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Bodyweight Stop Doing Squats?

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Yeah, you're right. That's why Schroeder has his athletes do those crazy isometrics for months or years at a time to prepare them. And why I've only seen it used under the tutelage of coaches (I said gymnastics in that post, but I meant sports. I've seen plenty of athletes using depth drops, but only under certain conditions. Also, I once heard Fichter or Korfist -- I forget who -- say that depth drops are a powerful tool, but the kind of thing you can only use once. I've always been curious what that meant.)

No, I am not going to take the time to rewrite this post so it's less rambling.

I don't know how it is for @Anna C, but even just the repeated shock to the joints of barbell snatches & C&J (bodyweight + barbell weight) can get to my ankles and knees when my volume is high as I head into competition.

I manage this by doing the competition lifts once a week in the off season, but starting in January I'll ramp up it so that I'm hitting the competition lifts 4-5 times a week at 80%+ intensity before the final taper in May.

But I can't do that much volume and intensity year round without my joints getting crushed.
 
I don't know how it is for @Anna C, but even just the repeated shock to the joints of barbell snatches & C&J (bodyweight + barbell weight) can get to my ankles and knees when my volume is high as I head into competition.

Yeah my ankles were feeling the last heavy week. Lightened up this week... headed to competition on Saturday!

My knees are normally happy unless I try to catch and reverse anything in the mid-range, then they tend to yell at me.
 
There's so much of a conflict between what the weightlifting world says and what the sports training world says that it leaves me dizzy trying to connect the two. As an example, something I've read several sports trainers write is that eccentrics don't cause DOMs: poor muscle patterning and muscle mechanics do. Meanwhile, in weightlifting circles it's just understood that eccentrics take a lot out of you.
Something I've been thinking about lately is how difficult it is to study different kinds of interventions. What I mean by that is this:

Each area of the "fitness world," i.e. weightlifting, powerlifting, sports science, biomechanics, nutrition, etc etc etc.... is always trying to find what works better for a given goal/outcome. The problem is that it's really hard to study an intervention (i.e. training technique, dietary style, etc) and isolate all the other things that could affect the outcome.

An example of what I mean:
-in order to know whether one training modality or another is more effective for muscle growth, you would either have to a) find totally untrained individuals with very similar body compositions and have each of them do one of the modalities for a long period of time, or b) find trained individuals with very similar body comps and strength levels, and then do the same. You would have to meticulously make sure that each participant's diet was controlled, and that each of their sleep quantitites and qualities was controlled. If you read enough studies you will find that they sometimes throw out data from participants who couldn't maintain the regimen or got sick or didn't otherwise get accurate or controlled enough data.

So you can see why two areas of the training world would have conflicting opinions on things. Both clearly saw results, and so believe their methods to work well.

So who cares? Why did I take the time to type all that out? I think it's important to keep in mind so that we can evaluate information with a clearer head. A shortcut I use is to be more skeptical of anyone who claims any sort of absolute, whether its arbitrary prerequisites for exercise or special diets or whatever. You will almost always get the best information from sources that say things like, "possibly," "in certain cases," "needs more studies," "in specific groups," etc... Sources that make absolute kinds of statements are almost always selling you a method, product, whatever. It might end up being a good method for you, or it might not. If it's not, that's okay.
 
Something I've been thinking about lately is how difficult it is to study different kinds of interventions. What I mean by that is this:

Each area of the "fitness world," i.e. weightlifting, powerlifting, sports science, biomechanics, nutrition, etc etc etc.... is always trying to find what works better for a given goal/outcome. The problem is that it's really hard to study an intervention (i.e. training technique, dietary style, etc) and isolate all the other things that could affect the outcome.

An example of what I mean:
-in order to know whether one training modality or another is more effective for muscle growth, you would either have to a) find totally untrained individuals with very similar body compositions and have each of them do one of the modalities for a long period of time, or b) find trained individuals with very similar body comps and strength levels, and then do the same. You would have to meticulously make sure that each participant's diet was controlled, and that each of their sleep quantitites and qualities was controlled. If you read enough studies you will find that they sometimes throw out data from participants who couldn't maintain the regimen or got sick or didn't otherwise get accurate or controlled enough data.

So you can see why two areas of the training world would have conflicting opinions on things. Both clearly saw results, and so believe their methods to work well.

So who cares? Why did I take the time to type all that out? I think it's important to keep in mind so that we can evaluate information with a clearer head. A shortcut I use is to be more skeptical of anyone who claims any sort of absolute, whether its arbitrary prerequisites for exercise or special diets or whatever. You will almost always get the best information from sources that say things like, "possibly," "in certain cases," "needs more studies," "in specific groups," etc... Sources that make absolute kinds of statements are almost always selling you a method, product, whatever. It might end up being a good method for you, or it might not. If it's not, that's okay.

Something that also complicates things in my mind is that some areas of the "fitness world" are drowning in voices trying to peddle a brand. It's not common to see random nobodies trying to make a name for themselves as a sports-training coach, but the fitness and bodybulding world is absolutely flooded with nobodies trying to make a profitable brand for themselves, peddling ideas that they're not knowledgeable or experienced enough to have reliable opinions on.

The noise used to be bad when it was just muscle magazines selling supplements and routines the roided-up pros use, but now every roided-up amateur is desperately trying to sell anything they can.
 
If you read enough studies you will find that they sometimes throw out data from participants who couldn't maintain the regimen or got sick or didn't otherwise get accurate or controlled enough data.
A great example is that study that showed hypertrophy was similar between the group that did 3x10RM and the group that did 7x3RM. If you just read the abstract or headline you think "great! If I do lots of super heavy sets I'll gain just as much muscle and even more strength than the 'bodybuilding routine'".

Read the discussion and you find that the 7x3 group felt completely beat up at the end of the study, reported joint issues, and had several injuries that resulted in dropping out of the study. None of the people in the 3x10 group had any issues and felt they could keep going easily.
 
Something I've been thinking about lately is how difficult it is to study different kinds of interventions. What I mean by that is this:

Each area of the "fitness world," i.e. weightlifting, powerlifting, sports science, biomechanics, nutrition, etc etc etc.... is always trying to find what works better for a given goal/outcome. The problem is that it's really hard to study an intervention (i.e. training technique, dietary style, etc) and isolate all the other things that could affect the outcome.

An example of what I mean:
-in order to know whether one training modality or another is more effective for muscle growth, you would either have to a) find totally untrained individuals with very similar body compositions and have each of them do one of the modalities for a long period of time, or b) find trained individuals with very similar body comps and strength levels, and then do the same. You would have to meticulously make sure that each participant's diet was controlled, and that each of their sleep quantitites and qualities was controlled. If you read enough studies you will find that they sometimes throw out data from participants who couldn't maintain the regimen or got sick or didn't otherwise get accurate or controlled enough data.

So you can see why two areas of the training world would have conflicting opinions on things. Both clearly saw results, and so believe their methods to work well.

So who cares? Why did I take the time to type all that out? I think it's important to keep in mind so that we can evaluate information with a clearer head. A shortcut I use is to be more skeptical of anyone who claims any sort of absolute, whether its arbitrary prerequisites for exercise or special diets or whatever. You will almost always get the best information from sources that say things like, "possibly," "in certain cases," "needs more studies," "in specific groups," etc... Sources that make absolute kinds of statements are almost always selling you a method, product, whatever. It might end up being a good method for you, or it might not. If it's not, that's okay.
I don’t even know if that would be THAT helpful. When you have such tightly controlled inclusion criteria you limit the applicability of those results to other groups that don’t meet that criteria. AND we’re usually evaluating averages, not absolutes - so if Method A saw 10% more growth than Method B on average but ranged from 3-15%, but Method B ranges -5 - 10% you couldn’t say that Method A would work better for Client X you could just say it was more likely, if they met the tightly controlled inclusion criteria. (And there are fancier types of statistical analysis most researchers don’t know about or use that can start looking at how removing one result changes the This is where crossover studies are sometimes helpful (washout period, method A for 12 weeks, washout, method B for 12 weeks - and randomized would randomly pick participants order of interventions), but even then you’re not getting a “Method A is objectively better” answer.

Doesn’t really take away from your “take away” at the end, just maybe emphasizing how “more studies” might really not help one decide how to train and absolutes absolutely suck. ;)

I guess I'm thinking - what would those studies benefit the trainer, client, or coach who starts with a base and adjusts based on results? It might make a better "planned out program" that you could buy (The BEST SCIENCE PROVEN WAY TO BUILD MUSCLE, GET STRONGER, AND BE LEAN OBJECT OF DESIRE!), but would it change practice at all?

I'm not trying to be anti-science. I just don't see all that much benefit.
 
A great example is that study that showed hypertrophy was similar between the group that did 3x10RM and the group that did 7x3RM. If you just read the abstract or headline you think "great! If I do lots of super heavy sets I'll gain just as much muscle and even more strength than the 'bodybuilding routine'".

Read the discussion and you find that the 7x3 group felt completely beat up at the end of the study, reported joint issues, and had several injuries that resulted in dropping out of the study. None of the people in the 3x10 group had any issues and felt they could keep going easily.

Easy solution:

Do 7 x 3 at 10 RM weights. ;)
 
Doesn’t really take away from your “take away” at the end, just maybe emphasizing how “more studies” might really not help one decide how to train and absolutes absolutely suck. ;)

I guess I'm thinking - what would those studies benefit the trainer, client, or coach who starts with a base and adjusts based on results? It might make a better "planned out program" that you could buy (The BEST SCIENCE PROVEN WAY TO BUILD MUSCLE, GET STRONGER, AND BE LEAN OBJECT OF DESIRE!), but would it change practice at all?

I'm not trying to be anti-science. I just don't see all that much benefit.
Agreed. My takeaway was that its a huge complicated mess, and anyone trying to say their one thing is better is probably mistaken or full of it.

To me, it seems like until you're lifting really heavy or otherwise at some advanced stage of training, you don't need to worry about the "one optimal method to rule them all." You just need to stay consistent and progressively overload over long periods of time.

FWIW I officially dropped my exercise science degree because of these kinds of reasons, and switched to physics....that's its own thread around here somewhere though.
 
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