Charles and Knelson,
Thanks for the very lively debate. I am thinking I might try to track down Dr. Rushall and ask him to answer some of the questions posed in this discussion if I can find an email address for him.
If you have some questions you'd like me to add, please list them!
In the meantime, what do you think of the following armchair analysis by an admitted layman of the first, most amateurish rank?
1) exercise physiologists have known for decades about the specificity of training effects. Classic studies, for example, where volunteers train one leg on an stationary bike have shown that VO2 Max increases substantially when tested on the trained leg, but shows no improvement when tested on the untrained leg. Similarly, a wealth of research has revealed that being in great shape for sport A doesn't translate much to sport B--the reason why so many extremely fit marathon runners can so quickly run out of gas when first taking up swimming.
2) even as this move towards extreme specificity of training has been gaining momentum in some coaching circles, there is a flip-side phenomenon emerging as well, as perhaps best exemplified in strength training. Here, machines like Nautilus, which may be good at targeting very specific muscles, seem to have become increasingly less popular with purists, who favor free weights and ever odder approaches like balancing on a Swiss ball with one foot while juggling kettle weights. I joke, a bit, with the latter example, but I do think there has been much recognition that training large muscle groups at the expense of little balancing ones and other connectors in the kinetic chain can turn your body into an archipelago of islands of great strength separated by lagoons of weakness, compromising your ability to perform whole body motions optimally (or even safely).
Over the past couple years, I had the great opportunity to watch both Dara Torres and Ryan Lochte train in the pool and on dry land, and both were huge advocates of a remarkably varied approach in each of these domains. For what this is worth...
So, we have two not completely opposite but nevertheless somewhat incongruent trends going on here: extremely specific training vs. a much more well-rounded, touch-as-many-bases-as-possible approach.
Would it be crazy to suggest that Rushall's contribution, in its most reductive form, is the ultimate crystallization of the former?
And advocates of the Pilates, free weight training, yoga, swim toys, cross training, multiple types of different swim sets, and Strong Man kitchen-sink-hoisting approach to swimming glory represent the epitome of the latter?
Count me somewhere in between, a devotee of Horace and Plautus, who said, respectively:
There is a mean in all things; and, moreover, certain limits on either side of which right cannot be found.
In everything the middle course is best: all things in excess bring trouble to men.
Charles and Knelson,
Thanks for the very lively debate. I am thinking I might try to track down Dr. Rushall and ask him to answer some of the questions posed in this discussion if I can find an email address for him.
If you have some questions you'd like me to add, please list them!
In the meantime, what do you think of the following armchair analysis by an admitted layman of the first, most amateurish rank?
1) exercise physiologists have known for decades about the specificity of training effects. Classic studies, for example, where volunteers train one leg on an stationary bike have shown that VO2 Max increases substantially when tested on the trained leg, but shows no improvement when tested on the untrained leg. Similarly, a wealth of research has revealed that being in great shape for sport A doesn't translate much to sport B--the reason why so many extremely fit marathon runners can so quickly run out of gas when first taking up swimming.
2) even as this move towards extreme specificity of training has been gaining momentum in some coaching circles, there is a flip-side phenomenon emerging as well, as perhaps best exemplified in strength training. Here, machines like Nautilus, which may be good at targeting very specific muscles, seem to have become increasingly less popular with purists, who favor free weights and ever odder approaches like balancing on a Swiss ball with one foot while juggling kettle weights. I joke, a bit, with the latter example, but I do think there has been much recognition that training large muscle groups at the expense of little balancing ones and other connectors in the kinetic chain can turn your body into an archipelago of islands of great strength separated by lagoons of weakness, compromising your ability to perform whole body motions optimally (or even safely).
Over the past couple years, I had the great opportunity to watch both Dara Torres and Ryan Lochte train in the pool and on dry land, and both were huge advocates of a remarkably varied approach in each of these domains. For what this is worth...
So, we have two not completely opposite but nevertheless somewhat incongruent trends going on here: extremely specific training vs. a much more well-rounded, touch-as-many-bases-as-possible approach.
Would it be crazy to suggest that Rushall's contribution, in its most reductive form, is the ultimate crystallization of the former?
And advocates of the Pilates, free weight training, yoga, swim toys, cross training, multiple types of different swim sets, and Strong Man kitchen-sink-hoisting approach to swimming glory represent the epitome of the latter?
Count me somewhere in between, a devotee of Horace and Plautus, who said, respectively:
There is a mean in all things; and, moreover, certain limits on either side of which right cannot be found.
In everything the middle course is best: all things in excess bring trouble to men.
