A Disagreement.....

Last night I was on the phone with a friend of mine who teaches Sports Performance in another school district. He is an extremely knowledgeable and well read individual who has been the path of an upper level athlete in numerous sports and knows what it takes on and off the field to achieve. However, we had a bit of a disagreement over an article that he read and some of the key points of the article. It was difficult to argue with him at first as I had not read the article myself and was only able to listen to his interpretation of the article and its findings. Not that his interpretations are invalid, but I would just rather read it myself so that I can formulate a better response. The article is written by Mike Boyle who is a well respected strength and conditioning coach and author of a variety of books on functional training. Mike definitely knows his stuff and I would never venture to say that I know more or am more intelligent than him. With that said, I don't have to agree with him. The article is called "Death of the Conventional Squat" and a video link of Mike speaking about it can be viewed here.

Essentially the crux of Mike's argument is that squatting is a lower back limiting and restricted exercise. He labels the lower back as a poor transducer, which essentially is "an element or device that receives information in the form of one quantity and converts it to information in the form of the same or another quantity". In English the back prevents the legs from being fully worked. While what he says cannot be argued about the back being the limiting factor when we look at the squat from a training and functionality standpoint it is difficult to find any other lift that is as functional as the basic squat. Can we find other way to work our legs o get maximum contraction and effort out of them without having a limiting factor? For sure! Welcome to the world of bodybuilders where it is all about show and not about go. I can get maximum power output, fiber stimulation and contractions out of my quads by sitting on a leg extension machine and banging out the reps, but did this truly allow me to become stronger? The answer if you have not already figured this out is no. Just because we have a limiting factor does not mean we should stray from something we do in everyday life all day long. From sitting on the toilet and standing up to getting off the couch we squat all day long and thus our bodies are anatomically and naturally designed to do this movement. The back as a limiting factor indicates a weakness in the posterior chain that should be addressed and not ignored. Fix the weak link and increase overall strength and performance.

If we look at the study itself, it has fallacies as well. We are comparing a unilateral movement with a bilateral movement and trying to equate weights across the 2 by saying that if we have 2 legs then we should be able to do double the amount of work. We also have a select group of athletes, football players, who we are given no background as to there abilities to execute movements properly prior to the study.

From a hormonal perspective big multi-joint compound movements allow for growth hormone, insulin and IGF-1production and testosterone stimulation which in turn equals your growth. Even the neural stimulation and response that goes hand in hand with these types of movement prepares athletes and the general public for bigger and better things.

The final argument I would like to offer against Mike Boyle's article comes from a rehabilitative aspect. When an individual has a knee injury, the first movement that you begin trying to work towards doing is a squat. The knee joint itself is a hinge joint and designed to complete the squatting movement. Weights are light enough that the back is not the limiting factor, but as an athlete wishes to return to competition the functionality of that same movement under load cannot be ignored. It will allow for strengthening of ligaments, tendons and scar tissue to a point that it will not tear when placed under significant amounts of stress from a variety of positions. This is a result of the increased level of core strength that comes from learning how to stabilize a load while moving through a full functional range of motion.

I welcome further discussion and invite my friend to post a response if he wishes as it is always good to not stick your head in the sand. Staying status quo will hinder growth and we need to evaluate new ideas and come to our own conclusions on their validity. Do I have a bias towards squatting? Of course I do. However, I have trained a thousand different ways and always been willing to embrace new things when training partners and other athletes were not. On some I made amazing gains and put it in the little bag of tricks, but on others I got burned. My opinion for what its worth, from an athlete perspective, Mike Boyle will burn you on this one.

Who do we have today?

Thursday

Press 5 x 5

Rest for 5 Minutes

Push Jerk 3 x 6

Knees to Elbows 3 x 10 (to be done between sets of push jerk)