Evidence Uncovers Options; Personal Preference Leads to Choices

A couple of years back, Stronger by Science did an exhaustive review of much of the literature out there regarding strength programs (talking strictly about force production here). Basically, they did a study of studies. Specifically, they were looking at set and rep ranges that led to strength gains. What they found is not that surprising if you've been coaching for a while, or if you've been part of the iron game for a while.

They found that folks can get strong across a number of rep ranges, even very high ones (20+). But they found the optimal set and rep range was 4-6 sets of 4-6 reps. This is pretty much a standard recommendation and has been done for as long as strength training has been around. 

The reason for the conclusion was twofold, and this is the key point of the entry. The first reason was that that rep range, and total volume, is a nice middle point between lower rep work (think 1-2 reps--primarily a neurological adaptation) and medium rep work (think 8-12 reps--primarily a muscular adaptation and a classic bodybuilding rep range). This comports well with what science tells us about rep ranges and is less surprising. But the second point was even more telling. They found that compliance was highest when folks do 4-6 sets of 4-6 reps. They postulated that this rep range wasn't too taxing neurologically or exhausting muscularly. It was a perfect middle ground and enabled folks to remain on this type of program longer.

I personally recommend 3-6 sets of 3-6 reps for most people when it comes to strength training as the base. Sets of 3 are too valuable to not include in your training. We can deviate from those rep ranges during certain phases for certain reasons, but this should be the go-to for most of your strength work (again, talking strictly about force production; many people throw around the term strength and sometimes mean something else).

The more general point here is that evidence will often point to many different options. But the deciding factor is almost always personal preference. For example, I know a few people who train sets of 10 throughout most of the year, and then throw in one or two strength cycles where they try and build to a max at the end of the cycle. And they make great progress year over year.

The most important factor here is choosing the rep range, and more generally, the training program, that will yield the most consistency. We all want to do the things we like. So if you can match an evidence-based protocol with a version that you really like (your personal preference), you're more likely to comply and stay consistent. The more consistent you are, the more training sessions you'll get in, which is where the magic happens.

And that magic will pay off in the long run. Choose wisely, trust the process, and stay consistent. It's not rocket science.

Another Nietzsche Quote

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Mix in this group-style madness with social media and you have the potential for disaster. The storming of the Capitol would be an obvious example of this type of situation. It definitely won't be the last time something like that happens. If you haven't seen The Social Dilemma yet, I highly recommend it.

Djokovic Has a Chance to Make History Twice

The US Open starts up tomorrow. The main storyline is Novak Djokovic, the greatest of all time. I make this claim and provide my argument for it here.

He's trying to become the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to win a calendar-year grand slam. In the history of the game, only two men (Don Budge and Rod Laver) and only three women (Maureen Connolly, Margaret Court, and Steffi Graf) have pulled this feat off, so it's extremely rare, to put it mildly.

But besides the calendar year grand slam, he's also trying to win his 21st grand slam. No other man in the history of the game has won that many. He's currently tied with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal with 20 grand slams.

So a chance to set two historical marks. There's a ton of pressure on him and media scrutiny will be intense. Should be exciting!

Practice Mindset

There have countless books and articles written about the growth mindset. Carol Dweck wrote a nice article about it back in 2016, but if you just google growth mindset, you'll find plenty of resources. To be sure, having a growth mindset is a good thing.

But I'd like to encourage folks to adopt a practice mindset. One of the toughest hurdles for many folks to get over when they're first starting a strength-and-conditioning program occurs after the first 1-2 months. They tend to be very enthusiastic about training when they're first starting out. Everything is so new and fun to learn, and with consistency, progress can often come quickly (depending on where we're starting from). But after the easy gains come and go and motivation starts to wear off, it can be a real challenge to get to the gym. While there can be many reasons for this, one of the most common ones is to be outcome-focused.

Now don't get me wrong. Having goals can be helpful, and in order to track where we are relative to our goals, we need to be aware of the outcome. But for things like long-term health and fitness, focusing too much on outcomes can quickly backfire. That's why it's much better--as early as possible--to develop a practice mindset. Commit to the process and the practice of movement and good things will happen. Don't worry about numbers in the short term, worry about getting reps in. Worry about practicing movement. Make consistency a habit.

After those initial gains, progress isn't a straight linear path. It zigs and zags. It's kind of like the stock market. If you check prices daily, you're bound to be in for a wild and often stressful ride. Much better to check in on your portfolio once a month (yes, this assumes a long-term buy-and-hold strategy, which is my bias).

Make movement the motivation. I have to credit Mark Bell with the following quote:

"You don't need to get motivated to move. You need to move to get motivated."

Precisely.

Your Fitness is Governed by the Laws of the Rosebush

This entry originally appeared on the CrossFit Oakland website. I wrote it during the heart of the pandemic in May 2020. Without further ado....

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to define fitness as the sum of one’s health and performance. In math terms:

Fitness = Health + Performance

And while I’m defining terms, let’s cover health and performance. I’ll define health as the overall quality of one’s physical, mental, and emotional state. I’ll define performance as one’s ability to complete a given task or set of tasks. Let’s be clear, there are many other much more expansive definitions of fitness, health, and performance out there, put together by some very smart people. One of my favorites is the CrossFit definition of fitness, which is well worth your time to read. These are just simple working definitions to get us through this post.

This post isn’t about the definition of fitness. It’s about what you can do to bring up your fitness, or at the very least, one way to think about bringing up your level of fitness. Although this post is relevant at any time, it’s particularly relevant now, because many of us are without the traditional tools of the gym (barbell, pull-up bar, etc.). That’s not a drawback, though. Instead, it’s a huge opportunity!

A word of warning before we get started: I’m sometimes referred to as the analogy guy. And we’re about to dive deep into an analogy.

A little background first: My wife and I inherited three rosebushes last fall when we moved into our new house. All three were dormant at the time. I was told by a trusted authority that they wouldn’t produce roses. A month or two before spring, I decided to conduct a little experiment. I used one rosebush as my control. I didn’t do anything to it and just left it as is. For the other two, though, I went to town and aggressively pruned them back. A lot! I pruned every little bit of dead matter from those two rosebushes I could find. They were little more than loosely connected sticks by the time I was done with them. I figured I had nothing to lose, since none of them would be producing roses, anyway. And before I forget, it should also be noted that all three rosebushes received the same amount of water and sunlight during the course of this experiment.

Fast forward to the spring (really, within the last couple of weeks) and my experiment has produced insight that I never would’ve had if I hadn’t conducted it in the first place. So what happened?

First, the control rosebush produced roses, which was a real surprise. I guess Mother Nature is fierce in her determination, it seems. The thing is, though, it’s only produced three to date. I do see a few more buds coming in, though, so there will be more. On the other hand, the two I pruned back have produced multiple dozens so far, and there are more buds on the way. It’s been a rousing success!

So what the heck does any of this have to do with fitness?!

Simple, we’re not that different from the rosebush. Yes, of course we need water and sunlight. But more relevant to our quest to be better at moving, to get fitter, and to improve our health and performance along the way, we need to regularly get rid of our dead matter as well. The dead matter in this case might be a bum knee that aches whenever you run, or squat heavy, or whatever. It might be that back pain that comes after deadlifting. Pay attention to these signs. These issues can be fixed. But the fix won’t be instant, in most cases. Even with the rosebushes, it took a couple of months for them to produce buds after being pruned back.

Use this time during the SIP order to fix those movement-related issues that might be present as well, even if they don’t produce pain. Do you shift to one side when squatting? Does your bar lean to one side when pressing or when doing an overhead squat? Or more simply, have you lost range of motion or skills that you once had? These are all areas ripe for some pruning. Remember, when we prune, not only are we creating an immediate fix (getting rid of dead matter that serves no purpose), we’re setting ourselves up for growth down the line. In fact, without pruning, we seriously stunt our growth. The dead matter weighs us down and doesn’t allow us to flourish.

If you take care of these matters now, when you aren’t distracted by things like a pull-up bar, a barbell, or a prowler, you might surprise yourself with the progress you make when you return to the gym.

And our coaches can help. That’s what we do. That’s why we’re here. So if you’re uncertain where to begin, or if you don’t know what kind of pruning will help with the issue you’re addressing, hit us up! We’re just an email away.

A Model Is Just a Model

I'm eventually going to follow up on my second entry on this blog, about complex systems and our inability to fully understand them, and in many sad cases in the financial markets, safeguard against outliers.

For now, though, I'm going to lead with a quote that I came across on the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) Wikipedia page. It makes the point I wanted to initially make in just a couple of sentences, as good quotes often do (I was taking way longer to get my point across so I scrapped that in favor of this quote). It has to do with models (in this case, financial models, but it really applies broadly to anyone who relies on models as a part of their practice--whatever that practice may be). Here's the quote:

"Economist Eugene Fama found in his research that stocks were bound to have extreme outliers. Furthermore, he believed that, because they are subject to discontinuous price changes, real-life markets are inherently more risky than models."

The case of LTCM should serve as a cautionary tale for failing to understand that you don't know what you don't know. Often times, very smart people are more susceptible to this failure of understanding, and the guys at LTCM were some of the smartest guys in the room--any room.

But this isn't just about financial modeling. 

When it comes to programming for strength and conditioning, the predicted results (based on what the model suggests) are often different than the actual results, sometimes on the downside and sometimes on the upside. This doesn't necessarily mean the program wasn't good. It just means the model wasn't robust and there were factors that either weren't accounted for (that should have been) or there were factors that couldn't have been known. 

But going down the rabbit hole of trying to find ever-more-robust models (or programs) is a fool's errand, in many cases. I see this all the time with newer coaches. They're obsessed with finding the perfect program and often make things needlessly complicated. The best programs match goals with processes, and are flexible enough to make adjustments along the way. You also have to be patient and let the program play out. Look for trends but don't make wholesale changes to the program hastily. And always keep long-term development in mind.

Never Sacrifice Development

I was watching some of the US Open qualifying tournament earlier today. This is the tournament before the tournament, so to speak. Sixteen slots for men and woman are left open in the US Open for qualifiers. They play a three-round tournament and the winners of those three rounds get into the main draw of the US Open. For these players, getting into the US Open can make them enough money to cover all of their expenses for a year (travel, coaching, etc.) and still leave a little money in the bank. By and large, the ones who are competing in the qualifying tournaments grind it out for most of the year in the equivalent of the minor leagues of tennis, hoping to make enough to keep the dream going.

There are generally two types of players who find themselves playing in qualifying tournaments: grizzled veterans trying to hang on and sustain their career and young players looking to get their first exposure to high-level competition. In many cases, the young players are still developing their game (see my entry on this topic and how forecasting isn't always rock-solid regarding junior players and their success at the senior level).

My favorite tennis analyst is Brad Gilbert (a former top-1o player in his own right, an author, and a great coach). He was asked about some of the younger players in the qualifying tournament, and he made an incredibly insightful comment that resonates deeply with me and my experiences as a coach. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, that the juniors who go on to have the greatest professional careers never sacrifice development for winning at the junior level. The development he's talking about here is all about technique, mechanics, stroke production--whatever you want to call it. It's so easy at the junior level to mistake winning for development; it's a very short-term approach that so often puts a ceiling on a junior player's future.

But I see this all the time in the gym, too (and it happens in all types of endeavors--it's not just confined to physical culture). Folks get caught chasing numbers and sacrifice development. In particular, foundational skills and positions often get sacrificed in the name of hitting some number (doesn't matter if it's a strength number or a time on a conditioning piece). There are many drawbacks to this type of approach. First and foremost, it takes a hell of a lot of work to undo bad movement habits that get ingrained. It's so much simpler to start off correctly and slowly build from there. Another drawback is the increase in injury potential if mechanics get really sloppy and those poor mechanics are repeated over and over again. And finally, no matter how hard you try, higher-level movements will always remain out of reach (e.g., if you can't deadlift and overhead squat, there's no way you're snatching).

I have a long-term bias (see my CI and DCA entry for one aspect of my philosophy on training). Don't put the cart before the horse. Take your time and enjoy the process. It's something you'll be doing for the rest of your life so there's no rush.