Force/Velocity Curve Questions

[damufunman]

What would someone look like that is in the 6RM camp?

IDK. Huge with extremely long femurs?

Is this someone really explosive

Nah.

How does anthropometry change the relative effort relationship (or whatever the fuck one would call it) between intensities? Would said long femured person have as hard a time with 1RM as with 6RM (from a mechanical standpoint at least, a 1RM and an 8RM are a little different for me, like how 8s are basically cardio)?

[Hanley]

How does anthropometry change the relative effort relationship (or whatever the fuck one would call it) between intensities? Would said long femured person have as hard a time with 1RM as with 6RM (from a mechanical standpoint at least, a 1RM and an 8RM are a little different for me, like how 8s are basically cardio)?

IDK. Here's the abstract:

https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abst ... ed.33.aspx

The r-values are pretty modest.


My guess is that long femurs force a horizontal back, which puts a big demand on the lumbar erectors (in a way that disproportionately affects work capacity more than single rep performance).

###

Regarding the concerns about the study and error measurement: yeah, my brain immediately went there too. And of course it could be an issue...but I'm pretty sure this came out of Zourdos' lab. I'm normally ridiculously skeptical....but I trust him.

[Murelli]

Wouldn't MU neuronal density, amount of type II x type I fibers influence on this? Let's say a really explosive guy with little to no fatigue resistance muscle fibers would hang near the 6RM, and a marathon runner with near zero "explosiveness" would get closer to 26RM due to a horrible 1RM capacity.

Could be a bunch of shit. This recent study found that body mass and femur length are inversely related to amrap count at 70%.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30640306

Ok. A wise guy in the S&C world said something along the line of "different intensities and rep counts are different motor patterns". A few other well thought guys said that "work capacity is trainable and you can have a decent 1RM and horrible work capacity". Some other dudes, a few well read and well thuoght and a few questionable, said that "strength is specific".

So yeah, it's all a mess. Could well be badly designed studies, bad 1RM tests, etc.

[quikky]

Some other dudes, a few well read and well thuoght and a few questionable, said that "strength is specific".

I heard Jordan say this a few times. I don't get it. If you get stronger, i.e. the weight goes up, part of that is specific, and part of that is general. In other words, if you add 100lb to your squat, some of that is "squat strength", composed of just being better at squatting, and part of that is "general" strength applicable to any other strength task involving the related musculature. I don't understand how "all strength is specific" can be true.

[KarlM]

Regarding the concerns about the study and error measurement: yeah, my brain immediately went there too. And of course it could be an issue...but I'm pretty sure this came out of Zourdos' lab. I'm normally ridiculously skeptical....but I trust him.

I ran some numbers to roughly estimate the variability in rep count. I based this off of the RTS chart.

For a daily performance swing of +/- 5%, max rep count at 70% of assumed true 1RM is 10 to 12.4. For a 10% swing, range is 8.4 to 13.3 reps.

So yeah, not that bad actually. I'd still want to see how the data cluster.

[damufunman]

How does anthropometry change the relative effort relationship (or whatever the fuck one would call it) between intensities? Would said long femured person have as hard a time with 1RM as with 6RM (from a mechanical standpoint at least, a 1RM and an 8RM are a little different for me, like how 8s are basically cardio)?

IDK. Here's the abstract:

https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abst ... ed.33.aspx

The r-values are pretty modest.


My guess is that long femurs force a horizontal back, which puts a big demand on the lumbar erectors (in a way that disproportionately affects work capacity more than single rep performance).

###

Regarding the concerns about the study and error measurement: yeah, my brain immediately went there too. And of course it could be an issue...but I'm pretty sure this came out of Zourdos' lab. I'm normally ridiculously skeptical....but I trust him.

Oh hey, I missed your reply to Murelli about femur length and body wt. vs 70%, and the lumbar fatigue seems plausible. Also, +1 for trusting Zourdo, though I'm not that deep in the field to really have a reason to have an opinion on it. Whatever.

Some other dudes, a few well read and well thuoght and a few questionable, said that "strength is specific".

I heard Jordan say this a few times. I don't get it. If you get stronger, i.e. the weight goes up, part of that is specific, and part of that is general. In other words, if you add 100lb to your squat, some of that is "squat strength", composed of just being better at squatting, and part of that is "general" strength applicable to any other strength task involving the related musculature. I don't understand how "all strength is specific" can be true.

I've been wondering this too. I wonder if it might be an issue of people meaning different things when they refer to "strength." Maybe there's a disconnect somewhere where someone is binning hypertrophy different from strength, so an increase in hypertrophy doesn't lead to increased strength, even if say your squat goes up. You didn't increase your strength in the squat, but your muscle mass increased to allow you to squat more. I dunno, only thing I can think of that would explain the no general strength thing.

ETA: re-reading your bit, looks like I said the exact thing you did. Oh well.

[GlasgowJock]

I heard Jordan say this a few times. I don't get it. If you get stronger, i.e. the weight goes up, part of that is specific, and part of that is general. In other words, if you add 100lb to your squat, some of that is "squat strength", composed of just being better at squatting, and part of that is "general" strength applicable to any other strength task involving the related musculature. I don't understand how "all strength is specific" can be true.

Perhaps it's learning the motor skill and/ or other variables to make that specific strength transferable. You could have a 700lb back squat but not even be able to budge a 700lb yoke in strongman. Or a 700lb dead lift only to find out your ability to do stone lifting is poor in comparison. You'll be able to gain competency way quicker demonstrating those feats of strength from your current specificity compared to say a 500lb squatter/ dead lifter.

Didn't Jordan do a regional strongman comp earlier this year? Perhaps he found out how specific his strength was from the static lifts trying to utilise that strength undertaking strongman type feats of strength.

[Hanley]

I don't get it.

It's quite simple: the degree of specificity in strength is case-specific.

[quikky]

I heard Jordan say this a few times. I don't get it. If you get stronger, i.e. the weight goes up, part of that is specific, and part of that is general. In other words, if you add 100lb to your squat, some of that is "squat strength", composed of just being better at squatting, and part of that is "general" strength applicable to any other strength task involving the related musculature. I don't understand how "all strength is specific" can be true.

Perhaps it's learning the motor skill and/ or other variables to make that specific strength transferable. You could have a 700lb back squat but not even be able to budge a 700lb yoke in strongman. Or a 700lb dead lift only to find out your ability to do stone lifting is poor in comparison. You'll be able to gain competency way quicker demonstrating those feats of strength from your current specificity compared to say a 500lb squatter/ dead lifter.

Didn't Jordan do a regional strongman comp earlier this year? Perhaps he found out how specific his strength was from the static lifts trying to utilise that strength undertaking strongman type feats of strength.

My contention is with the statement "all strength is specific, there is no such thing as general strength". I don't see how your muscles can contract with a lot of force in context A, and then contract with massively less force in context B. If there would be no such thing as general strength, it would mean you would start with a 135lb squat and a 225lb leg press, then improve your squat to 405, and still have a 225lb leg press because your strength is specific to the squat and not general.

[Murelli]

SpoilerShow

I heard Jordan say this a few times. I don't get it. If you get stronger, i.e. the weight goes up, part of that is specific, and part of that is general. In other words, if you add 100lb to your squat, some of that is "squat strength", composed of just being better at squatting, and part of that is "general" strength applicable to any other strength task involving the related musculature. I don't understand how "all strength is specific" can be true.

Perhaps it's learning the motor skill and/ or other variables to make that specific strength transferable. You could have a 700lb back squat but not even be able to budge a 700lb yoke in strongman. Or a 700lb dead lift only to find out your ability to do stone lifting is poor in comparison. You'll be able to gain competency way quicker demonstrating those feats of strength from your current specificity compared to say a 500lb squatter/ dead lifter.

Didn't Jordan do a regional strongman comp earlier this year? Perhaps he found out how specific his strength was from the static lifts trying to utilise that strength undertaking strongman type feats of strength.

My contention is with the statement "all strength is specific, there is no such thing as general strength". I don't see how your muscles can contract with a lot of force in context A, and then contract with massively less force in context B. If there would be no such thing as general strength, it would mean you would start with a 135lb squat and a 225lb leg press, then improve your squat to 405, and still have a 225lb leg press because your strength is specific to the squat and not general.

How much transference can you get from a squat to a deadlift, from a back squat to a front squat, from a squat to a bicep curl, from a squat to an uppercut? Specificity and transference are well documented. Now how much does a 1RM transfer to a 20RM?

What I've said is that "strength is specific", i.e. if you train to perform a 20RM you get better at doing 20 reps, but if you train to perform a 1RM you get better at doing 1 rep, but these two only transfer (performance wise) a limited amount.

[Hanley]

SpoilerShow

I heard Jordan say this a few times. I don't get it. If you get stronger, i.e. the weight goes up, part of that is specific, and part of that is general. In other words, if you add 100lb to your squat, some of that is "squat strength", composed of just being better at squatting, and part of that is "general" strength applicable to any other strength task involving the related musculature. I don't understand how "all strength is specific" can be true.

Perhaps it's learning the motor skill and/ or other variables to make that specific strength transferable. You could have a 700lb back squat but not even be able to budge a 700lb yoke in strongman. Or a 700lb dead lift only to find out your ability to do stone lifting is poor in comparison. You'll be able to gain competency way quicker demonstrating those feats of strength from your current specificity compared to say a 500lb squatter/ dead lifter.

Didn't Jordan do a regional strongman comp earlier this year? Perhaps he found out how specific his strength was from the static lifts trying to utilise that strength undertaking strongman type feats of strength.

My contention is with the statement "all strength is specific, there is no such thing as general strength". I don't see how your muscles can contract with a lot of force in context A, and then contract with massively less force in context B. If there would be no such thing as general strength, it would mean you would start with a 135lb squat and a 225lb leg press, then improve your squat to 405, and still have a 225lb leg press because your strength is specific to the squat and not general.

How much transference can you get from a squat to a deadlift, from a back squat to a front squat, from a squat to a bicep curl, from a squat to an uppercut? Specificity and transference are well documented. Now how much does a 1RM transfer to a 20RM?

What I've said is that "strength is specific", i.e. if you train to perform a 20RM you get better at doing 20 reps, but if you train to perform a 1RM you get better at doing 1 rep, but these two only transfer (performance wise) a limited amount.

Movements with very different contraction velocities is where you get really shitty transfer.

[Murelli]

SpoilerShow

SpoilerShow

I heard Jordan say this a few times. I don't get it. If you get stronger, i.e. the weight goes up, part of that is specific, and part of that is general. In other words, if you add 100lb to your squat, some of that is "squat strength", composed of just being better at squatting, and part of that is "general" strength applicable to any other strength task involving the related musculature. I don't understand how "all strength is specific" can be true.

Perhaps it's learning the motor skill and/ or other variables to make that specific strength transferable. You could have a 700lb back squat but not even be able to budge a 700lb yoke in strongman. Or a 700lb dead lift only to find out your ability to do stone lifting is poor in comparison. You'll be able to gain competency way quicker demonstrating those feats of strength from your current specificity compared to say a 500lb squatter/ dead lifter.

Didn't Jordan do a regional strongman comp earlier this year? Perhaps he found out how specific his strength was from the static lifts trying to utilise that strength undertaking strongman type feats of strength.

My contention is with the statement "all strength is specific, there is no such thing as general strength". I don't see how your muscles can contract with a lot of force in context A, and then contract with massively less force in context B. If there would be no such thing as general strength, it would mean you would start with a 135lb squat and a 225lb leg press, then improve your squat to 405, and still have a 225lb leg press because your strength is specific to the squat and not general.

How much transference can you get from a squat to a deadlift, from a back squat to a front squat, from a squat to a bicep curl, from a squat to an uppercut? Specificity and transference are well documented. Now how much does a 1RM transfer to a 20RM?

What I've said is that "strength is specific", i.e. if you train to perform a 20RM you get better at doing 20 reps, but if you train to perform a 1RM you get better at doing 1 rep, but these two only transfer (performance wise) a limited amount.

Movements with very different contraction velocities is where you get really shitty transfer.

Like a straight punch versus a bench press? Deadlift versus sprint take-off?

[Hanley]

SpoilerShow

SpoilerShow

I heard Jordan say this a few times. I don't get it. If you get stronger, i.e. the weight goes up, part of that is specific, and part of that is general. In other words, if you add 100lb to your squat, some of that is "squat strength", composed of just being better at squatting, and part of that is "general" strength applicable to any other strength task involving the related musculature. I don't understand how "all strength is specific" can be true.

Perhaps it's learning the motor skill and/ or other variables to make that specific strength transferable. You could have a 700lb back squat but not even be able to budge a 700lb yoke in strongman. Or a 700lb dead lift only to find out your ability to do stone lifting is poor in comparison. You'll be able to gain competency way quicker demonstrating those feats of strength from your current specificity compared to say a 500lb squatter/ dead lifter.

Didn't Jordan do a regional strongman comp earlier this year? Perhaps he found out how specific his strength was from the static lifts trying to utilise that strength undertaking strongman type feats of strength.

My contention is with the statement "all strength is specific, there is no such thing as general strength". I don't see how your muscles can contract with a lot of force in context A, and then contract with massively less force in context B. If there would be no such thing as general strength, it would mean you would start with a 135lb squat and a 225lb leg press, then improve your squat to 405, and still have a 225lb leg press because your strength is specific to the squat and not general.

How much transference can you get from a squat to a deadlift, from a back squat to a front squat, from a squat to a bicep curl, from a squat to an uppercut? Specificity and transference are well documented. Now how much does a 1RM transfer to a 20RM?

What I've said is that "strength is specific", i.e. if you train to perform a 20RM you get better at doing 20 reps, but if you train to perform a 1RM you get better at doing 1 rep, but these two only transfer (performance wise) a limited amount.

Movements with very different contraction velocities is where you get really shitty transfer.

Like a straight punch versus a bench press? Deadlift versus sprint take-off?

Yeah. But even then it really depends on the athlete.

[mettkeks]

How does anthropometry change the relative effort relationship (or whatever the fuck one would call it) between intensities? Would said long femured person have as hard a time with 1RM as with 6RM (from a mechanical standpoint at least, a 1RM and an 8RM are a little different for me, like how 8s are basically cardio)?

IDK. Here's the abstract:

https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abst ... ed.33.aspx

The r-values are pretty modest.


My guess is that long femurs force a horizontal back, which puts a big demand on the lumbar erectors (in a way that disproportionately affects work capacity more than single rep performance).

###

Regarding the concerns about the study and error measurement: yeah, my brain immediately went there too. And of course it could be an issue...but I'm pretty sure this came out of Zourdos' lab. I'm normally ridiculously skeptical....but I trust him.

Helms was involved in another study that showed a similar range.

[gnuckols]

Sorry guys. I don't check my account here very often. Here's my SWELTERING hot take, though:

I think this whole thing is a case where models can be useful without being strictly true. I think most people would agree that you need to a) recruit all or most MUs and b) induce some meaningful amount of local fatigue (i.e. not just doing 1RMs) if you want to maximize hypertrophy. Beyond that, you're just trying to come up with a model that more-or-less matches the experimental findings we have. I think the idea of "effective reps" puts you in the right direction, but it doesn't fit all the evidence we have (in Helms' dissertation study, growth was pretty similar between two groups stopping each set different distances from failure; in a recent study by Carroll et al out of ETSU, a group stopping further from failure grew substantially more than a group reaching failure each session. Then there's that old Sampson paper where growth was similar between failure and ~2 reps shy of failure). And then there's also the issue of model fitting - are we sure the hypertrophy we're seeing in the research is the hypertrophy we "should" be seeing? Do we see more growth with failure in a lot of studies simply because the subjects have more local edema? Is there possibly more sarcoplasmic hypertrophy going on with failure training (that's never been studied)?

I personally don't think we're yet at a point where we know enough to have too much confidence in any specific predictive model being "true," but effective reps isn't necessarily a bad lense to look through.

[KarlM]

Sorry guys. I don't check my account here very often. Here's my SWELTERING hot take, though:

I think this whole thing is a case where models can be useful without being strictly true. I think most people would agree that you need to a) recruit all or most MUs and b) induce some meaningful amount of local fatigue (i.e. not just doing 1RMs) if you want to maximize hypertrophy. Beyond that, you're just trying to come up with a model that more-or-less matches the experimental findings we have. I think the idea of "effective reps" puts you in the right direction, but it doesn't fit all the evidence we have (in Helms' dissertation study, growth was pretty similar between two groups stopping each set different distances from failure; in a recent study by Carroll et al out of ETSU, a group stopping further from failure grew substantially more than a group reaching failure each session. Then there's that old Sampson paper where growth was similar between failure and ~2 reps shy of failure). And then there's also the issue of model fitting - are we sure the hypertrophy we're seeing in the research is the hypertrophy we "should" be seeing? Do we see more growth with failure in a lot of studies simply because the subjects have more local edema? Is there possibly more sarcoplasmic hypertrophy going on with failure training (that's never been studied)?

I personally don't think we're yet at a point where we know enough to have too much confidence in any specific predictive model being "true," but effective reps isn't necessarily a bad lense to look through.

This is anecdote, but still, when I train my bench in the 2-5 rep range to or close to failure, I reliably stall (in terms of strength, not sure about hypertrophy). When I trained it over a range of rep ranges (2-8) far from failure, only touching heavy weights every so often, I saw a big increase in my 1rm. The former method should have produced a bunch of “effective” reps while the latter should not have. Rather, it almost seems like reps close to failure are anti-effective. Do too many of them and they steal your gains. WTF?

[blowdpanis]

Greg's post is really good. I think the "effective reps" concept is getting to the right idea, but the fact that most research seems to imply that being in the general ballpark of failure (maybe at like RPE ~6+) works as well as actual failure kind of undermines the concept's accuracy.

As per this Beardsley article that's been tossed around:



The "effective reps" idea taken to the extreme would imply there's something like ~5 effective reps for any set taken to failure at ~5+ reps per set. Which is an attempt to explain research which demonstrates that you can count "hard sets" ala Nuckols at ~5+ reps per set when tallying hypertrophy. E.g. 3 hard sets of 5 is probably as good as 3 hard sets of 10 to make you grow. But if you fall below that ~5 mark, it no longer works, e.g. sets of ~1-3 aren't as good as sets of 5 or 10 for hypertrophy on a per-set basis.

The problem comes from the above observation on research of failure vs. not to failure, that training a few reps shy of failure is arguably as good per set. If effective reps were the true driver, being able to only get ~50% of the effective reps in a set and still grow just as well as getting 100% of them by going to failure wouldn't make much sense.

I'm almost reminded of the old idea of growth being switched to "on" or not in a set ala the HIT people. Though it's not quite that simple, probably more like there are two conditions necessary to maximize hypertrophy for any given set. Those are:

1) Enough total time/reps/fatigue
2) Sufficient (full) recruitment

If you accomplish both, that set is as good as it gets to produce hypertrophy. So let's take two common scenarios:

1) doing a bunch of singles, doubles or triples. We satisfy condition number 2, i.e. all our reps should be "effective" and at full recruitment. But we're not satisfying the first condition, and we'd predict that each set of these low reps would not work as well. And, indeed, research implies this, you have to do way more total sets of really low reps to equal the hypertrophic results of higher rep sets (again assuming both are "hard").

2) doing a bunch of really submaximal sets of higher reps. I'm reminded of something like 531's boring but big here. If you're consistently at RPE ~5 or less, then it's hard to say that we are ever achieving any "effective reps" as per the Beardsley idea, so condition number 2 isn't met. However, condition 1 actually is, and anecdotally, as long as you throw a lot of volume at it ala Wendler, this does seem to make people grow.

The commonality is that, for both very low reps and very submaximal sets, you can make up for their less than maximum hypertrophic potential by throwing volume at the problem. However, you can probably substantially cut down volume by achieving the two criteria above, since every set's hypertrophic potential will be effectively maxed out.

Obviously, for strength/skill's sake, there are many potential reasons why we wouldn't want to fulfill both criteria above. As per Hanley's thoughts, submaximal sets performed explosively on the concentric might violate some of our logic about what "effective" reps even are, and there are elements of skill practice if one has 1 RM type goals that would obviously necessitate heavier, lower rep work.

But if you're just trying to get jacked, I'd think you should try to make most of your work fulfill both of those criteria. I.e. ~5+ reps per set at sufficient RPE, again maybe something like ~6+.

[TimK]

This is anecdote, but still, when I train my bench in the 2-5 rep range to or close to failure, I reliably stall (in terms of strength, not sure about hypertrophy). When I trained it over a range of rep ranges (2-8) far from failure, only touching heavy weights every so often, I saw a big increase in my 1rm. The former method should have produced a bunch of “effective” reps while the latter should not have. Rather, it almost seems like reps close to failure are anti-effective. Do too many of them and they steal your gains. WTF?

Possible explanation: you were doing "too much" and digging yourself into a hole recovery-wise. You were struggling just to get back to baseline/repair muscle damage after your sessions with no resources left to actually build new muscle and improve performance.

or

You were so fatigued from going to failure that your overall volume was too low.

[KarlM]

This is anecdote, but still, when I train my bench in the 2-5 rep range to or close to failure, I reliably stall (in terms of strength, not sure about hypertrophy). When I trained it over a range of rep ranges (2-8) far from failure, only touching heavy weights every so often, I saw a big increase in my 1rm. The former method should have produced a bunch of “effective” reps while the latter should not have. Rather, it almost seems like reps close to failure are anti-effective. Do too many of them and they steal your gains. WTF?

Possible explanation: you were doing "too much" and digging yourself into a hole recovery-wise. You were struggling just to get back to baseline/repair muscle damage after your sessions with no resources left to actually build new muscle and improve performance.

or

You were so fatigued from going to failure that your overall volume was too low.

I suspect your first option is in fact correct - at that point in my training my volume was approximately the same session to session. Even when training to failure, it seems pretty easy to just pile on bench volume.

This brings up another point, in that it may be easier than we realize to do too much - as you said, all we can do is recover from the last session, with no resources left to adapt. It seems the “effective reps” model fails to explain this, unless I’m missing something.

[Hanley]

2) Sufficient (full) recruitment

But if you're just trying to get jacked, I'd think you should try to make most of your work fulfill both of those criteria. I.e. ~5+ reps per set at sufficient RPE, again maybe something like ~6+.

I've spent way too much time thinking about "hacking" effective reps (as academic exercise...but also because I've got an arthritic shoulder...so stimulus:fatigue ratio on upper lifts has to be REALLY good or I get stuck and my shoulder feels like burning).

My guess is that we shouldn't consider all reps within the "efficacy range" (ie RPE 6+) to be equally effective. I'm absolutely certain the bar speed in a 5RM trends down. So, I have the situation where I have 1) complete, simultaneous recruitment from rep 1 in a 5RM...but 2) I have that bar speed slow-down. What's going on there? The fatigue that's causing slow-down could be central...but EMG data doesn't really support that (IOW...we don't really see disruption in "signal"...and here I fully acknowledge that surface EMG is a really shitty proxy for...anything).

If the fatigue is largely local (my hunch), then the mechanistically disruptive elements are probably concentrated in the fiber of large MUs (the MUs that are most poorly adapted for sustained/prolonged contractions). The low-hanging fruit of plausible disruption is compromised cross-bridging due to inorganic phosphate build-up. Disruption in cross-bridging in the fiber of high-threshold MUs, would (obviously) decrease tension in that fiber, but it would also (not so obviously) shift tension to the muscle fiber of less-fatigued smaller MUs. So, it's plausible that pushing beyond RPE 6-7ish, I'm 1) getting compromised tension in the fiber of big MUs, and 2) incurring increased muscle damage in fiber of smaller MUs.

My hack has been to accumulate a stupid amount of reps precisely in the RPE 5-7 zone. The problem with trying to work in that zone in that error margins get huge and RPE validity goes to total shit. Time efficiency also sucks...but whatever.

TL;DR: solid maybe on your points, but I think we need to also consider the possibility that intraset fatigue and/or derecruitment might be possible confounders of efficacy.

###

^ I actually have a collection of references for all this inference and speculation. Maybe I'll out together a ramble-article at some point.