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Old Forum Is GS Third Way Cardio?

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Physical Culture

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I don't have the Purposeful Primitive or I Will Be Iron, so everything that I know about third way cardio, or "hybrid muscle" is from forum posts and Google searches.  I know that 3rd way cardio includes prolonged use of heavy work.  Does kettlebell sport meet this requirement?  Would a 10 minute set of snatches with a moderate to heavy kettlebell (20k and up) provide the benefits of 3rd way cardio- strength and cardio in one?  Rambodoc posted a question a while back about why GS athletes are so strong- could this be an answer?
 
Hi Steve,

These combined sessions are exactly what I'm wondering about.  I'm leaning toward the idea that any session ought to fall into one category or the other.  After all, something has to give out first.  In GS training, what gives out, the muscle or the cardio?  Or are you so diabolical in orchestrating the agony that it's both?

I would say yes, GS is third way.  It's a pretty broad category.  What I really would like to know is if there is such a thing as "hybrid" muscle that combines strength and endurance.  This is a simple scientific question we should have the answer to by now.  A muscle biopsy of Fedorenko's deltoid or Pavel's glute would answer it.

I did try heavy (36 kg) hardstyle snatches for ten minutes, doing a set at the top of each minute, switching hands every set.  Every set was near muscle failure and I was gasping for air at the end.  This only worked moderately well and wasn't worth the pain.  I can grow more muscle with casual hex bar deadlifts and help my cardio more with light swings or jogging.
 
You have a part of your answer by Aaron post, " endurance and strength "
but the world endurance alone doesn't mean anything is you don't precise :
- cardio vascular endurance training or
- muscular endurance training,
For our case, we refer to cardio ...training.
- and, if you are doing high reps or swings or snatches, your heart beat raise, and you are working " your aerobic energy system ".
So, yes, you can work in a single session both, you can also alternate, both are good to work, and both way either.
It is not matter of GS or Hardstyle, it just relative to: number or reps,
tempo, exercises ( swings and snatches )and weight.
EG : if you want to work your aerobic/ cardio endurance system at a high intensity, with your kettlebells, you can do intervals training :
- 5 to 10 mn of swings- 5/ 10 times- with the weight which allow you to always keep a perfect technique.
- between the sets, you are recovering, but never a full recovery, and the recovery time is personal, could be 30 seconds or two minutes. Heart rate monitor are monitoring everything.
It is recommended before to do this hight intensity interval training to have your heart check before.
Hope I answer clearly to your post.
 
Forgot :
- high intensity intervals training are not endurance cardio training, but power
training, if you are running. In this case, hight intensity are sprints.
In running, cardio training are longer distance with a lower intensity .
- in hardstyle kettlebells training, we refer at conditioning for aerobic training.
 
My mistake again :forgot, in running, ENDURANCE cardio training..
I should re-read my posts before...to send...sorry
 
More speculation from a non-science person:

"3rd way" doesn't clarify things.  There's really just steady-state and intervals.  The modality is a side issue -- running, sled, kettlebell, etc... I skimmed Pavel & Kenneth Jay and didn't find any "hybrid" muscle.  I doubt there's a true new muscle type.  I think he just means mitochondria & capillaries.  Pavel has an article in Beyond Bodybuilding on pushups for muscle endurance, growing mitochondria, capillaries, sarcoplasm.  No mention of cardio.

Personally I did really go for it with snatches anywhere from 24 -40 kg.  That's fine, but I can't say I noticed any super hybrid muscle.  So I can't explain why GS athletes are strong.
 
@ Matt Hoskisson

The idea behind 3rd way cardio comes from Bud Jefferies. Its explained in his book "I Will Be Iron".

My poor interpretation of the idea is that you take an activity at a weight you would bo for intervals, for example swings with a decent weight, and take it beyond the intervals, so like doing 1000 unbroken reps with a 70lb bell. Its a hybrid technique.

at least that my 2 cents.
 
Thanks, I should buy the book.  Curious about people who have gone on swing odysseys.  Scared to start my own voyage.  btw, I didn't get super hybrid muscle, but I did get tree-swinging traps :)
 
I think it goes back beyond that Sam as Marty Gallaghers Purposeful Primitive predate's Buds book by several years. The "3rd muscle fibre" is discussed well by Ori Hofmekler in Maximum Muscle, Minimum Fat,

“The so-called “super muscle” fiber carries all possible performance-related advantages. Scientists have already found a kind of super muscle fiber high in both mitochondrial enzymes and glycolytic enzymes, a combination that can afford superiority in both prolonged aerobic exercise and short, intense, anaerobic exercise. Note that conventional muscle fibers are either high in mitochondrial enzymes but low in glycolytic enzymes (slow fibers) or vice versa (fast fibers), a fact that limits their capacity to utilize fuel. In any case, super muscle fibers are somehow classified as part of the family of fast Type II fibers, albeit with superior endurance capabilities similar to those of slow Type I fibers. That classification, however, may be misleading. The unique structure and biological functions of the super fibers should make them a distinct type of muscle fiber with unique cellular composition and ultra-superior performance capabilities.”

This is a worthwhile book, and this idea of hybrid training is one that Hofmekler covers to some extent in The Warrior Diet.

Excerpt From: Hofmekler, Ori. “Maximum Muscle Minimum Fat: The Secret Science Behind Physical Transformation.” North Atlantic Books, 2008.
 
Cool, Piers.  If it's real, I want some.  Maybe Steve is onto something, and GS athletes have it.  I just would like to know the science.  I roughly follow Hofmekler's eating pattern, but his training seems backwards.  Maybe that's the idea.
 
On the other hand, if I have to work even harder than I did before, maybe I don't really want it that bad after all.  :)
 
Piers,

Thanks for the information.  As I mentioned, I don't have these texts, so this kind of information really helps.  My question remains- does GS training produce this hybrid muscle, increasing both strength and endurance?  With light weights, perhaps not, but when you look at athletes who jerk two 32k bells for 10 minutes straight (supporting them between reps), it seems that this is the kind of activity that classifies as 3rd way cardio.
 
Matt H: "In GS training, what gives out, the muscle or the cardio?  Or are you so diabolical in orchestrating the agony that it’s both?"

This may be best description of GS (at least in my limited understanding) that I've ever seen.
 
Thanks Rob.  I know less than you, and certainly less than Steve.  It's too bad I hate GS, because otherwise I would love it.  I was trying to do something similar by concocting a rep/set/weight/rest scheme where I crapped out at muscle & cardio at the same time.  Hardstyle GS, if that makes any sense.  I was partly inspired by The Purposeful Primitive.  It didn't work so great, especially for the effort.  Oh well.  Been there, done that, got the ripped callusses.

I'm gonna take a stance here and declare that I don't believe there is such a thing as 3rd-way cardio, and no hybrid muscle either.  Cardio efforts are either sustainable or unsustainable.  Adding the category "cardio with weights" doesn't add any new information, and confuses the issue.  Your heart beats fast when large muscle groups work hard and/or continuously.  It doesn't matter a whole lot whether you are running up a hill or snatching a kettlebell.  That is a side issue.

Muscle takes on endurance qualities when subjected to endurance training.  Maybe it's mitochondria and capillaries.  It could be "mojo" for all I know.  I just don't see it becoming somehow special because of cardio.  Gallagher is basing off of Hofmekler, and Hofmekler speculates beyond evidence.  People have been doing variations of combined exercise for a while now.  If hybrid muscle is something distinct, by now someone would have stumbled upon the exercise protocol to grow it.  I don't think anybody has ever walked into a Crossfit box and declared  "Wow!  Look at all that super hybrid muscle!"
 
I found an answer in a post by JDC on the DD forum, in which he includes an excerpt from Purposeful Primitive:

"Good examples of 3rd Way cardio modes might include grappling or wrestling with an opponent; clean and jerk an ultra light weight from the floor to overhead for a protracted period of time; carry a weighted backpack for distance."

So it seems that GS events, like the jerk, the snatch, and the long cycle are examples of 3rd way cardio.  My next question is this: is 10 minutes long enough to tap into the benefits that are presumed to accrue from 3rd way cardio?
 
That's probably a fair stance Matt. However, it must be possible to make fast twitch fibres endure long and / or slow twitch fibres more explosive, if it truly reaches the point where one or the other has been manipulated to mimic the others function to a comparable level, perhaps that does deserve to be re categorised. Surely at that point it is distinct from whichever group it began as? If fast twitch fibres gain endurance effectively, and I can't see how slow twitch could develop explosiveness, then for a variety of events that will be of immeasurable value. However, one has to question the cost. Am I willing to be an above average generalist? Does that suit my purpose? Or do I want to be insanely strong or go all day?

And can I achieve both more effectively as per the Siff quote the other day, by training the individual fibres in a more focused way?
 
Hi Steve & Piers,

Someone who knows the science could probably clear this right up.  It's a clue that Kenneth Jay's Viking Warrior Conditioning is full of science and there's no mention of "3rd way" or "hybrid muscle."  Gallagher has mountains of real-life experience but isn't a scientist.  I think he just felt the need to name something that people are obviously doing.  I have The Purposeful Primitive.  He doesn't mention GS, but I would say yes, it's in that category.  Maybe even the best example.

I suppose I'm invoking Ockham's Razor here and eliminating a redundant concept with no explanatory power.  I'm already busy enough with strength training, LSD, and intervals.  If I have to include 3rd way cardio I will have a nervous breakdown.  I really think it isn't something distinct.  If I run up a hill, there is a sense in which I am doing cardio with weights.  The weight I am lifting is my own sorry a#@.  If I just know I should do intervals twice a week, I can pick between hills, snatches, sled, whatever, and not worry about whether I am using an external object.  In another context Pavel wrote something like "The debate over free weights versus bodyweight is a waste of bad breath."

We could look at it from the muscle endurance end.  I'm thinking that the combination of cardio and localized muscle endurance at the same time doesn't have any special effect.  So if we took a guy who runs and does high-rep military presses, and an equivalent guy who does 10-minute jerks, there wouldn't be any difference under the microscope if if someone took a muscle biopsy of their deltoids.  Just guessing.

I found another section in Siff's book where he is quite clear in preferring separate strength and cardio sessions, and is especially against cardio before weights.  He was writing before P90X, Crossfit, and before the kettlebell resurgence.  I suspect he would still have the same opinion.  I personally find this to be true, so I guess that makes me "anti" GS.  Nevermind how awesome it is.

I would just observe that there must be a reason why GS has settled on ten minutes, and MMA fights are three five-minute rounds.  It's just what we all know too well, you can't work really hard really long.  I typically did my snatches for ten minutes.  I gradually came to prefer more reps with a lighter bell, 24 kg.  That way the sessions were clearly cardio and not really strength.  I hike around in the mountains and can report that the snatches helped quite a bit, but not as much as jogging.  No surprise that intense efforts are not the same as LSD.

Getting mired in details of muscle fiber types and energy pathways can be a real rabbit hole.  Good stuff to know, but the SAID principle always helps keep things in perspective.  Thanks guys for the cool discussion.
 
I agree with what you're saying to an extent Matt, and the point I made at the end of my last post was along the same lines as your philosophy. I'm just reluctant to shoot down what sharp guys like Gallagher, Jeffries, and Hofmekler are saying without looking at the data myself, so if they believe in a third muscle type or a differenstyle of training I'm going to want evidence to say no rather than a hunch.

Personally, I don't think any of these guys would say to do this alongside intervals, but rather as an alternative.

That said, I've enjoyed this interaction and appreciate people being willing to engage in respectful discussions, and as you say, the details may not shave much value at the end of the day for joe normal's training.
 
Fiber type doesn't necessarily dictate a muscles function.  Muscle fibers are extremely plastic and more neurologically/demand mediated.

http://ptjournal.apta.org/content/81/11/1810.full

"Regardless of the classification scheme used to group muscle fibers, there is overwhelming evidence that muscle fibers—and therefore motor units—not only change in size in response to demands, but they can also convert from one type to another.2,18,19"

"High-intensity resistance training (eg, high-load–low-repetition training) results in changes in fiber type similar to those seen with endurance training, although muscle hypertrophy also plays an essential role in producing strength gains.33"

In the spirit of Occams razor noted earlier, I believe it is more of an ATP supply and demand issue.  Repeated sprints, for instance, are increasingly reliant on aerobic energy production, even a 200m sprint is ~50% aerobic.  Anaerobic energy production is VERY limited in terms of duration, we are aerobic creatures.

So to summarize:

Training repeated efforts of say, swings, allows for the fibers to adapt to that stimulus and improve that.  With many heavy swings you are looking at making fibers that have relatively high force production but also has oxidative capacity to support the effort for a prolonged duration.

In the pure bro-sense of "strength" vs "cardio" then the above adaptation would indeed to "Third Way," to my understanding of it.  Similar to Joel Jamiesons HICT training (which I have thought sounds much like USST with a 32kg.

Also to add to a lengthy post, much of the strength gains (and very probably endurance gains) are mediated by the brain, not by the physiology of muscles.
 
I have Ori's books.  I have Marty's book.  I have KJ's book.  All, including KJ, are short on science and physiology.

All you have to do is look at the training truly elite athletes do and the classifications of their energy system work.  Rowing, for example, trains in six different bands, each with a specific purpose, goal, and duration (as short as 5 strokes to as long as 90'+).  I bought the books, so, yeah, I'll say it: the author's manipulated the science to give a secret advantage.

And I say this as a 10 year rowing coach, with years of taking lactate and heart rate, reading, evaluating, and learning in my sport.  If there were a super muscle, you'd see rowers and skiers doing anything to get it, not to mention everyone else.
 
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