Comments on: CrossTraining for Strength

By: Yash

Yash — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:20:21 +0000

Along the lines of what Cerin said, the key point is that the study was done on sedentary males. Strength gains in beginners are often a matter of optimizing neural signals to increase muscular ability. There is definitely a big physical component as well, but for guys like your strongman clients who are near or at their maximal neural efficiency for strength, the circumstances may be different. So, its possiblebeginners can gain strength even with crosstraining because they have so much room for improvement, whereas your powerlifters have more concern because things like endurance training and cardio or HIIT may fatigue them to the point of being deleterious to their strength goals.

By: healthhabits

healthhabits — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:40:59 +0000

Cerin,

Thanks for sending the links to the other studies. They help to reinforce my belief that we shouldn’t take the findings of any single study as the final word on the subject. As soon as we do that, another study will come along to prove an alternate conclusion.

What I like to do is treat each study as temporarily true OR true enough to test out on me and some of my clients.

In my experience, strength is affected by a number of factors – fiber type, muscle size and central nervous system involvement

Fiber type we can’t do much about…damn genetics
Muscle size is important because if all other things are equal, a muscle with a greater cross-sectional area “should” be stronger. But, then again, when are all other things equal?
CNS involvement – now this is the factor that may come into play during these studies.

Trained athletes will have a more effective CNS as it pertains to muscular control. Simply put, they will be able to activate a higher percentage of muscle fibers than an untrained test subject. And more fiber activation = more strength

Unfortunately, you CNS can become over-trained or fatigued. When that happens, efficiency drops and muscle fiber activation is reduced. When that happens, strength drops.

And that is my guess what happened in the study that showed cross-training impaired strength production.

Too much CNS stimulation without enough recovery produced lower strength production.

In the other 2 studies, the CNS wasn’t overwhelmed.

So, how do we keep from overwhelming the CNS?

Well, that’s way too complex a subject for a simple comment reply…I think we have the subject for another article or two. – Thanks again Cerin

By: Cerin

Cerin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:30:06 +0000

This study was done with “sedentary” people.

that both support and contradict what your saying.

The main difference i can see is that one study used “physically active university students” and the other used “untrained men”.

In your experience, how does a persons initial fitness/activity/strength levels effect their training outcomes?

PS – keep it up! I love reading your posts!

By: Philip

Philip — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:50:09 +0000

Cross training should be a cornerstone of any training program. In a lot of ways, it is the mortar that holds all of the focused training blocks together and makes them stronger.

Keep the great stuff coming!

@pdmann