The most frequent fallacy committed in studies related (however loosely) to strength training is the "false comparison," also known as the false analogy or questionable analogy. Sometimes, this happens because the researchers usually do not have any true understanding of overall practice of strength training, and therefore compare two things that really shouldn't be compared. Other times, however, the researchers well know that they are making a false comparison, and they are using this to discover relationships and move forward in their research, rather than to prove something. It is the strength training lay public that misunderstands this and uses these studies as evidence of something.

False comparisons are used to sell products on television all the time. For instance, I just saw a silly commercial for some skin product for women that used "paper that reacted like skin" to show that their product was more gentle. But paper is not skin nor can paper "react like skin." It is a false comparison.

Another used a subtle yet entirely fraudulent comparison. This was the Sobakawa Cloud Pillow commercial. To show that their material was more supportive than memory foam, they dropped a weight into a cylinder of their foam and into a cylinder of memory foam. Except the memory foam was cut up into cubes. Memory foam comes in solid blocks, not cubes and this, of course, would make it less supportive as the weight can simply fall through the pieces. They altered the density on purpose. A false comparison, since the cloud pillow material was left in it's original normal state and the memory foam was altered. This makes the two distinctly dissimilar: one is altered, the other is not. We see many such false comparisons in everyday discussions of strength training and fitness.

The Smart Car commercials that show the frame of the car supporting an SUV on its roof also uses a misleading false comparison since supporting a vertical static force is completely different than the dynamic forces of a vehicular collision. Also, we usually don't get hit from above or generally have a demand to support loads from above. Not only that, but the safety cell is mounted on a steel frame that provides atypical support compared to its axles and wheels.

Now for examples of strength training study false comparisons, I'll give one that should be easy to grasp. It has to do with research on neural fatigue. Pituitary-adrenal-gonadal responses to high-intensity resistance exercise overtraining by Fry et al:

Weight-trained men [OT; n = 11; age = 22.0 +/- 0.9 (SE) yr] resistance trained daily at 100% one-repetition maximum (1-RM) intensity for 2 wk, resulting in 1-RM strength decrements and in an overtrained state. A control group (Con; n = 6; age = 23.7 +/- 2.4 yr) trained 1 day/wk at a low relative intensity (50% 1 RM).

Okay, do you see the huge difference in the training parameters of the experimental group and the control group? This is a false comparison. As long as you understand that this group is meant as a control you're OK. But many lay people will see this as a realistic comparison between two training scenarios: low intensity and high intensity. Now, people have used this study many times to point out that there must be a fundamental difference in the body's reaction to very high intensity muscular training, and low intensity training. They speculate that this must have to do with the neural component. That may well be true. But that is as far as you can go with it because comparing these two protocols is like comparing the quality of flip flops to hiking boots on a hiking trip.

In reality, nobody actually trains like the experimental group and there is a continual mixture of intensity, volume, density, etc. within a single workout, let alone a work week or a training cycle. Metabolic and/or neural components will be at work and there will be no true way to separate one from the other. There was NEVER any intention on the researchers part to suggest new ways of training for strength. They were studying overtraining, not training itself. Specifically, they were wondering about ways to monitor overtraining due to short-term high relative intensity resistance training. Which illustrates my point that people are constantly talking about neural fatigue as if we can actually actively monitor it an separate it out from other causes of fatigue. This is an example of when just because there is a study that has something to do with lifting weights, doesn't mean it can be applied to our training practices.

What you must understand is that even if you were to compare two groups of lifters using the exact same training protocol, but with different training histories, the comparison would fail. So to compare two vastly different protocols should of course not be expected to lead to any direct insights into strength training. Nor were they ever meant to.

Instead of listing a bunch of little examples of false comparisons, like comparing walking to squats and talking about how they affect your nervous system (not made up), I want to just mention the biggest one that affects the subject that is most dear to me, training for maximal strength. Most of the strength and conditioning world is concerned with power production for athletes. This is because, in most sports, power is more important a consideration than total force production. Now, this does not mean that strength, or "force" training does not come into play as part of that. Of course it does. However, when your express purpose is to gain maximal strength, you are engaged in a different activity than an athlete needing to optimize power for his sport. Pure strength training is specific, as I've hollered about a million times. The false comparison, then, is when strength coaches talk about their training for sports athletes to a pure strength training audience. If you do not care about power production, then you do not need to follow the training of an athlete from some specific sport. Now, some coaches have decided that the strength part of the training is more important and that developing power should be left to working with the specific skills that one needs to have power in. You know, like using vertical jumping to get better at vertical jumping instead of cleans or something like that. That's all fine and I agree with it.

The point is that in order to reasonably compare training, we must compare goals. An athletes goal is to further performance in their sport. A pure strength trainees goal is to lift the heaviest weight possible in whatever lifts he is prioritizing. Different goals make for different training and any comparison of these training scenarios is a false one.

There is also the general success comparisons. That is the myth that the same habits that make for a successful businessman would make for a successful strength trainee. Now, if that is not a false comparison, I've never seen one.

Do you know some examples of false comparisons frequently made in the strength training world? If you do, comment on it below!

Now, don't forget, it's almost Father's Day! Amazon has lots of great gift ideas.

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by EricT

By Eric Troy

Olympic lifting experts often misunderstand the so-called slow lifts. The O-lifts are not technical and precise "just because." Simply speaking, there is a much thinner line between technical precision and success in the O-lifts than in the slow lifts. This has everything to do with the amount of time you have to apply force and to maneuver the body.

Therefore, when Olympic lifters with minimal true experience lifting maximum loads see the heavy deadlift they compare it to the clean or snatch and the deadlift seems to them like a loosey-goosey "anything goes" lift.

I take exception to this portrayal. Although for some lifters it is an anything-goes type of thing, much more success and longevity, for most people, will be gained from a fairly strict adherence to good technique for most of the training load. Notice I said most. That's important.

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This, once again, is a difference between what we intend when we lift a maximal load, and what happens and is SEEN by others. The Olympic lifter might see what looks out of control, but this does not mean that the deadlifter approaches the lift from this perspective, nor does it mean that the lift IS out of control. It is the difference between form and technique, but it is also the difference between what an expert in the slow lifts has trained his or her eye to see and what an Olympic lifting expert has trained their eyes to see. The needs of the lifts are so much different that the results need to be viewed from different perspectives and expectations. I have yet to come across anyone who truly seems to be an expert at both disciplines.

The clean and the deadlift are, in fact, often confused and conflated. Many people actually think that the deadlift is a derivative of the clean! This is absolutely not true. The deadlift came before the clean was not just a reaction to the deadlift. It may help to illustrate this if I describe a different version of the "dead lift" from the lift we call the deadlift today.

Although we think of the deadlift as lifting a loaded barbell from the floor to the waist in one movement, during the old-time strongman days, such as those of Sandow, a lifter would often stand on two chairs or platforms and grasp a handle attached to a weight between the chairs. He would then lift the weight a couple of inches by straightening his legs and back. Obviously, the range of technique could be somewhat different than that of the barbell deadlift. Sometimes, the chairs were not used at all. The lifter just stood on the ground with a chain attached to a weight between his legs and the chain was used in a way that only required the lifter to hunch over at the shoulders a bit to initiate the lift. As I've explained before, the technique utilized in the lift is dependent on the implement being lifted! It is not called a deadlift because of a certain trunk angle or technique. This is a fallacy and yet many modern strength coaches, due to the ever increasing promotion of functional training, teach this fallacy. Deadlift simply means lifting the weight from a dead stop.

Now, as you can see that anything to do with lifting a weight up from the ground "to the waist" could be considered a deadlift, you might wonder how someone could have derived the idea of the clean from this, since the clean has nothing to do with chains or chairs and the deadlift has nothing to do with getting the weight to your shoulders. Well, it is just as likely that the clean was a reaction to the Continental or the Continental Jerk. I discuss this, as well as much more information regarding the clean lift versus the deadlift in Clean Style Deadlift versus Powerlifting Deadlift

I understand enough about Olympic lifting to know that there is a much greater need for precision, even in an all-out lift, within reason. But beyond this, most all of my time has been spent studying and perfecting the slow, maximum strength lifts, where a greater time to develop force means that, at times, the application of "brute force" technique can be the difference between success and failure. The word brute has connotations, does it not? Well, don't confuse how we use our skeletal muscles with how we use our thinking muscle. I keep my nose out of Olympic lifting and do not make judgement calls about things I know little about. Instead of arguing about it, how about we simply admit that we may not understand each other completely, and we don't need to!

The Old Time Strongman was NOT as Strong as Today's Athletes

Since I brought up old time strength training culture, I want to make it clear that I was using it as an illustration of how the lifts came about, and not as a suggestion that we should emulate the way they trained. Although this may anger, or disillusion many of those who have been fascinated by the many websites promoting old time practices, the old time strongmen were NOT anywhere near as strong as even an average modern strongman! Yes, I know you have seen images that seem to suggest almost super-human strength, but you must realize that "physical culture" in those days of Saxon, Apollo, Milo, etc. was at times a physical reality while at other times a stage act replete with what amounts to what seemed like great feats of super-human strength but were actually impressive but nowhere near super-human. Much of it was deception. Even the famous back lift, where lifters hoisted huge platforms laden with people, hay bales, or bricks, is not as impressive as it seems. And, in this case, the amount of weight claimed was often exaggerated. To this day, the official record for the lift is disputed. Even the great Paul Anderson held a record for this lift, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, which has since been unlisted, as it could not be adequately backed up. Weights of over 5000lbs were claimed and even today, using much more stable lifting platforms, the all-time USAWA record is 3050lbs lifted by Steve Schmidt.¹

The Bent One-Arm Press.
Impressive, but not as impressive
as it seems.

A great example is the bent press, as in the image above. Images like these are often passed around as evidence of the superior methods of the old-timers. And look how skinny he is! Wiry strength, right! It is an impressive feat, but it also a bit of smoke-and-mirrors. It may surprise you to know that the same guy may not be able to actually take that same amount of weight to his shoulders and lift it over head with two hands!

In his book Ideal Physical Culture and the Truth about the Strong Man, William Bankier, aka Apollo, makes a surprising admission:

It is astonishing how ignorant people are now-a-days concerning feats of strength which, if they took the trouble to enquire into, would seem very simple after all. To read the announcements on the play bills you would imagine that the Strong Man had the strength of half-a-dozen ordinary men. Whereas the real truth is that the strongest man known - if it could be decided who that is - has not more than the strength of two ordinary men in good health. That is to say, a strong man may lift a bar-bell weighing 240 lbs. (which is an extraordinary weight, and is about the heaviest that any strong man performs with) from the ground to arm's-length above the head, with both hands; and you can take two ordinary men and after a few minutes practice in getting them both to lift at the same moment, they will elevate the same weight. To lift a weight with two hands is considered the hardest way and they greatest test of a man's strength. There are strong men who can raise with one hand from the shoulder to arm's length above the head, weights of from 200 to 230 lbs., but if you ask these same men to lift it with both hands it is ten-to-one they could not do it, proving that the one handed lift is accomplished with great practice, and is simply done with leverage of the body. This mode of lifting is not allowed in competition. It is always taken advantage of by Stage Athletes, as it is attractive, and sounds very well to say that the performer can raise such and such a weight with one hand, the public thinking naturally that he could lift double the weight with two hands, the fact being that he probably could not lift it at all with both hands.

No, that is not a typo. He said what you think he said. Today, we (the public) still look at things the same way. What he means by great practice and leverage of the body is that the one arm bent lift is more about balancing the weight with the body bent way to the side and the arm straightening, but not pressing, and then using a lateral extension of the body while carefully guiding the weight so that it ends up in an overhead position. In this way, the weight is never actually pressed. It is more finagled then lifted in any conventional sense of the word. It is strong. It is impressive. But it is not super-human or even extraordinary. Today's junior strongman without his pro card can lift MUCH MUCH more overhead for many repetitions. This same type of exercise is promoted today as a type of core training, usually using kettlebells. To move a great deal of weight this way is an accomplishment. But if we lead people to believe that we could actually lift double the amount overhead with two hands, we are being deceptive. And deception was part of the show in the old strongman acts. Some of the acts were more than deceptive, they were outright fakery. See How to Fake it as a Strongman!

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by EricT

By Eric Troy

We all know that in life there are some things that we can control and some things we cannot. Well, in strength training, or any kind of training, it is the same. Yet, this is a typical sort of message from a trainee:

"Eric, I had a bad day today. Nothing went as planned and I was supposed to hit 350 today but I couldn't get past 325. The air-conditioning in the gym was too low. The music sucked and distracted me. The trainers were annoying. Nobody was putting the weights away. Some guy was lifting next to me with this huge barbell but didn't even know how to lift. People were curling in the squat rack. It rained. It didn't rain. There were too many blue cars in the parking lot."

Are you noticing something, here? Are any of these things really in the trainee's control? Perhaps he could go to the management and get some of these problems solved. But were they directly controllable by the person while he was trying to lift? No. Notice that what is missing is ANY reference to any one thing that WAS in his control. Obviously, I exaggerated the message but this is typical. Focusing on things that you cannot directly control is a waste of energy and steals focus from the task at hand. Those things that you have direct control over at the time should have your primary attention.

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Another comment is "I kept losing focus in between lifts." Sometimes maximal lifting sessions can stretch out for well over an hour. Maybe even two or three. YES, ignore the 45 minute crowd. They are out to lunch when it comes to maximum performance. However, it is a myth that you are supposed to achieve some kind of super-human hyper-focus during every moment of a long session! It's impossible and trying to do it won't result in more focus but will just drain you. Of course your mind will wander at times when you are not actively engaged in a lift.

Let it wander. Don't judge it and don't grab onto it. The key to focus is developing it as a skill that you can turn on and off. You never want to get completely distracted, say by a pretty girl or a phone call. But expect not to be able to achieve some constant state of concentration for long periods of time when you may just be resting. Trying to do so would drain you. If you do have a problem with becoming over-aroused, then try breathing exercises to turn the dial down. Then you can turn the dial back up to your appropriate level when it's time to lift. If you feel your level of arousal dropping off, then put yourself in game mode again by developing mental cues, such as images or simple trigger thoughts that help to psyche you up (but not too much).

Strength training is a very narrowly focused activity. That gives us an advantage over, say, a basketball player who must have a much broader area of focus. Use it. Don't turn the gym into a basketball court. Perhaps a better example is a goalkeeper in soccer. When the ball is coming to the corner of the net, the goalkeeper must focus ONLY on the flight path of the ball and tune out the other players that are moving around the field. After the play he must then re-focus to a broader area. Well, in strength training, the ball is always coming and the other "players" are always irrelevant. You have one object to deal with and that is the object you are lifting. Don't make it more complicated than it is. We are always required to zoom-in to the task and to block out any distractions.

You do this all the time at a busy restaurants. Even though there may be loud conversations and all sorts of other noise all around, you are able to tune all this information out without any thought, and focus on what your friend or family member is saying. Why is this so much harder to do when lifting? It may be because you are not task-oriented in the first place. Many will focus on not failing. Even worse, they will focus on a PR they hope to get next week! This is being outcome oriented. If you think about NOT failing, really, you are thinking about failing. Thoughts of failure are the antithesis of focus. Our mind runs from these thoughts. The result is a need to let your surroundings distract you, to escape from the negative thoughts. The mindset that you should cultivate is one of being focused only on the immediate task at hand. There is no failure, there is only the lift. This may sound like psychobabble and sure, when I say it, it is just psychobabble. That is why it is important to realize that everybody does not achieve this kind of mind-set in the same way. The Getting in the Zone Series, to which this post is related, is all about achieving focus and flow.

Can you tell how high this tightrope is?
The body cannot. Only your mind registers the height and
to your body there is no difference between two feet or
100 feet. Don't approach your lifts like you are on a tightrope!
image by Quinn Dombrowski via wikimedia

Some Rules of Concentration and Focus

• Concentration doesn't just happen. You must prepare for it and put energy into it. You can't just show up and hope that you happen to be focused that day. It is a learned skill
• You may be able to notice more than one thing at a time but you can ONLY focus on ONE THOUGHT at a time. Outside distractions and thinking about them preclude focus on the task. Thinking about the outcome, precludes focus on the task! Yet all these distractions compete and overload us.
• When you are truly focused, meaning you are in a true state of flow, there is NO DIFFERENCE between what you are thinking about and what you are doing.

Some Tips for Lifting Focus

Since lifting requires a narrow focus, the strategies used to develop focus can be different from things like basketball, soccer, or football, where a broad focus is needed. As I said above, you can tune out everything but the barbell or lifting implement, whereas a soccer or football player needs to decide at any one time which elements, or cues, to focus on. Keep your thoughts simple and develop cue words to help you focus on the task and execute the lift to the best of your ability. Cue words not only help you focus, they also can help drown out negative thoughts concerning failure or injury. Imagery can help tremendously as well.

Even so, it can be hard not to get distracted. Someone drops a weight or another loud noise occurs during your big lift, for instance, and it is hard not to automatically attend to it. This is called the orienting response. This has a lot to do, however, with what you are used to. If your gym environment is always loud and a bit chaotic, you will, over time, get used to it and you will be able to automatically tune out loud distractions, as long as they are of the usual sort. In fact, after training in a place like this long enough, you might find a quiet environment makes it difficult for you to focus! Believe it or not, if you are a trainer who trains people in a quiet environment but will soon be going back to a commercial gym environment, you might want to provide distractions during lifts! It makes no sense to train someone in a quiet environment who will subsequently be doing most of his lifting in a loud one. Not all distractions in sport are bad, of course. Some of them are needed and help keep an athlete safe, etc. But in strength training and lifting in general, pretty much everything is noise. You may hear people shouting encouragement during a heavy lift at meets or in the gym, but a lifter in the midst cannot attend to and react to such encouragement. For distractions, it's very simple. You have to get used to them so that they become "normal" to you.

Once you've learned to tune out distractions, it is your own thoughts that are likely to be the problem. As mentioned above, concentration and focus are not something you need to maintain at all times during a lifting session. You need to learn how to turn it on when needed, otherwise you will mentally fatigue yourself and this mental fatigue WILL result in a corresponding drop in performance. The key to dealing with your thought is to keep them firmly rooted in the present moment.

When I say keep your mind in the present, trainees often get confused by exactly just how exact I am being. Thinking about how nice it will be to get a big PR, is actually thinking about the future! Focusing on how the task will turn out is not focusing on the task. Certainly, if you are thinking about how it would suck to fail at the lift, this is even worse. Instead of all the various thoughts that are clattering about in your mind while approaching a lift, you might try forming a simple picture of yourself lifting the weight the way you want to lift it.

Another thing that steals focus from a lift is treating a new weight as if it is something completely different than anything you've ever done before complete with all the fear and anxiety that comes with this. I'll use an analogy. When tightrope walkers are learning the ropes, pun intended, they place the tightrope a few feet off the ground. Once they have mastered the walk at this low and safe height, they should be able to do the same walk on a higher rope. That is, there is no difference in the physical skill required, only the stakes are higher and the danger is much greater. When we lift a heavier weight, we often treat it as if it's our first time walking a high tightrope. It doesn't matter how physically prepared you are, if your mind is telling you that this is something you've never done before. This is when it is time to trust your training and hard work. Remember, only the weight is changed, everything else is the same! You've done this hundreds of times and there is no reason to pretend like you're balanced a hundred feet off the ground.

Ironically, these PR jitters can cause you to try to micro-manage your lift, tuning into every little thing you do and basically trying to control the lift too much. Just about everything you do should be automatic and the time for thinking is over once you begin a lift. One way to combat against this is to treat all lifts the same, using the same tools and focusing the same on the task. You see, if you learn to respect each lift as if it is as important as every other lift, after a while, you will not be thinking of your 500lbs deadlift being something completely different than your 450lbs deadlift. You can't wait to learn focus when your think it is really needed. Approach every lift the same, and you might be surprised when one day you get a big PR like it is routine, only to realize after you finish what you've just accomplished.

by EricT

By Eric Troy

Strength training and fitness in general brings on reams of discussion as to what it means to be an expert. They also bring on droves of people who play at being an expert on the internet and, increasingly, on television. Recognize that I cannot hope to define expertize without it tending to align with my own interests and biases. However, I do think that the non-expert may be distinctly recognizable!

There are so many things that a person who is not an expert in a particular field would not recognize as expertize, even though they themselves may be an expert in another field!

That, to me, is an uncanny realization. Expertize is not an easily recognizable thing, even to experts. Yet, we are ALL experts at some things, even if they are just little everyday things. For instance, many of us who drive everyday for years and years, starting when we are around 15 years old, are pretty much experts at driving under normal conditions.

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Daniel Kahneman, in the introduction to Thinking, Fast and Slow, uses driving as an example of when we use accurate intuitive leaps that can be called expert intuition. Have you ever been driving along the highway, and for some reason, you sensed that the driver in a lane in front of you was dangerous, and was about to do something stupid? Like, for instance, he is about to change lanes suddenly without signaling and risk cutting you off. You "instinctually" back off the gas, and, lo and behold, he comes on over into your lane. You would have hit him if you had not slowed down after anticipating his move. But how did you know? Did you predict the future through clairvoyance, or were their subtle clues?1

The answer, of course, is that there were subtle clues present which you immediately and expertly picked up on, reacting automatically without having to think much about it. You simply see the road, and the patterns of the vehicles moving on it, in a different way than you see other things that you are less versed in. It seems like magic, but it is not. There is nothing mysterious about it at all, underneath. You were given information, which triggered your memory, and this triggered a response. The fact that you did not consciously register the actual content of this information, has nothing to do with your effectiveness.

So why am I mentioning all this, and what has it to do with the "dirty little secret" I mentioned in the title? Well, let's look at another example first, given by Kahneman: Chess experts. They too, after hours upon hours sitting at a chess board, begin to see the board in a different way. What seems like a big complex mess to us is a familiar and easily recognizable situation! They react to it the same way you would react to a familiar situation. It is that simple.

Can you become an expert chess player by reading about chess, then? Obviously not. So too, you cannot become an expert at strength training by reading about it. Still, is this an apt comparison?

Not really. A chess board is a finite environment. There are so many pieces and they can only move in certain ways. There are only so many situations that can occur. Sure, they still number in the thousands, but imagine if the pieces were dynamic, with changing needs, personalities, strengths, weaknesses, goals, desires…

Well, I think you get the point. You simply cannot be an expert in strength training in the same way that you can be an expert in chess playing! Regardless, once you've spent hours upon hours observing and teaching, you come to recognize familiar patterns and you come to react to these familiar patterns the same way you would react to any familiar occurrence.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Also listen to his talk, The Riddle of Experience Versus Memory

Although human beings are much more complex than chess pieces, and I am not comparing the two, trainers can and do use 'gut instinct' to get past training problems. This is, of course, not instinct at all, but expert intuition. Sometimes, although the system itself is highly complex, this intuition involves recognizing one BIG factor, that, when dealt with, brings other sub-factors to light, so that they can be dealt with one by one. This is a process of simplification. We cannot hope to understand the full complexity of a dynamic trainee, but we can use experience and the intuition that comes with it to isolate factors that are influential on that system. This may seem like overly fancy and obtuse language, but I could not think of a better way to say it. I will give an example, though, to bring it home.

People often come to me for help critiquing and fixing their deadlift or squat issues. They come to me also for bench pressing but I am not as much of an expert on that! Often, I look, and something, I don't know what, jumps out at me, and I offer a suggestion as to what I think a simple fix may be. Or, at least, the first simple tool that will lead to the problem being fixed down the line, as other issues are dealt with. This might seem as if I am inside the trainee's mind. "I think you are trying to do it this way, but instead, think of it in this other way." Many times, they react as if I have read their mind. "Oh, my God, that is exactly what I was doing. How did you know that I was taught to do the lift that other way, instead of the way you said?"

How did I know? I'll explain some of the reasons: I don't ignore what I call "base-line" or statistical information. That is, I might know that a certain (wrong) instruction is prevalent in the strength training world. I see something in the way the trainee performs the lift, that reminds me of the same situation with other trainees. Together with the statistical likelihood that the trainee received a certain instruction and developed a certain habit, and some subtle pattern in the execution of the lift that coincides, in my experience, with this instruction (in other words, comes about because of the instruction) I offer an alternative instruction that should solve, or begin to solve the problem.

The thing that most strength training people will not tell you, however, is that none of this necessarily involved any complicated and active thinking on my part! I simply saw and reacted. The reason I was able to do this was knowledge and experience. These things together equal expertise, at least when it comes to deadlifts. Yes? You knew that already, of course. But I've revealed to you that this expertize can manifest itself as a very simple and direct response, without thinking! The dirty little secret then, is that strength training, and performance experts in general, rely on this type of reaction as often as relying on complex and drawn out analysis. It is as simple as "I know because I've seen it a thousand times, and I had the knowledge to deal with it."

I just see pieces. I know the rules but I extract no
immediate pattern from this board. An expert does!

So the question of how much is knowledge and how much is experience is a moot question. You cannot separate the two, when it comes to being an expert. They rely on one another and are entangled. Yet, we come across experts every day, that read a lot of books but only train themselves. Not an expert, in my opinion. Or, we come across an expert that has never bothered to educate him or herself, and instead relies completely on "in the trenches" experience, with no foundational background. Not an expert.

In the first case, the person who reads a lot, and maybe even has a degree or two, but has practically no experience training others, may have lots of, for lack of a better term, theoretical knowledge, in his head, but will completely lack the experience to recognize when and how to apply that knowledge. In the latter, the person who has observed and worked with many trainees, but has no education, lacks a broad enough knowledge base to effectively deal with most situations. What I've learned to recognize in this type of "expert" is that they often have great ideas, brought about out of intelligent thinking about what they have observed, but they lack a broad enough educational foundation to fully bring these ideas to their fruition, or to recognize when the ideas cannot become models.

Today's internet expert wants people either to think that he is so vastly experienced, and so immune to bias and bad thinking, that he is automatically superior to those 'book learners' who haven't "been in the game" for the hundreds of years he has. We can't do anything with these experts but ignore them and hope they go away, which they rarely do.

Just as harmful is the expert full of big confusing words and muddy jargon who has practically no experience training others. These "book learners" believe that they can think their way to expertize. The internet slang "knowledge bomb" is a part of this trend, although not all of those who use the expression are guilty. The idea that being an expert is having tons of facts at your disposal is a gross misunderstanding of expertize! Most of us who put their "experience" to work to train others can easily recognize those self-proclaimed experts who write about strength training on the net but who have obviously never trained another individual besides themselves. How do we recognize them?

I'll give you one big clue. This may not help you pin down true experts but it should help you eliminate the all talk and no go experts who inundate the net. Here it is: These bogus experts hardly ever make statements about strength training that you can directly apply to your training right then and there, so to speak. Superficial and vague is the rule. Always remember, even when a true expert is being abstract and philosophical, rather than practical and direct, there is almost always a practical lesson in it that can be applied! These book-learner experts usually always confuse style with substance.

The true expert will tend to see and extract much more than the less experienced expert from any one piece of information, be it a statement made by a trainee or an actual observance of a training situation. The reason they see more is because of the connections that they already have at their disposal. You know the color red because you have experienced it. Well, the same goes for experts, whether they be strength coaches, doctors, engineers, or chess players. You'll also find that the resultant instruction is more brief and pointed. The expert has learned more about efficient instruction, and has gotten past the over-coaching stage.

The problem of expertize with "coaches" of strength training, especially on the internet, is a kind of two-sided coin. The expertize of the generalist is not defined the same way that the expertize of sports coaches is defined. That is, by the success of their "players." Instead, it is defined simply by their popularity, which is the province of marketing rather than expertize.

Then, the expertize of the specialist, which is mostly those who market themselves as powerlifting experts, is defined the same way, but only as it pertains to highly advanced elite lifters! So, a coach that is very skilled at training "sub-elite" lifters will not be recognized as an expert as readily as the coach who, to put it bluntly, is riding the coat-tails of advanced lifters who have the bulk of their progress behind them.

Your expertize as a "coach" or a trainer is defined by the success of those you train! On the net, a successful trainer is one who makes a lot of money and reaches reams of people. Here we have the autonomous expert and the attributed expert. The autonomous expert is an expert regardless of how many people recognize them as such. The attributed expert rests solely upon their "circle of peers" and the attribution that entails, as well as the attribution of the followers their probable marketing efforts have gained.

The expert will always be, as Williams, et al. concluded in Exploring Expertize, socially contingent:

A clear conclusion from all this is that the role of the expert remains socially contingent: what is judged is not so much the content of the evidence or advice, as the credibility and/or legitimacy of the person giving that evidence or advice; if we trust the expert, we must trust their expertise.2

I am not an expert to many people simply because other experts do not recognize me as such. But in the fitness industry, this is not based on my powers of persuasion! It is based on how much a marketing platform I represent. If, however, I represented a vision of success, that in itself would be persuasive and that power of persuasion would symbolize expertize. I want you to think about that for a second. It doesn't matter how much success the people I help have. It only matters what other experts have to say about me and I can control this, if I choose, just as I can control whether I actually gain true expertize. I could give advice to 20 people a day from all over the world. But so can anyone. I can only successfully train a relative few, in comparison, and see to it that they succeed in their goals with my help. Only those people will experience me as an expert.

Expertize and Trustworthiness

Those people whom I have worked with, after some time, come to trust me. Now, what if I could have gotten them to trust me in advance? Would that have influenced their view of me as an expert? Absolutely. When someone says to a fitness expert "what makes you an expert?" or "why should I listen to you?" what they are really saying is "why should I TRUST you." Credibility is the first criteria of expertize. Sometimes there is objective credibility. For instance, you might find the message of an independent fitness trainer more credible than a supplement company, when it comes to dietary supplements, if you think the supplement company just wants your money. So, not only do you trust the fitness trainer over the supplement company, he or she then becomes more of an expert to you.

But, before I continue with this line of reasoning, let me say that you cannot discount the importance of content. There is this thing that social psychologists call the sleeper effect. It has a lot to do with the strength of the message. If a message resonates enough for you, even though you may have discounted it at first because of the low credibility of the messenger, this effect will diminish over time and you may remember the message but forget the messenger, and thus your very reason for discounting it! This is so important to our discussion I cannot begin to explain it. So many of those messages held as truths in the strength training and fitness world started from dubious sources. Persuasion is everything. A more persuasive message trumps credibility, over time.

But there is nothing more persuasive than to tell people what they already believe or would like to believe. A fast track to becoming a credible expert in the strength training and fitness world, then, is to do just that. A message that does not challenge your audience, ironically, can make you seem smarter than a new idea will. Therefore, as I have said so many times, telling people what they want to hear works every time. The second, or first, way is to be introduced as an expert. In the fitness industry this is usually done by endorsement. You become an expert simply because someone else who is perceived as an expert endorses you as one.

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by EricT

By Eric Troy

I saw a very interesting internet exchange concerning overhead squats the other day. This was actually in regards to my own writings. A keyboard legend apparently decided it was opposite day and proceeded to describe all the things NOT to do during the overhead squat…what seemed like exactly the opposite of everything I had said. This kind of thing is bound to happen but looking at some of the tips I figured they may be prevalent. I can think of a few big names who might even be preaching the kind of stuff the KL was preaching. So I thought I'd make a list of good habits for the overhead squat.

1. DO keep the bar right behind the ears

Precisely, that means to try to keep the bar between a sort of imaginary space between the ears and the scapula. You do not want to place the bar over the upper back, which is a style that is seen quite often. This requires you to hyper-extend the shoulders and lean forward with the torso. A very unstable and weak position to be in. Now, will you see Olympic lifters in this position from time to time during the snatch? Sure. But you'll see them in all sorts of positions they'd rather not be in! During competition it is about getting it done come what may.

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2. DO squat straight down

You want to squat straight down between your knees, the bar staying over feet. You do not want to push the butt back like you are doing a low bar "powerlifting" squat. A moderate shoulder-width stance of a bit more should suffice. If you bring the butt back the bar must go back as well and the torso must come forward.

3. DO shrug the shoulders

The opposite day instruction was to actively depress the shoulders! Shrugging the shoulders gives you added stability in the shoulder. Depressing them does the opposite. Depressing also does another funny thing. It makes it more difficult to keep your elbows extended!

So, in plain English, you want to keep your arms completely straight and push the bar up toward the ceiling. This will have the effect of elevating the shoulder girdle.

4. DO rely on thoracic mobility, not shoulder extension

You should not have to hyper-extend the shoulders to do a good overhead squat. Having the shoulders in a hyper-extended position is not having them in a stable and strong position. Combine a hyper-extended shoulder with depression, and the elbows can be forced down so that you end up in a sort of externally rotated hyper-extended position. That is one of the number one scenarios for shoulder dislocation. It's not likely but it's not pretty either.

You will see many overhead squatters with very little thoracic extension and they are forced to pull the bar back actively at the shoulders, forcing the torso down facing the floor. Really difficult and ineffective way to squat, not to mention a recipe for a barbell planted on your neck.

This is not to say that your shoulder flexibility isn't a limiting factor. You'll want to start with a wider grip, i.e. snatch grip and it helps to pull outwards on the bar, or broom stick, or towel or whatever your using to learn with.

If you are trying to get into an overhead squat position and your arms are forced forward, look for your latissumus dorsi, pectoralis major and minor, and also the coracobrachialis to be tight and overactive. A typical scenario for a weight trainee. You'll want to loosen those up, do thoracic extension exercises, and strengthen the middle and lower trapezius and rhomboids.

By far the best way to develop the flexibility you need for the overhead squat is actively. Why? Well you may have heard the term active stretching. Active stretching involves using your own muscles to move your body and limbs into the stretched, or desired, position. In this way the prime movers, which may be weak, get worked, and the tight and overactive muscles get stretched. With the overhead squat, if you do the drills I outlined in Tweaking the Overhead Squat, even though these are mobility drills, you will be doing a kind of active stretching.

5. DO Use the Overhead Squat as a Warmup

Even if you do not wish to get a big overhead squat, the exercise itself makes a hell of a good warmup for any squatting session, and really, any "lower body" big lift type session. If you want to do a general warmup and then use some empty bar (or a little heavier) overhead squats in place of any kind of mobility routine, go for it.

by EricT

By Eric Troy

This should be a very short blog post. I have gotten a great number of queries about "jerking the weight off the floor" leading to some of my deadlift posts. I was wondering why this question suddenly sprang up so I did some searching. I found that there is some advice floating about about how you should never JERK the weight off the floor in the deadlift, because this can injure the shoulders and cause the hips to shoot up.

That is all fine and well and the advice certainly is trying to help and keep people safe. However, to "jerk" something can be seen as meaning different things to different people. Unfortunately, the advice seems to be engaging in the fallacy of the excluded middle and going all the way to the extreme of saying that you should v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y pull the bar. I don't know exactly, I just got the gist of it as saying something like that.

Okay.To jerk on the bar does not only mean to pull on it in a very powerful and quick way. Not at all. To jerk on the bar implies that you fail to take the slack out and you pull very hard and quick at the shoulders. There is a little bit of free space and you pull out that slack HARD and the pull is suddenly arrested, transferring all that force to your shoulders. That is what to jerk something means and it has the connotation of being abrupt and spasmodic. Like if you jerk on a rope, it means that you suddenly pull the slack out of it and that pull is suddenly stopped when the slack runs out. To say that you should not jerk on the bar does not mean that you should to the extreme of intentionally trying to lift it in slow motion.

What this comes down to is two things: Top down pulling and hip drive. Read through these articles tagged top down pulling and you should be able to work out any problems with jerking the bar on the deadlift.

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by EricT

By Eric Troy

Brief comment on a study out of Duke University that has lead to the speculation, and also conviction for some, that Splenda destroys healthy gut flora. I'm sure Mercola and others are all over this study. Thanks to Jeff Green for bringing this to my attention via his Facebook post. After that, I will move on the Mercola's little bombshell of Splenda being closer to DDT than sucrose.

Sucralose, the non-nutritive sweetener in Splenda, appeared on the market in 1998 but was discovered in 1976. It is six hundred times sweeter than sugar and is heat stable, so it can be used for cooking. A chlorinated form of sugar, it is made from sucrose by substituting three chlorine atoms for hydoxyl groups. The body does not digest it or recognize it as sugar, making it a noncaloric sweetener. Some of it is absorbed, however, making way for all kinds of fearful messages and whole books about the "deception" of it's makers and the FDA. Most of what it absorbed is passed in the urine, but the fear is that the chlorine may be released and be harmful to the body like other chlorine molecules are. Although it is considered safe for use it is true that not much is known about the long-term consequences of its use.

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Biochemistry Primer for Exercise Science by Peter Tiidus, et al.

In the study, Splenda sweetener, which contains 1.1% of actual sucralose and the rest fillers, was administered to rats at 100, 300, 500, 1000mg/kg. That means that at least 100mg of Splenda was given for every kilogram of body weight. Now relate this amount to a human.

Assuming that the same effects would be observed in a human, and that followup studies get similar results, how much Splenda is this for a 60kg person, or a person that weighs only 140 pounds?

Well, one packet of Splenda is 11 milligrams. To get the minimum 100mg for one kilogram of that body weight, then, you need 9 packets. Then you need to repeat this 60 times, which comes out to be 540 packets of Splenda. Per day. For a diet soda, it's hard to say, but I'd surmise that this equates to at LEAST 135 12oz cans a day! And that is diet soda with a lot of Splenda in it, equivalent to 4 packets per can. And they gave some of the rats 300 or 1000!

We must understand that studies designed to find margins for safe use often intentionally use high doses far in excess of what would ever reasonably be consumed. Even the current ADI's are designed to be highly conservative.

This is ridiculous and anybody who consumed that much of anything would have to be a fool. Now, the study points out that the "safe level" is 5mg/kg. These levels are actually called the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) and they are set 100 times lower than the levels found to be safe in animal studies. ADI's are not recommendations as to how much you SHOULD consume of something. They are meant to be the "worst case scenario" and they tend to be much more than you would ever consume, even with the reduction from studies. Even if you disagree with the safe levels as set, it has nothing to do with reasonable consumption of anything and if you get anywhere near those levels, then you really need some dietary counseling!

There is absolutely NO reason to believe, based on this one study, that a moderate consumption of Splenda would alter healthy gut flora for a human.

Why did Mercola say Sucralose was "Closer to DDT"?

To scare you. That's why. I'm far, far from being an expert in nutrition and biochemistry. But, as someone with above-average knowledge, I can tell you that this is a completely incompetent statement. See, sucralose was "discovered" out of research looking to make new insecticides. In 1976, UK researchers were experimenting with modifying sugars with chlorine (Cl₂), phosgene (Cl₂CO) and other toxic gases. At some point, one of the younger members was told to 'test' a new modified sugar. He misheard and thought he had been told to taste it! So he did, and he found that it was very, very sweet. But it was not toxic. It binds very strongly to the sweet-taste receptors on the tongue. More strongly than ordinary sucrose. That is why we perceive it to be so much sweeter. This new molecule became sucralose and was originally marketed only as Splenda, but now can be found in other brands. This origin in insecticide research is the backbone of the fear-message regarding the sweetener.

Now, if you compare the molecular formula of sucralose to that of DDT, you get something that looks superficially similar, and it is pretty easy for some millionaire supplement selling huxter to convince people that this similarity means that sucralose is just like DDT! So compare them one on top of the other:

Oh, look 14 c's in DDT and 12 c's in sucralose. Oh my God, 9 h's in DDT and 19 h's in sucralose. Even more! And then those pesky cl's, they are very much alike. Let's ignore all the O's in the sucralose. It's obviously pretty much the same as DDT.

Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. They also say that the molecular formula of a compound, all those letters and numbers, is a bit limited compared to its structural formula, which tells us about how all those things are fitted together with their different chemical bonds. Lest you don't think how the atoms are arranged is important, well, did you realize that two completely different organic compounds can have the same molecular formula? These are called isomers. Now, I don't know a bunch about chemistry, but I assure you that most of the people writing scary articles on Splenda know even less than I do. Anyway, this isomer thing means means that they can contain the same proportions of various atoms. BUT, those atoms will be arranged differently. With organic compounds, this is very important!

See, the different types of bonds that can exist in a molecule can make all the difference to it's chemical properties. It is the structure that really makes the compound do what it does, and doesn't do, not just the molecular formula. Here is the structural formula of DDT:

Now, remember that with sucralose, three of the hydroxy groups (-OH) are replaced with chlorine atoms (-Cl). So, you'll see that some of the -OH's on the sucrose molecule are replaced with -Cl's. First we have the sucrose structural formula followed by the sucralose forumula:

I do not think you need to be a chemist to get that sucralose is a lot more similar to sucrose than it is to DDT. These are different styles of drawing structural formulas, with the sucrose and sucralose being a 3D representation, but no matter, they are not similar.

Pure DDT is highly hydrophobic, whereas sucralose is highly water-soluble. DDT more easily dissolves, however, in some lipids, while sucralose does not. So, what happens to DDT in the body, and the environment, is much different to what happens to sucralose. DDT cannot be dissolved into the body's fluids, and so sticks out like a sore thumb. But because of it's lipophilic properties it can easily bio-accumulate. This was a much bigger problem for birds than it was for us, by the way. Now, sucralose is the opposite. What little bit is absorbed (and it's just a little) is readily dissolved into the body's fluid and so diluted, then distributed to most of the body, where it is eventually excreted by the urine. DDT, is not dissolved in the fluids, and so cannot be diluted or easlity dealt with by the kidneys, and at the same time can be absorbed into the body's tissues where it accumulates. Not the same. Notice, however, that I said "pure DDT." Most commercial preparations of DDT are actually a mixture of compounds with a chlorine content that exists in a certain range and additives like iron and aluminum salts and alkalis that serve to make it more sensitive to thermal breakdown¹

So what happens to the sucralose that does get absorbed? Research was done with volunteers who were fed sucralose labelled with ₁₄C, a radioactive molecule. When the molecules were analyzed in the urine of the volunteers, the researchers found that 92.8% of the sucralose passed through the body unaltered.

Most sucralose is not absorbed by the GI tract and it cannot be actively absorbed. Only about 15% of it is passively absorbed by the GIT lumen. It can not pass into mother's milk, or transplacentally, nor can it cross the blood-brain barrier. The molecule itself is water soluble and non-reactive. The 2 to 3% that is not excreted in the feces (having not been absorbed), or the urine (having been absorbed) is changed, by common phase II biotransformation, into a highly water-soluble glucuronide conjugate which is not toxicologically significant. All sucralose, once ingested, leaves the body in about 13 hours and there is absolutely no evidence that it accumulates in the body.

That is about as technical as I'd like to get because the fear-mongers like to use "data" such as this to scare you with big words. I'd rather not be accused of doing the same in reverse. Suffice it to say that there is no real reason to fear moderate consumption of sucralose.

I myself do not use Splenda or any other artificial sweeteners on a regular basis. I use sugar in my coffee and iced tea and I drink regular sodas when I want a soda. Same with other sweets. So, I would not be a person to sell Splenda to you. Should you be using scads of the stuff? Probably not. Should you be in general, fearful of it? Probably not. Is there a direct and imminent danger to the public from sucralose? I highly doubt it.

by EricT

By Eric Troy

There are two kinds of "cheating" in the strength training and bodybuilding world. On one hand there is sloppy, desperate, and out of control exercise technique done when it is not necessary. And there is cheating which is controlled and purposeful. The former is obviously bad and dangerous. The latter, however, is more akin to "forced reps". This can and will be done occasionally in order to force the muscles to work a bit harder in their strongest range of motion than they otherwise would with strict technique.

Cheating in this vein could also be called "tweaking". Cheating obviously has a negative connotation and this causes many trainees to think that it is never allowed. This is probably for the best as even cheat reps must be done correctly and under control. It is better for trainees to think "cheating is bad" than for trainees to get the wrong message and cheat their way to injury.

Although a small degree of cheating will be used in strength training the practice is more suited to bodybuilding. What many people call "cheating" in strength training movements are actually compensations that are a natural part of lifting maximal loads. These compensations are simply natural deviations from "ideal form" and experienced lifters tend to have a educated sense of acceptable and unacceptable deviations. For instance, a lifter may have his or her lumbar flatten and begin to round during the performance of a very heavy deadlift. But the lower back will not be allowed to flex past a certain range of motion. Past this range of motion the lifter would abandon the attempt. This is not cheating. Instead it is the reality of lifting heavy objects. The majority of the lifter's strength training will not have such severe deviations but pushing the envelope is necessary at certain times.

Usually, however, purposeful cheating is used for single-joint isolation exercises such as biceps curls in order to perform a few more reps than would otherwise be possible or to move a heavier load than usual. Using a cheat movement to actually move a weight that you would not have been able to move at all on something like a barbell curl, is a waste of time and dangerous.

Normally the cheating method is a way to eek out a few more reps at the end of sets after you've reached positive failure with strict form. This means that a set is performed to exhaustion and then compensatory movement of the body is used to gather momentum in order to carry the weight implement out of the weaker and into the stronger position. What this means is that if momentum is used to carry the weight through ranges of motion which the target muscles would not otherwise be able to accomplish, then the lifter is no longer cheating "correctly".

As mentioned, biceps curls is the exercise that most often comes to mind when we think of cheat reps. Look around in any commercial gym and you will observe cheated curls being performed more often than strict ones. But in this case the trainees are not cheating in a controlled manner and are probably unaware they are cheating.

During a barbell or dumbbell curl, the elbow flexors are weakest (in terms of ability to generate tension) when the elbows are fully extended. They are strongest when the elbow is flexed to approximately 90°, and when I say strongest, I mean tension generating ability. This means that the maximum amount of weight you can curl with strict form is the weight that can be lifted from the fully extended, or weakest, position. This also means that the muscles do not need to develop their maximum force once the weight has reached the strongest position. This is refereed to as the "strength curve."

To understand this more clearly, simply consider the basic tool used to cheat on any movement, including a biceps curl. That tool is momentum that is gained through using larger muscle groups to help accelerate the implement. If you use more "body English" than is necessary you will accelerate the implement past the "sticking point" and through it, meaning that the momentum has taken the place of actual muscular effort. Instead, you apply just enough effort to get the implement past the angle at which you cannot move well, and then let the muscles take over at the stronger joint angle.

image by ablight via wikimedia

This means that only a few exercises can actually be "cheated" on productively and somewhat safely owing to their strength curve. Basically, for these lifts we are weakest at the bottom and strongest somewhere from the middle onwards. Obvious examples are biceps curls, overhead press, and pullups. In fact, a cheat movement on the strict overhead press has it's own name, the Push Press, and this can be an effective tool. . So cheating, again, is not always the right word and the appropriateness of it depends on the intentions and context in which it is used. The press is a bit different than the curls and pullups, though, in that the tension generating capacity in former two gets less as the joint angles close

The bench press is difficult to cheat on, but bouncing the barbell off the chest and arching the back are sometimes considered "cheating". This is a different kind of cheating from above, though, since there is no way to generate much momentum through these tactics. Arching the back helps bring the lower part of the pectorals into the movement and can give a slight advantage. The back should be arched in the bench press to start with: it is only when the glutes start to leave the bench that the "cheat" has begun and it is darned hard to get all your PR's with your glutes glued firmly to the bench. Although it is not a good idea to do this all the time, we all sometimes resort to it on very heavy max lifts as a natural compensation to create an advantage. Notice in the image of the bench press a few paragraphs above that the bar is locked out and the glutes are just beginning to drift off the bench. No big deal.

Feet up benching, shown below, is a much worse idea! Notice how the lower back flattens out between reps? Not to mention that it is done on a Smith Machine. Bouncing the bar off the chest is playing with fate and this is not something I would ever condone.

Feet Up Benching on a Smith Machine
Worse than Cheating?
image by Mohamed Ouda via wikimedia

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by EricT

By Eric Troy

I've read a couple of journal papers here and there. And I've also published a fair amount of them here on Ground Up Strength, if permission was given to do so. One thing that you may have noticed about journal articles these days is that they are full of tables and supplemental attachments. Some of them useful and essential and some of them ridiculous fluff. You may even have noticed that I routinely leave out many of the tables in these journals. That is because they look particularly useless, adding nothing to the content or readability of the paper and serving only to create noise and distract the reader, taking up his or her precious time.

My son's school science project this year illustrated this nicely. He goes to a great school and he is being taught critical thinking skills and the science instruction is top notch. But a big part of the package he was given was about including tables and graphs, making it seem that science and tables/graphs were almost synonymous. I helped him with his project and we included a graph, even though the graph in no way made the very simple data any easier to understand. It just looked pretty.

For journal papers, when the tables seem particularly important, I include them, but when there are 10 of them I have to say enough is enough. Still, tables are at least more "primary" to the study. What you'll also notice is what is called supplementary information. Files attached, to be downloaded separately. Some papers have so many of these supplementary items, it begins to look like a data dump. Not many readers will comb through reams of supplementary files, especially when a great deal of the information in them is already in the paper.

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Data dumping is not only limited to supplementary information in scientific papers. I find it in something I know a lot more about (than I do about scientific papers): articles about fitness, strength training, etc. Now, if this is a problem in research papers written by people with strings of letters after their names, what the heck is it doing in fitness and nutrition articles aimed at lay-people?

What do I define as a data dump in this regard? Reams and reams of non-essential technical information, especially replete with accompanying obtuse technical jargon.

Look, I know my articles are long, sometimes. In fact, they are often over-long. But I don't think you can accuse me of being over-technical or obtuse. I try to thoroughly explain and back up my ideas, and I may sometimes go over-board. Same things with other authors. Even with technical info, you have to ask, is the author just being over-zealous or, and this is the million-dollar question, is it a smoke-screen?

There are so many different kinds of articles with different purposes, all of them under the general fitness umbrella. Or nutrition, as well. The purpose of some articles is to get across technical information. But when it is not, there is one simple question to ask: How essential is all this stuff to the article?

Usually, if you have doubts as to whether there is a purpose to all the 'extra' information thrown into the article, you are on to something. The strength of your reaction to this will probably give you a clue as to whether the author was just being a bit over-enthusiastic, or whether the data dump was a cover operation. Designed to look smart but teaching nothing. Very precise seeming numbers are a big part of this.

Throwing a lot of numbers into a concept that cannot even be precisely measured is not about data. It's about what Charles Seife, in The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception, calls "proofiness." Very precise information about areas of human performance? Well, it just doesn't get that precise. Seife calls these mostly made-up numbers Potemkin numbers, which he named after Prince Gregory Potemkin, who, according to legend, duped an empress with an elaborate facade.

Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception by Charles Seife

Potemkin did not want the Russian empress to know that a certain area in the Crimea was an unpopulated, barren wasteland. He thought that he needed to convince her the area was bustling and thriving. To this end, he basically made what would be, by today's standards, like a movie set of a small town, like the ones they make for Westerns. He built wooden frameworks, facades, made to look like villages and towns when viewed from a distance. The empress traveled through the area in her fancy carriage and was easily fooled into thinking these were busy towns, full of people. To Seife, Potemkin numbers are just like Potemkin villages: Facades.

And I agree. Look at random through some articles about health or fitness. What you will find is a whole lot of them are absolutely chock full of very precise figures like statistics and other numbers. Look at this example from UNICEF. Now, I certainly support the goals of UNICEF but what you'll notice is that the article is full to the brim with very precise statistics. It's full of proofiness. It is very unlikely that many of the numbers the article claims could be known so precisely. But it doesn't matter, for the reason expressed by the quote from Richard Hofstadter, which Seife uses at the beginning of his introduction:

The American mind seems extremely vulnerable to the belief that any alleged knowledge which can be expressed in figures is in fact as final and exact as the figures in which it is expressed.

- Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life3

What if you asked me how to "get through your sticking point" on bench I told you this: You have to use speed training so that you can learn to accelerate through the sticking point. You need to use exactly 50% of your 1RM on bench for 8 sets of 3.

Don't I sound really smart? Precise numbers like that must have taken a lot of figuring out. Nah, I'm just repeating some crap that someone else made up. Yes, made up. If you tell people the truth, that there is no exact right intensity and exact number of reps and sets that everyone must do to "get through their sticking point," they will simply turn the page. Go to the next article that gives them some exact numbers. Numbers have the ring of not only proofiness, but truthiness. The more precise the formula is that someone feeds you, the more you should suspect them of selling you a bill of goods. So, this is a problem that we as writers have to contend with. But I don't think the solution is to sell out and just make stuff up. Instead, take a bit of time and explain how it all comes together. I can tell you that 5 good guidelines will take a person MUCH further than 2 hard and fast rules. See what I just did there?

Good Will Hunting

Remember the movie Good Will Hunting? When Matt Damon's character Will was being his usual pedantic self, and Robin Williams said to him, "I can't learn anything from you I can't read in some book?" That is the ticket. Assuming you are not reading a reference article (think Wikipedia and the like), when you read a long, long article full of technical mumbo-jumbo, and you end up sitting there scratching your head, thinking 'I didn't learn anything I could not have read in some book or some study, and then I still wouldn't have understood it,' you have just fell victim to the data dump. Now, there are actually a lot of reference articles on GUS, many of them written by me, but even then a data-dump could be a sin, depending on the purpose and target audience. And of course, my audience is not college students, even though, I am honored to say, my articles are sometimes used as reference material by teachers for their students.

Horn tooting done. Once, in another incarnation of my writing career, I had the "opportunity" to look through the "briefs" from a very large corporate lawsuit. A brief is the epitome of oxymoron. Lawyers don't do anything brief. These were printed and bound books many of them over 300 pages long. And there were hundreds of them spanning years for one lawsuit.

The idea, I take it, is that if you want to get your way you state your position in as muddy a way as possible and throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at them.

Also fairly recently Goldman Sachs perpetrated a data dump of this sort that has probably set a record. When asked for information by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission the company dumped over 2.5 billion pages of info (5 terabytes of data) that would, according to a Business Week article, take 159 years to print out on a laser printer. Needless to say the commission wasn't laughing.

So much of the data dump has to do with science and people's perception of it. Science pertaining to fitness and what we actually do on a practical level, do not always coincide. Some authors just either don't get this or willfully ignore it, thinking that biochemistry can explain how a person gets strong better than a well-qualified strength coach with a coherent philosophy of training.

So much more of it has to do with nothing more than pseudo-intellectual posturing. Throwing around high-sounding terms and scholarly sounding ideas without actually saying anything, and that is primarily what I am talking about. I've grown so very weary of the trend toward fitness professionals thinking their job is to impress us with how many studies they read and how they derive so many theories from them. Our job is not to derive theories, our job is to solve problems. We seem to be forgetting that. So many of the people doing this really are the good-guys! They mean so very well but are caught up in this rat-race to prove they are smarter than the average bear. For every choir member who hangs on your every word and tells you how brilliant you are, there are five people out there who get nothing from it because you alienated them at the very beginning by your posturing and intellectualism. Your fellow fitness superstars might be impressed by your data dump, but the people who actually need advice are going to fall victim to misinformation simply because it is presented in a format that makes them feel like it is relevant to them, and that the author cares. So while you think you are saving the world with your knowledge-bombs, in reality, you're adding to the problem by driving away the very people who could benefit most from your sincere desire to help.

I would never want everybody to write like I do, or to a certain style or standard. That is not what I am saying here. What I am saying, instead, is that it is time we all examine our fundamental motivations and remember why we got into this field in the first place.

This page contains affiliate links to Amazon.com. We have not been compelled in any way to place links to particular products and have received no compensation for doing so. We receive a very small commission only if you buy a product after clicking on one of these affiliate links.

by EricT

By Eric Troy

You know, there are really a great many articles about technique tweaks for this or that lift. Especially for the bench press. Usually, they promise that you will add an additional 50lbs or so instantly to your lift. Yet here I sit, having committed myself to expressing myself honestly and giving my readers something closer to reality.

The reality is that if a change in technique can put 50lbs or more on the bar for you it is MORE than a tweak. It's more like an overhaul and you must have fundamentally changed your technique. A tweak on the other hand is one small change in one little thing, like the width of your grip or something like that. When you are a beginner, lots of little tweaks add up to a great many pounds on the bar, but you'd be hard pressed to match the progress with the tweak, because at any one time too many things are going on in your training. However, we can say that beginners don't really need tweaks, they need good learning, otherwise constant tweaks are just like applying a little duct tape here and there as you go along, it sticks, but not forever.

The "Add 50 Pounds to Your Bench Press Instantly!" articles are not usually aimed at beginning lifters, but at much more advanced lifters. Therein lies the rub. For the advanced, small changes in technique cannot make that big a difference in load on the bar. Sorry, but it's true. Small changes are more likely to make a difference in terms of training longevity, but not absolute weight on the bar, instantly. It just does not work that way. For the advanced, it's work, work, work, that makes the difference.

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We can see the problem here in American Weightlifting. There has been so much focus on technique and having some fancy camera filming lifters in slow motion so that a computer could analyse the bar path, hoping to find some little biomechanical this or that which leads to a little tweak that just makes all the difference…

And yet Olympic lifters, as well, need strength, and time under the bar, performing rep after rep. In other words, science cannot replace hard work and you cannot put all your eggs in the biomechanical analysis basket.

Tweaks are the duct tape,
but hard work is the structure

However, there are some very common mistakes that add up to big problems with progress that can be easily corrected (tweaked). Most tweaks on upper body exercises are one detail in several that make a big difference when put together. Chances are, a couple of them, or even all of them, will apply to you and you'll see a big change from a series of small tweaks. Any of our exercise technique articles here at GUS will discuss these common mistakes and their solutions.

However, for the deadlift and squat there are some BIG tweaks that involve a simple change in outlook. These are about how you think about the exercise. In other words, they are quite fundamental, and that is why they are such common mistakes made early on in training. Fixing these mistakes now will create big changes going forward.

How big is big? Measured immediately, not that big, but you may be able to expect 5 or 10 more pounds on the bar, depending on the lift. Measured down the road…could be huge. Most of these have been written about at GUS in longer explanations, but here is the quick run-down for convenience.

Deadlift Mistake: Pulling Up on the Bar Instead of Driving Forward with the Hips

This is a common mistake because trainees think of the deadlift as pulling the bar off the floor. In fact, they are told to think this way. So, this is a problem with the 'schema' of the lift. The way you look at it affects the way you perform it. What happens here is what I call 'top-down' pulling. Trainees pull up on the bar with their shoulders. This effort at the mid to upper back, going through the shoulders, does not have very good transfer DOWN the chain to the hips, which is where the movement really needs to take place. So, the fix is to think of the lift as driving through with the hips. Get the full picture in the article, Should I Push or Pull for Deadlifts.

Squat Mistake: The Flexion/Extension Conundrum

This applies to all bilateral squat lifts, but the 'tweak' is in your head and this small change in thinking helps to bring about big changes in the lift. I call it the flexion/extension conundrum because the problem with squatting is that squatting is not a movement, its a position. You know, once upon a time they called it a 'deep knee bend.' That has a connotation of being temporary. The squatting position, when we assume it naturally, however, is a comfortable and quite grounded position that we settle into for a length of time.

Therefore, what we call a squat exercise, isn't really the squat at all but the "standing up" part. I know you've heard that said before but the implications of it may have been lost because most trainers just say it as a slogan (like most everything to do with lifting). What are the implications? Well, if you look at the squat as a SQUAT, you are going to think of it as a grounded position where your body moves toward the floor. That is, you will think "down" and your body, automatically, will react by going into a flexion mode. This will even tend to include the eyes, and we see the results as lifters look down toward the floor as they descend into the squat.

The solution is simple although hard to get used to and comfortable with. You must never think "down" during a squat. Even as you are descending, you can still focus on extending up into the bar. In this way, you allow the knees and hips to flex, bringing you down into the squat, while the spine stays extending so that you avoid the torso flexing forward and the chest falling. This is especially true for high bar deep squats. Those using a low bar squat position more like a powerlifter style, will still find advantage in it as well. By staying extending, the transition from the descent to the ascent is much stronger and less demanding.

This is also, perhaps even more so, true in the overhead squat. I've written in-depth about it in the Overhead Squat eBook, which is an extended version of Tweaking the Overhead Squat. Also, look here for some instructions on how to go about learning this.

by EricT

You ever heard the expression, in lifting circles, "It was a real grinder?" This usually refers to a deadlift and it is when someone tries a very heavy lift, presumably a 1RM or thereabouts, and he really struggles with the load and completes the lift very slowly with a lot of hitches and adjustment, etc. So a grinder means a painstakingly difficult and slow lift that does not go from the floor to the waist in one easy shot. You will probably see a lot of fits, jiggles, and other manner of evidence that the lifter is at his absolute force output.

So why are some lifters grinders and some not? Have you been confused by this? Maybe you've read that it is about RFD or something and that a grinder is a slow lifter while his non-grinder counterparts are faster lifters.

Nah. That's, shall we say, hokum, if I may use Sheldonian. It does have to do with how you train, but not as much to do with speed training as you may have read.

The confusion stems from how we use the word. We use the term grinder to refer to a hard, slow lift that was ultimately successful. If we have a hard slow lift that is not successful, we call it a fail. Well, the fail may have been a grinder as well, no? So what is the difference between a grinder that succeeds and a grinder that fails? You could imagine a great many complicated things but perhaps the main thing is your ability to sustain force output. Think about your maximal force in two ways. There is the most force you can muster, and there is how long you can keep it up! So, when you see a lifter who is a true grinder what you are seeing is a lifter who can sustain maximum force for a very long time. I've seen deadlifts that last seven seconds or more! That is a very long time to put out a maximum or near-maximum force.

e's an organ grinder ain't e?

Therefore, the next time you say, "Man, that was a good PR lift, but it was slow," give yourself a flogging. You've just criticized someone for putting everything on the table and getting a new PR. Now, obviously, if every single time you pull the bar, it's a grind, you have a problem. I don't have to tell you the obvious, do I? I know that I do not. I am referring to maximum or very near-maximum lifts.

If you fail at a grinder, you may be able to blame it on a lot of things, such as loss of focus or some such thing, but what happened is you were not able to sustain the very high force output for a long enough period of time, and through the various joint angles, to get the bar up.

Who can lift more between a grinder and another guy? The grinder! Why? He can sustain force output for longer! No, no, a "fast" lifter has nothing to do with maximum lifting. No matter how "fast" you are in terms of RFD, the longer you can keep pulling at your utmost, the more weight you will ultimately be able to lift. Sure there are sticking points and all that but this doesn't change the fact that a slow lift is about sustained force output over a longer period. You want to learn to do this, then you simply have to do it. That means you have to train yourself to keep pulling that bar even when it seems glued in place and that you have to train your body to be able to tolerate this.

There are those very successful lifters that never seem to be grinders. But they are. You see, there is no such thing as a non-grinder. There are simply those who can lock out a grinder and those who can't. Show me a mega-strong deadlifter who never does a grinder and I'll show you Samson if he learns to lock out a grinder. I'm kidding. The difference may not be all that significant, and I may be insulting some people here, I know, who would like to feel that they are a fast versus a slow lifter. I'm sorry, but you've been sold a bill of goods. If you never lock out a very slow difficult lift, it only really proves that you can't lock out a very slow difficult lift. That's OKAY! You don't need to be able to do that to be successful. However, you really should try to do it, because that effort and struggle against a seemingly unmovable bar can really pay off down the line.

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by EricT

By Eric Troy

Nutrition for Health and Health Care has a list of junk science red flags attributed The Food and Nutrition Science Alliance (FANSA).1 I like this list so much I decided to make a blog post to do nothing more than list them, and I am not the first one to do so. They very well sum up how to be on guard against junk science in the nutrition world and, of course, junk science in the health industry and in the broader sense. Remember that a "red flag" does not automatically mean that something is amiss, it means that you should have your hackles raised a bit because you've encountered a warning sign. Now, the more red flags you see in one piece of information, the more you can be assured that it is junk. I will expand on some of them.

FANSA is a joining of members from seven professional scientific societies. The organization speaks on food and nutrition science issues. FANSA's combined membership includes more than 100,000 food, nutrition, and medical practitioners and scientists. The societies are:

• American College of Nutrition
• American Dietetic Association
• American Society for Clinical Nutrition
• American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition
• American Society of Nutritional Sciences
• Institute of Food Technologists
• Society for Nutrition Education

I've previously written a related post about media reporting of nutrition studies and of course there is the GUS pseudoscience section. Some people make distinctions between pseudoscience and junk science. Some even have other categories of bad science. These may be valid but to me its all crap and I don't care what you label it, just learn to recognize crap when you see it. Here are the red flags of FANSA. Although this list is universally attributed to FANSA, I have been unable to locate an original document or website.

Red Flags of Nutrition Related Junk Science

1. The information promises a quick and easy fix. This should eliminate half of what is out there.

A ready example is any one of many quick fat loss products or programs that promise that you'll lose weight via some method or pill that "tricks" your metabolism, so that you lose weight without dieting or exercise. Nothing of the sort exists.

2. Fearful messages or warnings of great danger from a single food, product, diet, etc. You'll find that the easy fixes are often accompanied by these types of tactics against the competition. I have an easy example in this typical bashing of a single product, namely casein, just sent to me recently. Of course, this guy knows something I don't: He knows how to trigger the biological mechanisms that transform your body and extend your life. Should we ask how much older than 100 he is? And how many 115-year-olds he has on his personal success list? Moving on…

3. It says what most everybody wants to hear. In other words, it is too good to be true. Let's see: Eat all the fatty red meat you want and avoid fruit. You'll live longer. Yep, that fits the bill nicely.

4. Simple (simple-minded?) conclusions drawn from a complex study. Most of the time, the data from a highly involved and complex study does not lend itself to one easy and simple conclusion. In fact, more often than not, the data just brings up the need for further investigation into certain areas brought to light by the limitation of the data.

5. Making recommendations based on a single study. I have ranted about this more than once. See Surprising New Nutrition Finding: Nutrition Articles on News Sites Suck and Spotting Bad Fitness Articles: A Study Said This.

Are pomegranates and pomegranate juice really such miracles?
Or is this pomegranate junk science?

6. Dramatic statements or claims that are refuted by major scientific organizations. This is a lesson that most lay-people never seem to grasp, and it is owed to the many old stories of amazing scientific discoveries that turned accepted knowledge on its head. These stories are the exception, not the rule. Saying something different than everyone else does not make you right!

7. Lists of good and bad foods! These are the articles I hate most of all and they are a dime a dozen. There are no bad foods, nutritionists sometimes say, only bad diets. Also, this is a good time to bring up the difference between a food, a dish, or a product. Anyone can make a list of prepared food products with less than stellar nutrition. However, this is not bad food, it is a bad combination of food ingredients. Check the blatant tactic in this article. The "bad" foods are prepared products, and the good foods are almost all fresh vegetables and fruits, salmon, and few exceptions like a Greek yogurt and some whole grain crackers. These are completely random products compared to completely random foods that are picked out of a hat.

8. You may sometimes find products linked in nutrition articles, whether they be foods, books, etc. This is okay. But when the article is making claims designed to sell that particular product, you should be cautious. "This food is delicious" is probably more credible than "this is a superfood."

9. Study results released to the media before peer review, and sometimes before publication! Claims or recommendations based on studies without peer review, such as when a study is reported to the media and recommendations are made based on the study, before other scientists have a chance to review the work is one of the biggest problems in science today. This absolutely undermines the scientific process. Many times, you will know from how the work is reported whether it has been peer reviewed, but sometimes this is a tough one for lay people.

How should we know if a study was peer reviewed? And if it is peer-reviewed, what did the other scientists have to say? Well, the truth is, most fantastical claims made about the healing or marked disease fighting properties of foods, when based on studies, are based on quite shoddy and discredited studies. Too good to be true is simply that, too - good - to - be - true. A familiar example is pomegranate juice, with its studies claiming pronounced cardiovascular effects. Do your best to read the studies and look for references to the studies so that you can tease out what experts have to say about it. It can be a lot of work, especially since most articles do not properly reference such studies. Usually, though, when the claims being made seem a bit far-fetched, you can feel fairly assured that any studies referenced were not peer-reviewed, were shoddy, or, as is often the case, not even related to the specifics of the claims.

Remember, ANY scientific results that are released to the public prior to being released and reviewed by the rest of the scientific community should be considered suspect until otherwise proven. Among many reasons this is done, one of the main ones is to secure grant money from private institutions so that a University can continue research. If a study can be reported to the media and sensationalized in advance of any scientific review (which may discredit the study), there may be a better chance of securing this money. Not all companies or organizations that have money to contribute to invest in research actually know good science from bad, or whether a certain scientific avenue is worth pursuing. Many millions of dollars are thrown at junk science every year.

10. Recommendations from studies that ignore differences among individuals or groups. This would be "sweeping conclusions" being made based on one sample from one particular group of individuals. What applies to someone else may not apply to you or may not apply to you in the same way. When Morgan Spurlock had his health go the crap after eating exclusively McDonald's, well, that really happened. But this does not mean that you would be affected in the exact same way at the same rate. Perhaps your baseline fitness is greater, for example. By the same token, when some fitness personalities, being in grand shape, try to disprove his results by doing the experiment on themselves, to find less pronounced ill effects, they are making the same mistake in reverse. Of course, these examples are not really scientific studies, but are more like case studies (by lay-persons) on one individual. Case studies cannot be used as evidence of an effect or lack of effect, despite the fact that they can be very illuminating.

My Personal Big Red Flag

I have one big red flag and it has everything to do with science, and how it works; as well as the profession that is dietetics or nutrition. This is a kind of statement which, to me, once uttered, should be considered to be a deal breaker because it is the height of dishonesty. The kind of statement I have in mind involves ideas about "modern" nutrition or the new science of nutrition. Many fraudulent huxters use this idea of a new wave of science to discount the mainstream. They say that the new science of nutrition has left dieticians and nutritionists behind. This is, of course, a load of crap. What they really mean is that they have a pet theory that nobody thinks holds any weight and they would like you to think that the reason nobody agrees with it is because they are not privy to the new science. They want you to think they are ahead of the curve and the rest of the scientific community just hasn't caught up. Says this person, they don't understand! They cannot see what I see because I have a special understanding they lack! "They don't understand," is never a valid defense of a theory: It is no defense at all. Once you hear it, you should know to move on.

This page contains affiliate links to Amazon.com. We have not been compelled in any way to place links to particular products and have received no compensation for doing so. We receive a very small commission only if you buy a product after clicking on one of these affiliate links.

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by EricT

By Eric Troy

You know that one of the biggest, and most ironic, reasons people don't go to the gym is because they don't think they look good enough! This is a serious problem, because it can go much deeper than what a little pat on the back can fix. It really doesn't matter if someone tells you that nobody is judging you, or looking at you, or caring what you look like when you feel like all the eyes in the room are fixed on your flabby love-handles or protruding gut. You can feel the eyes upon you, as the song goes.

I can't solve that problem in a quick blog post nor can I help solve it except on an individual basis, if at all. But some of the sources of gym intimidation are a little less serious and I think that just being aware that you are not alone can help in many of these cases. Before I start with this, though, let me point out that we, on the internet, are constantly reinforcing certain sources of gym intimidation by making derisive comments about this practice or that practice, based on concepts such as manliness or being "hardcore", among others. Most of this we have no business foisting on other people. If you don't have anything better to say than "that makes you a sissy," then, bro, shut the &)*& up and watch out, Moe is about to stick his fingers in your eyes.

People with great bodies are experts

This is, of course, related to the grandaddy source of intimidation that I discussed above; how everybody else at the gym looks so darn good compared to you. You don't have a clue what you're doing but they obviously have it all together. Hence, you've got no business even trying. Associated with this is the idea that the best trainers are the ones with the best bodies.

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This myth, that people with fit and attractive bodies are knowledgeable about fitness and fat loss is sometimes called the Body Beautiful Myth. Let's assume that someone's training goals are solely related to improving their physique. It would stand to reason that an expert in physique development, who also had a great physique as a personal goal, would have a great physique. But, the reverse is not true! The physique expert might be expected to have a great body (if they actually pursue one) but someone with a great body should not be assumed to be a physique expert! Some people are just blessed with genetics and a body "set-point" that is different than yours. Some people may not have a clue what they are doing and still look great!

Also, keep in mind that you are often seeing just a "snapshot" of someone at a time when they look particularly slim and muscular (well-defined, etc.). And, if you are older, pay no attention to those buff 18-year-olds; they will be in your shoes when the time comes! A person who is an expert at helping others lose fat and "tone" their body is someone who gets that expertise from helping others and from copious effort and study. You know, the internet is full of fat loss experts. Why? Because so many people think that losing weight makes them an expert! Nope. It makes you someone who has lost weight. All of this is, of course, true for strength training, to some extent. The take home message? Unless proven otherwise, assume that all those people you think look so good are just as clueless as you are.

You will also meet, on the internet and at the gym, many people who have had problems for years maintaining or losing weight and getting the body they want. Sometimes such a person will find success using an extreme method that entails "sacrifices." In the fitness world, the word sacrifice is sometimes a euphemism for obsessive behaviors towards food and exercise. Most of the time, this success is short-lived and the aftermath can be worse than what came before. But a sense of euphoria and control can come with this success that can cause a certain kind of zealotism to be born. It is almost akin to the "manic" phase of bipolarism where such an individual feels infallible and on top of the world. They might view themselves then, as experts, having done the seemingly impossible. And what did it take? Dedication! Anybody who fails to live up to the ideal that this person has constructed in their mind, is deemed, quite simply, not to be dedicated enough. In reality, though, they may be quite fit and accomplished. The success of this kind of dedicated zealot should not be taken to be the norm, nor does it need to be imitated in the name of fitness.

To understand this better, stop paying attention to what you assume someone's success means and find out what they actually do. For instance, people are always talking about "celebrity fitness programs." Well, celebrities often employ "celebrity trainers." And that trainer may have done nothing magical past planning out a menu and putting them through a circuit routine, etc. And that brings us to one of the biggest points:

Not everybody with a great body you see in the gym achieved that body by transforming themselves in some big way. At least some of them may have been very slim and just needed to muscle up a little. Whatever the particular circumstances, the journey is different for each person. For some, it is much easier. That, in itself, should dissuade you from thinking that success makes one an expert. More importantly, for those who did lose a lot of fat, it would have been their diet, that they wrested the most control over. Chances are, once they got their diet in check, and started seeing the pounds melt off, they just went to the gym and did any old random thing. Hit a machine there, or lifted a dumbbell here. Ran on the treadmill. Whatever. This is going to fly in the face of what you just read about kettlebells, or some other thing, I know.

Choose a Gym With an Atmosphere that is Right For You

This does not seem to be obvious to many people. There is more that goes into choosing a gym than what sort of equipment it has, and how clean it is. It may not always be possible to find just the perfect gym, but the atmosphere counts for a lot, as well. Certain gyms attract certain types of people. You know, if you are a maximal strength trainee, you obviously do not want to go to Planet Fitness. At the same time, a gym full of hardcore bodybuilders may not be right for you either, any more than it would be right for a busy mom just trying to stay in shape. And forget about the intensity. What if most of the people are just there to socialize while appearing to work out? That happens, too. If you are the only one there who is there to seriously strength train, or really exercise then this would not be the place for you.

Female Athlete competing in 1914

Even more so, the staff of the gym defines the atmosphere. Are they friendly and helpful or elitist and snobby? What if the gym plays music? Well, this affects the atmosphere. A hardcore lifting club that blasts loud death metal over the speakers may be just right for some, but not so great for others. Even worse, you may not want to work out with Justin Bieber blasting in your ear, either, any more than soft classical music would motivate you to hit it hard.

To the Women: THEY do NOT Get to Decide What is Beautiful

All this practical stuff leads me to something that is more emotional. In so many fitness gyms there are established "insider" groups. Although men are certainly not immune to assigning power to those guys who have some kind of movie-star ideal of the chiseled physique, physical prowess can often trump appearance. The lesson being, you can't fool guys with a "show body" if that is not accompanied by capabilities that at least come close to matching that ideal. Otherwise, the power goes to the man who may not have as perfect a physique, but can obviously outperform the other. It is a balancing act for sure, and does not always work like a Swiss Watch, but "all show and no go" is usually not a continued source of power in male culture.

In female culture, you either have to be "all show" OR "all show and all go." You know, this is a complex social problem, and one I would never dare to write deeply about. Far be it for me to think I understand these problems. But I do see some of the writing on the wall, as it were. Something I understand is something you may not realize. There are people in the "fitness industry" who have a vested interest in telling you how you should look, and how you should WANT to look. The internet is inundated with flashy photos of muscled athletic looking women lifting weights, for instance, and usually the caption to these images are designed to sell an ideal to you. There is often a prideful and self-delusional game behind these practices. Health is not a commodity any more than beauty but the female body is commodified, and it always has been. What is ironic is that, while many women rightfully complain about this, it is other women doing it, as much as any man!

1920 Olympic Medalists in Springboard Diving
Aileen Riggin and Helen Wainwright

As much as I love strength training, I am tired of it being bastardized by huxters to make a quick buck. When any kind of physical activity becomes a product instead of an individually assigned goal oriented activity, then certain body types which represent an idealized athletic form become a representation of that activity for everyone, even though they represent very few people who may pursue that same activity. To any woman, or man, out there in the fitness industry who is engaged in telling women how a beautiful woman looks, you seem to misunderstand beauty. If all women looked the same, then we would not know what beautiful is! We would have no concept of it. It is the differences that make beauty. Beauty is unique; it is not a commodity.

It is beyond me why anyone thinks a photo of some muscular fitness model (and they are usually models) would motivate more women to go to the gym. It's people who look like this helping to keep them away. But, I can understand how this kind of thing could come about. The female psych seems to be at war with itself. On one hand there is the ideal female athlete body, and on the other hand there is the wider cultural ideal female body. Female athletes may be quite proud of their physical prowess in the athletic arena, and understand how their physique goes along with that prowess. That drive may come with its own pitfalls, of course, but the point is that the ideal female body is a function of social context. Therefore, those same athletes who accept their bodies in the athletic arena, may also feel dissatisfied with their bodies in the cultural environment outside of sport. Yes, it is possible to accept your body in one context and wish it were different in another! The athletic body that is appropriate in the field may not be the culturally ideal body.

So what happens? You can see it happening all around you. Instead of rejecting the idea of a culturally ideal body, athletically prone women themselves seem to be trying to redefine what the ideal body is. Hey, if I only like the way I look in one social environment, why don't I try to convince more people to be a part of that social environment, and to convince the rest of society that this is the new cultural ideal! In case it seems like I am assuming too much, and perhaps being insulting, can you think of any other reason to try to convince others that they should seek to look the way you do besides your own innate discomfort or feelings that you have been judged?

This may be a gross oversimplification of a very complex social issue, I know, but you cannot deny it makes sense. What these "athletically prone" women do not understand is that they have idealized the athletic form beyond what is realistic. Not only does the female athlete's body evolve to fit the function for their sport (see a female shot putter and compare that to a track and field athlete) but female athletes are under great pressure to stay within a certain physical ideal that corresponds with their performance needs. What so many see as healthy, may only be healthy on the surface. Underneath there may be great struggle; disordered eating and body dysmorphia. Selling this "ideal" is selling a bill of goods!

The subject here is an aspect of sport and exercise psychology, as well as social psychology. However, since it involves cultural constructs and ideals, it relates to a new and emerging area of sports psychology called Cultural Sports Psychology. It is a fascinating area which challenges many of the preconceived notions of traditional approaches to the psychology of sport. For more indepth reading see Cultural Sport Psychology by Robert Schinke and Stephanie J. Hanrahan.

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by EricT

By Eric Troy

Have you heard the one about the guy who walks into the gym, bends over and tries to touch his toes, does a deadlift, touches his toes again, scratches his head, does a squat, touches his toes again, does a barbell curl, touches his toes one more time, and decides, due to the biofeedback he got from trying to touch his toes, that the barbell curl is indeed the best exercise to perform that day!

Good one, right? Okay, maybe not such a great joke, but that's because I didn't make it up as a joke, it's real. I exaggerated a little, sure, about the barbell curls, but this method of biofeedback is out there.

Biofeedback has become one of those overused and misappropriated terms in strength training. People who are "using" it in these ways seem to think that biofeedback is a sort of magical thing whereby your body gives you 'feedback' about internal processes and you can immediately act on this report in order to make better choices. Think of it as a memo your body sends out.

Except that is not what biofeedback is. I've been hearing about these biofeedback techniques for strength training for years now but recently someone sent me a link to a video demonstrating how to find the best sort of pullup to do by using a toe touching range of motion test between different pullup attempts, such as regular, chin up, wide grip, and rope pullups. You bend over to touch your toes but you just let your arms sort of naturally hang so that you reach your range of motion without forcing it. Then you do one of the pullup attempts. Then you do the toe touching thing again and see if your range of motion has improved, stayed the same, or worsened. Presumably, when it gets better your body has told you what the BEST type of pullup to do that day will be.

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Quite amazing! Almost magical. Now, people are applying this kind of thing to what strength training exercise they should do on a certain day, much like the tongue-in-cheek scenario I laid out above. Now, biofeedback is a real term. It is used by psychologists and there is ongoing research on using different types of biofeedback as a therapeutic tool, for all sorts of people with all sorts of problems.

Before this gets too confusing, then, let's define biofeedback. First, biofeedback is a tool. A technique that is used by professional psychiatrists, and the like. In a biofeedback technique, information about a normally unconscious physiologic process is presented to a patient (and/or the therapist) as a visual, auditory, or tactile signal.

I'm going to put those last three terms in bold, to drive them home: visual, auditory, or tactile signal.

Okay, let's compare two very simple scenarios, and then decide whether one or the other fits the definition of biofeedback.

1. A Zen kind of Yoga master dude sits in a meditative position and carefully slows down his heartbeat by calming his breathing and doing some other mysterious stuff.

2. A patient is hooked to a heart rate monitor and his heart-rate is presented to him in real time via an auditory bleep. He then tries to slow down the rate of the bleep, by using different mental processes, breathing exercises, etc. When the bleep slows down, he knows whether what he is doing is working or not, and if it speeds up, or stays the same, he knows he is not being effective.

I don't have to tell you that example one is not biofeedback, although you've probably heard, on TV or something, that it is. The reason it is NOT biofeedback is because the monk guy is receiving no ongoing direct signal, in a simple form, about the state of his heart beat. He is not reacting to anything. He is simply relaxing and slowing his heart rate through some technique that he has learned through years of practice. Sure, he may claim to be reacting to some signal that only he can detect, but well…you can believe that if you'd like to. I do not. The fact that it is not biofeedback does not mean it is not very cool that he can do this, and very useful, as well. However, actual biofeedback therapy probably would have been much quicker to learn. Why? Information. Biofeedback is a bit like learning to ride a bike. You are just doing it until it becomes natural. You don't think about it, it just happens. Your brain uses the information to find the quickest path to the desired outcome. It's a lot like playing a video game.

Through a DoD grant, Dr. Carmen Russoniello of East Carolina University is working toward a portable biofeedback training program that could prevent or reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms. (Photo by Dr. Carmen Russoniello)
Image from ArmyMedicine via flickr

You may have heard that when you get cravings for certain foods, this is biofeedback. Your body is giving you feedback about what it needs. No. This is not biofeedback and there is absolutely no evidence that our brains will reliably signal cravings for foods that we need at a certain time. In fact, our brains are much better at craving things that are exactly what we do not need, and from time to time, people crave all manner of weird things. Cravings are much more centered on taste and texture than nutrient content. People have theorized that weird cravings are also some signal that you need some certain thing. For instance, if you crave dirt (yes, it happens to people) you must need minerals! Now, you think about that one for yourself.

For more on the kind of claims made about cravings see the forum thread Food Cravings? Here is What Your Body Really wants. Pay attention to the comment I quoted by a Dr. Clark, as his comment pretty much sums it up.

The point is that cravings are seen as a way that your body signals you about its biological needs. Similarly, this toe touching range of motion thing is seen as your body signalling you about its exercise needs, or preferences, or something like that. This simply shows a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word. The bio part of the word does not mean that your body is signalling you, it means you are receiving a signal about a biological process.

Everyday Biofeedback Devices

This is not to say that we do not have devices in our everyday lives that are examples of biofeedback devices. A bathroom scale, for instance, is one. It measures your weight and displays the results back to you. Your weight is a function of your biology but you would not really know it without the scale display. This does not mean that the scale is a great training tool, as far as biofeedback goes, but it is an example.

Another example is a heart rate watch, like you use for jogging. This may not be a great way for you to learn to control your heart rate, but it is a form of biofeedback and it allows you to reach a target heart rate, for instance, hold it for a certain period, and then decrease the intensity to allow your heart rate to go down. You wouldn't need this device if you did not think that a certain target heart rate was necessary, and that is open to critique, but nonetheless it is a kind of biofeedback device.

Here is one you may not have considered: A mirror. A mirror displays your appearance to you. If you have bags under your eyes from lack of sleep, then there you go: biofeedback. If you look a little green because you've been drinking too much and you're hung over: biofeedback. Not a great tool because of the subjective nature of your reaction to what the mirror tells you, but it could be called a biofeedback device, as well.

Putting your hand on your chest or feeling for your pulse, while trying to control your heartbeat is biofeedback. Not a very effective way to do it, of course. We are stretching things a bit and supposing that your hand is the device and it provides a direct tactile link to your heart rate. Which it does, although not very well. The problem is that the device itself does not display accurate, unambiguous results. You have to interpret what you are feeling. Is it a little faster? A little slower? To be more accurate you'd have to also use a stopwatch to time the beats within a certain period. By the time you do all that, the whole point of biofeedback is lost. So, we see that biofeedback uses simple and unambiguous ways of displaying the information, so there is no "processing" involved for the trainee.

Biofeedback Training

Real biofeedback relies on an ongoing signal to the patient that translates the biological process into an easy to understand and easy to react to stimulus, not one to be judged by subjective measures. For instance, either the pitch of a sound goes up, or it goes down. It is straightforward. Just saying "My heart is beating fast, I must be nervous," is not biofeedback. It is simply an inference. Biofeedback is not diagnostic, it is a tool used to teach certain people to control certain things. Biofeedback research was never meant to test how one should progress on a pullup or which exercise out of several choices a trainee should perform. The whole concept is absurd.

Toe touching is used in biofeedback research, but not to evaluate someone's readiness to do an exercise. An example of how the toe touch has been used is to demonstrate a lack of muscle tension awareness, which applies to most all of us, but people with musculoskeletal pain could benefit from being aware of this. Muscle tension should also be a good measure of autonomic arousal.

But to use a toe touch to demonstrate muscle tension, or lack thereof, a researcher would not just have someone bend over and then say how he felt about it! Why? Because didn't we just say that most people are unaware of their muscle tension? Most will report that they are relaxed and felt fine about the whole thing. And just having them touch their toes over and over would not be biofeedback, it would be stretching. If they are able to bend over further after performing this several times, is it because they have been able to relax after evaluating the results of their toe touching efforts? Or, is it because they have increased their range of motion, as would be expected after repeated toe touching? And, is range of motion on toe touching really a measure of general muscle tension?

Graphic respiration display for Biofeedback
Thanks to Fredric Shaffer, PhD, BCB

So, while the patient would certainly be reporting his subjective experience, what the practitioner needs is a way to give the patient direct feedback as to his muscular tension. Surface electromyographic recordings (SEMG) of the patients back and neck would be used.

After initially trying the toe touch, the patient could receive this SEMG feedback while they bend forward and touch their toes again. This feedback would give them immediate information as to how successful they are at relaxing their muscles. The signal could be auditory, or tactile, or both. If the SEMG increased, the pitch of the auditory signal goes higher. The practitioner could use verbal coaching to help the process along, etc. The goal would be to achieve mastery of the skill of hanging forward totally relaxed, both back and neck, using the SEMG feeback. Then, to be able to repeat this skill without the benefit of the feedback.

Now, of course I didn't just make all that up about toe-touching, that was based on a report given by Thorne, et al. at the 42st Annual Meeting of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, as related in the book Case Studies in Applied Psychophysiology: Neurofeedback and Biofeedback Treatments for Advances in Human Performance, edited by W. Alex Edmonds and Gershon Tenenbaum.1

According to the book, the biofeedback movement began in the late 1960's and early 1970's amidst lots of excitement over its perceived potential to turn human beings into virtual super-humans. Early researches thought that biofeedback would allow humans to gain "enhanced awareness and control over visceral physiology, musculature, and states of consciousness." A founder and first president of the Biofeedback Research Society, Barbara Brown, boasted that biofeedback would give to human beings a new mind and a new body, which she later imagined as a supermind with "expanded consciousness and unlimited potential."

As you are well aware, these superminds haven't quite happened yet and there is no longer such a lofty goal for biofeedback research. What biofeedback is used for is to give people tools to have better awareness of their mind-body "linkage," increased control over their physiology, and better self-regulation strategies, to borrow liberally from the book's language. That is a good thing, but a far cry from unlimited potential.

Now that we have a firm grasp on biofeedback (we do, don't we?) let's evaluate this toe-touching to choose which exercise technique to see if it meets the criteria of what we've learned biofeedback to be.

When I described the toe touching study above, what was actually being reported by the patient, as far as his/her subjective experience? Was it how close they came to touching their toes? NO. It was there impression of how relaxed their backs and necks were..it was simply a report of their subjective experience of their state of relaxation. Yet, the toe-touching exercise technique correlates range of motion directly with the appropriateness of an exercise. Furthermore, in an actual research setting, the person would be instructed to basically just flop over and hang there, but not to attempt to pull themselves down further, as if stretching, in any way. A person who was trying to figure out what exercise to do, even if a toe touch could be relied on as a good test, could NOT be relied on not to cheat, albeit unconsciously.

But what is really being looked at? It is not range of motion, it is relaxation. Your state of relaxation, as in your state of muscle tension, is associated with your autonomic arousal. So, why would one exercise change this state, making it "lower," presumably, while another exercise increased it? Is it because, there is some process in your body that evaluates the best exercise out of a group of exercises and then reports this to you via an increase or decrease in muscular tension?

Heart Rate Monitor Watch
A Cheap Biofeedback Device
Image by D100a via wikimedia

No, of course not. There is only one reason why performing one exercise would increase your arousal level, and so muscular tension, and another decrease it. And this has everything to do your your mind and how you feel about that particular exercise! It is simply this: We all feel more comfortable with certain exercises. This has to do with many factors, such as your level of advancement, familiarity, previous injury history, the overall perceived challenge and skill level needed, etc. Little things about even a minor variation could subtly increase tension level, which might, presumably, show up in your range of motion when you tried to touch your toes. But we are presuming too much! Because there is not reason to think that just touching your toes and looking for changes in range of motion is really telling you anything at all.

Even if it does, it is only reporting to you your your level of relaxation after a certain attempt. If you are NOT relaxed, and are in a state of high arousal, a much more direct route would be to use relaxation techniques (e.g. breathing exercises), imagery, etc. to self-regulate. But if you find yourself just a bit more keyed up after a certain exercise, does this mean you should NOT do it? Are we looking for a state of total relaxation? No. That is not what we are looking for. Athletic performance and total relaxation does not go hand in hand. Being a bit keyed up does not mean you can't do an exercise and perform quite well at it. Being completely bonked out and stressed may mean you shouldn't do it, OR that you should first do some relaxation in order to bring down your arousal level to an appropriate pitch, but looking for tiny little subtle variations in muscle tension, between one exercise and another, through toe touching? It is the opposite of scientific and reasonable, it smacks of magical thinking.

And there is one more important criteria. Remember what the point of the toe-touching experiment with SEMG was? To achieve mastery of the skill without the benefit of the SEMG feeback. This is the main point that the toe-touch test for exercises is missing…that there is not a point. There is no skill being learned, nothing at all being accomplished.

Quite frankly, that is absolutely pointless and it in no way has anything to do with what exercise you should perform. Most of my trainees would be performing deadlifts every day because they'd cheat their way to the barbell. A better guide to what you should do today might be, I don't know, what you did the day before? What's on your schedule?

No matter what exercise you do, you are going to be affected by it neurologically based on your comfort with it. In other words, different "skills" cause different levels of arousal. This arousal is basically your state of anxiety. Those exercises you are more "anxious" about will cause you to be more tense, pure and simple. And not just anxious. Those exercises you don't like. Those that you are dissatisfied with your ability on. Those which have given you problems in the past. OH! Those you feel you have suffered an injury during? Sure. All of this, and more.

I watched a video demonstrating this pullup technique and, low and behold, chin ups "tested" better. Chin ups are always easier than other pullups! So, is it really a surprise that they "tested" better? Or did they test better? Was it that he just wanted to do chin ups because he liked them and, duh, they are easier, so he "tested" better. How do WE know how well a person is actually testing without a system in place to monitor things? We do not. In fact, this test violates just about every criteria that makes for a good test.

Dyspenesis: Unneeded Work

Okay, a lot of this has to do with something called "dyspenesis". That is something that's been discussed since the 1970's. If you look at a few things:

1. When you perform a task of some kind, or an exercise, you are not really aware of any excess muscular tension you get from it or bring to it.

2. You tense up muscles that you do not need to tense up, when you do certain exercises. I.E. you tense your neck during the deadlift, etc. But are unaware of it.

4. Between repetitions of an exercise, or during some task, you never relax at all, as if your whole body is continually performing the task, even when it is not.

That's all part of dyspenesis and it refers always to work that is unneeded. Misplaced effort. The best way to become aware of this unneeded muscular tension is to learn to do relaxation exercises. By learning to relax, you learn what it is like to NOT have excess muscular tension. Since you are always having excess muscular tension, you can't be aware of it until it goes away. Think of it like a lumpy bed that you are used to. When you get a new mattress, suddenly you realize how uncomfortable that old one was! I go deep into all this in the Getting in the Zone Series.

Recap on Biofeeback and How it Might Be Used in Athletics

The idea of something like a toe touch is not to "test" how well a certain exercise will do for you. Instead it is simply a movement screen, and a silly one, at that (I won't start on movement screens, or I'll never stop). The idea of biofeedback is for an individual to learn to control physiological reactions and processes! It is for the "user" himself to USE to learn to control these things better. These Yoga master dudes who are supposed to be able to control their heart-rate, as I mentioned above, that is not biofeedback. It is just relaxation.

Biofeedback is not just a measurement but it is directly communicating that information to the user. And this information is information that is not usually directly accessible. Most of its research seems to be centered on pain management.

The appropriate use of biofeedback for strength training, would not be to pick an exercise but to help someone control some physiological process that they otherwise could not, had trouble with, etc. Since strength training movements are so complex, it is very difficult to use any of this except globally. That is, to learn to "relax" if relaxation techniques weren't otherwise effective. Other tasks are more discrete so that a person might be able to hone in on ONE thing, and use biofeedback to monitor and control that ONE thing..but this is much harder with strength training movements.

Some strength training things are not "precise" and therefore not amenable to biofeedback training. For instance, a firearms shooter might want to monitor the tension in his forearms, right? Or his breathing right before a trigger pull. You might relate that to a grip device. But a person using heavy grip devices is not performing something so precise…he is simply trying to exert maximal force. He might be able to use biofeedback to monitor unneeded tension but it would be hard to determine if that tension WERE unneeded, or if it actually affected performance.

Biofeeback + Voodoo Science = Comedy!

Unfortunately, while biofeedback research is an actual scientific area and has promising potential as a complementary tool for musculoskeletal pain management, stress management, etc. it has that very scientific sounding name combined with a "new-agey" kinda feel that makes it very attractive to quacks and the perversions of voodoo science. Instead of being content with the slow pace of actual research, they invent all sorts of fantastical properties for biofeedback and combine it with other magical things couched in scientific terms, so they can sell products to a gullible public.

Devices such as the emWave Biofeedback Stress Relief and the StressEraser Portable Biofeedback Device. The latter is a small devices with a cable hooked to a pulse oximeter type thing that uses an infrared sensor to monitor you "heart rate variablility." It displays these results as a wave on a small screen and you are supposed to control the wave to make a "good wave," which is a wave that is not all spikey but nice and rounded.

The emWave does something similar but uses an ear clip sensor and displays the results are displays rising and falling colored lights displayed in a little window, and a green light that is supposed to display your "coherence level" at any one time. You can also check your "coherence ratio" for the entire session. Which is something I've been concerned about checking for a while now.

Joking aside, while the StressEraser seems to limit itself to helping you learn to relax by controlling your breathing, the emWave goes over the top with all sorts of fancy made up terms. Before I get into that, let me remind you that you do not need to 150 dollar device to learn to relax through breathing exercises. You can start doing it right now, for free, no equipment necessary.

The emWave is such a great example of pseudoscience, I'm glad I made this particular post just so I can talk about it. First, it was developed by a guy who is CEO of Quantum Intech. Folks, when the word quantum, as in quantum physics, comes up in any kind of self-help or alternative medicine kind of scenario, it's time to hang up the phone and wait for the next infomercial.

According the emWave, stress creates incoherence in our heart rhythms:

However, when we are in a state of high heart rhythm coherence the nervous system, heart, hormonal and immune systems are working efficiently and we feel good emotionally. emWave Personal Stress Reliever helps you reduce your emotional stress by displaying your level of heart rhythm coherence in real time. But emWave does more than just display coherence levels. It guides you toward stress relief by training you to shift into a coherent, high performance state.

I know that not all of you understand all the scientific lingo so let me translate that for you:

Yada yada, gobbledygook. We feel good emotionally hokum gobbeldygook. Completely meaningless nonsense training gobbledygook.

You can get a little further background, skeptically speaking, here.

The take home is that yes, biofeedback is a real thing with real application but you do not need to spend over 150 bucks to do what some simple breathing exercises will do for free. I already have written some beginning ones down for you long ago: Breathing Exercises for Relaxation.

For more reading on this and other aspects of sport and exercise psychology see Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology by Robert S. Weinberg and Daniel Gould

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by EricT

By Eric Troy

There is so much obsession, confusion, and supplement company shenanigans concerning whey protein products, I thought that what everyone needed was a thorough overview of the whey manufacturing process. That is, the whey powder manufacturing process.

Supplement companies use our ignorance against us: our ignorance of what whey is, how it is processed, and what all the terms attached to it mean.

I am actually surprised at how many whey users don't realize that the dairy industry doesn't produce whey powder just so they can make a shake.

Before I get into the nitty gritty, I will bust a current example of the type of misleading, no, fraudulent stuff that whey supplement sellers get up to. If you want to get right into the manufacturing and terminology skip this next section and go right to the next one.

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Raw Whey Shenanigans

Have you heard the term "Raw Whey?" It is being used in regards to whey supplements to make you think it is superior and more natural than other whey products. Here, they are using our ignorance of terminology (or trying to) and our ignorance of the whey making process and its regulations.

First, the term raw, when applied to whey, usually refers to unprocessed liquid whey. In other words, whey in its "raw" state, before it is fooled around with. The term fresh whey is also used to mean the same thing. So, when supplement companies use it to refer to a whey protein powder, they are already being misleading. You see, they know that the term raw makes you think of something that is completely unadulterated. The truth is that unprocessed liquid whey would not be useful at all as a supplement. It has very little protein, maybe 30%, and it is full of other stuff.

Of course, these companies selling raw whey, what they are claiming is that their whey comes from raw milk. Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized. It is illegal pretty much everywhere. Whey must come from milk that has been pasteurized or the liquid whey itself must be pasteurized, as per FDA regulations. We will see that most of the time, whey will have to be pasteurized anyway. Alternatively, they some claim that their whey is raw because it does not have added enzymes or some other ingredient.

Let's look at some actual copy used to sell a one of these so-called raw whey products. That will open in a new window so you can read along with me and I don't have to worry about these folks accusing me of quoting too much.

Notice this paragraph: Raw milk has never been through the heating process of pasteurization which denatures the health promoting proteins…which means the beneficial enzymes, immunoglobulins, lactoferrin,…are denatured or broken down into the individual amino acids….destroys the beneficial healing effects of the original proteins.

Okay, so it starts out right. Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized. The rest…bullshit. Most all of those things mentioned are proteins and they will be broken down like any other protein and digested. However, the statement that pasteurization breaks down the proteins in milk into individual amino acids is absolutely false. Man, bodybuilders would love it if it were true. Milk would be a very cheap "amino acid blend."

However, it's the second part I really want to show you:

The fragile proteins in raw milk are denatured at 149 degrees Fahrenheit. Once this temperature is reached, the milk is much less healthy…all other whey proteins use milk that has been double pasteurized at 162 degrees. And some have the nerve to still claim to be "non-denatured"…

The milk used…is subjected to the minimum amount of heat allowed by law. The temperature never reaches 149 degrees and is at or around 145 degrees for only 30 minutes as required by law.

Notice how the first paragraph I quoted starts out talking about pasteurization and then the second two paragraphs change to "subjected to the minimum amount of heat allowed." They are trying to get you to think that the milk used for their whey is not pasteurized, while actually telling you that it is. The minimum pasteurization temperature is indeed 145° Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. It's still pasteurized, and therefore not raw.

I want you to see another little trick. See how the ad is careful to say not only that it is heated for 30 minutes but that it is heated for only 30 minutes. As if they have somehow managed to cut down the time. What they aren't telling you will be evident from this chart that lists the temperatures and corresponding times that can be used for pasteurization:

No, those are not typos. When the temperature is increased a mere 16 degrees, the time required goes from 30 minutes all the way down to 15 seconds and then down to an instant as the temperature is increased. This basically means that the milk can be slowly and gently heated until it reaches this temperature and then it's pretty much done. Compare that to only 30 minutes and you might start to wonder just what those dudes have been smoking. Why I should care whether my milk (or whey) has been pasteurized at 145° for 30 minutes or 161 degrees for 15 seconds, is beyond me. Either way, it's not raw. People go on about the functionality of proteins from whey, but talk around the subject of ever finding an actual function.

Cheese makers understand that the amount of heat they use, and the time it is heated for, will cause the much more heat labile whey proteins to denature which will cause them to interact with the more heat stable caseins. This will change the way the milk curds. Understanding it is beyond me: it's food chemistry. I doubt very much that some dude selling a whey protein supplement on the internet understands it either.

The Color of Liquid
Fresh or "Raw" Whey
Image by opencage.info

Whey is a valuable product in itself. Too much heat can denature and flocculate the whey, as well as insolubize the proteins. And insoluble whey would be a whey that wouldn't mix with water very well, and also a whey that may or may not interact the way you want it to with other food ingredients. The idea that some unscrupulous whey producers are using ridiculous amounts of heat while others are making it "just so" is ridiculous. Whey producers do what they need, to produce whey that can be used and sold. There is no incentive to ruin it: pH, temperature and time applied, calcium, lactose, and other factors influence heat stability and the process must be controlled to ensure the proper end-product.

Still, some denaturing occurs, and it is true that whey proteins such as lactoferrin and some immunoglobulins will not retain their biological activity after ultra-high-temperature (UHT) pasteurization. However, they do fine under normal pasteurization.

Lactoferrin is an iron-binding glycoprotein. It is found in the milk of mammals (especially human colostrum), as well as saliva, tears, seminal fluids, mucous, etc. This molecule is an important part of pre-immunity in mammals and acts as a bactericide or antimicrobial as well as many other important roles.

Cow's milk contains lactoferrin (although not as much as human milk). Is it possible that lactoferrin could survive the gastric environment and thus have an influence on gut health? According to some research, it seems so. However, getting more lactoferrin by drinking raw milk is a leap when you consider that the danger from the microbials in the milk far outweigh any theorized benefit from the lactoferrin. Besides that, when consuming a whey protein product, you are getting a much higher concetration of lactoferrin than you would have from the original milk, 30 to 100mgs/liter as opposed to only 10 mgs/liter in cow's milk.

Ultra-high-temperature pasteurization (UHT)

Ultra-high-temperature pasteurization is going full out with a whopping 275°F for one to two seconds. This kind of milk must be processed under stringent conditions and placed in aseptic (sterile) and hermetically-sealed (airtight) containers. The kind that is stable on a unrefrigerated grocery store shelf for many months. See image below.

UHT Pasteurized Shelf-Stable Milk Products

UHT products are not the kind you get in the dairy case, although you might find some ultra-pasteurized milk there. This is similar to UHT in that 280 degrees is used but the milk can be placed in regular containers and must be refrigerated. The shelf life is extended to up to 90 days. Organic milk might be treated in this manner, since less of it is sold and it is shipped over long distances so it needs to remain stable for longer.

These higher heat treatments certainly might alter some of the properties of the milk, as well as its color and taste. But by far the most common temperatures used in the milk industry are the first two listed in the table above. This would be "Grade A Pasteurized Milk."

As far as the enzymes, we don't use them to help us digest milk, we simply digest them. However, if they were left active, the milk would go sour much faster. For more on raw milk see The Dangers of Raw Milk and the Claims of its Magical Healing Powers.

Regardless of what you believe about raw milk, however, I hope you can see that there is no whey protein powder that can rightly be called raw whey, and that this is a blatant ploy to dupe you into paying more for a similar product. Now onto the whey manufacturing process itself.

Whey Comes from Milk

The two types of protein in milk are casein protein and whey protein. Casein is separated to make cheese. Liquid whey is left over. It is a greenish-yellow fluid which contains about half the solids of the original nutrients of milk, including protein, calcium, and lactose. Contrary to what you may have believed, only a small amount of these solids are protein.

Making Cheddar Cheese
Cooking the Curds

Many of my readers may think of whey as a powder, instead. But when I say it is a liquid, I mean really liquid. Let's assume 3.25% fat milk. While milk is about 83% water, whey is around 93% water. Some of it is also carbohydrate (lactose), about 5%. Some is fat, in this case 0.36%. Then we have some minerals and vitamins and a bit of ash, which is a kind of impurity. As you have already figured out, there is only a bit of protein, comparatively, in this liquid whey, about 0.85%. Compare that to the lactose, at 5%. Are you getting the picture?

Well, the whey in its liquid state it is raw or fresh whey. The point is that it is mixed with a whole lot of water and some other stuff. So in this state it really is not very useful at all. Or, at least, it is not anywhere near as useful as it could be when processed and refined. In fact, it used to be considered nothing more than a waste product, suitable for feeding pigs or dumping into the river. As pig farms went on the decline and protecting the environment became more important to us, this changed. Also, cheese began to be made in much larger batches, meaning much more whey. So dairies looked for wheys to put it to use (sorry, couldn't resist).

As a clear yellowish fluid, it was just going to be in the whey (oops, I did it again). When you consider that this fluid was 90% of the original weight of the milk, and between 6 to 6.5% of it is solids, you realize just how much was being wasted. Today, about half of the liquid whey left over from cheese is further processed. The table below shows the average composition of whey.

It also contains B vitamins, such as riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, and thiamine.

Flocculating Your Whey

One way to use whey is to produce cheese. Confused? Well, riccota cheese is not made from the casein proteins, it's made from the whey precipitate. Also, there is a process called the Centriwhey process that can be used to process the whey (flocculation) in such a way that the proteins can be added into the cheese making process, thus recovering this valuable product and increasing the yield 10 to 12% without affecting the taste and texture of the cheese, hopefully. This involves heating, acidifying, and centrifuging the whey to coagulate the proteins (unlike casein proteins whey proteins do not coagulate easily). The result is partially denatured whey protein concentrate (PDWPC). Another similar process is called the Lactal process. Both produce concentrates that can be added at the desired level to the cheese milk and then the cheese can be made as normal. Some commercial brands of this concentrate are Simplesse 100 and Dairy Lo.

Problem is it produces varying results. It is generally agreed that it increases the moisture content and the actual yield of hard or semi-hard cheeses. But for cheddar and gouda, it can produce a greasy and soft cheese (body) and an unclean and astringent cheese (flavor). They do improve the texture and yield of reduced fat cheese, which tends to be firmer and more elastic than regular cheese.

Making Whey Powder

In additions to the components listed above, the whey precipitate contains something else. Some residues of the active rennet will be in there. And a good bit of bacteria which have reproduced from the lactic starter used to get the cheese going in the first place.

The composition will differ somewhat depending on the type of cheese being made. Thus, when cottage cheese and other fresh cheese are made, which use acid, an acid whey is made with different mineral content and higher calcium. The making of cheddar, mozzerella, and swiss produces sweet whey.

Acid whey is not very tasty and generally less useful than sweet whey, although not entirely useless.

The first thing to do to the whey is to remove any cheese particles, called cheese fines and the free fat, called whey cream. For this, filters, centrifuges, or clarifiers can be used. Once this is done the whey is considered clarified. Usually, a clarifying centrifuge removes the cheese fines and another type of centrifuge, a separator, removes the fat.

Don't forget the bacteria. When cheese is made, a bacterial culture is added to the milk. The purpose of this culture is to convert lactose to lactic acid, hence why lactic acid bacteria is used. This acid curdles the milk. Now, when the liquid whey is removed, some of this bacteria is still present. But it would be bad for the bacteria to continue converting lactose to lactic acid. Pasteurization is needed so that the whey does not acidify. Typically, this requires at least 72°C (161.6°F). So much for raw whey.

Now it's time to concentrate the whey and then dehydrate the whey. Concentration can be done by evaporation or a combination of reverse osmosis and evaporation. After this the concentrate must be cooled down and its lactose allowed to crystallize so that the whey can be spray dried. The end results is a non-hygroscopc whey powder. This means it won't easily take up water. Hence, a basic whey powder.

There are many technical considerations depending on the functional characteristics needed (for instance, how the proteins behave in baking) but the end result is a powder that contains all the constituents of the original whey except for water. When you hear the term whey powder this is the product that should come to mind. The basic whey that is produced without further isolating the protein. Whey powder and whey protein or whey protein powder are different in that whey protein contains less of all the other stuff and more of just the protein.

Whey powder can be used in many different foods like bread, ice cream, processed cheese (think American Cheese), candies, caramel, cakes, and as a filler in meat products. The powder might be mixed with other proteins to obtain a product that meets certain requirements. For instance, whey powder may be mixed with whey protein, caseinate, soy protein, skim milk powder, or various other proteins.

The point is, that whey is not just protein to the food industry. It is a raw material that can be used as is, blended with other things, or further processed to produce whey protein powder or whey concentrates, or lactose, which is also a very important part of its use (for the food industry). Therefore, when whey protein supplement sellers talk about how "unprocessed" their whey is, you know better. No processing, no whey powder and certainly no whey protein concentrate.

Instead of producing basic whey powder, pasteurized whey fluid may be processed to produce demineralized whey, reduced lactose whey, whey concentrates, or whey isolates. This PDF from USDEC (U.S. Dairy Export Council) will provide an overview of these different products, including many other end-products, including lactoferrin, lactoperoxidase, and glycomacropeptide (GMP): Whey Products, Definition, Compositions, and Functions.

The basic process is ultrafiltration, evaporation, and spray drying. The fresh whey is held in a tank and passed through filters of varying permeability. Then comes pasteurization. Remember, this is important because there was lactic acid bacteria from the initial cheese making, and there are also rennet enzymes. These must be inactivated. However, as stated, too much heat will cause the whey proteins to precipitate or insolubilize (won't dissolve!). So you need enough heat to inactivate the rennet but not enough to mess up the whey protein. 85°C (165°F) is the top limit, held for about 18 seconds. Then the filtrate is evaporated and spray dried.

Whey Depends on what the Customer Wants

Whey producers can customize their whey products to meet the needs of a buyer. For instance, a baking company is going to want a completely different product than a supplement company. In general, whey can be made ranging from 12 to 90% protein and from 1 to 28% mineral content.

Use in Foods

Besides enhancing the protein content of a food, or as an extender, the general reasons for using whey in food products are emulsification, stability, viscosity, mouth-feel, and imparting a dairy-like flavor.

A whey protein concentrate might be used to make a firmer pasta product. It would also enhance the nutritional value of the product. It might be used to keep a salad dressing emulsified, again, enhancing the nutritional value a bit. It can be used in processed meat products, etc. The use of whey in food products, in fact, is so widespread that it is well beyond the scope of this article, or any article I would ever care to write.

Whey Protein Concentrate versus Isolate

Whey protein concentrates (WPC) contain from 34% to 80% protein. Whey protein isolates must contain at least 90% protein. The idea that WPI's are "superior" to WPI's, as is often stated in articles about whey supplements, shows a misunderstanding about how and why different whey products are made. WPC's are simply useful for different applications than WPI's. For instance, a WPC of only 34% would be useful in a yoghurt or maybe a soft serve ice cream. That is because its affect on the final product is much different than a WPI would be. It may be better at binding water, for example. It may be a better emulsifier. The consistency and mouth feel of the product would be much affected. Besides this, cost is an issue. A more expensive whey protein would mean a final product that was overpriced. Different concentrations and fractionations (more later) are produced for specific properties and uses, often based on the customer's specifications.

How concentrated the product is depends on how much of the non-protein constituents are removed. Whey can be concentrated and isolated in a number of ways:

Membrane Technologies (Filtering)

What we think of as filters is known as membrane technology in the trade. These involve pressure driving the whey through semi-permeable membranes at relatively low temperatures (less than 55°C). Pumps and valves are used to create a pressure gradient across the membrane, so that the smaller molecules in the whey pass through the membrane and the larger molecules are concentrated. The stuff that passes through is called permeate and the stuff that remains is called retentate. The type of membrane used depends on what type of whey product is desired.

Nanofiltration, ultrafiltration, microfiltration, and reverse osmosis are examples of this process. Electrodyalisis also uses membranes, but electricity is used instead of pressure. They do not denature proteins and can be used to produce concentrates of 34% all the way up to isolates at 90 plus percent protein. Using membranes with different pore sizes actually allows the selective concentration of whey components.

Reverse Osmosis

Reverse osmosis (RO) membranes have pore sizes of less than 20 daltons. They remove only the water, so they do not selectively separate the whey components. These cannot be used to highly concentrate whey since as the water is removed the viscosity and osmotic pressure increases, limiting the extent of concentration. The ratio of the solid components in the whey is not changed. Reverse osmosis is basically a concentrating process whereas the processes below are better termed fractionating processes, since the selectivity of the membranes can be changed so that they pass only molecules of a certain molecular weight. The following are general descriptions.

Nanofiltration

Nanofiltration (NF) membranes, unlike RO membranes, have pores from 20 to 500 daltons which allow some salt to pass through so that the whey is partially desalted. This slightly reduces the mineral content of the whey, but does not eliminate it.

Ultrafiltration

Ultrafiltration (UF) membranes have larger pores than RO or NF membranes, from 500 to 300,000 daltons, and so allow lactose and ash to pass through, retaining the whey proteins. These are standard for making WPC's. Since water is being removed and the viscosity is increasing, in order to produce higher concentrations than 50%, water is added to "wash" out more lactose, ash, and minerals from the retentate (now we're using the lingo). This is called diafiltration.

Microfiltration

Microfiltration (MF) membranes have the largest pores of all, from 0.1 to 10 microns. Some of the smaller soluble proteins, peptides, lactose, minerals, other compounds, and water all readily pass through.

Cross Flow Microfiltration and Ultrafiltration

You've probably heard from some sports nutrition expert that "you've got to have cross-flow microfiltration whey, bro!" I don't know if you've noticed, but there are those who like to use bigger words than necessary in the hope that they will sound more important or knowledgeable. This is one of those times. It may have led you to believe that there is some difference between a whey that claims to be from microfiltration instead of cross-flow microfiltration, which sounds so much more impressive.

The membrane systems use two membranes. These are glued together around the edges and a spacer is placed between them, creating a space where retentate can collect. Then, one edge of the membrane system is glued to a hollow core. A product spacer is placed on top and the whole thing is wound around to create a spiral wound membrane system with a hollow center. When they are used, the product is fed end-ways through the system using pumps, which allows the permeate (the stuff that is filtered off) to collect in the inner core. The term cross-flow simply refers to the fact that the material is fed across the membrane system from one end to the other and similar spiral membranes are used for the different sized pore systems discussed above. Other than that, the term has no special significance on its own.

Electrodyalisis

Electrodyalisis uses an electrical current to drive the whey components across a membrane. These membranes only allow minerals to permeate, so protein and lactose are retained. This is because the minerals are charged and the electrical current draws them across the membrane into a brine stream. Lactose is not affected by the current and the proteins are too large to pass the membrane. This process can remove up to 75% of the minerals in whey without affecting the protein. Excessive mineral content can make whey taste bad and can change its properties when used in food. So it is sometimes desired to remove certain amounts. In fact, whey is fairly tasty except for its saltiness. Removing some of the minerals is necessary if you want your whey to taste its best. However, completely demineralized whey is not widely used and only a few select companies would want it, its largest use being infant formulas.

Chromatography

Chromatagraphy can be considered a scientific discipline within itself, rather than just a group of technologies. However, for our purposes we can define chromatography as a way to get some molecules to move one way while other components move another way, so that they can be analyzed or separated, for whatever means. It is based on electrostatic interactions. For whey, chromatography uses charged resins in a column to separate out proteins or minerals. The resin has a charge opposite to the proteins so that the proteins are attracted to, and bind to the resin while other particles pass through the column. Ion-exchange is a type of chromatography used for whey protein.

Ion-Exchange

Ion-Exchange can be used to produce a highly demineralized whey, or to separate out protein from other whey components. Whey proteins are amphoteric. This means they are capable of reacting to an acid or a base and change their charge by carrying a positive charge at the amine group in an acid, or a negative charge in the carbolylic group in a base. By changing the pH of the whey, therefore, the proteins can take on a net positive or negative charge. At around pH 4.6, they are at their isoelectric point. Below 4.6, they have a net positive charge and behave as cations. Above 4.6 they have a net negative charge and behave as anions. Therefore, if the acidity is changed in a column or stirred tank (columns are more common), the whey proteins can be charged and so attracted to oppositely charged resins. The lactose and other materials can then be filtered off and the pH readjusted so that the proteins are released from the ion exchanger, then filtered from the resin and concentrated before being spray dried.

However, although 4.6 is the approximate isoelectric point, different whey proteins have slightly different points, making it possible to fine-tune the process, although the results can be unpredictable, especially since there can be a range of points involved for any one type of protein.

Ion-Exchange versus Microfiltration Whey

Many people buy into the notion that there is some significant advantage to buying a whey supplement that claims to be from ion-exchanged whey, or one that is from microfiltered whey. There is no significant functional difference, except, perhaps the presence of GMP (glycomacropeptide), which is higher in microfiltration whey. For the purposes of supplement and helping to augment protein needs, either should suffice. When WPI's are desired, ion-exchange is more often used than microfiltration.

Hydrolyzed Whey

Hydrolyzed whey is a whey protein to which protease enzyme has been added to pre-digest the proteins. The process is controlled by time and temperature. There is no advantage to buying a hydrolyzed whey supplement, despite many suggestions and questionable studies claiming otherwise.

Spray Drying

Most whey for human use is dried on spray driers. This involves spraying the whey in an atomized stream through a column of hot air. As the whey stream passes through, the water is almost instantly evaporated, leaving the whey almost completely dry. This is the least damaging to the whey proteins.

What is WPNI?

WPNI stands for whey protein nitrogen index. This is a way of quantifying the degree of heat treatment of a milk powder. It is an indirect measure of the amount of whey proteins that are denatured. The degree of denaturation may correspond to the solubility of a product, and thus the WPNI may be an important factor to buyers of whey powders or milk powders, depending on the characteristics desired.

For a whey supplement, a low heat WPNI would be desired as this would be the most soluble whey, and so would have a WPNI of greater than 6mg of nitrogen per gram. On the other hand, a high heat whey will have better heat stability in food products and will have higher viscosity when added to yogurt or other products, as well as a more intense flavor, which might be desired in chocolate, for example. A high heat whey will have a WPNI of less than 1.5mg nitrogen per gram. Medium heat whey powders will have between 1.5mg and 6mg nitrogen per gram.

Protein Components of Whey

No doubt, you have heard a whole lot about all the different protein fractions in whey, and their special and magical properties. Well, some of them do have special properties. It's the magical part that is questionable. I will write about some of the different proteins in whey in my next whey post. I'll leave you with a brief discussion of one of the more "magical" beliefs about whey.

This belief is centered on the similarities between human infant mother's milk and bovine milk. The idea is that since mother's milk contains so much whey, that bovine whey must be very very good for us. First of all, I don't know if you've noticed, you're not an infant. There was never any "grand plan" in your biological makeup which would entail you receiving a life-time infusion of mother's milk or anything like mother's milk. The needs of an infant are not the same as the needs of an adult. But that is not the myth I'm talking about. See, since whey is used to make infant formulas, people believe that bovine whey must therefore be of special importance in human nutrition.

Well, bovine whey and human mother's whey are not the same. For one thing, the major protein component of bovine whey is β-Lactoglobulin. This protein is pretty widespread in the milk of mammals. Except, that is, human milk.

The major proteins of human milk are a-lactalbumin, lactoferrin, and IgA. While, besides β-Lactoglobulin bovine whey also contains such proteins as a-Lactoglobulin. This is one of the reason that normal whey formula's are unsuitable for certain infants. They sometimes are intolerant to the β-Lactoglobulin. It is, as a matter of fact, the major allergen in cow's milk. A "hypoallergenic" whey product is a whey product from which the β-Lactoglobulin has been removed or which has been hydrolyzed, which removes the allergenic potential of the β-Lactoglobulin. This is how it is often done for infant's formulas, which also makes it easier for the baby to digest. Hydrolyzed infant formulas are also more heat stable, which is good since you have to heat sterilize an infant's formula. However, it makes for a less stable emulsified product, so other things are added to aid in emulsification.

There are other essential nutrients in mother's milk that are not present in sufficient quantities in bovine milk. These must be supplemented in infant formulas. For instance, lactoferrin, mentioned above, is a major component of human milk, but is very low in bovine milk. Human milk also contains lysozyme, which has antibacterial activity and is contained in human milk at concentrations higher than in most other species. Furthermore, it is not clear at all that the functional proteins in bovine milk, such as lactoferrin and immunoglobulins, have the same gut activity as their counterparts in mother's milk. Perhaps more important, the the first phase of mother's milk, colostrum, contains these proteins in a much higher concentration.

Clearly, then, the notion that just because human mother's milk contains lots of whey means that whey must be comparable to consuming mother's milk, is questionable, not to mention a bit creepy in the first place. None of this is to say that whey is not a fantastic and convenient source of protein with many desirable properties. It's just not magic.

This page contains affiliate links to Amazon.com. We have not been compelled in any way to place links to particular products and have received no compensation for doing so. We receive a very small commission only if you buy a product after clicking on one of these affiliate links.

by EricT

By Eric Troy

Not a week goes by when someone doesn't bring up his/her mistrust of science. No area of science has less trust these days than those associated with nutrition and health.

How can we trust science when science constantly contradicts itself? That is what people ask.

It's the wrong question. You see, science cannot contradict itself. It's a concept, a way of gathering knowledge. Scientists can, however, contradict each other. And that is a good thing! That is part of how science works. Scientists review and question other scientists findings. They may seek to replicate the results of a certain study or experiment. Ah…now we're on to something.

Surprising New Egg Yolk Finding

Replication of results is a cornerstone of the scientific process. Recently, a study was reported which found egg yolk eating to be as bad as cigarette smoking in terms of cholesterol raising. It made the rounds on Facebook and, as you can guess, most everybody was quite tired of this whole egg yolk fiasco.

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This single study was reported, for instance on a site called "ScienceDaily" which constantly reports single new studies: Egg Yolk Consumption Almost as Bad as Smoking When It Comes to Atherosclerosis, Study Suggests.

Notice that the title says that the study "suggests" this thing. However, the small blurb underneath the title, uses language quite different:

Newly published research led by Western's Dr. David Spence shows that eating egg yolks accelerates atherosclerosis in a manner similar to smoking cigarettes.

Now, the study SHOWS that eating egg yolks is like smoking cigarettes in terms of atherosclerosis. Not suggests anymore. It shows.

A single study, even a very good one, cannot show anything. It can only suggest that maybe, just maybe. Replication of results.

Are you tired of hearing about egg yolks?
I know I am.
Image by Paul Goyette via wikimedia

The Problem With Media Reporting

The problem, however, is that the media, be it internet websites, news organizations, magazine, etc. have no understanding of the scientific process whatsoever. In fact, even if they hire a person with scientific credentials, it may not help.

Yet most people get the majority of their nutrition and health information from television news, magazine articles, internet news websites, etc. These organizations have deadlines and often rush to "print" without checking the facts.

An even bigger problem, at present, however, is the constant reporting of single studies as if a single study represents a new nutrition paradigm. They report these findings prematurely, without any interpretation, without peer replication, and without peer review. These "SURPRISING FINDINGS" from single studies, just released the day before, if not the same day, are the bane of accurate and reliable nutrition education and info.

The reporters and news organizations are not as concerned with the accuracy of the information as they are with reporting "exciting" new things, hopefully before another organization does. The conclusions and findings are twisted and even when the findings are not conclusive, they are reported as if they are meaningful.

Number One Criteria to Report on a New Study

To add to our problems and our frustration, the number one criteria that any news organization uses to choose which to report on of the thousands of studies published is this: Does the study run contrary to current health and nutrition recommendations? All the other studies that do not run contrary to current recommendations, but further support them, they are not reported on! If you only get one take home point from this article, this would be an excellent one. Even if you are going to report on a contrary study, it is your responsibility to say something about how it fits with the other evidence on the subject. This is the most important question we can ask!

How Can We Trust Science with Scientists Always Contradicting Each Other?

Well, perhaps you can see now that often, scientists (plural) are not contradicting each other. One scientist is contradicting most other scientists. A trick of psychology is to believe that one dissenting viewpoint outweighs the popular viewpoint, giving these lone voices more power than they sometimes deserve.

Of course, with so many new studies being published every day, and with so many of them being reported by the media, these surprising new headlines often contradict each other! When the scientists themselves, the university or other organization they work for, reports these findings to the media before any peer review the problem becomes worse. How can we trust science, given all this?

I'll answer that. The scientific big picture rarely changes dramatically. There are certain things that, once you are aware of them, you can count on them. The "science," in other words, is fairly static, with only small changes in our understanding happening. These small changes slowly contribute to a fundamental shift in understanding.

Nutrition is nothing like the laws of physics, but you can think of it like that. That is, you can't always count on scientists, but you can count on the laws of physics.

Back to the Egg Debacle

However, the article about the egg study makes no attempt whatsoever to consider any other findings which may shed light on this single study. There is no interpretation, and there is no attempt to provide any skeptical counterpoint from a qualified peer. Certainly, there is no thought given whatsoever to the validity of the methods used in the study, which would be covered by peer review, should it exist. What do we do with this information, as consumers?

Hardly anyone that I know took it seriously. But you can bet many many other people did. Why shouldn't they? That is what we are here to find out.

Similar to what I've already mentioned, many science types will say, well, how was the methodology? Was it a "quality" study? That is certainly important. Other scientists, reviewing the paper, will ask these questions, and answer them with their take on the soundness of the methodology and the appropriateness of the conclusions. However…

I'll let you in on a little secret. There are thousands of crappy studies published all the time. People have this vision that when some controversial new study, overturning everything that came before it, comes along, hundreds of distinguished scientists go on a crusade to check all the P's and Q's and a big battle ensues.

Well, most of the time, when they see some clearly flawed piece of crap study, you know what they do? They ignore it! Why? Everybody needs priorities, man! Not everything is worthy of our time. This is the same reason I don't examine every new workout program or fitness book that comes out. Even though people expect me to. Whether this particular study is being ignored I do not know. But it is not likely to be receiving a lot of attention.

The egg yolk study has been reported on hundreds of web sites by this time. Out of those hundreds, perhaps one or two have the knowledge and ability to analyze the paper. Yet, all you have to go by are the sensational reports of this surprising new finding.

Furthermore, to actually read this study in its entirety, you will have to pay 32 bucks. Who is going to do that? Do you think all the websites reporting this story payed the 32 dollars to buy the full text? I can assure you that they did not. They simply reported the very limited information that was available in the preview. This consists of a very brief summary report of the background, methods, results, and interpretation. That, and a quote from a study author is all you're usually getting from these online articles.

There are many very important details you do not know, and you may not be able to interpret them if you did. Also, you have no sources. For instance, what sources did the author(s) use to come to their hypothesis? Where do we read about the link between cigarette smoking and arteriosclerosis? How does this compare to another food? Why wasn't another food compared? What would be considered a "control" in this study? Where did the information come from for this study and can we consider it accurate and reliable? How was it determined that egg yolks build up plaque "2/3's" as much as smoking? What is P<0.0001? What is multiple regression? Do you know? Do the reporters know?

Do you trust that the reason to trust this study is because the person who performed it is an authority figure? Or do you think that because it was reported on news sites it must be accurate and important? I think I have probably shown you that neither of these assumptions are safe.

Yet, if you have seen one of these articles, you probably found yourself, once again, getting a little fed up with the constantly conflicting information. After all, you have been led to believe, as of late, that moderate consumption of egg yolks (and 3 egg yolks per week is certainly moderate) is not bad for you and may even be healthy. You may have read that certain people may be more sensitive to dietary cholesterol than others but that there is no particular need to be concerned. And, you probably have read that eggs are generally considered a healthy food, yolks and all. Then comes new "science" to confuse you, and piss you off. Before it was milk, now it's eggs.

Well, now you know. All that stuff you have read and been told, it hasn't changed! Because all the evidence that lead to these very moderate views on egg consumption is still the preponderance of evidence on the subject. This was ONE study. It does not overturn everything that came before it. That is not how it works. When and if our basic understanding of egg consumption changes in a "big picture" way, you will know.

Your mantra, when dealing with these large and sudden changes in the scientific status-quo must become: Science is a slow and deliberate process.

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by EricT

Consider any simple exercise, and you will find a confounding number of variations. Take barbell rows, for example. Compared to a barbell row, potato salad is rocket surgery. The exercise is just too dirt simple for there to be a need for more than a few variations. Yet there are endless variations.

Sure you can change the trunk angle. There are epic discussions which spawns worship of such clever little variations like the "Yates Row." Probably, if you advocated sticking out the pinky finger during the row, you could paste your name to yet another version. Still, at least most versions have at least some reason for their existence. Changing the trunk angle, deloading or not deloading the bar, these things change the character and impact of the exercise at least a little and they are based on something that makes sense. Something actually is fundamentally different about the versions.

But, lo and behold, you don't have to make sense to come up with your own version. You can use muddy concepts, bullshit kinesiology, and plastic words to really corner the market with an "advanced" version of your own. To that end, we have the Dynamic or Explosive row. Dymanic, in this case, refers to it being "energetic" or "forceful."

Explosive! Well, that word is so undefined in strength training literature it could mean almost anything that ain't standing still, but in this case it means the same thing as dynamic. Both words are used to denote a similarity to a fast Olympic lift.

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Dynamic rows, according to whom you ask, are the same thing as the "Pendlay Row" or the "JS Row" both of which are apparently the same exercise. A deloaded row, this version of the barbell row is deemed to "activate" the latissimus dorsi more than a regular barbell row and allow one to lift heavier weights. Although there are many iterations in technique for this, which are not worth my time to try an outline, the basic gist is as follows:

• Load the bar with much more weight than you can handle for a barbell row
• With the bar sitting on the floor, bend over at the waste and assume a "parallel" position over the bar (torso is parallel with the floor)
• Keep the lower back neutral - in its natural arched position, and tight
• You probably cannot reach the bar from this position without going below parallel

That's okay, just flex forward at the mid back..thoracic spine..until you can reach the bar

• Now, violently hitch at the hips, in a twitching sort of way, and extend the mid back, so that you bring the bar up to the chest "explosively"
• If you look like you started to do a barbell row and then suffered a seizure, you are doing it right

Okay, I am making what some would call a "straw man", sort of exaggerating and distorting the whole dynamic row thing. But the simple truth is, there is no way to describe this "exercise" which has no fixed form. But hey, that shouldn't matter, because they are dynamic, and thank God someone invented these "dynamic rows" because I've always performed my rows with absolutely no force or energy in as snail-like a fashion as possible. That's why I really need to do dynamic effort on bench and stuff because all the other days I try to see if I can move the bar so slow I turn back time.

Sarcasm aside, what you have to ask yourself is: Why? Why is it that on any other exercise the word "dynamic" is only applied to speed work. So that when you do speed or acceleration work on bench, or deads, or anything, you do it WITH CORRECT FORM only as fast as possible and you usually of course lower the weight in order to focus on velocity. Speed bench press is still bench. A speed deadlift is exactly the same as a regular deadlift except faster. But with rows…

With rows it's a mess. The dynamic row is basically a cheating movement. Although cheating movements have their place, here and there, in strength training (although more prevalent in bodybuilding), this is a particularly ill advised way to cheat. And of course, cheating is a way of getting a too heavy bar to move when you wouldn't normally be able to move it, using a little Body English. There is no one way to do that. So what is the rationale for this cheat?

Get Your Ducks in a Row
Image by James Yardley

Latissimus Dorsi Role in Spinal Extension

Although I do not know the origin of this myth, according to Glen Pendlay, the so-called Pendlay Row, which some refer to as a Dynamic Row, is superior because it activates the latissimus dorsi more than "bodybuilder rows." According to this theory, the latissimus dorsi is active in thoracic extension and thus the flexion and subsequent extension of the thoracic during these rows strengthens the lats better than rows without this extension. This was determined, apparently, by electromyographic studies, according to bodybuilding forum lore.

Well, I've looked and looked but I can find no scientific evidence that the latissimus dorsi has ever been implicated as an active thoracic extensor. Let's look at the origins, insertions, and actions of the lats, both known and theorized.

The latissimus dorsi originates on the spinous processes of the last six thoracic vertebrae, the first two lumbar vertebrae, the lateral raphe of the thoracolumbular fascia, the iliac crest, and ribs 9 to 12. Covers a lot of ground doesn't it? The muscle inserts onto the intertubercular groove of the humerus (upper arm). A review of how we determine origins versus insertions of muscles tells us that the origin is usually the attachment that is least moveable, which tends to be the proximal attachment. The insertion of a muscle, typically, moves toward the origin. So, if the latissimus dorsi originates at the spine, the thorax, and the ribs, but inserts onto the upper arm, what would you guess to be its role, if you didn't already know? Something to do with moving the upper arm, possible toward the body? Well, yep, you'd be right. Surely, then, the lats will be more worked by the shoulder's action in the row than by any extension of the spine, although not as much as in a pullup or lat pulldown.

The main roles of the latissimus dorsi is to adduct, extend, and internally rotate the arm. I think that explains why we consider the pull up and the lat pulldown to be the premier lats exercises. But can it extend the spine? It can exert only a trivial force toward extending the lumbar. It may, according to McGill and Neumann, play a role in core stabilization. When it comes to actually extending the lumbar, it plays a supportive role, at best. The reason for this is that the erector spinae (the main extensor) is covered by the thick thoracolumbar fascia, which attaches to the lumbar vertebrae. This fascia becomes continuous with the apaneurosis and fascia of the latissimus dorsi (and abdominals). Remember above when I said the lats originate, in part on the thoracolumbar fascia, well, it is really more correct to say that the apaneurosis and fascia of the lats sort of "melds" with this fascia tissue. Together with the erector spinae, the fascia and the lats is a kind of tube or sheath around the spine. When you extend the your back, the thoracolumbar fascia tightens thus pulling on the lats which help provide support.

What kind of force can the lats actually contribute to extension, other than a supportive stability role? A trivial amount of force. According to Bogduk, et al., while the lats can contribute up to a whopping 529N of force on the shoulder, the maximum extensor moment on the lumbar, in their experiments, was 6.3N, with a maximum moment of 30N on the sacroiliac joint. Getting past the jargon, that is about 118lbs of force exerted on the shoulder as opposed to 1.4lbs on the spine, and 6.7 on the sacroiliac.2

Now, how do we translate all this into the lats role in thoracic extension. Well, to start with, the thoracic spine is a bit complex so we best keep to the most essential facts. One thing to realize is that thoracic extension rarely occurs on its own. It is usually accompanied by lumbar extension. Many of the same muscles active during lumbar extension are active in thoracic extension. The need to keep the lumbar extended during the barbell row will activate the latissimus to some degree, as it does assist in extension of the thoracic spine, but adding an active thoracic extension to the mix could hardly have a large effect on lat function, especially when weighed against the anterior-posterior spinal segment loading/unloading which is a recipe for disaster. The lats are much more active at the shoulder in extending, adducting, and medially rotating the upper arm.

What to Do Instead

Besides all that, you can't get 3 people to agree on how to do a regular row let alone this dynamic thingamajig. It might be nice to have some consensus of opinion on what a wheel is before it is reinvented. As above, you could describe the dynamic row as bastard child of a row and the Olympic lifts. If you want a 'power' lift, do an Olympic lift. If you want a row do a correct row.

The dynamic row seems to be seen as a sort of posterior chain exercise, I'll get more into that later. Most of us should be doing lots more posterior chain work anyway. Deadlfit variations, pullthroughs, Olympic lifts if desired, glute-ham raises (which we prefer supine), so on. The effective training of which will be a hundred times more effective for the posterior chain as well as the entire back ESPECIALLY if you save the row exercises to be done correctly with a full range of motion to target the upper and mid back.

Perhaps this dynamic row would not have come up were there not people out there rowing in s-l-o-w motion. All the bodybuilders and the focus on TUT and Superslow this or that is always causing this confusion when the quest for strength meets ideas that are about mass gaining and have nothing to do with strength. I know all about this as I encounter it again and again. I still remember when some particularly incensed person repeated "TUT" about a thousand times in his comments about the SDT article, thinking, perhaps, if he just used the jargon enough I would start to agree with him.

But when you see the majority of trainees doing "regular" rows but doing them super slow, you can see why someone might want to invent a dynamic row. When it comes to training for strength there are few instances where you would intentionally move the bar (at least the positive) very slowly and even with "regular" rows we do them very powerfully, we simply do not use momentum from lower body movement, back movement, or upper back flexion.

Doing Rows Correctly

Although I've already directed you to an article on correct row technique, I will go ahead and provide some instruction here, to add to it. It will be pretty much the same as the link I gave you but I may say a few additional things.

One of the common ways of instructing rows is simply to get in the row position and "pull the bar up". Then "pinch the shoulder blades together" at the end. So what this amounts to is a glorified barbell curl followed by a scapular pinch. Instead of inventing new rows it may be useful to teach a basic row technique correctly in the first place.

Here is my take on it and this is the premise by which I work whether it be barbell, dumbbell, cable or whatever. Starting with the actual performance and not getting into positioning.

1. Start with the implement fully extended allowing the scapula to "protract" or track forward allowing a little, but not a greatly exaggerated, stretch. You should not allow such a stretch that the shoulders are allowed to be pulled forward out of their sockets. They should be maintained under tight control. This is scapular protraction only.

The lower back is maintained in a neutral, natural and tight, arch at all times. Likewise the thoracic area is maintained and you do not flex forward at the thoracic spine (do not "bend" at the upper or mid-back).

2. Initiate the movement with a powerful retraction of the scapular muscles, spreading of the chest, and bringing the shoulders back. The action of bringing the scapula together, spreading the chest and bringing the shoulders back are simultaneous. At the full extent of the motion the scapula should be pinched together as much as possible, and the upper back tightly arched. There is very little bicep in this when done correctly and it is a very powerful and quick pull.

3. Go back to the starting position under control.

Every once in a while you may be bringing in a bit of lower back to get a hard rep done and in the more advanced stages of training you'll probably have more of this. This is an example of natural, and sometimes necessary, 'cheating' in strength training, as such a small cheat can help you in various ways, albeit not predictably and consistently..which is one reason, among many, we don't do it all the time! Most of the time, concentrate on doing it strictly.

Rows As Posterior Chain Training

Here is another reason people have given me for doing the dynamic row. Actually it's a couple different reasons which are related. When you do strict barbell rows, one of the main limiting factors is the endurance of the lower back. The lower back, especially with higher volume, must support the load isometrically for long periods of time, while you're performing the rows. Since rows are usually done with moderate to high volume, not only do we easily reach the end of the lumbar's endurance, but we can easily reach the end of its supportive capacity, especially given acute or chronic "fatigue" from the rowing that came before or all the other work the back is doing.

Now, I know I said that this exercise uses flexion/extension of the thoracic, not the lumbar. But that is only one version of it. I am describing to you what I have seen and the reasoning I've been given.

So, what happens is people figure the way to fix the back is make it do more work. Therefore, they bring the back into the movement. They want to increase the strength of the lower back using barbell rows! There are some problems with that. Static endurance that was the limiting factor, not extension strength, which tends to be very great in the erector for the most part. So they are barking up the wrong tree with that idea.

Also, ironically, when your lower back gives out during barbell rows, and starts to round into flexion, in order to feel like you are getting a complete rep, you might tend to hitch up with the lower back, creating much the same type of movement that is recommended/used with dynamic rows. So, it's all connected.

Rows to train your lower back, then? Silly. Rows are a silly and inefficient way to train the lower back, not to mention requiring you to repeatedly flex and extend it under load. Fact is you may be able to take a lot more of that then you've been told, but I wouldn't test fate. I think I heard that was bad for you (you guess which one).

Since as much as 70% of your training should be posterior chain, I see absolutely no reason to use rows to train the PC or the 'lower back' in any way. Likewise As I pointed out, if your back is healthy then the reason "regular" rows become hard on the back is a lack of local muscular endurance. I might also point out that when it comes to most of the big lower body stuff you do, local muscular endurance in the lower back is what you NEED. Your back helps to keep you in a stable position during those things which is a function of endurance, not to move you up and down.

But How do You Prepare Your Back for Barbell Rows

Ah, now we get into some real controversy! You see, there are some yahoos out there who shout about how real men only do barbell rows. Everything else is an easy row and is for sissies. Except they use another word, starts with a P.

You want to know how I would help you deal with your back not being able to handle all the barbell rows? I'd tell you to switch to another row where your back wasn't a limiting factor. Because from my perspective, the purpose of rows are to train the mid/upper back as a supportive exercise to the big, primary lifts. Nothing more. I don't see the "row" as a means in itself. What is a row, exactly? I don't care. I really, really don't. I don't care about whether the lower back can handle a bunch of barbell rows. I care about whether it can handle a bunch of squats. Am I repeating myself?

Since so much of our training is posterior chain oriented in some fashion including strength and endurance work for the lower back when necessary, it is really a loss of focus to worry about your lower back, your hips, your hams, or any of that in regards to rows since all that is well covered.

by EricT

Aspartame gets such bad press and is the subject of a very intensive misinformation campaign. The myths about this non-nutritive sweetener are so ingrained that I doubt I can change many minds with this post. Well, that's okay. Why should I care whether you avoid aspartame? There is certainly nothing wrong with that. But wallowing in ignorance is an invitation to being easily victimized by money-grabbing gurus.

They are very quick to tell you what is poisoning you, while they are also telling you how, for a fee, they can fix you. If there is one thing I cannot stand its cranks telling us how "they" are lying to us…while they lie to us. Do I care about aspartame and consider it a victim? Of course not. What I do care about is scare-mongers preying on our emotions and gullibility.

I'm going to cover some basic information and then give you a link to a paper, on which I will expand with more detailed information.

When Was Aspartame Invented?

Aspartame was invented in 1965 by James Schlatter, who was a chemist for G.
D. Searle and Company, now a subsidiary of Pfizer. Schlatter was not trying to make a sweetener, but was instead working on an ulcer drug. While working with aspartame, it is said he accidentally got some on his fingers and when he licked his fingers to pick up a piece of paper he noticed a very sweet taste. He figured the sweet taste may have been from the aspartame, so he tasted some and voilà, a highly successful and highly maligned sweetener was born.

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Aspartame was reported as a sweetener in 1969 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. It is now distributed under several names, including Nutrasweet and Equal.

When Was it Approved for Use?

It was approved for use by the FDA in 1981.

How Does Aspartame Compare with the Sweetness of Sugar?

Its about 200 times as sweet as table sugar (sucrose). However, it has a slightly bitter aftertaste.

Diet Coke is Readily Associated with Aspartame
Being one of the first to use it and the number one
selling diet soda in the world.

How is Aspartame Produced?

Aspartame is produced by combining two common amino acids: phenylalanine and aspartic acid. I'd like to stress that these amino acids are COMMON. They are found in most of the protein foods we eat. The phenylalanine in aspartame is modified by the addition of a methyl group. Its chemical name is N-(L-α-Aspartyl)-L-phenylalanine, 1-methyl ester. You may read, from one source or another, that there are other things that the makers "sneak in" and that these add to the danger of aspartame, but these accusations are difficult to confirm. When I confronted an anti-aspartame zealot about their proof of these accusations, the response I got was the typical "prove there is not anything else in it." The burden of proof is on the person making the accusation and although it is usually close to impossible to prove a negative, in this case all he has to do is send off a sample to an independent lab, out of pocket, and wait for the results. I won't hold my breath.

Can Aspartame be Absorbed Into the Bloodstream?

No. It must be broken down into its constituent components. The primary breakdown products are the two aminos it is made from, phenylalanine and aspartic acid. Some free methanol is also released.

What is the ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake) of Aspartame?

According to the FDA the ADI for aspartame is 50mgs per kilogram of body weight. So, if you weigh about 75kgs, that would take about 20 cans of diet soda. If you drink that much, you've got a diet soda habit, for sure.

Why is There a Warning on Diet Soda Cans About Phenylketonurics?

Diet drinks which contain aspartame must bear the following health warning: "Phenylketonurics: Contains Phenylalanine."

This has led many to jump to the conclusion that phenylalanine is poisonous. Why else would they put a warning on about it on a label? Well, because it is dangerous to some people who have a very rare disease known as phenylketonuria.

Phenylketonuria, or PKU for short, is an inherited condition that affects about one in 15,000 people. It is usually diagnosed at birth by a heal prick test known as the Guthrie test. People with the condition lack the enzyme, phenylalanine hydroxylase, necessary to deal with the amino acid phenylalanine.

Normally, the phenylalanine hydroxylase enzyme acts to convert phenylalanine to tyrosine. Lacking this enzyme, those with PKU can build up high levels of phenylalanine in their blood. The elevated levels of phenylalanine can cause damage to the developing brain of a child, resulting in brain damage and mental impairment. Also, the fact that the amino is not converted to tyrosine causes a lack of tyrosine in the body. Tyrosine is needed to make melanin, which is the dark brown pigment in the body (skin, eyes). PKU babies will tend to have blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin.

Packets of Nutrasweet, Sweet-n-Low, and Sugar
are ubiquitous in restaurants across the U.S.
Image by Steve Snodgrass via flickr

PKU babies are normal at birth because the mother's body handles the phenylalanine. They start developing symptoms when they are fed and phenylalanine enters their system. The results, down the road, can be devastating. IQ's of less than thirty are common and they can have a lack of interest in other people, along with other cognitive and physical problems. Seizures can occur and they often suffer from bad eczema.

Once screened and detected, which usually occurs after 5 days or so, a baby with PKU must be put on a special low phenylalanine diet, which initially is a special formula made from beef serum. Later, high protein foods must be restricted, along with certain other phenylalanine containing foods, which includes anything containing aspartame. Levels of the amino are monitored and the special diet can often be discontinued in adolescence, unless high levels are detected again or symptoms are noticed. With proper diet, those with PKU can live normal lives.4

Phenylalanine poses no danger to anyone without PKU. However, in order to develop PKU, an individual must inherit the defect from both parents. Those who only inherit the defect from one parent are PKU carriers and known as PKU heterozygotes. These individuals have an impaired ability to metabolize phenyalanine but otherwise are normal. It is not recommended that PKU heterozygotes consume a special diet. However, there has been fear that aspartame could represent a particular danger to these individuals. Studies have not shown there to be any danger from aspartame for PKU heterozygotes, either short or long term.1,5

Most high protein foods contain much much more of the amino than a diet soda or other diet drink does. There is a particular concern among parents about the supposed harm of phenylalanine from aspartame in their children's diet. Keep in mind that since children are rapidly growing, they already take in a much higher proportion of phenylalanine than adults do. For all of us, there is a significantly higher amount of phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and methanol from the rest of our diet than there is from aspartame.

Exaggerated Claims About the Harmful Effects of Aspartame

See Aspartame and the Internet, published by The Lancet in 1999. Here are some further details of the particulars, excluding the supposed dangers of phenylalanine, which we've covered:

Methanol

As mentioned, aspartame breaks down into its constituent amino acids and methanol (methyl alcohol). The methanol content is approximately 10% by weight in aspartame, but it is an abundant naturally occurring compound found in the foods, including fruits, you eat, and fruit juices. Many claim that the methanol in aspartame is converted to formaldehyde which is broken down to formic acid. The danger from these trace amounts are greatly exaggerated. What these fear-mongers don't tell you is that methanol is a very common breakdown product from food and drink, usually in much larger amounts.

A can of diet soda with aspartame will yield about 20mg of methanol. Compare that to 40mg from the same volume of fruit juice. Except tomato juice gives 4 to 5 times the amount, 120mg for the same volume. Or, how about 60 to 100mg from an alcoholic beverage.

That's nothing. I know. Well, how about some other examples?

*One egg: 300mg of methanol
*One glass of milk: about 500mg of methanol
*A big old hamburger: 900mg of methanol

You'd have to drink a lot of diet soda to derive as much methanol as you do from these other things. And yet, even if you over-indulge, these chemicals are quickly broken down and excreted.

Methanol, when ingested, is quickly oxidized to formic acid. Formic acid can be toxic to the body in large amounts. This can occur if the production of formic acid exceeds the oxidation of formic acid. It has been estimated that the amount of methanol needed to produce these toxic amounts of formic acid is 200 to 500mg per kilogram of body weight. This is a huge amount. Let's say you weigh only 130 pounds. You'd have to drink 240 to 600 liters of aspartame sweetened drinks at one time. Notice I stressed the at one time part. The methanol is continually oxidized to formic acid and the formic acid is continually oxidized, in very short order. If you stagger your consumption, the danger from formic acid toxicity is removed. This is not to suggest that you should drink such ridiculous amounts of diet drinks, of course. I am only illustrating the point. The equivalent of 24 liters of aspartame flavored drink for a 130lb person has been administered to individuals and there was nowhere near enough peak methanol concentration in the blood to be toxic. What's more, there was no detectable change in blood formic acid amount.

There has been no evidence of toxic effects found from the consumption of the equivalent of 17 cans of diet soda a day, for a 70kg adult. What's more, there is no increase in plasma concentrations of methanol, formic acid, or phenylalanine.

The results in infants receiving 100mg/kg aspartame resulted in peak blood methanol concentrations similar to those in adults, which suggest a similar rate of clearance.

Longer term tolerance studies of up to 27 weeks showed no evidence of methanol toxicity as measured by changes in ophthalmologic status or changes related to methanol toxicity.

The dose of methanol from aspartame is very tiny. Hell, the seemingly huge doses from these other foods are easily handled by the body, let alone the small amount from aspartame.

Aspartame Causes Many Disease and Conditions

Aspartame has been claimed to cause many diseases and health conditions. Multiple Sclerosis, lupus, Parkinsons, diabetes mellitus, Alzheimer's Disease, brain tumors. Coma! Vertigo, dizziness.

There is nothing to any of these claims. They are, in fact, quite ludicrous. The cancer claims, which of course, came from dosing rats with ridiculous amounts of the stuff, are silly, as well. The myth about cancer is not unique to aspartame. Artificial sweeteners in general are always being claimed to cause cancer yet none have been shown to. Even the cancer danger of saccharin has been overturned and saccharin containing products no longer need to carry a warning. The American Dietetic Association and the National Cancer Institute, and the American Cancer Society all concur that there is no correlation between artificial sweeteners and cancer.

I understand, of course, that you may be under the sway of a conspiracy theorist health guru who tells you that they all lie! Oh, well.

Aspartame and Seizures

The only common concern that may have a grain of truth is the claim that aspartame causes seizures. But this is not because it causes seizures out of the blue but that it can raise the threshold for seizures in those with epilepsy.

Since aspartame is chemically related to the excitatory amino acids glutamine and aspartate, and since these aminos, in large amounts, can cause seizures and neurotoxic changes, the concern has been raised that aspartame can cause seizures in those with epilepsy. However, there has been no evidence that aspartame causes seizures or neurotoxic effects when consumed in recommended (read reasonable) amounts. Also, it has been speculated that aspartame could increase phenylalanine concentrations in the brain and therefore cause a deficiency of monoamine neurotransmitters, thus increasing seizure susceptibility. This has not been found to be true. Reports claiming that aspartame caused seizures are anecdotal and there is no evidence that aspartame actually caused any seizures.

The only study to show a potentially significant alteration in neurophysiological parameters was done on children with primary absence epilepsy (sometimes called petit mal seizures), with several hours of EEG monitoring.3 In a double-blind crossover design, 40mg aspartame was used one day and a sucrose sweetened drink the next, as a placebo control. Children were found to spend more time in a 3-HZ spike-wave EEG pattern than in the placebo control. The actual amount of time was not given. Furthermore, diet was not controlled for and the choice of sucrose as a control is not without problems, as sucrose may have a positive effect on this type of EEG abnormality, so that the placebo could have been more like an actual treatment.2

Despite the lack of credible evidence, aspartame is often included in the scare books and articles about the oh so dangerous EXCITOTOXINS, along with MSG, another big bad boogeyman.

Aspartame Paradoxically Increases Appetite

There is no credible evidence that aspartame increases energy intake, changes the distribution of macronutrient intake in the diet, or results in an increase in subjective feelings of hunger. Aspartame seems to have no different affect on hunger and satiety than sugar, except that it results in a significant decrease in caloric intake. For further reading see the sources below.

Now let's look at some of the negative studies concerning aspartame. We have "effects on patients in a vulnerable population, headaches, etc.

Aspartame Effects on Depressed Patients

This study, called "Adverse reactions to aspartame: double-blind challenge in patients from a vulnerable population" was written by Ralph G. Walton, et al. Although the study authors recruited 40 people with unipolar disorders and a similar number of people without any history of depression. They claim the study was halted after only 13 patients completed the study because of the severity of reactions within the group with a history of depression. Only 11 of those 13 reported on actually finished taking all their capsules. Even though the study was never complete and the number of participated was exceedingly low, the reported the results anyway because they thought they were significant.

In the end, they were left with data from 13 people. Eight of them were from the group with depression history and 5 were non-patient volunteers. Five of the depressed group were on anti-depressant drugs. Before the study began, they had a 3-day wash out period..no aspartame.
Then the study was done in two seven day periods, between which there was another 3-day no-aspartame period. The aspartame was given in pills and an identical looking placebo was used. The group was randomly divided to receive the equivalent of 30mg/kg aspartame a day, so to be equal to about 10-12 cans of diet soda a day for a 70kg person. The patients self-reported based on the occurrence of a number of symptoms, including headache, nervousness, dizziness, trouble remembering, etc.

Here is where it gets interesting and when we can see that even psychiatric scientists can become hysterical along with their patients. The abstract of the study makes it seem as if lots of patients were being so badly affected by the aspartame that the board had no choice but to pull the plug, in order to protect the participants from further unreasonable danger. But this was not actually the case. There were three patients who felt they were being "poisoned," presumable while on aspartame, although they had no way of knowing. One was one female participant, with a history of depression, who felt as if she was being poisoned while on aspartame and thought she should withdraw from the study.

There was an older PhD psychologist male with a history of recurrent major depression, who suffered a detached retina and had to be rushed to the hospital. Interestingly, he did not cease taking his capsules until into his second week on the PLACEBO.

Another patient who had felt "poisoned" got a conjunctival hemorrhage, apparently while on aspartame, although the language of the study is confusing.

It was these two ophthalmologic events, one of which occurred during the aspartame arm and one of which occurred during the placebo arm, which caused the plug to be pulled. To imply that a host of serious complications occurred in the aspartame arm which caused the study to be stopped, is stretching it a bit and seems to be designed to get us to ignore that fact that the study was never completed.

In all, two persons withdrew from the study. Even though they did not complete all the symptom reporting, they were still included in the study. Each having 3-day periods of symptom reporting. In the end, only 11 patients completed the entire study and reported symptoms for the entire 14 day period. Why is this important? Because even though the study authors had sought data from a number of people apparently close to 80, they willingly used data from ONLY 11. The two that withdrew early should NOT have been included. They thought that the negative results of 8 of those patients was "significant" because, you know, it's 8 out of 13 (but really 11). However, you cannot throw out most of the data and then assign significance to the small amount left just because you think it seems more than chance would allow. This is a misunderstanding of statistical analyses. We will never know if the data would have evened out more, as you would expect, if all the participants had been allowed to complete and report their results. So, what it comes down to is that someone got afraid of being sued because some people happened to have some medical emergencies and got some persons with a history of depression got a bit hysterical while taking a mysterious pill. There is just not enough data to conclude that the aspartame had any real affect. The study was never completed. Keep in mind that the authors admitted that most reports of behavioral or cognitive reactions to aspartame had been completely anecdotal and made the disingenuous leap to other studies that failed to replicate those (anecdotal) results had been criticized on methodological grounds and/or because of funding from the Nutrasweet company. In other words, discounting their own lapse in methodology. They further went on to say that they felt that the problem was that earlier studies had not used a "vulnerable population."

The two actual physical events cannot be traced to the aspartame. Besides these two events the symptom checklist relied on entirely subjective reporting of symptoms from a 'vulnerable' population. Let's look at it further, though, because it is interesting to behold.

Headaches

Of the patients with depression, 63% experienced headache on placebo while 88% experienced headache on aspartame. of the non-depressed volunteers, 88% had headache on placebo and 20% on aspartame. Curious. Apparently, the fact that the authors paid so much attention to data from "vulnerable" volunteers, they ignored the data from "non-vulnerable" volunteers. Makes on wonder why they included any at all. All I can get from this is "headaches happen" and I do not doubt at all that the data would not have been so significant on the vulnerable side had all the study been completed. The chart given in the study, however, does not mention the severity (as reported) of the headaches.

But wait. The percentages make it sound oh so significant, don't they. Well, 63% of the depressed patients was a total of 5 and 88% was a total of 7. So, 5 people versus 7 people. Big whoop. On the other hand, 4 nondepressed people go headache on placebo and one on aspartame. Again, big whoop. I won't bore you with every symptom. Let's just pick another one more.

Dizziness

Of the patients with depression, 13% got dizzy while on placebo. That is, um, one person. 25% got dizzy on aspartame. That is two persons. Oh my, it was an epidemic of dizziness! I mean, there is no way that two people could experience dizziness by chance! I never ever get dizzy unless I ingest poison. Oh, wait, I do.

Now, of the nondepressed volunteers, 40% got dizzy on placebo. That is two persons. And 0% got dizzy on aspartame. So, of course, you can see, that aspartame has the opposite affect on non-depressed volunteers. It cures dizziness for them. Yep.

If it seems I am doing a hatchet job, well, the study is quite silly once you see the actual numbers involved. It is hard not to find it amusing. Many unrelated symptoms were reported, such as headache, dizziness, binge eating, nervousness, feeling blue or depressed, nausea or upset stomach, bad taste in mouth, uncontrollable temper outburst, fatigue, malaise, swollen lips, facial numbness, irritability, and more. Notice that some of these symptoms overlap if you evaluate them subjectively. Yet, for instance, negative thoughts, temper outburst, and irritability counted as separate symptoms. If you are irritable, you might have negative thoughts. If you are irritable and having negative thoughts, you might have an outburst. Any of these symptoms, and the number who reported them, taken alone, would be meaningless. But the authors lumped them all together and what's more, any symptoms reported as mild or above, was included, even if it was only reported on ONE DAY of the 7 day period. The fact that any one person had any one of these symptoms at any one time, means nothing. But if you choose to lump all the symptoms together as data, suddenly you have an epidemic. Again, should more data have been collected, these trends might have continued, or they may have evened out as the number of people completing the study increased.6

Now, I can't leave this study behind without a mention of the oh so famous P-value. You see, the researchers undoubtedly got all excited about their P value of 0.01. Hey, that's better than the magical 5% threshold! I don't pretend to understand all the math involved in calculating P values, or in interpreting them, but I can almost guarantee that the study authors, as well, do not understand them. Perhaps they thought this meant the null hypothesis had only a one percent chance of being true. Which is not true. There are so many problems with P-value and its interpretation but as often happens, the authors found that a "statistically significant" finding must be clinically important. However, as I mentioned earlier, the magnitude of the effect was not even considered, and just what the "effect" was is hardly outlined in the study as so many different symptoms were mish-mashed together. So, the take home points:

• Only 11 completed the study.
• The authors reported a statistically significant result, but to obtain this result, symptom complaints across a large range of unrelated categories were included and consolidated together.
• Furthermore, two patients who had withdrawn from the study for adverse events had their data re-entered into the study.

The errors are so broad and vast that there is no point in considering this study to be of any use whatsoever.

So Many Products Contain Aspartame, Isn't This a Problem?

That is a fair question. So far, I have concentrated on diet drinks, especially sodas, containing aspartame. Soda has its own negative campaign and aspartame is one of the "ingredients" of this campaign, along with high fructose corn syrup, caramel coloring, and other components. Therefore, it made sense to me to mention diet drinks, and it is fair to say that diet drinks represent by far the largest source of aspartame in the diet. As we've seen, it would be very difficult to ingest enough aspartame from diet drinks to represent any danger to our health.

Still, there are thousands of products that contain aspartame. First, let's clear up some common confusion concerning the ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake). This amount is supposed to represent what you can safely take in day after day for a lifetime safely. It is not about what you can take in on a given day. In other words, just because you consume an amount larger than the ADI for aspartame (or anything else), on one day, does not mean you are going to drop dead. To put the ADI further into perspective, consider that, in terms of sweetness, 5omg/kg of aspartame is like a 60kg person consuming 1.3lbs (600 grams) of sugar (sucrose) in a day.

If your diet has a large proportion of aspartame containing "diet foods" you are still probably not in much danger, but it would be wise to reevaluate such a diet, because it is obviously not a balanced and healthy one. A large proportion of such products would also mean a small proportion of fresh vegetables, fruits, fish, and lean meats.

In-depth Reading on Aspartame

If you want to get down and dirty about aspartame in a book check out The Clinical Evaluation of a Food Additive: Assessment of Aspartame. You can get it used for a very low price since the many scare books from the popular press easily outsell such a comprehensive and scholarly text. Maybe you'd rather believe all the pseudoscience crap, though, as it is nice to think that if we can simply avoid some poisons we can avoid disease or other health conditions and live forever.

The Famous Nancy Markle Email

There is an email¹ that has been in wide distributions since 1997 or 98 claiming that aspartame causes a wide variety of diseases and problems, such as discussed above, and I have no doubt that this is the origin of most people's beliefs about aspartame. The email. which claims to be a talk given at a 'World Environmental Conference,' even coined the term "aspartame disease."

Since, the email has been shown to be almost identical to previous messages posted to internet Usenet groups in 1995 and 96 by the author of an internet scare campaign named Betsy Martini. Martini said that someone took the messages and added a bunch of stuff to them and sent them in an email as Nancy Markle.

It is beyond me why people believe random emails written by unknown individuals and received without warning in their inbox. This person, Nancy Markle, has never been found and, undoubtedly, does not exist. It may have been Martini, or someone else, as she claims. The claims in the email are so ridiculous that any person with a modicum of rationality should laugh at, rather than believe, the claims. But rational thought is not at a premium when it comes to scare mongering claims about the collusion of our government with big business.

How many people, when told aspartame causes cancer, bother to check with any of the organizations mentioned above, or any other medical professional, for that matter? The letter claimed that aspartame causes multiple sclerosis, which scared many people, yet did any of them bother to check with any multiple sclerosis sites or organizations. For instance, if they had checked with the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, they would have quickly been reassured. Or would they? The sad truth is that many people are quicker to believe mysterious email, because of its sensational and emotive nature, than an organization like the MS Foundation. Regardless, the senior medical director of the foundation, David Squillacote, M.D. wrote this about the email:

This series of allegations by Ms. Markle are almost entirely without foundation. They are rabidly inaccurate and scandalously misinformative.

Scandalously misinformative, in the webernet age, is damn near close to Gospel. Scandalously misinformative, if it is done right, will sell more than rational thought and scientific fact any day of the week. Here is a breakdown of some of the extraordinary claims about aspartame, which, of course, require extraordinary evidence.

Extraordinary Claims Against Aspartame Which Require Extraordinary Evidence

• Aspartame contains MORE methanol than all other foods or products. Somehow, it contains more methanol than is actually put into it.
• The 'unbound' amino acids in aspartame SPIKE the blood levels of these aminos. This has not been shown in any way to be true and it makes no sense because unbound aminos (aminos not in whole proteins) are not absorbed preferentially. To spike the blood levels you need an extraordinary amount entering the bloodstream in an extraordinary time frame. Extraordinary claims!
• Aspartame was a biochemical weapon. Needs no interpretation (this one was of course, Mercola).
• Formaldehyde poisoning is bad. Yes, that is the argument. It cannot be shown that aspartame releases more than a trace amount of formaldehyde into the body that appears for a moment before it is dealt with. Basically, the argument is that formaldehyde poisoning is bad and since you can mention formaldehyde in a discussion about aspartame…aspartame is poison.
• Aspartame has had more adverse events reported against it to the FDA than any other food ever and there is a database that the FDA holds listing 10,000 adverse reactions. Nobody has ever show this database to exist or listed any reference to it at the FDA. The only reference to it I have ever seen is, you guessed it, our Ms. Betty Martini, which you can see here saying "Identical symptoms are on a list of 10,000 consumer complaints of aspartame disease compiled by the FDA. Notice that is on the FDA website, but it is not FDA material. Anybody can send stuff to the FDA in regards to a food evaluation. In other words, there are NON FDA materials that can be found on the FDA site that claim there is a list of 10,000 adverse reactions, even though there is no proof that the FDA holds such a list, except for the word of a mysterious person on the internet (and email). Where is the list?

Before you ask, YES, the FDA does maintain a public archive of such reports called Potential Signals of Serious Risks/New Safety Information Identified from the Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS). In any given year there are are say, 1.5 to 200,000 reports from consumers and doctors entered into the database (2010 was a banner year with over 600,00) covering complaints about thousands of products. The accusation here is that the FDA willfully ignored 10,000 complaints against a SINGLE product. Now, if aspartame generated these reports in the past, and it is so widely used now, it should be generating a whole lot more reports now. So, go and find some. I know it would be hard to search through all the events posted online, but the FDA does allow you to download the reports as files. They are huge, but you can download them and then search on your computer. You should, undoubtedly, find thousands of adverse events relating to aspartame.

Comments

by EricT

There is a lot of talk about Michael Phelps and his many, many medals. Is he the greatest Olympian ever? Well, it depends on your perspective. As has been said already a thousand times, a case can be made that he is the greatest Olympian ever. But what is true of athletics in general is true of the Olympics. In fact, the Olympics is a case study in athletes with a capital A.

What is an athlete? And how do we compare one athlete to another who competes in an entirely different sport, with different needs of technical skill, energy systems, etc.? Well you can't directly compare them.

Events like the decathlon and heptathlon are sometimes supposed to find the "greatest" athlete. You have speed, you have endurance, you have power production. So, in other words, maybe the greatest athlete is one who can perform at a very great level both aerobically and anaerobically, both in terms of endurance and power, skill and discipline? This leads to the question as to whether athleticism is a generalizable concept or simply the specific level of ability within a discipline.

Call Micheal Phelps the greatest swimmer of all time, you will have a hard time finding good counter-arguments. But what if you think that the greatest should be one who has the greatest endurance? There are a few swimming events that even Phelps could not do well in. And could he do open water long distance?

You are getting my point here, I'm sure. But now that I've brought up different swimming events, remember that not all sports give an athlete the opportunity to win so many medals.

And then there is the viable age. You see, Phelps could keep swimming. He doesn't HAVE to retire. He could still be swimming into his thirties.

Swimming is not quite as punishing to the body as say, gymnastics. Why do we tend to see new gymnastic athletes at every Olympics? Because your viability as a gymnast can be as little as 3 to 4 years! Some longer, sure, but you're not going to find many gymnastic Olympians having competed in a the number of Olympics that Phelps has competed in. Just so we're clear, any high impact activity has a shorter range of viability.

Phelps holds up yet another gold medal.
More opportunity plus longer potential career
gives a swimmer ample potential to win medals.
Phelps lived up to that potential.

While I'm on the subject, the peak of a female gymnasts career can be even shorter than for males, because of the body changes that young females experience, which changes their bodies and their center of gravity. Diet and training can "hold off" these changes for a while, but this has consequences. The need to keep body-fat below the threshold to begin menstruation is one such example. The pressure this can put on a young female athlete cannot be underestimated. Even without these changes, the extreme forces the body encounters will not allow you to compete for extended numbers of years at an elite level. You can think of gymnastics as a contact sport. Except the body does not make violent contact with another player but with the floor, beam, horse, etc. And not all that contact is controlled and absorbed. Violent crashes take their toll, and so do controlled ones.

The Story Of Kurt Thomas - Gymnastics is for the Young

You may not know the story of Kurt Thomas. If you saw the movie Gymkata, though, you've seen him. A fantastic and promising gymnast, he was the epitome of what was to become the modern male gymnast: small, compact, great agility and strength. And, he tended to land on his feet like a cat. Kurt was 5'5" and about 130lbs at his full adult size. He came along just when it was becoming clear that this kind of small, compact and powerful stature was the ideal for a gymnast, instead of a large, heavily muscled poser.

The famous trick that we used to always see on the pommel horse, the "Thomas Flair," was invented by Kurt (he also did it on the floor). Another floor exercise move was also named after him: the Thomas salto. He was set to be a phenomenon. He already was, in fact. He made it to the 1976 Montreal Olympics and was sure to win the gold. But he tore some ligaments in his right index finger a few days before the games, and ended up twenty-first in the all-around. A devastating setback, but he went on to win the floor in the World Championships of 1978, the first American in 46 years to win on an international stage. Then, in 1979, he took the gold for high bar and floor; and silver for parallel bars and pommel. And he won silver for all-around. America was back on top after over 40 years of stagnation. Thanks to Kurt.

Kurt Thomas performs the Thomas Flair

He was set to hit the 1980 Olympics with a bang. Then entered President Carter. Carter boycotted the Olympics over the Soviet refusal to pull out of Afghanistan. And the Olympics went on in Moscow without America. And without Kurt. He retired. Did a fairly bad but entertaining movie. Some shows. Some commentary. He coached. But he was bitter and disappointed, as anyone would be. He lost his dreams and in the bitter aftermath he even lost his wife. He announced a comeback for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, where he would be 36 years old.

Thirty-six is old for a gymnast. A swimmer, like Phelps, could have a chance. A weightlifter could do it. But Kurt hurt his ankle, shoulder, and wrist during the trials. He finished 16. Not a happy story for a gymnast, but gymnastics is a sport for the young. The bright-side is that he helped usher in the new-age where America was competitive in gymnastics once again.

Of course, there are no rules and it is not unheard of for a gymnast to be competitive into their thirties. In fact, Oksana Chusovitina, of Germany, competed in these London Olympics at 37. She placed fifth in the individual vault. There is also the veteran gymnast of Bulgaria, Jordan Jovtchev, who is 39, but he only trains the rings.

Taking that into consideration, it would be hard to say that a great gymnast was not as good an athlete as someone like Phelps, wouldn't it? And the same can be extended to every sport, where the specifics of the sport provide a different number of opportunities to win awards and a shorter or longer amount of time in which it is possible to compete at an elite level.

Now, I do not think there is anything wrong with saying that you think a certain person is the greatest athlete ever. Just remember that it is subjective and there are many variables. Yes, I think Phelps is one of the greatest athletes of all time. But there can never really be a "greatest" athlete.

How Many Gold Medals Could an Olympic Weightlifter Win?

Not as many as Phelps since they can only win up to three per Olympics. So, a better question is, how many times can a weightlifter be an Olympic champion? History tells the tale:

Dimas Pyrros, of Greece, who is certainly one of the best there ever was, won gold in three Olympics:

1992 Summer Olympics, Barcelona, Spain
1996 Summer Olympics, Atlanta, Georgia
2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney, Australia

Naim Suleymanoglu, from Bulgaria but of Turkish descent, also won three, two in the same games as Pyrros:

1988 Summer Olympics, Seoul, Korea, competing for Turkey
1992 Summer Olympics, Barcelona, Spain
1996 Summer Olympics, Atlanta, Georgia

Kakhi Kakhiashvili, born in Georgia to Greek and Georgian parents, is another great three timer:

1992 Summer Olympics, Barcelona, Spain
1996 Summer Olympics, Atlanta, Georgia
2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney, Australia

Halil Mutlu, of Bulgaria, is fourth but probably not last (lifts for Turkey)

1996 Summer Olympics, Atlanta, Georgia
2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney, Australia
2004 Summer Olympics, Athens, Greece

All of these gold medals say nothing of the numerous other championship titles these lifters won, and the world records they set. Before you think these are anomalies, there are also at least 13 or more lifters (I am not exactly sure) that have won two Olympics. That's not too shabby, either. The first woman to do this was Chen Yanqing of China in 2004 and 2008.

Kazakhstan's Ilya Ilyin, just successfully defended his 2008 title, winning the gold again, breaking two world records, and just being an all-around bad-ass (94kg class). Could he do a three-peat? Sure looks like it.

Ilya Ilyin made it look easy.

If you cared to do some reading, you'd find that weightlifting champions have long and storied careers, even when you do not consider the Olympic games. I just gave you some highlights, we could go at this all day.

How Does this Relate to Maximal Strength

Sadly, there is no maximal lifting competition in the Olympics. Powerlifting would have liked to be included. At first, the reasons for not including powerlifing were complete bunk, such as:

• Powerlifting does not require enough technical skill, i.e. is not "athletic." Well, rowing a boat isn't exactly rocket science either. How about riding a horse around? I mean really? Each of them requires some skill, but the level of technical skill required is clearly not a factor in Olympic inclusion.

• Powerlifting just wasn't popular enough internationally. Well, that used to be true, but now, it's probably safe to say that more people follow powerlifting than Olympic weightlifting and many many countries have lifters.

• I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but I'm sure there was some special interest involved.

These first three reasons are not really valid anymore. And I don't know whether number three ever was. It would be weird to have two sports with three lifts, but I do not think it would be "confusing" like many have suggested. There are, however, other practical reasons:

• Meets take forever.

• Just what the hell is parallel, anyway? Point being, little consistency between organizations.

• Separate sport for props and supportive gear and non-supportive "pure" lifting? Nobody who competes in the Olympics uses props and artificial aids. Bench shirts, squat suits, etc. would have to go, at a minimum, in order for the sport to ever by in the Olympics.

• Name makes no sense. Power? If it's not power, what should it be called? History has largely decided that the oh so haughty "fast lift" crowd has gotten their grasp on the words strength and lifting.

Now, before I get the typical angry response: "Weh, I'm so sick of people putting down powerlifting because of the gear, weh" let me say something: I don't care. I do not care if people want to use all this stuff. It really makes no never-mind to me. Do what you want. Lift how you like. But don't whine about not being the in the Olympics if you're unwilling to lift without special gear. Do you think they would let rowing team use tiny outboard motors? Hey, it's a tiny motor, it hardly does anything and you have to know how to use it just right…If powerlifting really wants to be an Olympic sport, then the governing bodies will do what is necessary, which would mean making it a more "pure" sport that does not rely on artificial aids.

The sport served its own ticket on that score, I'm afraid. If it had been separated out from Olympic Weightlifting early on things may have been different. There used to be many other lifts, not all of which were the fast lifts. But that did not happen and powerlifting emerged as a separate discipline and went down a road that is not conducive to being accepted as an Olympic sport. Sorry to anyone that may piss off but many changes would have to be made before it ever happens.

Let's say powerlifting was an Olympic sport and you were an Olympic powerlifting athlete. What kind of Olympic career could you expect, when compared to something like swimming or gymnastics?

Most people would tend to equate it with gymnastics. That is because they equate the very heavy weights with the same kinds of forces that are involved in gymnastics. Nope. Gymnastic athletes absorb much, much greater forces. Not only gymnastics. Like I said above, any high impact activity involves extremely high forces. Higher, yes, than maximal lifting.

So would it be more comparable to swimming? A bit more, yes.

But wait. It makes more sense to compare it to Olympic Weightlifting, right?

The truth is it's hard to say. Weightlifters have competed into their 50's and beyond! Yes, at the Olympic level. And athletes competing up to and past the age of 35 is a fairly routine occurrence.

In terms of elite level viability, it would probably be safer to compare a maximal strength athlete to a swimmer, as paradoxical as this sounds. But the reasons are a bit different. A swimmer can reach "around his peak" at a fairly early age and then continue to compete into his/her thirties, and perhaps beyond, and make small improvements, even. But does it really compare. Well, look at the Olympic gold medals stats I gave above. I cannot guarantee how perfect my stats are but I can tell you they are not far off. Consider the number of gold medals available, before making your judgement. Remember, Phelps had many races in which he could win a medal. Weightlifters can win three. One for the total, one for the snatch, and one for the clean. It is not likely for a lifter to just sweep all the medals for consecutive Olympics. But that is not the point. We are talking about longevity as a champion, since we can't really compare total medals.

There is a lot more to female gymnastics
than meets the eye.

So, Phelps has been in 4 Olympics, starting in the 2000 Sydney games, when he was 15. He didn't medal there but that is to be expected. At his peak, then, we have 3 Olympics where he won golds (and other medals). Well, we see from the stats above that there have been Olympic weightlifting champions who have also won three Olympics games. So that tells us that it is possible for an Olympic weightlifter to have success for a long career, comparable to Phelps. Another thing I can tell you, and this is very simple and logical, is that the earlier a lifter begins the earlier he/she will reach their peak, and the older they begin the older they will reach their peak. That should seem kind of obvious but the point is that starting older does NOT mean you can never reach your peak and become a champion.

However, for maximal strength, it can take up to age thirty and beyond to reach your peak! Of course it depends on when your start training but similar to Olympic weightlifting, those who start younger do not automatically outstrip those who start older. You catch up.

The confusing part here is that around the age of 30 you start losing strength. That is what you've been told. Well, only if you never train. If you do train, you can keep getting stronger past thirty. And, if you only started training in your thirties, you will easily end up being stronger than when you were 20 and 25, if you play your cards right.

The point? A Olympic powerlifter could be expected to be seen in quite a few Olympics! Being able to root for your old favorite for consecutive Olympic games is always fun.

What Does this Mean for You?

I wonder if you have guessed that I wasn't really talking about the Olympics here. It's weird, but while watching athletes like Phelps can be inspiring to other athletes, it can have the opposite affect on those who have never trained or exercised. There is a perfectionistic fallacy that says, "I'll never be like him, so why even bother."

Maybe you are an older person seeing some very strong lifters and you are thinking something similar. Man, I wish I has started lifting young enough so that I could deadlift 500 like that guy.

I am not going to tell you that if you're 65 you are going to be able to deadlift that 500, if you've never lifted before. You will be more prone to injury than your younger counterparts. You will have a deficit due to muscle loss. You will have more mechanical baggage to overcome. But is it possible? You betcha. Just be careful, don't go too fast, and get some proper supervision.

For those of you who are into your thirties and maybe looking at your 40's? Same thing but, you should be able to get that 500 and it is definitely not too late to get very very strong.

A lot of people will tell me that I am being naive. Eric, they will say, people don't care about being strong. They just want too look good. You're barking up the wrong tree.

Well, to those people, I know some things about the human psyche that you do not. You see, it is inspiring and motivating to people to know that something is still possible, even if they do not wish to achieve it! You may only do strength training for "health" reasons, but if you do it while thinking that "it's too late for me to get strong" this will have psychological repercussions that will limit your engagement and you will be more likely to be one of those people who say, well, I used to lift but I switched to yoga. Don't switch to yoga because you think that you have limited possibilities, switch to yoga because you enjoy it more, it suits you better; you know, for a positive reason. The trap is that if you go into something thinking your outlook is limited, you will never enjoy it like you would if you new that so much achievement was not only possible, but likely!

Comments

by EricT

This is a continuation of the post All Important Attitudes: How They Affect our Fitness and Strength Training Pursuits

I've mentioned a certain pet-peeve statement several times in different posts, most notably in The Deadlift is not a Deadlift and Other Infectious Aphorisms, Why Fitness, Diet, Bodybuilding, and Strength Training Programs WorkTraining to Fail Part 5: Focus and Pick A Program. Man, that's a lot! This statement just really riles me up, I guess.

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The statement I am talking about goes something like this: "A bad program done with the right attitude can work better than a good program done with the wrong attitude.”

Obviously, this statement is supposed to describe how your attitude affects your success. But it is about as "arm-chair" psychology as you can get into. I think of it as the "Tinker Bell fallacy."

You remember the part in Peter Pan where Tinker Bell is near death, don't you? She says that she thinks that maybe she could get well again if only children believed in fairies. So clap if you believe in your crappy strength training program. And remember, if you don't clap, you won't get results! Tinker Bell will die.

The idea is basically that if you believe hard enough, you will get good results. People that wholeheartedly believe in something will tend to display the kind of attitude that proponents of this view expect: a gung-ho attitude.

They seem to think that a gung-ho attitude is synonymous attitude with a capital A, or in other words, its very definition. This idea really does seem to be prevalent in most of the strength training world.

I’ve seen all sorts of psycho-babble spouted by strength training experts but it all seems to come down to “don’t be a pussy” and “be very enthusiastic about the things I tell you to do."

As I've said before, this is like saying that beating your head against the wall with the proper attitude is better than stopping short of the wall with the wrong attitude.

Image by Nova May Solite

What we need to realize is that behavior is not always a good indication of underlying attitude since behavior is so very contingent on specific circumstances.

Many advocates of “boot camp” training programs feel that the behavior that they instill during such programs has permanently changed the trainees attitudes and approach to training. However it would take a much longer time and a much more intensive effort to actually achieve this kind of change.

Much of the behavior seen is simply “rising to the moment” and adapting to the social environment. Remove the social environment and you remove the stimulus that required the adaptation.

That being said, what's the motivation behind getting people to just believe in whatever it is you hand them? Well, let's say you come to me and say you just wanna have some big guns and pecs. Being a maximal-strength guy and not a bodybuilding guy, I have two choices. I can either tell you that I'm not the right guy for you or I can put you in a box I am more comfortable with, and then try to convince you that if you just approach it with the right attitude, it will work for you.

So, you think telling a guy that just wants big guns and pecs that he needs to work on a big back squat is far-fetched. Well, it is not. There are people out there right at this moment handing out beginner strength training routines with an emphasis on back squat, even to guys who really just want to bodybuild. Just clap your hands if you believe that squatting twice a week will give you big guns and pecs. Tinker Bell lives!

The point, as I hope is clear, is that no amount of gung-ho feeling will make a bunch of back squats (and maybe a bit of bench press) magically grow your arms and chest to huge proportions. The training you do must fit your specific goals.

Does it sound like I am saying it is not a great idea to go to a maximal strength person about your bodybuilding? Yes, that is what I am saying. If you assumed that it also would not be a great idea to go to a physique guy about your deadlift total, you're getting the idea.

Remember, Peter Pan was for children! Don't worry, every time you say, "I don't believe in this program," it will not cause a strength training expert somewhere to fall down dead.

Comments

by EricT