Lose Fat, Gain Muscle, Get Strong, and Laugh a Little – Installment 3
Written on March 10, 2011 at 6:30 am, by Eric Cressey
Reading today’s blog post should instantly drop your body fat by about 10% and increase your bench press by 50 pounds. I can’t however, guarantee that you’ll laugh at my attempts at humor.
When all was said and done, researchers found that the combined group improved maximal muscular strength and rate of force development, a change that wasn’t seen with the endurance-only group. Both groups improved their short-term (5min) endurance capacity, but only the group that strength training improved in a 45- minute test. So, effectively, you can say that these athletes improved in both endurance measures and strength/power measures simultaneously (probably helped by the fact that cyclists aren’t exactly what I’d call “trained” in a strength training context – so they simply filled a void).
However, it’s a good lesson to be learned for the endurance athletes out there. The endurance-only group was completely specific in their training; they only did cycling. One might think that this specificity would allow them to achieve greater short-term results on endurance tests, but the opposite was true; those who did more strength training improved faster on both short and long measures of endurance performance (and without a change of muscle capillarization, an aerobic adaptation important for endurance athletes). This just goes to show you that you need to exploit your windows of adaptation – even if they aren’t things you enjoy doing.
As a brief aside, my buddies Mike Westerdal and Elliott Hulse took some heat for talking about a “Type 3” muscle fiber in the weeks leading up to the release of their Lean Hybrid Muscle program.
My impression of what they intended was a type II fiber (presumably a IIa fiber) that could “swing” either way and hold both favorable endurance properties (e.g., capillarization, mitochondrial density) and strength qualities (e.g., maximal strength, rate of force development, and cross-sectional area). This study tends to substantiate that assertion, as the research has shown (as with this study) that all training leads to a shift toward a slower twitch phenotype – but NOT all training leads to concurrent improvements in both endurance and strength/power measures. Sure, we didn’t have the most highly trained resistance training athletes, but I’d argue that they are more “fit” and “adapted” than a huge majority of the general population who participates in weight training. Food for thought.
2. It’s remarkable how similar the “Sillies” are to the new fitness gadgets that come out each week, huh?
4. This is an old Precision Nutrition article that I just happened to come across, but it is absolutely fantastic (and very enlightening). I’m not a cereal guy, and thanks to this article, I doubt I’ll become one anytime soon: All About Breakfast Cereals.
Back tomorrow with more madness…
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Eric,
I have been thinking about trying Lean Hybrid Muscle Reloaded. I know you are doing the program and I am wondering if you noticed any increase in hypertrophy?
March 10th, 2011 at 7:36 am
Eric,
I have been thinking about trying Lean Hybrid Muscle Reloaded. I know you are doing the program and I am wondering if you noticed any increase in hypertrophy?
Thanks,
Mike
March 10th, 2011 at 8:11 am
He’s like a penguin…clumsy out of the water but so beautiful in the water…haha
March 11th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20799042
another research of strenght training on cyclists
must be seen
March 14th, 2011 at 10:00 am
Interesting study onn cyclists, keep up the good work, Eric! 🙂