Science and Practice of Strength Training

What Hacker News says

1. dredmorbiusDec 2012
   This is a great article (even as a repeat), and well-timed for the annual influx of "resolutionists" at the gym come January 1.

   If you haven't lifted or trained seriously before, and have been looking for a solid guide and starting point, you could well do worse. If you're looking for further reading, the suggested library (Rippetoe's Starting Strength and Practical Programming, Zatsiorsky's Science and Practice of Strength Training, Schmitz's Olympic-Style Weightlifting and Gambetta's Athletic Development: The Art & Science of Functional Sports Conditioning) is solid. I'd add Schuler & Cosgrove's The New Rules of Lifting* more for its fitness and nutritional background than its training program, though that too is good.

   For community, Reddit's /r/fitness, /r/advancedfitness, and /r/weightroom are good.

   The one significant omission from Duane's "Men's Journal" article is of HIIT (high intensity interval training) and Tabata intervals (http://www.rosstraining.com/articles/tabataintervals.html). As with strength work, it's amazing how little a time investment can provide returns. Your work sets for both lifting and high-intensity cardio training can be completed in a very few minutes.

   The other key point is that consistency over time, rather than instantaneous effort, is what pays dividends. Lift for a week and you'll be sore. Lift for a month and you'll start feeling things. Lift for a year and you'll see results. Lift for 5 years, and it will be obvious to even the most oblivious. And you can look forward to benefits throughout most of your life, not just your 20s and 30s.

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2. jacques_chesterSep 2011
   Training for strength has a number of components, but the two ones that matter are, in order:

   1. Central nervous system adaptation; developing the ability to recruit the largest muscle fibres, to recruit them more completely and to recruit them faster.

   2. Myofibrillar hypertrophy; causing the myofibrils, the structures that generate force, to grow larger. (It's possible to provoke sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, which causes fluid build up in muscles -- it grows larger but not stronger).

   I am unfamiliar with the physiology of exactly how the CNS produces its adaptations, but I would be surprised if there wasn't measurable effects on the brain, if only the parts related to motor function.

   Bodybuilding-style training -- high reps, isolation movements -- is generally easier on the CNS, but has only limited strength development potential.

   (For an enlightening read, get a copy of Zatsiorsky & Kramer's Science and Practice of Strength Training 2nd ed).

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