Why the hell did Dinosaurs get so big?  How could they?  Wouldn’t it be impossible given Galileo’s square-cube law?

In what has become known as the dinosaur paradox, a few key issues have plagued scientists.

1. Inadequate bone strength to support the largest dinosaurs
   
2. Inadequate muscle strength to lift and move the largest dinosaurs
   
3. Unacceptable high blood pressure and stress on the heart of the tallest dinosaurs
   
4. Aerodynamics principles showing that the pterosaurs should not have flown

I’m only going to focus on number two, as this is the most relevant to what we do here on this blog.  (If you want to read more about why dinosaurs were able to get so big, you can read my post at my other blog: sapien games.)

Sometimes (often) in science, something that at first appears to be a “paradox” is in fact not one at all.  Instead, the original facts of that case were simply misunderstood.  And once the facts become clear, the one-time paradox fades away.

In worst cases, these facts were misunderstood simply because scientists in different fields don’t pay nearly any attention to what others scientists are doing in other fields.  Something of that sort is happening here.

Here is a paragraph from the article on the dinosaur paradox at dinosaurtheory.com:

The relative bone strength and the relative muscle strength are grouped together because they are similar scaling problems. For both, strength is function of the cross-sectional area. If we look at the longest length of a bone or muscle and then imagined cutting this length in half, the newly exposed area is the cross-sectional area. The strength of either a bone or a muscle is directly proportional to this cross-sectional area, so both bone and muscle strength are two dimensional attributes. Yet body mass is a function of volume, a three dimensional attribute. In accordance to the Square-Cube, as we look at increasing larger animals the mass of each animal increases at a faster rate than the cross-sectional areas of either the bone or the muscle. Thus, larger animals have less relative muscle strength and less relative bone strength than that of smaller animals.

The bold is mine – these statements are false.

Any undergrad in exercise science would know that strength is NOT directly proportional to muscle cross-sectional area, but a professional paleontologist might not.  This is not to disparage the paleontologist (there is plenty of info in their field that exercise sci people wouldn’t know).  But, sometimes this lack of understanding can lead to paradoxes that aren’t paradoxes. 

To most people, when they see a big bodybuilder, they assume that they must be one of the strongest men on the planet.  After all, they LOOK strong.  They are so big; they have so much muscle.  The top pro bodybuilders are literally the most muscular men to have ever walked the earth.  But, they are decidedly NOT the strongest.

The cold-hard truth is that the size of muscle is NOT directly proportional to strength and is therefore not a 2-dimensional attribute. (That is, when size goes up strength goes up and vice versa – think of a simple Cartesian graph.)  It IS true that as mass goes up it becomes harder to be as relatively strong.  But, does that mean that dinosaurs weren’t strong enough to hold themselves up?  No. 

When it comes to building strength, we can call muscle size (it’s cross sectional area) the “weak” force.  And we can call motor unit activation and fiber types the “strong” forces.  All of which are more complex than you might expect.

The statements above are predicated on a single fallacy of both science and logic.  It goes something like this:

Statement A:  Strength goes up if and only if muscle size goes up

This statement is really the conjunction of two statements:

A1:  If Strength goes up, then muscle size goes up.

A2:  If muscle size goes up, then strength goes up.

Let’s start with A2.

It IS true in a weak sense that if muscle size goes up, then strength goes up.  But, not as much as one would think.

The size of muscle is dictated by a lot of things, among them being contractile proteins and sarcoplasm.   Contractile proteins are the little guys that actually do the mechanical work of moving your body around.  The sarcoplasm is the fluid in your muscle cells.  Believe it or not, the size of your muscle has as much to do with how much “water weight” you’re carrying as it does with how many contractile proteins you have.  Yes, more sarcoplasm does correlate with more strength, but not as highly as with more contractile proteins. 

Even with a “maximum” amount of both of these, this still doesn’t mean you will be as strong as someone half your size.

Which leads me to A1.

The first of the strong forces is much more complicated, and it is at least part of what accounts for the fact that top middleweight powerlifters and olympic weightlifters are SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than the worlds top bodybuilders, in spite of the fact that they are half their size.

Just because you have (for the sake of argument) 10 muscle fibers, doesn’t mean that you use all 10 every time you do something.  In fact, most people won’t be able to activate all 10 even in their moments of greatest need (like when lifting a really heavy weight).  The reason is that the body is all about efficiency.  Using all of your muscle fibers all at once is taxing as hell.  This is why the more advanced you get in strength sports, the longer your rest periods have to become, because you’ve literally worked harder than someone who is just beginning can possibly work.

What we’re saying here is that it is perfectly possible to get a whole lot stronger without ever getting much bigger, simply by training your muscles to actually work at the top of their capacity. 

OK …  is that it?  Nope.

We also have the difference in fiber types.  There are lots of them (and the list seems to get bigger every decade), but to keep things simple as all hell, we’ll just go with two groupings of them: fast twitch fibers and slow twitch fibers.

The fast twitch fibers are the ones you use when you want to go … fast (surprised?), and the slow twitch fibers are better at going the distance.  The fast ones are more efficient at bursts of energy that result in both speed and strength.  The slow twitch ones are more efficient at avoiding burnout. 

So if you go for a long hike up a mountain, you’d better hope you have an abundance of slow twitch fibers in your legs so that it doesn’t burn the whole way! (Trust me, I hate hiking for a reason …)

Now imagine two ladies, each with identical cross-sectional area of muscle in their thighs.  But one has an over abundance of fast twitch fibers and the other has an over abundance of slow twitch fibers.  They are the same size, but the first is going to be a ton stronger. 

There’s more to all of this, of course, including the neuromuscular coordination problem and the importance of leverage as dictated by limb-length, tendon and ligament attachment points, etc;  but, I’m not even going to get into that.

The “paradox” regarding dinosaur size includes statements about the lack of muscle strength adequate enough to support their weight.  But, this assessment is based solely on the myth of Statement A, above.  Clearly, that statement is false.

OK, I know what you’re thinking, “Nick, for heaven’s sake!  You’re talking about mammals, and humans particularly.  The author above is talking about dinosaurs!  OMG!”

True.

But, hear me out. 

We have NO fossilized evidence of what the muscles of dinosaurs were like.  So, speculation based upon available current animals is all we have.  Further, we DO know that dinosaurs are closest related to modern-day birds, and bird muscles function in the same way as ours.  That is, among animals, a muscle is a muscle in the broad sense, and species “pick” which configuration they can most use from the available options (as discussed above).  (Well, natural and sexual selections “pick” for them.)

We also know that these beasts DID exist, and they WERE huge.  So, clearly they were able to stand up and hold their own weight.  Part of the many reasons (see here for more) that they were able to do this is likely because of a muscle-configuration-distribution that made that possible.  We know that Statement A is false with regards to mammals, and by Occam’s Razor, it was probably false for dinosaurs.

They had big legs, but they also must have had strong legs – not the same thing.

Big dudes, big weights

Mike Burgener has said, “I don’t believe in over training, just under recovery.”  And he is not alone.  We Olympic lifting coaches have all said similar things over the years (myself included).  But, these types of statements are highly misleading and tend to give off the wrong impression.  A better statement would be,

“Train as hard as you can, as often as you can, and spend the rest of your time working your ass off on recovery.”

Managing your fatigue is the key to your success in this sport.  Generally, your ability to come in as often as possible to practice the snatch, the clean, and the jerk will determine your success. 

Terminology

I’ve talked about this before, but I think it’s valuable to go over it again.  In strength and conditioning circles, we use a couple of variables to manage the fatigue of our athletes.  The most important of which are Volume, Intensity, and Frequency.

Volume is simply the number you get when you multiply sets times reps when you’re doing an exercise, in a workout, or even in a week, etc.  So, if you are doing snatches for 5 sets of 3 reps, your volume on the snatch today is … 5 x 3 = 15. (See, that math degree counts for something!). NOTE that we use the “times” symbol, “x”, to denote sets “times” reps when we write up our programs for a reason.

Now, if you want to have a total squat volume of 30 for the day, you can do 10 sets of 3 (10 x 3), or 3 x 10.  As you can see, while volume is important to keep in mind, it doesn’t tell you the whole story.  We need to know something about how hard things are for you.

Intensity is the amount of “work” you are putting in.  If you can do 20 chin ups as a max, but only do 10 in a set, that is NOT intense.  If you do 17, 18, more … then it is.  It is a subjective variable.  And it is good to keep it that way. 

There is another term, Load, that describes the Volume x weight used.  Load was designed to be more “accurate” at describing the intensity of workouts.  But, I find it problematic.  For instance, some athletes with a lot of slow twitch muscle fibers in their legs will find doing 8 reps at 90% of maximum in the squat taxing as hell, but doable.  Other, more fast-twitch, athletes will barely be able to do 3 reps at 90% without nearly falling over.  If they have the same 1 rep max, then the LOAD will appear different for both, in fact, higher for the first athlete, even though they found it relatively the same in terms of intensity.

NOTE:  If I’m a “Bulgarian” in any way, it’s in my belief that we should always go off of how an athlete feels for the day, not what we think the numbers are telling us.  (For this reason, I avoid percentages in the routines I write as much as I can.  If I write 5 sets of 2 reps, I mean hard and heavy for 2 reps on each set – I don’t know if that’s 80% of your 1 rep max, more, less … just lift hard)

Frequency is what it sounds like.  It’s the number of times you come in to do something.  So, if athlete #1 does 20 snatches all in one workout, but athlete #2 does 20 snatches spread out over 2 workouts in the same day, then #2 has a higher frequency, even though they are both doing the same volume for the day.  The bonus of a higher frequency – when volume is held constant – is that you can usually work harder in each session than you could have if you did it all at once. 

3 Easy Steps

As promised (and after my standard round-about way of getting here), these are the 3 easy steps you can take to start training like an Olympic weightlifter today!  (This is NOT for beginners.  You must have a decent level of technical proficiency and overall athletic capacity before this makes any sense.  And it helps greatly to have a coach or good training partner to watch you and keep you from overdoing it.)

1. Keep your Frequency and your Intensity HIGH, and your Volume LOW.  This can be accomplished in a myriad of ways.  One of my favorites is a classic “Bulgarian” variation.  Like to hear it?  Here it go:  Do 1 to 3 heavy workouts per week (depending on age, recovery capacity, etc) and as many light workouts as you can.  Stick with singles ONLY on the classic lifts; and singles, doubles, and the occasional triple on squats.  On your heavy days, go to a true max for the day on all three lifts (snatch, clean and jerk, and front squat), and do some back off sets (1 to 4) at 85% or even 90% of that max if you can handle it.  The light days, do technique work with nothing heavier than 80% of the previous days max, do some prehab stuff, chins/push ups/dips, etc.  Keep it mellow.  It’s about practice.  Do the Oly lifts at least 5 days a week, if you can. 
2. Stick with the classical lifts and their variations to avoid eccentrics and nervous system burnout.  The eccentric portion of the lift is the “down” part.  It’s the part that tends to cause the most fatigue and soreness.  If you only do the “up” part, and then drop the weight (as is done with snatches and clean and jerks) then you avoid a whole lot of soreness and CNS fatique, and are able to train more often.  I like 70%+ of your work to be on the Olympic lifts themselves (or very close variations like power snatches, hang cleans, etc).  Now, obviously you can’t avoid the “down” portion of a front squat!  But, by sticking to low reps, you will keep yourself fresher.
3. Avoid the power lifts most of the time.  Deadlifts and back squats are great.  But, they become quite problematic for the Oly lifter.  Squats done in the method of the powerlifter – wide stance, bent over – are very taxing on the low back which is a prime stabilizer in the oly lifts.  Deadlifts are just brutal!  They take so much out of you that you can end up spending an entire week trying to recover.  This is BAD.  I strongly believe that you need to be lifting singles on the Olympic lifts in the 80%+ range OFTEN if you are going to be able to lift at 100% in a contest.  It’s as much psychological as physiological, but either way, if you can’t keep in the groove of lifting heavy snatches and jerks because you are too zonked from your deadlift workout, you are not doing yourself a favor. Technical proficiency and confidence with heavy weights are far more important than your brute strength in this sport. 

NOTE:  I’m experimenting with ways to incorporate deads into a Bulgarian-like program more aggressively, because deads ARE so good at making you brute-strong.  I’d like to be able to do them more often (they’re fun! Check me out doing 17 reps in 1 minute with 315 pounds at a local strongman show).  But, I’m not in a position to make any conclusions yet.  Stay tuned!

Disclaimer! 

The fact is, this is only ONE way to approach training like a weightlifter.  There are plenty of high volume approaches out there (the Russians and Chinese national teams are famous for such craziness).  But, when the volume goes up, something else has to come down, or you are heading toward burn-out street!  These high volume programs tend to keep intensity low to medium – they run like gymnastics programs. 

Gymnasts aren’t doing 1 rep maxes on the pummel horse!  They instead do a ton of attempts all throughout the day (high volume, high frequency).  But, any single attempt isn’t all that taxing. (For them, of course. It would kill most of us!)

I personally have found it easier to manage athletes fatigue with the above lower volume approach (especially when heading into contests).  But, there are plenty of highly successful systems that use lots and lots and lots of volume.  Just keep in mind the idea of balance, and that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

The big Russian is likely to be on the team for Russia at the 2010 World Weightlifting Championships, according to Iron Mind.

Here he was this year at the Europeans:

My friend, and fellow Portland Oly lifter, Mighty Kat blogs about her time at the Tommy Kono Open and includes the 10 things she learned while there.  I particularly like the first:

1. Having tape at a meet is like having cigarettes around smokers. People will come out of the woodwork to bum some.

Very true!

Here’s a vid of her and some others lifting.  Congratulations, Kat!

Over at Evidence Based Fitness, Bryan Chung reviews a study that looked at whether manipulating rest periods can aid in hypertrophy. 

Rest 2 minutes, or less than 2 minutes, that is the question!

He explains the methods:

The subjects were then randomly assigned to do an 8-week lifting program in which the rest period was either constant (2 minutes between sets for 8 weeks) or decreasing (2 minutes between sets in week 1-2, and then decreasing every week to end up at 30 seconds between sets in week

The program was 6 workouts a week, alternating between a workout A and B, Monday to Saturday. Both groups had the same exercises. In weeks 1 and 2, both groups resting for 2 minutes between sets. From week 3 onwards, the decreasing rest group got less and less rest between sets each week.

I particularly liked this paragraph, as it makes a point about the proper way to read a research article:

I think it’s important to pay attention to the characteristics of subjects in a study as it has direct implications as to whether this research might apply to any particular consumer. There were 20 subjects in this study (10 in each group). The subjects in this study group were, on average, in their 20′s, somewhere around 5’10" tall and 160lbs. What does this tell us? Well, for one, in terms of a study about hypertrophy, we know that it’s likely that of all the guys that could have been in this study, these guys were in the demographic of men most likely to build muscle. So, from a sample selection point of view, this is a trial designed to succeed (which isn’t some underhanded thing, since ALL trials should be designed to succeed).

Here’s the conclusion:

The Bottom Line: When it comes to hypertrophy, it’s pretty unlikely that resting 2 minutes or resting less than two minutes has much of an effect on how fast or big your muscles get. Resting for less time may make your workouts shorter though. Mostly, though I wanted to review this study because it just goes to show that it’s NOT impossible to measure hypertrophy directly.

Bryan goes into far more depth here.

My own reaction is curiosity of exactly what exercises were used, as rest periods are largely contingent on what you are doing.  Do biceps curls and you don’t need much rest.  Do tire flips and you fall over for 5 minutes, puke for 10, slowly sip water for another 5 minutes while sobbing sweet man-tears, and then crawl your way back for another set.  Exercises matter.

They tested 1RM on the bench and squats at both the beginning and the end, so I am assuming that they used those exercises in the routine … but you know what happens when you’re assuming?  You make an ass out of you and “uming”!

Sugden Barbell has put up some great video of a seminar in Glasgow done by none other than Misha Koklyaev.  This dude ain’t messin’ around.

I like this quote:

"Weightlifting is an art. A weightlifter shoots the bullseye of a target 100′s meters away. A power lifter brings out this huge cannon…"

Now the vids.  Notice this guys smile at the end of every lift.  He’s clearly having a great time.  Gotta love that.

Behind the neck jerk

No hands back squat … yes, that’s right, no hands!

190k Snatch

400 kilo x 3 deadlift (I can barely do a 400 pound deadlift for 3!)

Training for the National Aerobics Championships may not be the best way to get big and strong, but it clearly IS the best way to be super sexy … oh, ya!

[hat tip:  Brandy]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The front squat is a superior exercise to the back squat.  I don’t mean that you should never back squat.  If you’re one of those individuals who doesn’t feel back pain while doing them, can do them with an erect torso, and doesn’t wimp out by cutting your depth short, then go ahead and back squat ALSO.  But, the front squat should be your bread and butter.

Over at EliteFTS they give 5 reasons why you should front squat:

• Front squats are more quad dominant, bodybuilders like this that are paranoid about getting their butts too big.
• Front squats are easier on your back because your torso is more erect and obviously less weight is being handled.
• If you go forward on a front squat you lose the weight, so it’s impossible to lean forward too excessively.
• Front squats are also a good tool to teach someone to back squat with an erect torso.
• Front squats offer great transference to jerks, push presses and Olympic lifts. More core stabilization is required.

The idea that front squats are more quad dominant is slightly misleading.  The average Olympic lifter has a bigger butt than the average powerlifter who does tons of the (supposedly more ass-dominant back squat). I’ll tell you why.

When you only go to parallel, the front squat is quad dominant.  But when you go to rock-bottom, you have no choice but to use your butt.  A deep front squat stretches the glutes massively and while under tension, they then have to work hard in this stretched state to get you back up again.  The result: lots of muscle growth.

The second reason is the Oly lifters often bounce out of the bottom position, this type of stretch reflex has been speculated to also result in muscle gain.  (Yes, I just said that if  you want big muscles DON’T lift slow, lift fast.)  Even if you don’t bounce out of the bottom, the work your butt has to do to decelerate the bar will aid you in muscle growth down there in your nether-regions.

Check out this video of (strongman) Travis Ortmayer doing some very heavy back squats (with solid form).  Note that even with his very good form, the back squat forces certain anatomical realities.  Namely, that your back is your weak-link.

Now in contrast, check out Vencelas Dabaya, from France, doing some front squats.  In the bottom position, your glutes become a prime mover.

Of course, in theory you could back squat exactly the same as you front squat with only a slight forward lean to make up for the bar being on your back.  But, in reality this almost never happens.  And as a result, the glutes get taken down a notch as major players.

So if you front squat only to parallel, then you’ll keep your glutes out of the picture.  But, if you want a butt to be proud of, keep going down. (Assuming you can do so without rounding your back, of course!)

Ok, seriously, after watching this vid, I’ve GOT to go to the gym   I’ve always been a big fan of David Rigert.  Like Tommy Kono, he was the complete package:  He was strong, he had great technique, he was a showman, and he looked the part. 

The theme song here is over the top in ALL the right ways … oh ya!