The Quick and the Dead Page 5
RSA researchers consistently kept arriving at 30 seconds of total sprint time within a series. Performance stayed at a high level up to that point—e.g., only an eight-to 10-percent peak power decrease after five six-second velo sprints done every 30 seconds. However, as soon as the half-a-minute threshold was breached, the speed and the power rapidly tanked and acid quickly accumulated.
The above eight-to 10-percent power drop-off is awesomely small compared with a 40-to 50-percent decline after a single 30-second velo sprint. And since there is a linear relationship between the exercise intensity (power) and the rate of CP depletion, this means we are able to run the CP system hot for a full 30 seconds in a series, not just the first 10 seconds of a 30-second bout.
However, a single 30-second sprint is superior in one aspect. It achieves a near-total CP exhaustion—a series of several bursts totaling 30 seconds still reaches an impressive nearly three-quarter CP depletion.
And an awesome one-third of ATP depletion.
This is far more impressive than it sounds. Your body is very protective of its ATP. No matter how hard you push, you cannot deplete it by more than 20–40 percent.
On our balance sheet, we have depleted ATP and CP as rapidly as possible, depleted ATP as deeply as possible, and CP significantly. Mission accomplished.
Once I was convinced the numbers added up to fit the mitochondrial biogenesis in the fast fibers model, I had another break. I came across an Iranian-American-Estonian study—does that sound like something out of a Tom Clancy novel?—that literally applied the RSA load parameters identified by the authors mentioned earlier to the training of advanced Iranian wrestlers, without speculating about the underlying cellular mechanisms:
Thirty-five-meter sprints (about five seconds)
Six sprints per series
Ten-second rest between sprints
Three minutes of rest between series
Three to six series per session
Two times a week
In just four weeks, these top athletes made great improvements on many fronts. Their time to exhaustion at a given speed increased by almost a third. Their peak and mean power on the 30-second veloergometer test significantly improved. Even their VO2 max went up by more than five percent, which is a lot for the conditioning machines that wrestlers are, especially from a protocol that is not overly demanding on the “cardio.”
The athletes’ testosterone and the testosterone-to-cortisol ratio increased significantly, while cortisol tended to decrease. This is great news not just for muscle building, but more importantly, for health.
I applied this protocol literally to two-arm overspeed eccentric kettlebell swings and tested it with the help of the StrongFirst team. All subjects, ranging from a nine-year-old girl to experienced fighters, had great results.
The Finishing Touches
I continued analyzing the metabolic events and experimenting with different set lengths.
When the chosen exercise is a sprint, its duration has to be limited to less than six seconds, the acceleration phase. Once the athlete has reached the top speed, no matter how high it is, power leaves the building. Without acceleration—a change in velocity—there is no force and thus, no power.
Sprinters typically take about six seconds or 50–60 meters to accelerate to top speed from a static start. Game athletes need 30–45 meters and non-athletes even less than that. This means the 40-yard dash from American football fully qualifies as a power event, but only a fraction of a 100-meter sprint does.
This under-six-second time limit does not apply to non-locomotion exercises like swings and pushups: there is a new acceleration in every rep. We experimented with different set and rep combinations totaling 20 reps, about 30 seconds of swings. The most effective and user-friendly options turned out to be 5/4 and 10/2, where the first number is reps and the second represents the sets:
5/4
Five reps per set
One set every 30 seconds
Four sets per series
10/2
Ten reps per set
One set every 60 seconds
Two sets per series
We tinkered with different rests between sets within a series and chose the classic guideline for alactic interval training by Profs. Edward Fox and Donald Matthews: a 1:3 work-to-rest ratio. Recall that within a series, we are doing intervals rather than repeats; hence, the recovery is supposed to be incomplete.
We stayed with five series of 20, a total of 100 reps based on the Russian training guidelines advising to limit the CP system training volume to less than two-and-a-half minutes per session.
A Strong Endurance™ seminar in Italy.
From the RSA research, we knew the rest between series of RSA sprints must be no less than three minutes—and preferably four minutes and even longer.
The 5/4 protocol is aimed at maximizing the rate of fuel burn and the 10/2 at a deeper depletion. Higher acidity in the latter is also supposed to deliver a hypertrophy WTHE.
We tested extensively. Both versions yielded excellent performance results, similar for both set and rep schemes. As predicted, 10/2 quickly built muscle, while 5/4 did not. There were also reports of gentlemen rapidly bulking up 10 pounds on 10/2 and losing all this new mass after switching to 5/4—without any loss of power or endurance.
These are peak power readings for an experienced girevik doing the Q&D protocol with 10/2 x 5 of two-arm 40kg swings and pushups. Note that the swing peak power does not deteriorate toward the end. In fact, it tends to go up slightly, presumably because of the lack of a warm-up. In the pushup, power dips, but within an acceptable range. The subject commented that the pushup power would have undoubtedly taken a steep dive had he done one more series.
Gains in power were expected and so were improvements in sport-specific endurance in games and combat sports. But some WTHEs were totally out of the blue.
Matthew Flaherty, SFG/SFB/SFL, did a 100-plus-mile mountain bike ride in Colorado. Later, with no changes in his training other than an addition of six weeks of 033 swings twice a week, he did another ride, the Tour de Steamboat:
As you can see, the second ride was longer and steeper, yet the rider completed it four hours earlier!
Sean Sewell, a Colorado mountain man who was introduced to Strong Endurance™ protocols by Eric Frohardt, SFG, writes:
There were several programs in the Strong Endurance manual, but the two that jumped out at me were 033C and 044[ 3]. They are beautiful in their simplicity and relatively easy to do. At first, I was not used to the added rest time required in these programs, but before long I understood its benefit.
After a week, I could already feel the difference in my practices in the gym. My resting heart rate went down for the first time in years. My strength went up quickly. I was not tired after practice and I had more energy. At the end of the 033C and 044 protocols, the data was pretty conclusive. Resting HR went from 72 to 56; HRV went from 60s to 80s (sometimes even 90s), and strength improved quickly. I went from using 20kg to 32kg.
But surely these quick and intense practices could not positively affect hours of hiking at 12,000-plus feet. Time to put it to the test. I went to one of my favorite backcountry ski spots for a four-hour hike with a friend.
After reaching a high alpine lake, we stopped to have a snack. It was then I realized how well the Strong Endurance protocols were working. I looked at my hiking partner, who is in good shape, and he was winded, as anyone should be after a good hike. I was not fazed, though. The training works.
Part III: The Power Drills
The Power Drills of Choice
Many popular minimalist training programs are made up of three lifts. A three-legged stool is most stable and all that jazz. But why would you want a stool if you could have a Harley? Two wheels are more than enough when you are going fast.
Years ago I came to the conclusion that an ultra-minimalist program must have only two lifts: a push and a pull, or, rather, a hip hinge.
Steve Freides, Senior SFG, made a post on the StrongFirst forum entitled Two-Lift Programs:
Balance is overrated. The idea that a lifting program must touch on all the “basic human movements” is fundamentally flawed. One should move in as many varied ways as possible, at least from time to time, but that doesn’t mean heavily loading every possible movement pattern. A lifting program can do what a lifting program needs to do and only contain two lifts. A lifting program doesn’t need to be balanced—a life does.
Steve keeps his training minimalist—and gets his balance by competing in all-around lifts[ 4].
Freides holds over 20 masters’ records, world and American, in exotica such as the “Steinborn lift” and the “Inman mile.” The former is a powerlifting squat, except that it starts and ends with the bar on the platform. The lifter has to maneuver the barbell onto the shoulders with complicated body language, squat below parallel, and then respectfully return the bar to the platform in the same controlled manner as lifted. The latter is death march with 150 percent of the athlete’s bodyweight on a yoke sitting on the shoulders.
Dr. Mike Prevost agreed:
This approach can be really effective…include some Hindu pushups, bodyweight squats, yoga poses, a bit of sprinting, some flexibility work, balance work (like on a slack line), lots of walking, some practice with break falls and rolls, swimming...
Besides, given the carryover from select kettlebell exercises to many seemingly unrelated events, is your minimalist program really unbalanced?
Here is how I arrived at the winning one-two combination for The Quick and the Dead.
For the sake of efficiency, the Q&D exercises need to involve many muscle groups and have an impressive record of wide carryover and many WTHEs.
Our drills of choice must enable maximal expression of power, which means a long range of motion (ROM) to give plenty of distance for acceleration.
This is why the kettlebell clean is not a Q&D choice: Its ROM is short. It is a better move for strength than power.
Also, unlike pure power training in which a leisurely cadence and relaxing between reps are encouraged, the WTHE-bearing Q&D drills must enable a quick tempo. High RPM are imposed by the requirement to drain ATP and CP as quickly as possible.
Understand that max power and high cadence are in conflict with each other—like the length and the frequency of a sprinter’s strides.
A boxer throwing a rapid-fire combination of punches cannot put nearly as much oomph into any one of them as into a single-focused widow maker.
A far less impressive example of high cadence draining the power are “Nazi” kettlebell snatches, where a lockout is never reached all in the name of a higher tempo.
According to our understanding of the prerequisite metabolic events, power must be prioritized over cadence. In other words, use the highest cadence possible without compromising the power or cutting the ROM.
This makes kettlebell swings and snatches uniquely qualified because they enable overspeed eccentrics.
Dr. Mel Siff explained this high-concept technique:
Instead of lowering the [weight] slowly or allowing it to drop under gravitational acceleration, deliberately pull the [weight] downward as fast as you can, stop the downward motion…as rapidly as you can…to accelerate the [weight] upward into a powerful concentric movement.
With most explosive exercises, even very fine ones like depth jumps and jerks, you are limited to 1G of downward acceleration—Earth’s gravity. Not so with kettlebell swings and snatches. An experienced SFG instructor routinely pulls over 10G with a 24kg kettlebell. For comparison, a fighter jet pilot may momentarily experience up to 9G when pulling out of a dive.
A MiG-29 fighter jet performing an extreme aerobatic maneuver, “Pugachev’s cobra.”
Overspeed eccentric swings and snatches—not content with the 1G of gravity on the way down, a seasoned hard style girevik accelerates the kettlebell up to 10G with an aggressive swimming-like arm action.
The benefits of overspeed eccentrics are awesome and many: jumping prowess, touch-and-go reactive ability, resilience, strength, even hypertrophy. Most of these have been written about; one has not.
Overspeed eccentric swings and snatches with light to moderate weights are perfect for inducing the metabolic events that spark mitochondrial biogenesis in fast fibers. They enable both max power and a very high tempo—a unique and contradictory combination, like a rapid-fire series of knockout punches.
A power drill of choice must continually load the same muscle groups.
For example, in the kettlebell swing, the posterior chain is constantly working. The hammies may be more engaged on the bottom and the glutes on the top, but neither muscle group gets much rest.
In contrast, in the snatch, the upper back and the triceps take over once the ’bell is halfway up, giving the lower body a break.
Nevertheless, the snatch more than makes up for this shortcoming with a tremendous power output over a very long trajectory—twice that of a swing. The rests the lower and upper body receive will be very brief indeed.
This is not so with the clean-and-jerk. Although it involves more muscle groups than any lift I can think of, the long cycle relays the work between muscle groups in such a way that no participant gets too smoked: dip, drive, second dip, lock out, dip, and catch. The C&J’s multistage nature slows down the cellular fuels’ depletion. It is a tremendous asset in some types of training (such as classic Soviet anti-glycolytic protocols), but it works against you when you are trying to use up your substrates ASAP.
In contrast, the one-arm “Viking” push press (VPP) meets the prerequisites, although not chosen for Q&D because it is unsuitable to many ladies. What makes the VPP superior to other kettlebell pushes is its ability to maintain a high cadence.
To perform a VPP, push press the first rep as usual, then drop the kettlebell to your chest, dip your knees to absorb the impact—and immediately shoot the ’bell up again without resetting for the next rep.
The double VPP, on the other hand, is not optimized for Q&D: The weights that are right for the quads are too light for the triceps.
In the classic push press, the additional knee dip slows the tempo.
The strict military press does not work either, as the ’bell starts flailing when the cadence picks up.
These are all great exercises, just not for Q&D.
The floor pushup is the Q&D push of choice—classic and democratic.
Parallel bar dips also worked great for the subjects whose shoulders could take this controversial movement, but since Q&D was conceived as an egalitarian “power to the people!” type program, dips did not make the final cut.
The drills of choice must have a ballistic component for the sake of anti-fragility and carryover to athletic events, professional demands, and life’s challenges. In other words, veloergometer sprints might build your mitochondria, but you will not net the collateral benefits.
The parallel bar dip is my push of choice for Q&D.
On the other hand, too much ballistic loading could spell trouble orthopedically, at least with a heavy weight such as one’s bodyweight. The Q&D drills of choice are those you can do safely for hundreds of reps a week, every week. That excludes depth jumps and, for many, all jumps. You are looking at about 10,000 reps per year and your knees and feet will not thank you.
In summary, the Q&D exercises must meet the following exacting requirements:
✓ Recruit many muscle groups
✓ Have a wide carryover
✓ Produce many WTHEs
✓ Have a long range of motion and allow a maximal expression of power
✓ Enable a high cadence without compromising the power or cutting the ROM
✓ Continually load the same muscle groups
✓ Have a ballistic component
✓ Can be done safely for hundreds of reps a week, every week
And the winners are…swings and pushups.
Ilaria Scopece, SFG/SFB:
“The hard style swing is very important for the athlete who practices a combat sport. In boxing, the impulse starts from the ground and rises along the leg; the hips rotate thanks to the glutes, the impulse propagates through the core to the upper limbs and finally moves through the upper limb that is about to strike. The swing allows you to explosively train the hip snap and the core, and the kettlebell float relates to the technique of the boxing jab.”