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Table of Contents

• What Are Models?
• Why Models?
• The Power Law Distribution of Non-Stressful Inputs
• Curvilinear Effects of Stressful Inputs
• General Adaptation Syndrome
• Impulse Response Model (Fatigue Masks Fitness)
• Fatigue and Intensity/RPE
• Technique and RPE/Weight
• Work Capacity
• Deloads and Responsiveness to Stress
• Strength vs. Mass Gains
• Specificity of Adaptations With Training Experience
• Pyramid of Nutrition Priorities
• Different Calorie Levels’ Effects on Muscle and Fat
• Minimum Effective Dose vs. Maximum Tolerable Dose

What Are Models?

Y

our body is insanely complex. Humans, with all of our scientific knowhow and the aid of vast compu- tational power from supercomputers, have just reached the point of being able to model a single cell of the world’s simplest organism. We’re still a long way from having a comprehensive model for a single human cell, let alone modeling, from the bottom up, how individual cells interact, or how entire organs signal back and forth with each other, or how the human brain works in its entirety, or how it interacts with, influences, and is influenced by the other tissues of the body, and how we interact with other complex organisms (each other) and our environment. We, as a species, know a lot, and we’re quickly learning more every day. But we still have a long way to go to understand all of the workings of a single one of our cells. Just let that sink in for a moment.

CHAPTER 1

A nihilist, when faced with this realization, would throw his hands in the air and lament: “Compared to how much there is to know, we know effectively nothing. There’s no way to understand all of this stuff, so why even try?” Luckily, I’m not a nihilist, and I think that response is nonsense. Not knowing EVERYTHING doesn’t mean we don’t know anything. Far from it. We know enough to treat many diseases, put a man on the moon, and split the atom. Heck, hundreds of years ago, Isaac Newton could describe, with stunning accuracy, how the planets move the way they do with nothing but a telescope and some calculus. We, as humans, are really good at doing a lot with astoundingly little (relatively) information. But, because we don’t know everything, we have to construct models. Models are our way of wrapping our minds around complex systems that we don’t know everything about, distilling them down to their most important features, and being able to have a basic idea of how they work and predict how they’ll respond to various challenges (stimuli or stressors). A good model has three main features:

1. It captures enough of the system’s complexity to be useful in describing how it works and how it will respond.
2. It accounts for few enough factors to actually be user-friendly.
3. It actually works.

to a specific question, or perhaps you’re dealing with a question that hasn’t been investigated yet in research. If you’re equipped with a model that helps answer similar questions, it will help you think through new problems and make good choices. In effect, models take a LOT of information, and compress it into a manageable amount of information that you can work with. They also make it easier to learn new things, since you already have a mental framework for dealing with similar problems. If I told you a battle took place in a specific city in Sweden during the Great Northern War, you probably wouldn’t remember it by tomorrow. How-

fact

fact fact

idea idea

knowledge

fact

fact

fact

idea idea

knowledge

fact fact

Figure 2.

ever, if you already know Scandinavian history and understand the geography of Sweden, you’d have a much better chance of remembering it. If you’re the type that tried to cram the night before exams in college, then freaked out and realized you didn’t remember any of it when the comprehensive finals came, that was probably your problem; instead of really understanding the material and having a useful mental framework to hang new bits of information on, you were trying to memorize facts and figures as discrete tidbits. Basically, The Science of Lifting will help turn you into the person who only studied for an hour and aced the comprehensive finals in college; you’ll gain a mental framework for retaining information, instead of random discrete facts scattered across their brain. Here’s the difference: Instead of getting a 4.0 GPA, you’ll get jacked (which is much more important, obviously).

olism,” people have taken to saying “meal frequency doesn’t matter.” Let’s think about that for a moment. The most extreme interpretation of this statement would have you believe that eating one meal per week will give you equivalent results to eating three meals per day. I hope we can dismiss that as ludicrous at face value. Total caloric intake is certainly the most important factor for diet success, but it’s certainly not everything. Eating one meal per day is going to clearly be substantially better than eating one meal per week, even if total caloric intake is the same. Eating three meals per day is going to be noticeably better than eating one meal per day (specifically eating protein spread throughout the day instead of all at once). From there, though, you’re probably reaching a point of diminishing re- turns. Would six meals be better than three? That’s a little hazy. The evidence on untrained populations indicates that it’s probably not going to make much of a difference, but for more highly trained people, there may be a noticeable effect (scroll down to “Athletic Populations” here). How about 10 meals per day versus six meals per day? Probably won’t make enough difference to worry about. At that point, you’re on the long tail of the power law distribution – the initial increases account for the majority of the results, while subsequent increases matter less and less.

Training Frequency It’s also been popular lately to espouse high training frequency, especially for drug-free lifters. The idea is that each session causes an elevation in protein

synthesis, so you get more “growth cycles” per muscle in the training week. You also get more opportunities to practice a motor pattern, so you master a move- ment faster. It’s certainly an idea with some merit behind it. For example, the Norwegian powerlifting team got noticeably better results from doubling the training frequency. This general trend is seen elsewhere in research. Strength gains tend to be a little better with higher frequency training, and hypertrophy gains seem to favor somewhat higher frequency as well, at least in trained subjects.

Power Law

most of results

increased inputs, diminishing gains

3-6 spaced, protein-containing meals. Train movement muscle 2-3x/week 7-9 hours of sleep

Figure 3.

composition. So sleep follows a power law distribution as well, with the largest benefits occurring initially (staying alive), and further benefits accruing as you sleep more, to the point of the 7-8 hours your body requires, after which point it won’t make much difference. ••• There are obviously other factors that fall under the umbrella of “recovery” as well. These are just a few examples to illustrate the point. When you’re thinking about factors such as these, even if you don’t have the time to keep up with all the scientific literature (which is darn near impossible, especially if it’s not basically your full-time job), you can just adopt this mental framework for thinking about such factors. The largest benefits occur initially, with further benefits accruing with increased inputs until you get to a point that further increases won’t make much of a difference.

Curvilinear Effects of

Stressful Inputs

W

hen thinking about stress, it’s always useful to start with the General Adaptation Syndrome in mind (we’ll discuss this is more depth in the next chapter). Very small amounts of stress won’t provoke a very robust adap- tive response, but more stress increases adaptation. However, too much stress

• to the point that you can’t cope with it physically or psychologically – also decreases the rate of adaptation. An important factor to keep in mind is that your body doesn’t differentiate between different types of stress to a great degree. Although the specific adaptations to different types of stress (lifting weights, a car crash, tight deadlines at work, etc.) differ, your body’s general response when it encounters and copes with any stressor is very similar for any stressor you encounter. This means (to simplify things a bit) that all the stressors in your life pool together, and dip into the same reservoir of “adaptive reserves” that are available for recovering from those stressors, allowing you to adapt so you’ll be better equipped to handle them next time. In the case of strength training, that

CHAPTER 4

The Magnitude Of Adaptation From A Small Stressor

X axis = magnitude of stress Y axis = marginal gains/losses Area under the curve = magnitude of gains or losses

x axis = magnitude of stress y axis = marginal gains/losses area under the curve = magnitude of gains or losses

The Training Stress Response Curve

Figure 4.

Figure 4.

you can handle without reaching beyond your ability to cope). In Figure 4.2 , I’ve sketched out the integral (area under the curve) when the body is presented with 1 unit of stress. This would be a fairly small stressor. The magnitude of adaptation is represented by the shaded area. Figure 4.3 shows the integral for 4 units of stress. As you can see, the shaded area is larger than it was for just 1 unit of stress. This means a larger adaptive response. This would be the maximal amount of stress the body can respond to productively, and the maximal amount of benefit you could possibly get from

The Maximal Amount of Training Stress

You Can Handle and Make Gains From

x axis = magnitude of stress y axis = marginal gains/losses area under the curve = magnitude of gains or losses

Figure 4.

doing over twice as much work. This is roughly what occurs when dealing with training factors that add stress. So just to sum all of this up, in case you’re still a little confused about what exactly you’re looking at:

1. The x-intercept on the left (0 for the graphs above) represents the minimum amount of stress necessary to start having a positive effect.
2. The x-intercept on the right (4 for the graphs above) represents the maxi- mum amount of stress the body can respond productively to.
3. The positive area under the curve, minus the negative area under the curve, is the total amount of positive adaptation you get from your training.
4. The curve itself represents marginal gains or losses as the stimulus increases.

Training Volume, Training Intensity, and Cardio Let’s look at three examples: Training volume, training intensity, and cardio training. Training volume : James Kreiger’s wonderful meta-analysis about the effects of doing more sets in training illustrates the first part of this concept beautifully. 2-3 work sets will give you significantly better gains than 1 work set, and 4- sets will probably give you better gains than 2-3 sets (it didn’t reach statistical significance, but there is a larger effect size). However, there was a much larger difference between 1 and 2-3 than there was between 2-3 and 4-6. The former would represent going from maybe 1 unit of stress in the graphs above to 2 units of stress. The latter would represent going from 2 to 3 or 4 units of stress

• increased gains, but not nearly to the same extent.

However, that relationship of increased work leading to increased gains only holds true to a point. Once you accumulate too much volume, you start regress- ing; you enter the realm of overtraining. This is a direct message to anyone who says overtraining doesn’t exist: Run a marathon every day, lift weights HARD for 4-5 hours every day, eat as much as you want, sleep as much as you want (and shoot, take whatever steroids you want), and tell me at the end of 6 months if you still think overtraining is imag- inary (if you survive until the end). That represents the curve dipping below the x-axis, and the detriments of the stress in excess of the maximal amount you’re capable of adapting to over- whelming the benefits you’d have seen from lower levels of stress. With training volume, more is better until you reach your limit, at which point further increases don’t just fail to produce better results, but instead lead to worse results. Training Intensity : Training intensity is similar to training volume. Research has shown that using loads of at least 60% of your max are necessary to cause robust gains in hypertrophy under normal conditions. From that point, there’s a range from about 60-85% that gives you the most bang for your buck in terms of strength and hypertrophy gains. When you start training above 85% regularly, especially if you’re taking a lot of your sets close to failure, the benefits start decreasing. This is because training volume is priority No. 1, and you simply can’t handle very much train- ing volume with 90-100% of your max. Training that heavy has its place when peaking for a meet, or if you have the rest of your program adjusted accordingly