Written on April 2, 2010 at 9:12 am, by Eric Cressey
1. We moved into our new house on Wednesday of this week. All of the packing, lugging, and unpacking was well justified when I realized that my commute is now limited to a whopping 3-minute walk to Cressey Performance. It’s a far cry from the 40-60 minute drive (each way) I had previously. I did the math on it and realized that it’ll save me 16 full 8-hour days of work per year in commuting. I think 2010 will be a productive one – especially now that I’ve got my own home office!
2. Optimal Shoulder Performance was released on Monday, and it’s already gotten some great reviews from those who attended the actual seminar:
3. Mike Robertson has been doing some great podcasts lately. The last two have been with Pavel Tsatsouline and Joe Kenn. They’re 100% free; check them out HERE.
4. Some new research was just published that showed that a 2-0-2 tempo and 2-0-4 tempo elicited just about the same acute hormonal response during bench pressing (with the exception of IGF-1, which was slightly higher in the 2-0-2 tempo). I have long been a believer that we should be less concerned with modifying the ACUTE endocrine response to resistance training via programming variables. Everyone has seen that wanker in the gym who uses a meticulous 406 tempo on every exercise, counting to himself as he lifts his pathetically tiny weights. We all knew he was a complete tool for being so neurotic (and weak), but now we have some research to show that those extra two seconds on the eccentric weren’t as important as he insisted.
Don’t get me wrong; I recognize that eccentric exercise is more damaging to tissues and therefore probably has more benefit in the context of building muscle mass, but you also have to realize that using prolonged eccentrics limits that the lifter can use. So, it’s really a system of checks and balances on strength and hypertrophy development.
5. Uh, is anyone else as fired up as I am for the start of the Major League Baseball season?
More productive? You just lost all the time for your audio books! You know that extra time will be spent snuggling or getting to CP earlier for your fill of techno!!
I don’t know if I’d call a 2-second difference much of a manipulation in tempo. I mean I’d probably lower the reps and leave the concentric phase alone and drastically alter the eccentric phase before I’d take on 2 measly seconds and expect much of a difference. Even then, I’d not be likely to make heavy use of that, but 2-seconds seems like far to little of an alteration to have even been worthwhile to investigate, hah, hah.
Congrats on the move EC! Huge time savings! Awesome!
I agree 100%–ACUTE hormonal changes mean virtually nothing for strength and muscles gains and even fat loss. Dr. Stu Phillips did some great studies on this recently using subjects as their own controls and showed despite higher acute hormone levels, there was NO change in muscle size.
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:59 am
More productive? You just lost all the time for your audio books! You know that extra time will be spent snuggling or getting to CP earlier for your fill of techno!!
April 2nd, 2010 at 10:19 am
yeah, but now he can lie down and read real books
real books > audio books
April 2nd, 2010 at 10:45 am
Did that unexpected use of ‘wanker’ make any of my fellow Brits laugh?? 😀
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:06 am
Congrats on the move! Commuting can really be a killer so the 3 minute walk sounds awesome. How many Americans can say they walk to work?
Andy – it made me chuckle – Eric who did you pick that kind of lingo up from?
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:39 am
“Everyone has seen that wanker in the gym who uses a meticulous 406 tempo on every exercise”
Feckin’ hilarious!!
Congrats on the move Eric.
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:57 pm
I don’t know if I’d call a 2-second difference much of a manipulation in tempo. I mean I’d probably lower the reps and leave the concentric phase alone and drastically alter the eccentric phase before I’d take on 2 measly seconds and expect much of a difference. Even then, I’d not be likely to make heavy use of that, but 2-seconds seems like far to little of an alteration to have even been worthwhile to investigate, hah, hah.
Happy Easter to you, Eric, and everyone at CP.
April 4th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Isn’t the first number listed the eccentric number and the last number the concentric portion?
April 6th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Congrats on the move EC! Huge time savings! Awesome!
I agree 100%–ACUTE hormonal changes mean virtually nothing for strength and muscles gains and even fat loss. Dr. Stu Phillips did some great studies on this recently using subjects as their own controls and showed despite higher acute hormone levels, there was NO change in muscle size.
Rock on
Mike T Nelson PhD(c)
April 6th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
The study and comments on it are a bit confusing. The eccentric portion is the same for both.
Who here would be dumb enough to use a 4 second concentric?
What about the effects of tempo, mainly the eccentric portion, on strength deficit?