Stay In Your Lane
By Tom Furman
“If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.”
― Voltaire.
When we learn skills or enhance attributes there is a thing called, “transfer”. That means that our supplemental activity helps or hurts our skill or sport. There are actually three categories.
Negative Transfer — It hurts your skill.
Positive Transfer — It helps your skill.
Indifferent Transfer — It has no effect on skill.
A proper example of making a baseball pitcher more effective would be to supplement his workouts with generalized aerobic and strength work. Then he can practice the specific skill of pitching, preferably, when he is fresh.
An improper example of making a baseball pitcher more effective is to have him throw a shot put until momentary muscular failure to build up his, “throwing muscles”.
Strength and Conditioning Coaches or even experienced practitioners and trainers, often get in a camp and stay there. They stay in their lane so to speak. They do power lifting and train power lifters. They rock climb and teach rock climbing. The methods may vary, but there is considerable overlap.
The problem arises when, “fitness gurus”, decide that their method is the only valid one. They jam their square peg in a round hole. Even in commentary in social media.
Do you want better legs? — Gotta SQUAT!!
My son’s playing football .— Teach him Olympic Lifts!
I need to lose weight. — -Go to Crossfit.
Don’t run, it eats away at your gains!
That Gymnast’s legs are too small!
That Cyclist’s upper body is too small!
Many even fail to understand that terminology between training methods is different. Sometimes it is simply mentioning the tools or categories used, such as-
Power — Deadlift, Squat, Bench Press
Olympic — Snatch, Clean & Jerk
Rock Climbing — Power, Power-Endurance, Endurance
Running — Massive variations depending on sprinting, middle distance, marathons or ultra distance.
Functional — Sleds, Tires, Sledgehammers, Carries, etc.
Gymnastics — Fundamental Straight Arm Strength, Fundamental Bent Arm Strength and Fundamental Leg Strength.
The first problem occurs when some specialist thinks his method applies to every other endeavor.
The second problem occurs when observing a genetically gifted specialist the individual athlete or coach thinks that those highly specific traits are transferable to their athletes or clients.
Examples you ask? Well a glaring one was mentioned earlier. Simply telling someone to squat will fix everything. Enter Eric Heiden. He and his sister, Beth, trained under Olympic medalist, Diane Hollum. If you saw him skating or biking, (he competed in the Tour de France), you might suggest a squat routine you read on a power lifting page. But Eric’s training and results are unique. Here it is in his own words that I saved from an old forum.
When I was skating, there was ice only for a really short
period of time. So we would have to do a lot of other cross training
type things. I’d enjoyed cycling very much that is why I got into
cycling. We used to lift weights a couple of times a week, we did a lot
of running. I enjoyed the variety. All those things I enjoyed doing. I
certainly wouldn’t want to do one all the time, but to have the variety
and the camaraderie with my teammates; it was a lot of fun. We did a lot
of squats, step-ups. We never did a lot of weights, but a lot of
repetitions. The most I would use doing squats was 300 pounds. That was
it.”
Before the 1980 Olympics it wasn’t uncommon for us to do the
following: Find an old truck tire inner tube and cut out about one third
of the tire (where the valve is). Seal one end by tying and taping with
duct tape.
Fill inner tube with either lead shot or pennies until almost full. Seal
off other end. I made several sizes but the biggest ones I figured
weighed about 150 lbs. Swing the anaconda on your lower back and assume
the speed skating position. Do 1 x 100 squats with each leg. Do that 5
x. Then repeat with both legs. Going down to slightly below 90
degrees. Right after these we would drop the tube then do 15–20 squat
jumps as high as you can bringing your legs up to your chest at the peak.
Typically we did these in a skating position keeping our backs parallel
to the floor and keeping your chin in line with the knee of the leg
doing the work. The resting leg was slightly behind with the toe just
off the floor. Goal was to use all of one leg with no cheating. I would
do them either near a wall or table in case I needed to touch something
briefly for balance. Arms were usually on my back. We would be so wasted
after these I wasn’t sure how I would climb up out of my basement. One
flight of stairs was formidable…
Usually the last one you would fall down because you could not support
your weight anymore. Dang, those were the days…and that was only
workout number 1. usually we did 3 workouts a day.
1. Weights
2. Dry land skating simulation (duck walk for 10 k)
3. Cycling/running
repeat.
Now ask me about the one time I did a wall sit for one hour! That was freakin nuts! I think it was a world record at the time.
We were training at the OTC at the Springs and I think it was 1978 and a
buddy challenged me to see if I could do a wall sit for an hour.
Basically in a sitting position with your back against the wall, legs at
90 degrees. Arms hanging down at your sides.
Legs were shaking like a banshee at the end but I did it. Some squirt
supposedly bested my time of 60 minutes with 61, but he didn’t have a
witness… you know how that goes.”
Suggesting an athlete adopt your method might have the unwanted effect of altering their physique in a detrimental way. For example these two, best of the best, athletes, couldn’t spare extra muscle in half of their body.
Sometimes the athlete simply needs a different tool that he has confidence in. It may not be running or lifting.
While we specifically adapt to the imposed demands, the results vary due to genetics. When a gymnast is used as an example of a muscular athlete, power lifters and bodybuilders will tell you they are all 5–3 and 120 pounds. That varies.
Even in terms of movement for supplemental exercise, there are different ways to cut the pie. A common and well known way is -
Upper Body Pull, Horizontal or Vertical
Upper Body Push, Horizontal or Vertical
Core
Lower Body Pull
Lower Body Push
However, Scott Sonnon of Tacfit organized these motions -
Heaving: moving up and down
Swaying: moving right and left
Surging: moving forward and backward
Pitching: bending forward and backward
Yawing: twisting right and left
Rolling: bending right and left
So you can see that even the terminology changes.
Perhaps the most interesting part (Or the third problem) of applying training methods is to make them up, give them a name and market them. Nothing wrong with this if you are aware of what you are giving/getting and can be honest with your outcome.
The late, Arthur Jones invented Nautilus Machines and a training method that goes with it. He redefined intensity. It was, and is a percentage of the one repetition maximum lift. Arthur said intensity was, “Momentary Muscular Failure”. This made Arthur rich. More on intensity here → LINK
Pavel Tsatsouline described an endurance contest he heard from Dr. Fred Hatfield. It involved carrying beer kegs up steps. (?) Then years later, “Strong Endurance”, was created with special protocol for developing endurance. It is based on something called, “Anti-glycolytic training”.
This term received this response from Exercise Physiologist, Kenneth Jay.
September 26, 2017 · Kenneth Jay
“Anti-glycolytic” is the new buzz word in the kettlebell training world…but is not even a real word used in exercise science.. at best it would refer to training below/up to the Lactate threshold and then it’s just low/moderate intensity aerobic training..(or alternatively only using the ATP-CrP system which would make it maximal speed training)
But tell me again how staying away from something (ie. aerobic and anaerobic glycolysis) is gonna make you better at it????
I hate it when people in the strength and conditioning industry make things more confusing than it needs to be. Just tell the truth instead of wrapping it in 40 year old pseudo-Science from Russia…
116 comments
Here is a link to the studies on, “anti glycolytic”, listed on PubMed → LINK
Even tools are not often comparable. A squat is a squat until it is not. The current squat for performance from the strongest gym on earth is the Westside Barbell Club Squat.
Powerlifting is a limit strength sport. Girevoy (Kettlebell Sport) is an endurance sport. Same exercise, different form for different needs.
To summarize, be careful of someone telling you about fantastic results. Amazing claims need amazing evidence. As well your ego is not your amigo. Don’t assume that since you played rugby in college that you are equipped to train water ballet.
If a training method injures you, it’s not good. Training should prevent injury and not cause it. Unless you are competing in Power or Olympic lifting there is no specific need to do those lifts. Substitutions are fine. That doesn’t mean you can’t do squatting or dead lifting, but you don’t have to. As well, be wary of both overblown claims of amazing positive transfer, (Ballet will help your cage fighting!) or some new, secret, method that has no track record or the studies are written in Aramaic. Understand the role of genetics as well. No amount of training will alter limb length, muscle belly size or God given, neurological gifts. Of course drugs change everything.
Train hard, but more importantly, train smart.
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