreviation. HIT should be familiar to everyone, though. I didn't direct this especially to Mike but to all contributors generally. It would make the posts more readable.
Erkki
-------------------- 10 --------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 11:46:11 EST
From: DrewBaye@aol.com
Subject: Re: Using set duration rather than rep count for measuring progress.
I know several people who use a stopwatch, rather than the repetition count,
as a gauge of progress, and in some ways it may be an even more accurate
measurment of ones progress, assuming that repetition speed is consistent from
workout to workout. Also, just as with repetition range, with a bit of
experience, most people are able to determine how many seconds they must be
able to perform an exercise until failure, before an increase in resistance is
necessary.
Andrew M. Baye
www.superslow.com
-------------------- 11 --------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 12:12:38 EST
From: DrewBaye@aol.com
Subject: Re: Strength Training and Cardiovascular Conditioning
During the Nautilus Project: Total Conditioning at West Point Military Academy, research subjects, who were already highly conditioned football players, had their heart rates monitored during HIT workouts. They wore heart rate monitors which transmitted a signal to an EKG which had been modified to give a readout on a spedometer type gauge, of their heart rate. These already highly conditioned athletes maintained HR's of around 220 BPM for durations of 40 minutes during these workouts. When their HR's approached 230, they eased off on them, when they began to drop close to 210, they pushed them harder.
Your heart has no idea what the rest of your body is doing. If the muscles are
working hard enough to place a significant demand on the heart, then it is
going to be stimulated to respond. Just as an experiment, I also took the HR's
of all of my clients after their workouts for a week last summer. I can't
recall any of them having had HR's lower than 140, and most of them were up
around 160 -180. Anyone who's HR is not significantly elevated during HIT,
either isn't really training that hard, or they're resting too long between
sets.
Anyone who doubts this is welcome to come down to Orlando and visit our
facility for a workout. Bring a bucket.
Andrew M. Baye
www.superslow.com
-------------------- 12 --------------------
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998 13:18:51 +0200
From: Erkki Turunen <eraturu@mail.dlc.fi>
Subject: Re: Aerobics, superslow cadence
>From: Stephen Turner <smturner@golden.net>
>Subject: Aerobics, superslow cadence
we are learning that brief intense infrequent exercise is
>probably superior for strength training, why not also for cardiovascular
>conditioning.
I'm not an expert of cardiovascular conditioning but my guess is that
because slow-twitch fibers are fatigue-resistant they cannot be adequately
worked with brief infrequent sessions.
>I had been thinking for some time about switching
>to a time based, rather than rep based method for tracking progess. For
>example, set your watch to beep at 90 seconds, start doing bench press at
>whatever cadence you prefer (doesn't even have to be constant thru the
>set), and if you are still moving at the beep, then you are ready for more
>weight next time out.
Seems like an interesting idea. But if you can endure a set longer next time
it may be because you have inconsciously changed rep cadence a bit and not
because of actual progress.
Erkki
-------------------- 13 --------------------
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998 13:19:07 +0200
From: Erkki Turunen <eraturu@mail.dlc.fi>
Subject: Re: Exercise is (not) supposed to be fun
>From: Erkki Turunen <eraturu@mail.dlc.fi>
>Subject: Re: Exercise is (not) supposed to be fun
> BTW, doesn't anxiety increase cortisol production?
>
>[I trust that was meant in a humourous vein, Erkki.
>--Rob]
Not necessarily. I think that training so hard that it causes nauseousness
and anxiety may not be the best way of doing it. That kind of training is
very stressful and may lead to adverse hormonal reactions, IMHO. I even have
the suspicion that it may be one - if not the - reason why Andrew must train
so infrequently. But of course this is only speculation on my part. To find
out, Andrew should try to train for a while with such an intensity that
those symptoms don't appear and see to what kind of progress it would lead.
He should naturally adjust the frequency accordingly.
Erkki
-------------------- 14 --------------------
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998 13:19:44 +0200
From: Erkki Turunen <eraturu@mail.dlc.fi>
Subject: Re: Swiss Ball Nonsense
>From: Sandeep De <sde@golden.net>
>Subject: Re: Swiss Ball Nonsense
Simply saying that swiss balls are dangerous is akin to the gym
>myth that squats are bad for your knees. Clearly, an exercise has no
>intentions or biases. It simply exists. It is up to us to determine
>whether or not the execution of said exercise is in an effective and
>safe manner. The only person to blame should an injury result is
>ourselves.
Not in every case. If an authority, who should know, claims that some way of training is totally safe he or she is at least partially responsible if it turns out that the information is false and someone gets hurt because of it. It cannot be demanded of an average trainee to be able to evaluate if something claimed by an authority is correct or false.
>Furthermore, Andrew, I appreciate the fact that you awknowledge that
>Swiss Ball training is POSSIBLY dangerous. But as with everything in
>life there is a certain risk. One has to weigh the associated risk
>against the possible benefits.
That's right. Instead of saying "don't do it because it's dangerous" we
should say that "these are the risks and those are the benefits. The
decision is up to you".
>If you could, Andrew, please illustrate the failings of swiss ball
>training on the same level of scientific assessment as Paul uses to
>encourage the use of the Swiss Ball. I am only asking for a "fair fight"
>here, that if something is going to be attacked, that it atleast be on
>the same level of detail and depth to which it is encouraged.
>
>I will forward your post to Paul Chek and see if he is willing to
>address the issue on the list. I think that a fair discussion, involving
>scientific fact, is required to fully explore this issue, and I am
>hoping that you are willing to continue through to defend your stance.
A good idea.
Erkki