Interesting weird health and fitness study
 

You don't have to lift weight, you just have to lower it. ("Negatives.")

https://www.ecu.edu.au/newsroom/arti...you-need-to-do

Quite interesting, but I would question the practicality. Are you really going to use two hands to lift and one to lower your dumbbells?

Maybe we can have the weight-lifting equivalent of downhill mountain e-bikes. The motor positions the weight for you, and then you can manually lower it, and take all the credit.

This kind of reminds me of a few years ago it was all over the news that you can forego all the time-consuming "easy" training for a quick HIIT session and reap the same benefits.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...rack-to-health

This is the guy I was thinking of when I posted the above post, I just couldn't find him, but here he is (Dr Michael Mosley), he was all over the news a long time ago promoting HIIT and it spurred a bunch of other videos and such of doing just HIIT.

https://www.kpbs.org/news/arts-cultu...michael-mosley




And here are a couple short videos of him demonstrating HIIT

It's been known "forever" that eccentric (lengthening) contraction is more effective for increasing strength. That's why you're supposed to spend more time in the eccentric phase when you lift.

In 1979, I started doing Nautilus workouts using machines. Key to these workouts was a timing ratio of 1 to 4 of the positive to negative part of the repetition. And there was a trainer who was with customers that assisted with forced reps and applied more force on the eccentric motion as one approached failure. We only did one set per machine and did no more than 8 machines per session. It was a very efficient gym workout.

I liked the workouts a lot and I was in great shape.

Slow down and explosive up. Accelerate the weight. Try to do that anyway. Same thing with bodyweight. Marine pushups - you clap your hands. That's why. Being temporarily restricted on cardio. I've been in the gym 3X week, probably for the first time in my life. Usually it's been 2, then 1.. It's been fun.

Ditto, Nautilus machines. I usually disliked the weight machines and free weights in most gyms, and, as an amateur boxer, back then most coaches discouraged weight lifting. They said -- with some validity -- that weight lifting can hinder a boxer's "snap" in his punches, and added useless muscle bulk.

I can think of one particular guy from my area -- a world class amateur in the mid to late 1970s, and later a world light welterweight champion -- who reportedly wrecked his upper body flexibility and right shoulder through his obsession with free weights. He even traveled with his own weight kit, sometimes sneaking them into his luggage. Toward the end of his career his upper body was stiff and he seemed unable to throw a straight right punch anymore. Instead he flung his right like he was throwing a football. It looked like he'd ruined his shoulder joint, and tried to compensate by bulking up with stiff muscles that lacked snap, that quickness boxer's need. It was sad to watch his decline over a few short years due to bad training.

For that particular sport, it was generally true. But there were also a lot of myths about training that have long since been disproved by modern training based on lab testing and results.

But I found the 1970s Nautilus machines helped significantly with strengthening while maintaining flexibility and full range of motion. Unfortunately those were phased out years ago and I'm not sure whether any current machines offer the same benefits.

Did the Nautilus concept go out of favor? I was in college in the 70s when they got a set of those machines and it was a big deal. I don't think I've seen them since.

That is a great question about which I often wondered. I think the short answer is that Nautilas was an equipment manufacturer that ran out of money and was acquired by Bowflex. Nautilas designs were knocked off by cheaper versions with stronger brands and better sales and marketing. The very short answer is great idea and design but poor business model.

Arthur Jones came up with the concept of a weight machine that matched muscle strength capability over the muscle’s range of motion by using a cam that was in the shape of a Nautilas shell. Since the machine matched the capability of one’s muscle, only one set was required as long as it was done to failure within a repetition range. Forced reps were added as a more advanced workout. At a Nautilas gym, a trainer was provided to help customers get to failure and set up the machines correctly and chart progress. And the trainer could add negatives after failure meaning once one could not do a concentric effort the trainer helped lift the weight and the customer lowered it or went deeper into negative eccentric fatigue. Only 8 machines per session were recommended and twice per week workout schedule.

The concentric motion was not explosive and we counted one thousand and one and the eccentric motion was a count of four.

There are a lot of problems with this model. How many people “actually” want to be coached to failure? With only 8 exercises and one set of 10 to 15 reps, how much can one charge for that service only coming to the gym twice per week?

It is my observation that aficionados of free weights poo poo any machines and certainly want multiple sets, hours in the gym and many more services that just one lineup of machines. I am sure there are journal articles comparing Nautilas to free weights and free weights win. No one will pay for an individual personal trainer for 8 machines and 20 minutes of time. So it goes.

I liked the workouts but I also like my current gym workouts but I keep some of the Nautilas concepts that I learned from over 40 years ago.

Yeah, I preferred the Nautilus machines because the workouts were quick and efficient. But I wasn't trying to get swole. Just adding some strength without bulk or sacrificing flexibility.

Back in the 1980s there was a TV ad campaign for a home gym that used the Nautilus type concept, but designed for the user's own body to serve as the weight. Very clever design. I tried one in a sporting goods shop. Unfortunately it had some quality control problems and, even if that had been resolved, couldn't overcome the stigma against weight machines at that time.

Most Bowflex devices I've tried are terrible, because the elastic bands don't correspond with many real world scenarios where you'd need that particular type of strength. But the Bowflex channel on YouTube offers some of the best videos I've seen for specific workouts that don't require any machines or devices, and they aren't trying to sell anything. Every video is very specific, concise, no fluff or host rambling on incessantly like this post I'm writing...

The big difference between free weights and machines is the activation of the zillion little supporting muscles that one gets with free weights. Like in the gym I'm using now, there are no squat racks, just Smith machines. They put a sort of similar stress on the main movers, but it's just not the same. Oddly, I can't squat as much on a Smith machine as I can with a free barbell. The machine somehow limits what I can do, the muscles I can use, something. For curls, rather than a curl machine, I stand, well bent over, legs spread, knees bent, holding on to something for balance, and use dumbbells. Lots more going on there than with a curl machine. Similar thing just doing dumbbell benches. Isolation exercises just don't work as well, unless one is competing and is trying for some particular look or having symmetry problems.

Arthur Jones and Nautilus has been controversial right from the start. They did gain some popularity in the 70s and 80s but then it just went out of style. We still have a few Aurthur Jones and Nautilus concept aficionados on YouTube claiming that it's the one and only proper way to train and all other training methods are wrong...but There is absolutely zero evidence to show that performing one set of an exercise to failure on a Nautilus machine is superior and more effective than other resistance training methods.

If you're a cyclist, you don't really want to "build muscles," at least not much. You want to get stronger, but not heavier, if anything, lighter. Your 8-week program will mostly improve your nerves' ability to fire muscle fibers, so you'll make a lot of progress in weight lifted, quite quickly. Getting "ripped" is mostly a factor of losing fat, not so much gaining muscle mass. When I'm in my fall strength training phase, I keep my meals small, so I hopefully don't gain weight and instead lose fat, but not weight, replacing the fat with muscle.

Doing leg work, I think cyclists are a bit of a special case, because our job is to accelerate the pedals as quickly as possible. That's a neuromuscular thing, not just muscular. So when I'm past the "I might tear something" phase, I accelerate the weight as quickly as I can. Think power clean, even though you probably aren't doing one:

The idea of doing several sets is to avoid injury and move more weight on the last set than you could have, had you only done 1 set. I start with maybe 85% of what I plan to lift on my last set. That warms up my muscles and makes sure my technique is correct. I don't rep to failure on the last set, just to where I know I would fail the next rep. No spot necessary.

Another difference between machines and free weights is range of motion. I think it's very important to move one's limbs through their full range of motion in whatever exercise one is doing. A machine may not allow that. I think that's a cool thing about Olympic lifting, that and the speed. I used to love doing snatches. That's really fun. Not that I was any good at it, I just loved doing it.