still dealing with chaos

As a result, I haven’t had the time to be here or to put thoughts on virtual paper as of late.
I have been working out, though.
I recently hooked my infimetric leg extension back up to the negative assist system I had long ago. I have been mixing up my workouts with infimetrics, statics, weighted exercises and, now, assisted negatives.
It was during a period of time many years ago when I had a complete line of negative assist prototypes that I made my best progress. I was carrying the most muscle mass (as well as a fair amount of body fat, I must add.) As is the case with so much of my machine building, I ended up recycling the steel from those machines into something else and divested myself of the control units and other necessary items as I moved on to the next thing. If I had held on to every piece of equipment I ever built I wouldn’t have the room to store it all but I sure wish I would have done so. I didn’t even make a decent pictorial record of most of them. When my wife or another family member discovers an old photo of one of my protos, I rejoice greatly.
Back to the negative assist device. My original intention was to make a pneumatic assist negative upload device for each exercise so that I could do straight negative training without needing a whole host of helpers to lift movement arms.
It wasn’t until I was having a discussion with a local trainer about the specifics of how it worked that I finally realized I wasn’t actually doing straight negatives with a complete offload for the positive portion of the exercise. I built exhaust constriction into the valve mechanism so that the faster you tried to lift the movement arm back into the contracted position for the next negative upload, the more resistance you encountered. The effect of this was to make it a hybrid exercise where you would have all you could handle in the positive followed by a negative upload that would release at the bottom.
There are some who contend that negatives are bad. That negatives are dangerous. That negatives will hurt you. I never had that experience with this hybrid system.
This has always made me curious. I have always responded well to negative training in spite of the warnings from others.
Flash back to seventh grade lunch. There were a group of us who would arm wrestle after eating our lunch. Just a phase we were going through. I was a puny little guy but I could beat just about anyone at arm wrestling even if they had 50 pounds on me (in seventh grade that’s more than you think!) I didn’t have that quick burst of outright strength but I always considered myself a good resistor. So much so that I could tire someone out because they wouldn’t be able to make me budge. Once they tired themselves out it was easy for me to administer the coup de grace and finish them off in relatively short order. This aggravated many a larger kid. We eventually moved on to the next lunchroom fad which had something to do with collecting milk bottle caps with all the presidents. Seems like everyone had dozens of John Adams and few had JFK.
Back to the whole negative and resistor thing. I have often wondered if there are two types of muscle initiation patterns. That of aggressor and that of resistor. I have no basis in fact for this nor do I even imagine there would be an easy way to determine or study this. It is mainly an anecdotal conjecture.
Once again, with the leg extension hooked back up to the negative assist device I feel, for the fist time in a long, long time, the actual effects of a quadriceps workout that no other form of exercise is able to evoke. I know it is dangerous to over estimate the markers of “feel” but I can’t help it. It seems to correlate with those times I have gotten the best from a workout.
I am still able to use the leg extension as an infimetric device without any interference. It is a dual function machine now. I intend to keep it that way. I am also planning on modifying my upper body infimetric machine to do the same as well.
Hopefully I will be able to keep things a bit more updated. The schedule still looks a bit too chaotic in the near future though, so no promises.
CS

more negative thoughts coming your way…

I have been thinking relative to some discussions ongoing here abou the need to clarify a bit.
It certainly seems that the whole concept of negative overload of the mythical forty percent did come out of the Nautilus camp.
Machine friction could certainly account for a larger percentage of the perceived differential between positive ad negative capacity on older equipment especially.
There have been some potential misunderstandings when someone tries to apply negatives to free weights or body weight exercises in some instances.
If the starting point for determining your negative only weight is based upon your typical weight used for a ten rep set, adding forty percent will not truly overload your negative capacity beyond what you could actually lift in a positive manner in the initial repetitions. There is usually at least that much headroom but it is effected by your overall genetic potential and profile for such things a neurological efficiency and fiber type.
If, however, you attempt to set your negative upload of forty additional percent to a one RM weight, you will then be in a position of dangerous overload thus inducing the need for bracing and cheating and all manner of counterproductive and potentially dangerous tactics.
While it is true that a very weak person will seem to benefit greatly from and eventually be able to handle more positive resistance (as in the case of the football player Arthur talked about drafted by the Bengals who could not do a single chin up before NO training) as a result of negative only training, I have a feeling that this, as much as anything, is due to neurological signalling issues in largely unused muscle tissue. If a person has disuse atrophy of any sort and has not been accessing all muscle fiber types, they may not be able to volitionally access the full potential of a muscle’s positive strength capacity. The effect of having to “hang on for dear life” that is characteristic of negative training may retrain those neural pathways to allow a functioning of the muscle once again and may do so rather quickly.
If a trainee is using an amount of weight on a negative only exercise that exceeds their ability to stop, hold and even slightly reverse the weight in the first two repetitions, that trainee is using far too much weight to properly evoke a safe negative set that will be of sufficient duration to allow for the exercise to effect the whole muscle in the exercise.

Not to be Negative or anything….

X-Force, Ren-X, Nautilus, Hammer, Med-X…
Name dropping for certain on my part. All makers of intriguing equipment and supported by some sort of exclusive protocol.
Statements are sometimes made about the absolute value of one protocol or another and it often alos includes a condemnation of anything not “theirs.”
I have had some discussions over the years about negatives and have, myself, waffled a bit on them.
Do negatives have any place in training.
Anyone who lifts a weight and then lowers it in a controlled fashion is doing negative work.
That there is any inherent ability for the negative to handle more resistance than the positive is debatable. I used to think absolutely so.
This formed the basis for the Nautilus rep protocol of 2 count, 4 count for lifting and lowering. Thing is, it was more a mistaken application based on a phenomenon caused by machine friction and not by any inherent physiological fact. There was speculation as to why it might be so but never any conclusive evidence.
But, this doesn’t mean that the negative is useless. Perhaps just misunderstood.
I think it has been highly abused by those who took the 40 percent myth to its extreme in application. This misunderstanding put a number of users in very dangerous situations.
I realized this when I began to parse what I had really been doing with my negative upload pneumatic equipment.
I was never really overloading with the equipment. What it di for me was to more effectively upload to my momentary maximum in a very flexible way. The fact that I could, if I chose to, also load the positive by trying to exhaust the cylinder as quickly as possible against a restricted exhaust, meant more that I had a tool that allowed for maximum loading at all phases of the exercise. This was not a set load but rather a flexible relative load that was able to match my momentary capabilities in much the same way that infimetrics can, only with an external source instead of a generated load as in infimetrics.
So, what is a negative if not an extreme overload based on false reasoning?
It is simply the muscle’s ability to lengthen under load. When the load is appropriate to the strength capacity of the muscle this can be done under control. It may not be easy but it can be controlled. If it can’t be controlled then it is not really a negative. It is more likely to be a dangerous overload.
Back in the Nautilus days it was necessary to upload as much as forty percent for a negative. This is a reflection of how mechanically inefficient the machines were (and are, if you still have some early machines as I do.)
So, what does any of this mean for working out?
I have been experimenting with negatives.
I have been paying attention to them both with imposed load equipment and also with static mid range upload infimetrics.
They are useful when understood properly.
Back tracking for just a moment.
One of the more effective ways of giving yourself a brutally effective negative is to use Dr. Ellington Darden’s 30-60 second chin up or dip.
If you are not familiar with this exercise I suggest you make a point to try it out. It puts together so many elements of strength training and does so with virtually no friction unless you have very creaky arthritic joints and count the friction of atmospheric air.
The point of the exercise is to do a single Chin Up (or dip) in equal cadence. If you take thirty seconds to lift yourself to a chinned position you then try to match that on the way back down. Even a skilled trainee might find this much more challenging than expected. The goal is eventually sixty seconds up and sixty seconds down. If you can do one complete, then immediately try a second. Good Luck with that. The negative portion of the exercise will be brutal. And yet, it is with a weight that is the same as what you might be able to lift for multiple repetitions at a normal cadence.
This is and has been the focus of my negative training throughout the years. Not excessive overload, but rather a controlled emphasis of the lowering portion with a weight that is near my maximum ability to lift for a single repetition.
So, logically I began to wonder what I have been missing with statics and infimetrics in the negative department.
In going back to imposed load this last month it got me thinking and re-examining the potential for variation with infimetrics.
I had been going in the direction of speed, which, of necessity, greatly decreased load but certainly had its own training effect.
In returning to statics and infimetrics (statics under the right conditions and equipment are infimetric) I have been much more focused on load and duration of each repetition attempt.
Because of the manner in which I have feedback rendered on the equipment involves a spring based scale mechanism allowing for some travel, there is potential for negative failure if understood and used properly. Each repetition can potentially be a maximum upload held to a point of negative failure. This does not take as long as one might suspect.
When you upload to your maximum, that max effort cannot be sustained for more than several seconds. Intriguing.
So, a set of ten to fifteen max upload reps with the emphasis on holding until momentary negative failure each repetition has become my mode for the last week.
I have also experimented with a slow negative on my double shoulder machine with lateral raises. I select a weight that would allow me one or two normal repetitions. I lift the weight and hold it at the top for as long as I can. Negative muscle failure is gradual and controllable and similar to the Darden protocol for dips and chins cited earlier. The reason I don’t so a thirty to sixty second lift on the double shoulder is simply because of the excessive machine friction that isn’t present in body weight based exercises.
So, negatives are not so negative after all.

Now what?!

I haven’t had much to say as of late.

 

I have finally gotten a few moments to contemplate the present state of my training as it relates to the various modes I have experimented with throughout the years.

 

There comes a moment when you reckon with all the deficiencies of thought and action.

 

This has been one of those moments.

 

As we have been moving and sorting and packing and unpacking and figuring out what is important and what is superfluous, the mind starts applying the same tests to everything else if given the chance.

 

This is what I am up against.

 

I was reviewing the pictures of what I looked like as a result of various types of training I was doing throughout the years and, hands down, the most productive phase of my training involved the period of time I was training with a negative assist line of equipment I built. This was back in the late 80′s and early 90′s.

 

I have experimented with many different modalities over time and have vacillated, at times, between traditional weight based either with machines or free weights, infimetric or akinetic, negative assist using pneumatic control devices and even a number of body weight based machines where you were essentially the weight stack.

 

The most visually noticeable improvement going by muscle mass alone occurred when I was using the pneumatic assist negative upload devices.

 

I have been dedicating my workouts for the last year to infimetric.

 

Things changed the last week.

 

Granted, this may have been the worst time to get frustrated with training as I had been, until a week ago, working seven days a week since early November. This all came crashing down when I had to have several teeth extracted but still had to keep up the work schedule. It all fell apart fast. This was during a stretch where we were also moving. I am grateful to have strong sons but it still left me with a substantial amount of heavy lifting.

 

The bottom fell out quickly and completely. I was laid up for a good week finally trying to properly recover from complications from the extractions. I lost a lot of strength and body weight in a short amount of time.

 

It gave me time to rethink a number of things regarding training, in general, and infimetrics, specifically.

 

I am not sure I can quantify how I know what I am about to say is true other than to say, I just know it by experience. I suppose that will have to suffice for now.

 

Even with a very motivated trainee, infimetrics is really only useful when using the unlimited speed of movement element of it. Slow reps with seeming upload do not do what you think they do. It pains me to say this as I have been trying to rationalize and justify infimetrics as the end all, be all.

 

I know what my baseline strength was before I started training with infimetric only last year. I was within a few pounds of the same body weight and what I have found is that certain markers of strength have decreased measurably. Most notable being a decrease in lat strength. This is very discouraging as this was always a strong suit of mine. Be it chin ups or weighted pull downs or pullovers, I always had a higher than average strength. Sitting down to do a comparison of where I was before I started straight infimetrics, I found I had lost a significant amount of strength in pull downs. This was on the same machine so whether I compared the extended movement arm version or the straight pulley strength, either one showed a decrease of somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty five percent of gross strength. Back has been the hardest muscle group for targeting with infimetrics so this makes sense to me.

 

Regardless of how I attempted to load up the exercise, whether fast reps or slow reps, I have to now confess that the depth of effect was never as effective as I had hoped.

 

Back to the drawing board.

 

I still think that, as an adjunct, infimetrics is potentially a very useful tool.

 

I also think I need to get back to weight based training for a time to see if I respond to that or if I am dealing with limitations that are based more on my health difficulties than on modality of training.

 

I am also toying around with my one piece of equipment I kept multifunctional. I still have pneumatics hooked up to my infimetric leg extension machine but have to trouble shoot the control system so that it functions properly once again.

 

The negative assist training I refer to was not, as I had contended in the past, straight negative. Strange of me to not realize this until one day when I was explaining exactly what I was doing as opposed to what I was intending to do.

 

My intention, with the equipment, was to have a negative upload phase followed by a complete off load phase until back in the contracted position to start again with a negative upload.

 

In truth, what I was actually doing was controlling the off load so that you had to force the positive movement to exhaust the air in the cylinder against a certain amount of resistive exhaust. The faster the movement attempted, the more resistance in the positive. You could just stop trying until the air exhausted and then lift back into contracted position with almost no resistance but the rest phase would have been too long. As practiced, the positive was maximum speed (but not fast, mind you) and the negative was a nearly stoppable upload for the first few reps. As fatigue set in, the negative phase became more akin to a standard negative upload but never really an out of control runaway contraction.

 

This is all interesting but I am a long way off from having a complete line of functioning negative upload equipment as I had twenty five years ago.

 

So, for now, I am going to train in a more traditional manner. It may disappoint some of you that I am not going to do a traditional HIT based routine.

 

I spent many years training that way and training others that way. I still have a lot of living I plan to do and I do not tolerate the whole rush factor train to oblivion model I spent years pursuing.

 

I have a particularly hard time by the second or third day post workout with not doing something physically active, challenging and hard.

 

I am going to train on a split routine for a time just because I never have.

 

I am already a week into it and actually feel better than I have in a long time.

 

It seems to help me regulate my appetite and blood sugar much more evenly through the course of the week and I am even sleeping better.

 

I have a Nautilus Duo Squat modified for leg press, a Nautilus double Shoulder machine, a Nautilus Hip and Back that I can also use for Ab work because of some simple modifications I have made. I have a multi unit that allows me to do lat work and chest work as well as triceps extensions. I have a prototype bicep curl machine and a whole bunch of free weights to accommodate for any other exercises I deem necessary to include.

 

I hate to say it but I think the idea of a silver bullet approach has finally died in my mind.

 

I kept reaching for the perfect paradigm, the ideal protocol with the ultimate equipment only to come away disappointed after a time at virtually every step of the way.

 

I started this whole journey nearly forty years ago out back by the barn with a simple weight bench and a bunch of free weights with a couple of childhood buddies. I was always curious enough to try to build a better mousetrap and suppose I will never give that up. I spent some time this afternoon tweaking the bicep curl unit I am going to use and it could serve as the basis for a nice little unit should anyone ever be interested. Simple and efficient. But I am not so sure there will ever be a silver bullet regardless of the hyperbole the marketing folks will send our way. The ultimate workout machine is still the body. Better yet, I bet it’s actually the brain.

Infimetrics and Nautilus equipment revisited

My sons helped me move the vintage Nautilus equipment over the weekend. This, of course, gave me an excuse to put it back together and experiment a bit. Just a brief revisiting of something I am sure I have covered in the past but it is worth restating. Compensated variable resistance exercise machines are ultimately counterproductive when it comes to infimetrics. This is counter intuitive as it was these very machines that I began to explore the whole infimetric phenomenon in the first place. It was so novel at the time that I didn’t think too critically about what I was experiencing at the time. The most pronounced example is the duo squat machine. We got is all set up and my son flipped the infimetric bar into place for me. I was properly lined up to take advantage of the full unwrapping of the negative cam for maximum upload in the extended position. Because of the radical difference positionally between the extended compensation and the  fully stretched position of the opposing leg there is a huge respite for the flexed leg. It is so out of balance that while the leg in extension is working so ridiculously hard, the opposing leg is barely doing anything. I never noticed just how pronounced this was until the other day. To a lesser degree the same thing happens with the multi bicep or multi tricep as well. On my prototypes I have gotten as close to zero variability by using a round cam. The same is also accomplished with the simple pulley and handle set up as well as the infimetric bar I have demonstrated. Even though it would seem that there should be some sort of disparity due to mechanical advantage or disadvantage, it just doesn’t manifest that way in practical application. This is where the line between mechanical machine and biological system begins to show itself more clearly. The more you remove the mechanical compensation restraints of imposed load, the more easy it becomes to get at the muscle biology.

Chaos

So, in the midst of the setback I suffered, I found myself having to move the entire contents of house and studio very suddenly. I will spare the details but having to move tonnage while in a flare is not the ideal scenario, especially when trying to keep a regular work schedule on top of it all. I can pretty much state, with confidence, that sleep is the most important factor in recovery bar none. When you don’t get enough sleep and the body is trying to deal with an autoimmune response, the appetite rages and everything starts moving in slow motion. Lifting and moving stressed the body to the point where I could no longer use my arms and my hands were in a flare from my Rheumatoid Arthritis I have not seen the likes of for the better part of my three years of steady recovery. Once I got a chance to sleep for the better part of a half day off it was amazing how most of the symptoms abated. Hammered as far as strength though and working out has been out of the question as I still have three large Nautilus machines to move in the next two days. Fortunately my sons will be around to help and I am not afraid of taking them apart. Divide and conquer!

I am pretty sure I was able to trace the real root of my initial problems. Yes, I reacted strongly to the perfumes and aftershaves I encountered in public a few weeks ago but, and it pains me to say this, there is probably another cause to the whole situation.

I know there are arguments in the paleo camp that dairy has no business in a paleo based diet. I have also contended that much of the research refuting dairy has been done with pasteurized homogenized dairy which destroys a vital living property of said product. Dairy was a crucial part of my strategy to rebuild and restore a healthy functioning gut flora. In fact, it was a real turning point in my recovery. Prior to using raw dairy to help restore and rebuild my gut flora I was showing all sorts of symptoms of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (aka SIBO) and would easily consume in excess of 5000 calories a day while I was still in a downward spiral of frightening weight loss. When I cut out all fructose, upped my consumption of coconut oil and then added raw dairy, almost all of my celiac symptoms went away. I went through a brutal die out phase for a few days that felt like I was living a virus in reverse but once I got through that I started to gain strength and endurance and was able to normalize my calorie intake to a level more around 2500 to 3000 calories daily. And I started to gain some muscle mass back finally.

I had an emotional connection to raw milk. Plus, full fat raw milk is replete with whey protein so I figured it was good for post workout recovery.

Prior to the episode with being out in public, I had picked up a new batch of raw milk. For a few days, as I got worse, I kept tracing everything back to the exposure to the rather pungent toiletries I have referred to before. But, by Wednesday I began to notice a pattern of worsening symptoms post prandial that seemed to be linked to the intake of dairy.

Raw dairy from a smallish herd has a unique characteristic of tasting seasonally different. I only buy from careful, legitimate certified organic farmers and have had nothing but good experiences. This batch was a bit different though. Something didn’t seem quite right in the taste department but I wrote it off to the cows getting into something different, whether out in the pasture or from a different mix of winter silage.

It pained me to contemplate that there was something wrong with the milk. I stopped drinking the rest of the batch and by the next day started to feel a bit better as I didn’t have any after meal flares and responses.

I have now gone 10 days without any dairy and, in spite of the chaos and stress we have been dealing with in the move and a host of complicating factors, I have managed to come through it in much better shape than I anticipated. That isn’t to say I am in top form as I am still largely sleep deprived, but I am surviving and getting better.

Oddly, I am back to feeling much better when I get a chance to at least go through a partial workout. I take that as a good sign.

I mourn the passing of my raw dairy phase as I have determined that I need to give it a rest for a substantial period of time. I may yet try to reintroduce it sometime in the far off future just to see, but for now, I will keep up with going cold (organic) turkey.

Back to the chaos of the day.

Setbacks….

Having a host of autoimmune disease presents its own challenge when training.

I have learned, over the years, to listen very closely to what signals my body sends me.

It is often the case where a workout will not push me over the edge but rather some external stressor after the fact, during recovery, and unexpected, that will do the trick.

It is a controversial topic among many in the celiac community but there are some of us who are extremely sensitive to even the aromatic component of glutens. If I can smell it, it is in the air. If it is in the air it can come in contact with mucosal linings in my nasal passages.

Just such the event happened on Saturday. It is why I seldom go out in public anymore. I can control my home and studio environment and do but when I go into large public gatherings I am at the mercy of other people in ways that may seem innocent to most but can be disastrous for me.

I was at a theatrical production my daughter was in. It was nearly sold out so I was left with little option as to where I was sitting. I am unaccustomed to sitting in the theater. I have spent my life back stage and on stage so I was in foreign territory. I ended up sitting behind a group of patrons who must have bathed in wheat and used wheat based products to plaster their hair and then rolled in more wheat based products. Within minutes of sitting down I knew I was in trouble.  My son could smell it as well and we switched seats to get me further away from the offending body.  too late, however. the damage was already done.

I spent the second act sitting in some dark far corner in a section that was almost empty at the very back of the house but it was already showing signs of triggering both a celiac flare reaction and a rheumatoid arthritis flare.

I had worked out of Friday and had gotten a very good workout. I felt well on my way to appropriate recovery bench marks until the episode at the show Saturday. By the time I arrived home from the theater my hands were swollen and gnarled as they used to be daily when my RA was so severe and chronic. This is a very unusual condition for me as the disease is largely in remission now due to controlling my celiac. The gut pain was very palpable and I was hurting quite badly. As is usually the case when it all starts to flare, it becomes very difficult for me to sleep. This is not a dose specific response. It isn’t a matter of a little only effects a little bit. It is a matter of being a trigger to an autoimmune cascade of events that, once started, runs its course relentlessly.

Oxygen uptake poor, muscle weakness and a feeling of widespread tissue wasting and joint pain that can only be described as fire in the joints are among the symptoms and nothing stops it. By the time I am a few days in I feel like a well cooked chicken who’s joints could be plucked apart easily. Drumstick anyone? No amount of sleep or food is sufficient to keep up with what the body needs at this point. It is very frustrating.

Any attempts to workout are very counterproductive during an active flare and there are cardiac implications with this as well. Just so discouraging. Thing is, I cannot get the taste of the smell of those bath products the innocently unaware person was doused in out of my system. They seem to have a particularly strong half life. I am sure most people think nothing of what they use and the potential to impact someone with my condition. That is why I find I increasingly lean towards being a social recluse. I don’t want to have to go around demanding capitulation to my needs nor do I want to have to explain myself in the process. It is easier to withdraw and play it safe.

Except, I really wanted to see my daughter in the musical. It’s the price I had to pay.

So, the gut pain continues and the liver starts to hurt more and then finally, the rash breaks out after several fitful days of not being able to get any restful sleep. I finally fell asleep this afternoon. A deep restorative sleep. My wife took one look at me after my long nap and confirmed what we both knew. It was, indeed, the end stage of another flare.

So, what does any of this have to do with training? By appearances most would have been skeptical there was anything wrong with me. It was only my awareness of the disease process and my internal cues that made me stop any training and go into survival mode. I still had lots of work to do after all. I will probably not train for another 5 days or so just to be on the safe side. I want the joints to return to normal and for the temporal arthritis to go away as well. The joint fires are slowly burning themselves out and the systemic inflammation is abating.

Back to work.

Zelig and other random thoughts

Zelig and plasticity.

Anyone having watched the Woody Allen mockumentary “Zelig” might appreciate this thought. The inherent muscle plasticity I have been revisiting here seems a lot like the main character Zelig in the movie. He had no personality of his own and would morph right before our very eyes to take on physical characteristics of whomever he was in the vicinity of. It was taken to amusingly extreme lengths, for certain, but it speaks to not only our social tendency to blend in but also our physical capacity to do the same as the situation requires it.

Speed and valsalva as relates to infimetrics

Almost involuntary tendency for valsalva when attempting to create maximum upload. Even if there is an overt attempt not to hold breath, breathing tends to become very shallow anyway. It is unnatural if you have to “learn” proper breathing that overrides the signaling of the situation.

Almost impossible to create valsalva when doing fast upload repetitions. In fact, it quickly becomes counterproductive to attempt to hold one’s breath while moving as fast as possible and would short circuit the exercise.

I become concerned when you have a protocol that forces a lot of learning to overcome natural situational tendencies in order for it to become safe and or effective. It just strikes me that something is not in sync if this is the case. I have nothing but gut reaction and years of controlled breathing experience to inform my speculation though.

Andrew’s talk about partials. Unnecessary when using midrange sweet spot that avoids insufficiencies.

When doing imposed load barbell based exercises there are not only active and passive insufficiencies, there are also mechanical insufficiencies due to leverage advantage and disadvantage. The reason it becomes necessary to attempt different angles is because, being gravity based, imposed load equipment is very limited. Single joint rotary machine work is also limited in much the same way. Because infimetrics is not gravity dependent it becomes possible, especially when dealing with exercises involving the shoulder or hip joint, to create a flexible interface that allows for freedom of planar movement without going into positional insufficiencies. It is purely loading the musculature and there is no need for finding multiple planes for multiple sets. You can vary the plane at all times within the exercise without being compromised by the limitations of gravity. I will show this in my next video in the coming days.

Now, of course, Andrew always gets me thinking. I have already addresses this with the design of the upper body unit I use for chest and back. That is the issue of multi planar flexible interface for the shoulder joint. I have been guilty of not paying enough attention to the fact that the hip joint also has the same capability. Again, this doesn’t really apply to single joint movements around the knee or elbow joint but does apply to the shoulder and hip joint. So, the “AHA” moment for me was realizing that I have been limiting planar movement with traditional leg press and squat movements unnecessarily. The beauty of infimetrics is that, properly understood, it removes limitations imposed by gravitationally based exercise equipment.

So, I have been spending the last week working on a new leg press design to create a Flexible interface for leg press so the hip joint is not limited to single plane work. I suspect that, if I get it right, it might be incredibly powerful in its effect on the training of the lower body. It may allow for a radically different design for the leg press as well. Once I get the particulars completely worked out I hope to make a working prototype later in the week. I just about have the thing figured out.

CS

Confessions from a workout

I was listening to an interview of Phil Campbell a few weeks ago. He is the man behind Sprint 8 training. I was interested in hearing what he had to say because his focus in this is on speed and since I have been considering the role of speed in infimetrics I am looking for any information I can find. His interview on Dr. Mercola’s site was a bit frustrating as Dr. Mercola has sort of co-opted Phil’s protocol and made his own version. Campbell seems to have very specific reasons for the whys and wherefores of what he does with his approach. Namely, he is looking at the impact of this particular protocol on the stimulation of human growth hormone post exercise. This is a protocol that is generally done on some sort of cardio equipment, however, which does not appeal to me in the bigger picture. In simplistic terms it is essentially interval training where you alternate 90 second low intensity activity with 30 seconds of all out speed.

My mind started to calculate a bit. Since I have been examining the role of speed in my infometric workout as a means to recruit muscle fiber more completely and since, with infimetrics, speed is not a liability as it is with imposed load equipment I decided to try a hybrid of this protocol on my infimetric leg press.

During their discussion it was noted that the typical trainee, even advanced athletes, typically cannot make it through all 8 cycles of the interval training. This is a dangerous thing for me to hear. I never back down from a challenge. I don’t like to hear “can’t” and usually take it as a personal challenge. I was not sure but I had a feeling that the ability to generate upload and speed might make this more difficult than I suspected but I was more than willing to give it a try.

I got my timing device to keep track of the time intervals and got ready to work out.

By the 3rd cycle I was chugging like a locomotive and realized I had been ignoring the circuit training mentality so prevalent in my early Nautilus training days. This was more of necessity as I have been in recovery and healing mode from a lot of damage to my body at many levels from the damage caused by undiagnosed celiac disease. In fact, in the early stages of my recovery over the last several years I had very little tolerance for any exercise. It was very easy to push things over the edge by just doing a handful of exercise to near failure. It was still much improved from the depths of my illness when one set to failure of any exercise would take the better part of 30 days to get back to baseline of being able to handle the same weight for the same number of repetitions. It was that bad. No recovery at all. No tolerance for exercise at all. If I had any physically demanding work, any attempt to put in a full day would set me back a week or more before I could move enough to go up and down the stairs. It was bad. I had a whole host of complications and my metabolic tolerance of exercise was, for all intents and purposes, nil.

That being said, the very fact I was even contemplating attempting this protocol was somewhat of a significant event for me. I knew I could handle it, even if I only made it through part of the total target.

I pressed on to the 4th and 5th cycles and was ready to call it a day satisfied that I had experienced enough to get a general idea of what effect it might have on my post workout recovery.

Something clicked, though. I made it this far and decided that I could handle a few more. It is the closest I have gotten to nausea in years but I went all out for the entire 8 cycles.

I am quite certain that the infimetric ability to upload may be significant when implementing this type of protocol.

I was feeling fairly decent after a bit of recovery time and went ahead and finished my workout with a fairly routine upper body sequence of infimetric seated lat rows, infimetric chest cross, infimetric bicep curls and infimetric triceps extension.

This was a week ago Friday. By Saturday I was aware of the early signs of DOMS in my quadriceps and glutes, especially. Nothing I couldn’t handle but I have not had this experience for years. Sunday was a bit more intense in the DOMS department but, again, noting I couldn’t handle. This is significant as I was feeling as if it all fit in the whole normal recovery routine and not at all like when I was so ill I couldn’t tolerate any exercise.

Monday was a disaster. No sleep, hammered with excessive workload I had no choice in avoiding and then some additional stress to finish off the day. When I started the day Monday I truly felt like I might be ready for a workout later that day. By the time the sun set, I knew I was in trouble. Tuesday was one of the worst days I have had in a long time. It was as if all the stressors on Monday were more than I could handle and it set my workout recovery into a total tailspin.

I had been planning to workout Monday, Wednesday and Friday just to test out Phil Campbell’s assertion of HGH signaling for adaptation but found that, in listening to my physiology, I was in no way able to tolerate anything for the balance of the week. I still had a hellish work schedule to see to and that was my number one priority. I was trying to make modifications to three pieces of equipment in the midst of all this as well. I think tearing down a few key pieces of equipment was my way of making sure I wasn’t tempted to go full on through a workout.

Still, the whole delay was aggravating as there were and are always elements of any workout of late that make me feel much better. I do not tolerate long layoffs at all well but I knew enough to be cautious with this.

Got a number of modifications finished and decided that today was the day for a workout. In talking through the mechanics of this protocol with my son and testing the impact of ergometer based interval training (which he is much more familiar with than am I) versus the infimetric impact on the same, we both came to the conclusion that 8 cycles for the lower body with this much upload potential is just too much.

He tested out the lower body leg press portion with 4 cycles and, for him, that was more than enough.

I made a sound track. Watching a clock, for me, is deathly boring and I am very much an auditory based learner. I made a soundtrack to take me through 5 cycles. The only problem is that I cut and pasted one too many times and ended up with 6.

I went to apply this on leg press and thought had miscounted. The cues in the music let me know whether I have one more sprint upload upcoming or whether I am in my final cool down and the cycles just kept coming.

I ended up doing 6 cycles of leg press. 90 seconds light, 30 seconds all out sprint and upload times six. I then moved on to low back, seated lat pulls, chest cross, bicep curls and triceps extension to finish the workout.

It was good to be able to push efficiently through the workout with little rest between exercises. The low slow “warm-ups” are very deceiving. You end up doing a lot more metabolic work with the muscle during these respites than you would think.

I know this doesn’t fit anyone’s idea of superslow or traditional HIT protocol but I am searching for the complete synchronous mutli factorial failure that I have not been able to achieve any other way.

I think that many protocols come close.. with one or two or maybe even three factors but I also think that none of them ever hits the target for all elements simultaneously. This is what I am seeking.

I have, previously, discussed the neurological elements, the internal metabolic elements as relates to fiber type and function but have largely ignored the cardio muscular interaction. I have always turned cardio on its head throughout my training career and have contended that we get it backwards when we let the social norm focus on cardio conditioning. Folks die of congestive heart failure with strong hearts that no longer have the complementary counter pulsation provided by robust skeletal muscle that is needed to provide adequate venous return to prime the pump that is the heart.

Cardio, because it fails to generate upload and can only rely on speed over distance or time, ultimately fails to address all the muscle fiber types in a trainee thus leading to atrophy of skeletal muscle of the fast fiber type while grossly overtraining and creating the potential for overuse atrophy of the slow fiber types.

This hybrid of infimetric upload capability along with speed that does not degrade upload potential provides for some potentially interesting avenues of exploration.

Even with the excessive stress I had to endure last week, I actually came through it with relative ease and today’s workout was one of the best I have ever had. There seems to be a bit of that balance of elements in the equation I have been looking for.

Hopefully I will be able to quantify and lay out the logic behind what I am attempting to do. This workout seems to beget action. I have been working seven days a week for months lately and I am amazed at the fact that post disease state and post 50 (ok.. 51.. I confess..) I actually seem to be thriving on the demands of a schedule that would have put the finishing touches on my journey to the grave a few short years ago.

Oh, and no supplements. Just lots of raw food. There are days when it seems like I live on raw eggs and raw milk. Someday I will share my specific journey of gut flora and villous atrophy repair related to my celiac recovery.. but that’s a story for another day.

Inroad? Outroad? Paradigm SHIFT!

What exactly does someone mean when they talk about inroading?

What exactly do they mean when they talk about outroading?

Seems like a simple set of questions.

Only, I think they are both highly misapplied and largely misunderstood and downright abused concepts in the high intensity training world.

Analogies are destined, ultimately, to be somewhat useless as they attempt to describe something they are not. And yet, they may be somewhat helpful in illustrating something we don’t know with something we do know. That which we do know may contain elements and parallels of truth about the unknown subject but, since it is not the actual unknown subject, cannot possibly be a direct explanation for that which is still only partially understood.

There are a lot of theories as to the function of skeletal muscle. There are a lot of theories about neurological function. There are a lot of theories about energy systems in muscle metabolism. There are a lot of theories about muscle fiber types. There is a lot of speculation about how all these elements actually work together. Any serious thought in this direction will always be confounded by the poorly understood effect of the plasticity of these elements on the appearance of results to the point that you can “verify” almost any pet theory if you design your studies properly. It is hard to know what is actually being measured in most studies and as a result, most add very little towards cohesive clarity of the system beyond this plasticity.

The skeletal system and the support given to it by the organs of the body is a very sophisticated biomechanical machine. It’s kind of like an automobile. When it all works together it gets you from point A to point B very effectively. There are many who take this on faith without ever knowing what is really going on beneath the surface, under the hood. Even expert automobile mechanics get lost somewhere between the theoretically perfect function and getting that unknown something extra out of a high performance race car. What kind of vehicle? One set up for optimal performance on the drag strip? That car would likely be a failure in a 24 hour Daytona or Lemans race. One set up for dirt track racing probably wouldn’t fare too well at the drag strip. You begin to get the idea. The same elements with minor but important combined differences yield performance of very different qualities. Anyone here for a Tractor Pull?

What road do we want our muscles to be on? What track are we trying to run. Do we want to travel the out road or the in road and how do we best fit in to whatever road we should be on?

I think there needs to be some sort of cursory attempt to define the important terms here.

Inroad. I believe there are those who associate the concept of momentary muscle failure as synonymous with the term inroad. They figure that failure to lift a weight after X number of repetitions equals an inroad as the net difference in a reduction between starting strength and failure. Most often there is some attempt to establish maximum strength and then to work at some preselected percentage of the starting weight, usually eighty percent. Thus, they figure, failure under these guidelines means a twenty percent inroad.

It is dangerous to assume that failure, under this circumstance, actually represents any inroad at all.

There are many possible explanations as to why a subject would reach the point of not being able to work past a certain point and many of these reasons are due to outroading. But wait, I just used another undefined term to refute the existence of a phenomenon I have still not defined.

Inroad is not failure.

Failure is simply reaching the point, due to any number of factors, in which the subject is no longer able to control, lift or lower the given weight being used in an imposed load exercise implement. It is hard to describe this to someone who has never actually performed a meaningful set of exercise in a generated force exercise like infimetrics. Failure does not occur in infimetrics. It does occur in the closely related akinetics as akinetics is infimetrics married to imposed load, albeit a smaller than normal load. This may lead to deeper inroading but most load the akinetic set too heavily to actually accomplish this leading to simple failure with the appearance of greater “inroad” without really effectively accomplishing this. Inroad is facilitated in infimetrics but can easily be confounding to the person looking for infimetrics to create failure instead of inroad. Because of this is becomes easy to create situations of outroading with infimetrics if a subject is trying to make infimetrics behave like something it is not. That being imposed load exercise.

I have still left the concept of inroad undefined. It is no small task to pull all the elements of inroading together. You have to take into account the energy delivery systems of the metabolic environment of the muscle. You then have to factor in the mechanical means with which you are either generating or imposing force with which to make this metabolic capacity set to work. There is the need, also, to consider the role of the neurological system in signaling all the parts of the system to work together without attempting to override any of the elements.

Going back to the car analogy it might be understood that the fuel tank and fuel delivery system are the circulatory system responsible for delivering elements of energy to the metabolic environment of the muscles or the engine. The electrical system is responsible for proper signaling and sequencing of firing the spark plugs in order to burn the fuel that is either in reserve (in the reservoir of the carburetor) or being delivered according to momentary need as in a fuel injection system. The engine, at idle, is sort of like basal metabolism. It is going to burn a certain amount of energy just to stay running. It can be revved without being engaged through the transmission to do any meaningful work or it can be put into gear and you then get movement. Whereas a vehicle is usually either carbureted or fuel injected, we muscle driven machines are a hybrid vehicle of sorts. Our slow twitch fibers are, oddly enough, fuel injected and rely on a steady delivery of energy to operate in an optimal way. The circulatory system is the fuel injector system but has the unique ability to run in a multi fuel environment. Fats or sugars. Flex fuel! The intermediate or type II fibers are adaptive over time and can run with characteristics like type I slow twitch fibers or more like, but not exactly like the type II a’s. This plasticity of function is influenced over time by the chosen method of training and leads to the self fulfilling phenomenon of getting the function you are training for within your genetic limits. Perhaps the type II’s could be compared to the traditional carbureted fuel delivery system where they are tapped into a fuel delivery system but have a reservoir in the carburetor to account for delivery lag when you step on it for a fast getaway. The type IIa’s? Think NiOx. BAM! huge boost and maximum speed but a short ride. Burst of speed or strength but not sustainable for long. You then default back to the delivered energy system and capacity of the prior two types.

Of course, if you have the car in the wrong gear for any of the above scenarios, it is this interface of engine speed, energy delivery and transmission where an element of inroading versus outroading starts to reveal itself.

I will interject my personal opinion here and state that I believe many training mistakes are made, of necessity, because imposed load equipment forces the trainee to always compromise the speed element in favor of load to make up for the deficiency of the source of resistance. This applies even to those who profess to move fast with an imposed load. This only exacerbates the force discrepancies and is sort of the muscle machine equivalent of a neutral slam. Fun as all get out when you are a teenager but brutal when you have to foot the repair bills as an adult.

In a manual transmission it is possible to select any number of gears in which you desire to start. It is most logical to start with low gear and coordinate increasingly higher gears with ever increasing speed. You could attempt to start out in a high gear from a dead stop but this requires a technique known as slipping the clutch and it wears out a clutch in short order. Wear and tear or failure due to working outside the ideal working range of all the elements of the machine working in synchronicity. That is not inroad. It is failure and it can also be expensive.

What analogous situation exists in the muscle machine? It is quite possible to try to override the mechanism by which the body wants to recruit in an orderly fashion by attempting maximum lifts. Strength demonstrations rely on overrides and can result in impressive displays. Strong men have been performing amazing feats of strength ever since one of our ancestors needed to hoist part of a freshly killed mastodon in order to carry it away to their cave. The bigger the chunk the better off your family unit probably was. This is not to say it is the best training strategy, however.

The problem here is that when the muscle reaches failure, it may not have created inroad of the entirety of the metabolic capacity of the muscle as a complete system. The fastest twitch muscle fibers, which may occur in various proportions in different muscles groups with distributive variety from subject to subject as well, might end up failing under a very high load scenario. If the need was for all the muscle fibers to engage to lift a very heavy load for a short duration is limited by these fibers, failure occurs when they fatigue even though there was much potential systemic capacity at a different speed or lower imposed load. If the subject is so extreme in their fiber type that type IIa fast twitch truly represents the majority of the fibers in the muscle (not all that likely) then a decent inroad may have also been evoked by this act. If, however, they are more typical of the generic genetic middle ground it is likely that the failure event circumvented inroad to any great degree because, at a much lower load or force, there is still plenty of reserve metabolic capacity remaining in the muscle. Thus, there is failure but little or nothing in the way of inroad.

So, heavy loads moved at lugging speeds might actually be an outroading event. This doesn’t even consider the necessary strategies of bracing or cheats that sometimes accompany such attempts. Please note I said sometimes. I realize there are many skilled lifters who train with the intelligent choice not to demonstrate but rather to train for strength with imposed load equipment. When this is understood you begin to realize it is not about becoming efficient in movement, which is what any power lifter or Olympic lifter seeks to do, i.e.: maximum efficiency for minimal effort. Rather, in training for maximum metabolic inroading it is often necessary to consider ways to make the exercise less efficient.

This is where the idea of strict form, in the extreme, can actually become a barrier to proper inroading. Warning: adult content ahead. This concept is not meant for the novice or those who try to rationalize away the whole concept of strength demonstration as a substitute for proper strength stimulus training regardless of whether your tool of choice happens to involve imposed load or generated load equipment. Form is important, just not as important as some may think when dealing with infimetrics.
What I am about to say might be heresy to machine geeks, of which I have long been a member of that fraternity. Form in its single planar linear manifestations on a machine or with a free weight, it will be discovered, is hampered by deviating from the single optimal plane of movement necessary to move the most amount of weight for a given exercise. Lifts and exercises will lure the subject into greater and greater efficiencies through the imposition of “perfect” form. This is, I believe, responsible for the “stronger but not bigger” phenomenon many advanced trainees encounter to great frustration. I am not even addressing the element of speed here, merely the whole concept of planar movement. There was a lifter a few weeks ago relating how he failed to get the set number of repetitions during a given workout and was further discouraged when he discovered that he accidentally underloaded the bar as well. This could have turned out to be more productive than he thought if he were to realize that, perhaps, he was less efficient in his lifting mechanics. He might have deviated from the optimal lifting path with force being deflected off line thus involving more metabolic effort of the target muscles (good from a training perspective, bad from an ego perspective) than had he been efficient. That underload might also have not overloaded the neurological signaling as much which might have prevented the exercise from crossing into the adrenal stress realm. ( I just made that last part up… but I will think about that some more.. Not willing to retract the possibility at this point.)

As an illustration of intentional inefficiency I think about some of my infimetric single joint machines. Since biceps exercises are relatively familiar to most readers, I will use that as an example. When I use the simple cable and pulley set up I demonstrated in my last video it doesn’t matter in which plane I am moving. There is really no lateral deflection possible with that set up as it all results in the generated force being directed through the single pulley and its attachment. Granted, angular deflection does reduce the efficiency of transfer to the pulley and scale but it is hard to deviate too far from the optimal line of pull for accurate readings with this set up.

On the seated bicep curl prototype, however, the machine rotates in a single plane. If you move your arms, in flexion, in that exact plane, the reading on the scale reflects accurately the work being done in the metabolic realm of the muscle being worked. If, however, you deviate by trying to create movement that is slightly out of the single plane while still limiting yourself to bicep activation (this is quite possible, BTW) the movement is far less efficient, there is more metabolic work going on in the muscle, which is a very good thing from an inroading point of view, but the scale does not reflect the deviation from the single plane. I have designed a multi axis sensor set up that would allow for readings in multiple planar intersections but the cost would be so ridiculous for such a negligible return on meaningful information for the average trainee as to be worthless outside of extreme theoretical discussion.

Suffice it to say, strictness of form and limitations of speed may have the unintended effect of reducing the efficiency of getting at the muscle’s metabolic capacity thus creating accidental outroading. Our bodies have an uncanny propensity to make hard work as efficient and easy as possible. We want to be inefficient in order to make significant inroad into the total metabolic reserve of the muscle in question if we really want to create a strength stimulus of any meaning. Otherwise we are merely producing toil, not stimulus.

But wait. Where does speed come in?

This is so difficult to put into a cohesive argument without just resorting to the poor example of just saying “whatever.” No one knows all the answers and I am only trying to spur serious thought and further examination of all the possible elements.

When dealing with a multifactorial event, you ignore or favor only some of the elements at your own peril.

There is a need to examine the role of all the elements and see how they may potentially interlace to create potentials that go beyond the simplistic mechanical work analysis models that have so paralyzed the proper perception of how it all works together. This is further complicated by the propensity to adapt the machine of the body to machines that are deficient, regardless of how well crafted they may seem to be. A limitation is still a limitation, even if it is a limitation that is less limited but very expensive.

As I have noted before, speed may play just as important (and possibly even more important)  a role in the recruitment of all muscle fiber types as relates to overall metabolic impact and depletion for the purposes of stimulating hypertrophic response in skeletal muscle provided you have access to a method or machine that does not restrict speed, either by cam profile requirements or gravity limitations. At this point it appears that infimetrics is the only type of exercise that allows for all of this and the ability to create whatever upload needed. Pure speed based body weight exercises suffer from the same limitations of imposed loads in response to things like momentum and inertia but fall short of weighted exercises to the degree that it is difficult to change resistance levels according to increasing capacities unless you are into radical binging and purging or ankle weights.

I need to step back and take a breather here.

Load thresholds versus speed thresholds as an entree to muscle fiber recruitment.
In the past I was just as inclined as most to view increased in working load via more weight as the way to access functional fiber type thresholds. The theory being that if an initial working weight in a set was too let you would never cross over the threshold into anaerobic muscle fiber recruitment. Speed had little or nothing to do with the whole equation other than to make sure you moved slow enough to cancel out the momentum that would be possible by moving too fast and throwing the weight. This limit on speed, slowed to extremes, was entirely load dependent to cross this threshold below which toil but not stimulus would occur.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when speed came in to the picture. I was toying with the idea of maximum speed with my pneumatically based negative assist equipment. the interesting thing about this method of training is that the lifting portion was dependent on a maximum speed effort for maximum resistance. The way I had the cylinder plumbed and the valves actuated and vented meant that, when the negative upload released, you could move very slowly to lift the device back into the contracted position. By doing this, you gave yourself a very big rest phase. The alternative was to push as fast as you possibly could. The exhaust was controlled and I could set it with a limiting device so that this didn’t cause a fast release of cylinder pressure. In trying to move as fast as possible you were trying to force the exhaust of the compressed air in the cylinder. The faster you attempted to do this, the more resistance you got. All along, I thought I was doing a negative focused activity. In hind sight I realize I was doing a maximum speed type of training with the positive and negative being optimally uploaded. The negative phase was not really the heavy negative most associate with straight negatives. The fluidity of compressed air, when regulated for optimal effect on these machines, would allow for a stopping of the negative and even a slight reversal in the early repetitions. In all, it was a unique combination of speed and relative contouring. Ultimately, though, it is imposed load and, as such, does not have the flexibility on the fly to follow the metabolic contour as it changes throughout the working set and is limited as a result just like other imposed load equipment.

So, even though speed was seemingly less limited and inversely in the positive with this type of machine, it did tend to push things in the direction of load thresholds. Speed was, of necessity, very slow.

Speed under generated load seems, at this time to have metabolic consequences unlike any other form of exercise I have ever encountered. There is the load threshold but it also seems there might very well be a speed threshold of greater significance when it comes to recruitment of the fastest twitch muscle fibers. The systemic impact if speed based infimetric training takes me across certain metabolic respiratory factors in a much different way than imposed load. Load based threshold crossing would take me to failure but do very little in the way of inroad. On the other hand speed based generated load seems to exhaust the entirety of the target muscle group much more effectively.

Certainly speculative and very unscientific and anecdotal at this time but I throw this out there for further discussion.

In the meantime, I will continue to make attempts at pulling all the elements together into a more cohesive, plausible working model.

So, at this point in time it would seem that inroad is anything that allows you to get to the total metabolic capacity of a muscle without working outside of supporting circulatory, neurological or profile characteristics. Working in the right gear at the right speed and the right load to allow a total exhaustion that is in no way short circuited until all the fibers are sufficiently fatigued to signal the adaptive response of hypertrophy.

Outroading would be any element not properly accounted for, be it speed, load, inertia, energy utilization false concepts of range of motion, improper use of statics or other elements that may short circuit the process.

Infimetrics challenges the user to experience a shift in the thought processes to combine these potential elements in ways not accessible in imposed load exercise.

Still a lot to think about!