theory Archives • Page 3 of 5 • Stronger by Science

YOUR Drug-Free Muscle and Strength Potential: Part 1

What you’re getting yourself into: 3,300 words, 11-22 minute read time Key Points: 1) Drug-free muscular potential is influenced by the size of your frame. 2) Strength is a function of neural factors and muscular factors. Once you’ve hit a point of diminishing returns for the neural factors, your strength potential will be determined by how much muscle you can build. 3) Based on a few simple calculations, you can get a pretty good idea of your muscular […]

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Who’s The Most Impressive Powerlifter?

What you’re getting yourself into 5300 words, 17-35 minute read time Key Points 1) The most common method people use to compare relative strength is strength/bodyweight ratios. However, this standard is horribly flawed. 2) The formulas used to compare relative strength in powerlifting (most notably the Wilks formula) have their own issues. The two biggest problems with the Wilks formula are that it’s not regularly updated, and it’s notably biased against middleweight lifters. 3) Allometric scaling is an

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How to Prevent Muscle Strains

Key points A muscle strain occurs when the strain energy the muscle is forced to absorb exceeds the strength of the tissue. Two-joint muscles are more susceptible to muscle strains, and nothing increases your likelihood of a strain more than a previous strain in the same muscle. Proper warm-ups, developing adequate mobility, and avoiding excessive fatigue decrease your risk of a muscle strain. Background Few things are more annoying than injuries. Your training is going well,

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Steroids for Strength Sports: The Disappointing Truth

What you’re getting yourself into: ~5,600 words, 18-37 minute read time Key Points: Many people think steroids make a massive (several-fold) difference in terms of competitiveness in strength sports. They are wrong. Other people (somehow) think that steroids don’t make much of a difference. They are also wrong. Steroids DO help people gain muscle mass and absolute strength at a much faster rate, but the increase in muscle mass generally means you’re forced to move

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Training to Failure, or Just Training to Fail?

What you’re getting yourself into ~3300 words, 11-22 minute read time Key Points 1. When comparing a WIDE array of training variables (number of reps, rest periods, rep speed, and loading), muscle growth is the same if sets are taken to failure. 2. Training to failure is likely safe. Or, at the very least, there’s no direct evidence that it’s particularly dangerous. 3. Training to complete failure likely isn’t necessary to maximize growth – you can

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The New Approach to Training Volume

What you’re getting yourself into: ~3500 words 12-24 minute read time Key Points 1. Studies across a variety of populations have demonstrated that muscles grow in a very broad variety of rep ranges. 2. When training protocols are matched for number of sets, even with very different training volumes, they generally result in similar levels of muscle growth. 3. Gains in strength and muscular endurance are still very much tied to the rep range used. 4.

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Why Cookie-Cutter Solutions Often Fail: Context

It can be hard to sieve through all the fitness information on the Internet. Picking out the wheat from the chaff is tough, and to make it worse, even a lot of the good information out there is misunderstood and misused by those who access it. The issue is that we are obsessed with content, what the information is saying, but rarely give any thought to the context in which the information is being given.

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Marine Corps lightweight powerlifter completes a squat.

Hamstrings: The Most Overrated Muscle for the Squat 2.0

What you’re getting yourself into 2,100 words 7-14 minute read time. If you’d rather watch than read, there are both a video and a graphic covering the same information at the end of the article. Key Points 1. In general, the body utilizes single-joint muscles before two-joint muscles really kick in. This makes movement more efficient. 2. At the bottom of the squat, overactive hamstrings make the movement unnecessarily difficult, so squatting in a manner

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Complete Guide to Bar Speed Trackers

In the last year, we hit the tipping point of sensor technology in the weight room, and finally those in the strength game have something for them. For decades, the endurance crowd enjoyed their toys, specifically GPS watches and heart rate monitors, but the average gym rat that takes his or her lifting seriously was always an afterthought. It made sense since more people will show up and “participate” in a 5K road race, but

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Succeed Every Day: A Complete Guide to Habit-Forming

“We are what we repeatedly do.” Aristotle gave us this insight into habits over 2,000 years ago and it remains true. A habit is a response to a contextual cue that we have developed over time by giving the same response to the same contextual cue. In other words, a habit is something we repeatedly do. We carry out many habits every day without thinking about them. Do you take the same walk to work

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Stress: Why Obsessing About The Stuff That Doesn’t Matter Can Mess You Up

The following is an excerpt from my new book “The Art of Lifting.” To see how “Science of Lifting” takes this topic in more depth, you can check out my article on rippedbody.jp which is essentially another except. This breakdown – general introduction to a topic in “Art,” and delving deeper in “Science” – is what this ebook bundle is all about. Stress is a very huge, very important topic. If you’re interested in it, I’d

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Avoiding Cardio Could Be Holding You Back

What you’re getting yourself into ~3100 words 8-12 minute read time Key Points Lifting heavy things is more metabolically taxing than most people realize. Most people think of weight training as a purely anaerobic enterprise, but the majority of the energy you use to train is produced by your aerobic energy system. Cardiovascular training can improve your recovery between sets and workouts, and won’t interfere with strength or muscle gains if you do it correctly.

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