Minimum Effective Dose vs. Maximum Effective Dose

Broadly speaking, people make two errors when training - doing too little to be effective (ranging from nothing to not enough), or do too much to really benefit (ranging from too much to recover from to too much to do without getting injured).

But the goal of exercise is to hit that sweet spot in the middle, where you are doing enough to get to where you want to go, but not so much you can't recover from the workouts.

To borrow a term from medicine, the goal of exercise is the minimum effective dose. That is, just enough exercise to get the results you want.

If 3 sets of a weight is enough to get you to your goal, you want to do 3 sets. Two isn't enough, and if you don't need to do 4 to get there, why do four? It's like accelerating towards a red light that'll still be red when you get there - it wastes gas and doesn't get you to your destination any faster.

How to tell can be hard, and means you need to track your workouts and track your progress. But although it can be hard to identify, it doesn't change that fact - the goal is to do just enough to get the most progress towards your goal and not any more or less than that.

This isn't easy.

It's very easy to get caught up in trying for the maximum effective dose. That's the most exercise you can do while still getting some benefit from it. It's doing so much exercise that you're reached the end point of utility but are still getting something from it.

Past that, and you get to ineffective exercise.

The bodybuilding great Lee Haney famously said, "Stimulate, don't annihilate." It's very easy to push past stimulation and head towards annihilation. If 3 sets are good, 6 sets much be great, and 9 sets much be amazing! The more your body screams at you to stop, the more benefit you're getting from the workout. After all, pain is weakness leaving the body.

Except it isn't. Like Lee Haney said, the goal is to stimulate growth. Pain isn't weakness leaving the body - discomfort and exertion is weakness leaving the body. Pain is a warning sign of injury and unacceptable levels of stress entering the body. It won't respond by getting stronger, but by breaking down - because you're not leaving it the resources (time off to regain and super-compensate) to do so.

If this wasn't the case, if pain was really the sign of a good workout and pushing until you literally can't continue was the basis of progress, then every MMA fighter out there would be an endurance god. Every teen to twenty-something male would have 25" biceps. Every jogger would knock off marathons like warmups.

Notably Dave Tate once wrote about fixing someone's bench press, and saying the first thing he does is get people to stop doing extra triceps exercises for a few weeks. That's the first fix - see if they're doing too much. Give them some extra recovery and less stress on the muscles involved and see what happens.

Psychologically this can be hard - no one (including myself) wants to go home leaving an opportunity to progress towards the goal behind. You don't want to "bag" a workout or slack off, and it's easy to mistake hard work (or just more work) with more progress.

But it's worth reminding yourself, the goal isn't to do the most and still make progress. The goal isn't even to do the most to make the most progress. The goal is to do the minimum you need to do to make the most progress. And if you can't figure out where "enough" and "too much" are, it's better to err on the "not quite enough" side - it's easier to add a bit later than to get extra sleep, extra recovery, and to heal up injuries faster.

So never push to or past your limits?

Not at all. You always need to be pushing past your limits to grow. You need to be striving, even if only striving to keep what you've got. What you just can't do is push past your ability to recover from and benefit from the workouts all the time. You grow during the time between workouts, and you always need sufficient recovery time to balance out the workouts - you can't beat your body into extra recovery by increasing demand.

This isn't to say that occasionally over-reaching isn't productive. Sometimes it is - in the same way that someone on a fat loss diet may have a higher-calorie or "cheat" day can benefit from a sudden spike in calories followed by a return to normal eating patterns. It's the disruption of the body's homeostasis - its attempts to keep everything the same unless forced to change - that makes that work. But in order for it to be useful it must be coupled with plenty of days where you are eating less than you need to take in to maintain, thus getting you to your goal.

You can't get very far with cheat days every day, or by overreaching every day. It works when you overreach your body's recovery and then give it extra recovery (spike the workout, spike the recovery).

But what about (Boot camp/Soviet-era Olympic camps/SEAL training/whatever)?

Don't mistake a selection process for a training process. A lot of famously effective programs for weeding out the unfit for the task are just that - programs for weeding out the unfit for the task. They're not programs meant to build up the participants but winnow out anyone who isn't ideally suited for a specific task that only needs doing by a very small group of people. Those processes can be nothing but overreaching on a daily basis to see if you break down. It can do nothing but annihilate instead of stimulate. The goal isn't improving but selecting for survivability and willpower (or for Soviet-era Olympic camps, the most perfectly adapted to the needs of that specific sport). And even then, once you make it in to the military or onto the team, they start to program in a lot of recovery to balance out the training - and use every tool in the world at their disposal to get you the minimum effective dose for the optimum benefit from training.

Keep this in mind while you train - are you doing as much as your body can take, or as much as your body needs to get to reach your goals?

Related Post:
Demonstrating vs. Training Strength

Book Review: The Complete Guide to Kettlebell Training

The Complete Guide to Kettlebell Training (Complete Guides)
by Allan Collins
Published by Bloomsbury, 2011
176 pages
$29.95

The book is focused on kettlebell training. It endeavors to be a complete guide to kettlebell training. To a large extent, it succeeds.

The book goes over equipment - both kettlebells and other tools you'll need (shoes, for example). It goes over basic mobility warmup.

The key section of the book is its list of exercises. Each exercise is clearly detailed. The individual exercises come with at least one picture each, clearly labeled in steps. It doesn't fall into the usual trap of two unhelpful pictures that show the start and end of the exercise but not the importance progression from one to the other. Somewhat unexpectedly the book includes some non-kettlebell lifts, such as the barbell Romanian deadlift and the overhead squat. They have value to add to a kettlebell training program, and thus have a place in the book. But other exercices might equally be valuable and get left out - it seems more like a question of providing enough to get you to integrate barbells into your kettlebell lifts and not an attempt to be "complete" for non-kettlebell lifts.

The pictures are clear, errors and key points to look for are also included. And differentiation between hard style and soft style lifts are denoted, allowing you to pick what works best for you.

The book does come with some workouts, which are good enough - if you need an idea of where to start, it's there. The book also comes with some excellent training flows - what exercise is a step down from another, and what exercise is the next step up. This allows you to start with some very basic kettlebell lifts, and steadily progress to harder versions.

If the book has a flaw, it is the influence of competitive kettlebell lifting. Many techniques emphasize using just enough energy on the move. Grip on the kettlebells is as little as you need to get the job done, power is just enough to get the rep done, etc. In running terms, it's a book on how to run marathons vs. a book on how to use running to burn calories and get your heart rate up. One is for competition, the other is for getting the most physical benefit from your lifting. This isn't a bad thing, but although the author is clearly trying to split them out little bits of "how to lift efficiently so you can work out longer" creep in regularly.

Rating:
Content: 4 out of 5. Extremely complete, but the subtle emphasis on lifting efficiency as if for competition detracts from it a bit.
Presentation: 4 out of 5. Well written, and pictures of techniques are very attractive and generally easy to follow. A bit hard to use as a reference book, though - you need lots of page flipping.

Overall: If you want a one-book guide to what you can do with a kettlebell, this is probably it. It's extremely dense with exercises, progressions, and explanation. It is subtly geared to competition, though, so keep in mind it's talking to kettlebell enthusiasts who are aiming for maximum time, maximum reps in a time limit, or clear competitive technique rather more than anyone else. Solid book and well worth the read.

Training When You Are Older

Mike Robertson posted a great blog post on training an aging athlete - aimed at the athlete, not at the coach. It's a good guide to what to do when you're not as young as you once were.

I would add three ideas to the advice there.

Find what works for you, not for them. - As you get older, it's hard to do many things you once did with ease. Accumulated injuries, surgeries, etc. can catch up. Don't conform your training to the expectations of others, or the training prescriptions meant for young, able-bodied and still-growing athletes.

By all means expand your repertoire. But don't be afraid to ditch an exercise if it's just not working out for you. If barbell bench press hurts that often-injured shoulder, don't barbell bench press. Find another exercise that gets you the results you want. It's about getting the results, not about to the path you take to get there.

Lift for today, not for yesterday. - It can be hard to adjust to reduced strength, reduced total training time, and so on. If you lifted before and were stronger before, that doesn't necessarily mean you can lift the same weights for the same reps today. If you pulled 315 last year but haven't pulled recently, don't base everything on pulling 315 again.

Don't let the weights you trained before hold you back. You need to learn how to feel
Be realistic about it. You may be stronger than before. You may not be. But don't let your knowledge of what you did before set your weights for today's workouts.

It can be hard - 20s used to be a light warmup, and now they are a working weight. So be it. Again, it's results, not the path to get there. By all means aim to get stronger, and to set new PRs. But don't let your ego choose the weights, sets, reps, and frequency of workouts. It's now that matters when you lift, not what you did good or bad before.

Quality beats quantity. - Chronic injuries can come from repeated low quality movements. Incorporate mobility drills into your warmup and cooldown (if you do a cooldown). Emphasize perfect technique. Make sure the exercises you do are building you up, not beating you down with repetition after repetition of incorrect technique. Hire a coach if you need one, or just if you can. Aim for perfect adaptation not just adaptation.

All of this advice should apply at any age, but as you get older, it's more and more important to respect what your body is capable of, what you can do now to get better, and to make sure you do good work not just more work.

Influence of Gut Flora on Weight Control

As the title says, Gut Bacteria May Be Key to Fighting Obesity - maybe a bit strong to say "key," but it's clear that gut bacteria have an extremely strong influence on your weight.

Now it's not clear how you can act on this now, for all of the "probiotic" and "prebiotic" products on the market. Healthy consumption of fermented foods can surely help to a degree, but most of this is still in the future. But it's interesting that folks like Paul Chek have been talking gut health as it relates to strength training for a long time, and finally health science is starting to demonstrate why that may be so important.

Not the most savory of topics, gut flora and bowel health, but it's the other end of the diet/intake process and equally as important in the long run for your health.

Zottman Curl variations

One of my favorite curl variations is the Zottman Curl. It is basically a regular dumbbell curl, but at the top you turn your palms down and lower the weight in a reverse curl. Since the reverse curl gets at your forearm strength more, and is generally less strong than a regular curl, you are basically overloading the eccentric (here, the lowering) portion of the exercise.

You can see Joe DeFranco demonstrating these in the first 7 reps of this 21-rep set:
21's ver. 2.0

Curl up, turn, lower down. Elbows stay close to your sides and the weight is lowered slowly to ensure you're not just dropping the weight down and catching it at the bottom.

These can be done double - as seen in that video, alternating (left then right, repeat), or one arm (all reps on one arm, all reps on the other arm.)


Tabletop Zottman Curls
This variation is one I first saw in this video by grip strength competitor Jedd Johnson.

Tabletop Zottman Curls

Like preacher curls, this has the effect of stabilizing the upper arm, preventing any "cheating" by swinging the body. The dead stop/dead start for each rep also means you can't use any momentum. Every rep will be as hard as the previous rep, and require a strong grip to squeeze the dumbbell off the bench and return it gently at the end of the movement.


Circular Zottman Curls
I've yet to find a video, however, showing this version of the exercise. It is described John Little in the book "The Art of Expressing the Human Body," which discusses Bruce Lee's workout routines and physical training methods. Bruce Lee was apparently a big fan of the Zottman curl, but it's not 100% clear if he did the "normal" version or this version, below.

"Curl the dumbbell in the left hand to the left shoulder, keeping the upper arm still but permitting the dumbbell to pass toward the right side of the body during the movement. When the elbow is fully bent, rotate the hand so that the palm is downward; then lower the dumbbell to the starting postion, at the same time taking the dumbbell away from the body as far to the left as possible (without altering the position of the left upper arm). When the left hand has been rotated and the weight is being lowered, the dumbbell in the right hand should be curled (across the body) to the right shoulder. [. . . ] Each dumbbell makes a circular movement, which should be performed smoothly and rhythmically."

That is a very different motion, combining a cross-body motion similar to a standing concentration curl with an external lowering of the weight. I've never seen this demonstrated. It makes for a somewhat different feel to the curls, too, although it's not clear that it does anything more to increase your strength or muscle size compared to a "normal" Zottman curl.


If you're finding your grip strength and forearm strength is lagging, this is a great way to address them (even more so with thick handled dumbbells, Fat Gripz, or Tyler Grips.) It's a good way to get both extra biceps work in while training your forearms and grip, too.

Audio Recommendation: Epstein and "The Athletic Gene"

I highly recommend this fascinating interview with David Epstein on his new book, The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance. This immediately propelled the book to the top of my "must read" list.

You can hear him interviewed here:

David Epstein and The Sports Gene

It's well worth listening to. It's approximately 45 minutes long.

What is it about? The effects of genetics on training.

Practice is critical, but what if some people are more genetically predisposed to benefiting from that practice? In other words, if person A and B do the same amount of practice, but A is genetically disposed to benefit more from X hours of practice. If they both do X hours of practice, A will be better. B may simply not be able to catch up (think of sports stars who think about and practice their sport from extreme youth, from morning to night.)

Extending that to training, it can help explain why some routines make people and yet break some other people. Why some folks gain strength easily and others have such a hard time adding it - perhaps they'd be reversed if the goal was weight loss, or endurance training.

This goes a long way to explaining why there are so many ways to get stronger, yet they all don't work on all people. And why if they do work on everyone, not everyone can keep on that same program as long, or benefit as much as others. Some people start to back squat and add weight workout after workout for weeks, and top out at a high strength. Others add weight just as quickly but stall out sooner and just don't end up as strong. It's common to say it's hard work vs. not enough hard work, but given equal amounts of hard work, genetics is starting to tell us it's just that one person might be more predisposed to benefit from that modality.

This is pretty exciting stuff - if training can start to be tailored to both your goals and your genetic predisposition, it can end in better results for the work you put in. We do this now on an ad hoc basis - we try different training modalities, we look at your body type and try to extrapolate from other people's results giving those modalities and body type, etc. You see it as "Skinny Guy" routines and "Mass Gain for Hardgainers" and "High volume programs" for "mesomorphs" and so on. It's a question of trying to find out by hit-or-miss which training will benefit you the most, and which is spinning your wheels.

You still need to put the work in - as David Epstein says, it was never a question of practice helping, the question is, exactly how much of a result is practice? You need to put in the effort. But it seems like genetics helps you determine how much you get out of every unit of effort you put in.

Related:

Review: Why Michael Couldn't Hit (maybe great genetics, but not enough practice)

Book Review: The First 20 Minutes

The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer
by Gretchen Reynolds
Published 2012 by Hudson Street Press
266 pages

This book is, at its heart, an explanation of why you should exercise. And that it's only going to take 20 minutes of movement a day to get some real benefits. What kind of benefits?

Chapter by chapter, the author outlines the benefits of exercise. Improved cardiovascular health. Improved brain function. Improved lifespan. Improved weight control. Improved everything physical and some emotional and mental, as well.


The author steadily debunks myths, too, while replacing them with facts. Explanations are thorough - you'll understand leptin and grehlin and their effects on appetite. You'll understand what endurance means and how it's achieved. You'll get a solid understanding of the body's response to exercise.

What it isn't is a workout guide, or a how-to book. It's much more of a "why you should" book and it leaves the details on what your exercise routine or diet should look like out. That might seem to make it less valuable, but in a way it makes it more valuable - it's not focused on getting you to do a specific workout or justifying a specific diet by demonizing others. It's all about the general knowledge you need to succeed.

The author does show a fairly typical general-population target audience bias, though - exercise is basically running, cycling, swimming, and yoga. Possibly weight training, but it's usually mentioned without any real explanation of what's involved. In general, the idea is that fitness is cardiovascular training. It's not a case of ignorance, though - the author clearly states the difference between weight lifting (a sport) and weight training (an exercise mode). It's just that strength training takes a back seat. Even the chapter on proper technique is about running (barefoot and shoed), cycling, and swimming, and not much else.

To a large degree this makes sense, because people need to walk before they run. Getting that first 20 minutes of activity per day, reducing sitting and increasing motion, is the main idea of this book. It's focused on getting started and why it's valuable, not on a balanced routine of strength and endurance training. If people are getting up and moving, and walking or going for a bike ride or swim, it's a good start. But so is getting out to the gym and learning to lift, but it's not really held up as more than a secondary choice.

The author also does an excellent job defining an athlete vs. a recreational trainer - and it's pretty hard to meet the definition of an athlete.

There are a few nits to pick, though. Although many studies are mentioned, none are discussed in specific or end-noted or footnoted. So when the author mentions the results of a study, there is no way to track it down. For example, she mentions that a study showed that the best way to improve strength was with higher reps at a lower weight than lower reps at a higher weight. That flies in the face of a lot of strength training science, on the face of it. But it's hard to find out what it means - what does "high reps" mean? What do they mean by low weight? Or low reps? Or high weight? Or even by strength - is it improving one-rep max, 10-rep max, perceived difficulty of lifting a weight? It's just not clear.

There are also other areas that prompted a "yeah, but" or two, where it was clear that maybe something else was going on. Studies about how fast pickle juice cures cramps or that swishing sugary drinks and then spitting them out improves performance vs. swishing sugar-less drinks or water are mentioned as possible mental prompts to perform better, not actual physiological effects of those substances. But it ignores the fact that digestion starts in the mouth (stick a sugar cube on your tongue and see), so it's possible you're triggering a very reasonable cascade of responses because actual nutrition (even a tiny bit) is being received. Things like that, though, really are nits. The book's information is so solid that it's only on this edge cases that I found things to complain about.

Rating:
Content: 4 out of 5. Excellent, highly accurate and well-explained content. However, many studies are mentioned but not in enough detail to track them down and study more.
Presentation: 4 out of 5. Well-written and clearly written. Easy to follow. Finding things later is difficult, and it lacks any illustrations or charts so it's even harder to just flip back to a specific piece of information.

Overall: This is not an exercise guidebook as much as it's a solid explanation of why you should exercise, what the benefits are, and generally how much you need. Well worth reading. If you're a trainer, it's worth reading and then passing on to sedentary clients or those without a basic understanding of why it's worth training.