I’ve recently begun reading Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training by Mark Rippetoe & Lon Kilgore.  The introduction not only gives an excellent summary to how the invention of Nautilis equipment in the 1970′s has continued to shape how most people view fitness, but also why free weight training is a far superior method of training. 

Among the first tools developed to practice resistance exercise was the barbell, a long metal shaft with some type of weight on each end.  The earliest barbells used globes or spheres for weight, which could be adjusted for balance and load by filling them with sand or shot.  David Willoughby’s superb book, The Super Athletes details the history of weightlifting and the equipment that made it possible.  But in a development unforeseen by Mr. Willoughby, things changed rapidly in the mid-1970′s.  A gentleman named Arthur Jones invented a type of exercise equipment that revolutionized resistance exercise.  Unfortunately, not all revolutions are universally productive.  Nautilus utilized the “principle of variable resistance”, which claimed to take advantage of the fact that different parts of the range of motion of each limb were stronger than others.  A machine was designed for each limb or body part, and a cam was incorporated into the chain attached to the weight stack that varied the resistance against the joint during the movement.  the machines were designed to be used in a specific order, one after another without a pause between sets, since different body parts were being worked consecutively.  And the central idea (from a commercial standpoint) was that if enough machines – each working a separate body part – were added together in a circuit, the entire body was being trained.  the machines were exceptionally well made and handsome, and soon most gyms had the obligatory, very expensive, 12-station Nautilus circuit.

Jones even went so far as to claim that strength could be gained on Nautilus and transferred to complicated movement patterns like the Olympic lifts without having to do the lifts with heavy weights, a thing which flies in the face of exercise theory and practical experience.  but the momentum had been established and Nautilus became a huge commercial success.  Equipment like it remains the modern standard in commercial exercise facilities all over the world.

The primary reason for this was that Nautilus equipment allowed the health club (at the time known as the “health spa”) industry to offer to the general public a thing which had been previously unavailable.  Prior to the invention of Nautilus, if a member wanted to train hard, in a more elaborate way than Universal equipment permitted, he had to learn how to use barbells.  Someone had to teach him this.  Moreover, someone had to teach the health spa staff how to teach him this.  Such professional education was, and still is, time consuming and not widely available.  But with Nautilus equipment, a minimum-wage employee could be taught ery quickly how to use the whole circuit, ostensibly providing a total-body workout with little invested in employee education.  Furthermore, the entire circuit could be performed in about 30 minutes, thus decreasing member time on the exercise floor, increasing traffic capacity in the club, and maximizing sales exposure to more traffic.  Nautilus equipment quite literally made the existence of the modern health club possible.

The problem, of course, is that machine-base training did not work as it was advertised. 

The reason that isolated body-part training on machines doesn’t work is the same reason that barbells work so well, better than any other tools we can use to gain strength.  The human body functions as a complete system – it works that way, and it likes to be trained that way.  It doesn’t like to be separated into its constituent components and then have those components exercised separately, since the strength obtained from training will not be utilized in this way.  The general pattern of strength acquisition must be the same as that in which the strength will be used.  The nervous system controls the muscles, and the relationship between them is referred to as “neuromuscular.”  When strength is acquired in ways that do not correspond to the patterns in which it is intended to actually be used, the neuromuscular aspects of training have not been considered.  Neuromuscular specificity is an unfortunate reality, and exercise programs must respect this principle the same way they respect the Law of Gravity.

Barbells, and the primary exercises we use them to do, are far superior to any other training tools that have ever been devised.  Properly performed, full range of motion barbell exercises are essentially the functional expression of human skeletal and muscular anatomy under a load.  the exercise is controlled by and the result of each trainee’s particular movement patterns, minutely fine-tuned by each individual limb length, muscular attachment position, strength level, flexibility, and neuromuscular efficiency.  Balance between all the muscles involved in a movement is inherent in the exercise, since all the muscles involved contribute their anatomically-determined share of hte work.  Muscles move the joints between the bones which transfer force to the load, and the way this is done is a function of the design of the system – when that system is used in the manner of it design, it functions optimally, and training should follow this design.  Barbells allow weight to be moved in exactly the way the body is designed to move it, since every aspect of the movement is determined by the body.

Machines, on the other hand, force the body to move the weight according to the design of the machine.  this places some rather serious limitations on the ability of the exercise to meet the specific needs of the athlete.  For instance, there is no way for a human being to utilized the quadriceps muscles in isolation from the hamstrings in any movement pattern that exists independent of a machine designed for this purpose.  No natural movement can be performed that does this.  Quadricpes and hamstrings always function together, at the same time, to balance the forces on either side of the knee.  Since they always work together, why should they be exercised separately?  Because somebody invented a machine that lets us?

Even machines that allow multiple joints to be worked at the same time are less than optimal, since the pattern of the movement through space is determined by the machine, not the individual biomechanics of the human using it.  Barbells permit the minute adjustments during the movement that allow individual anthropometry to be expressed.

Furthermore, barbells require the individual to make these adjustments, and any other ones that might be necessary to retain control over the movement of the weight.  this aspect of exercise cannot be overstated – the control of the bar, and the balance and coordination demanded of the trainee, are unique to barbell exercise and completely absent in machine-based training.  Since every aspect of the movement of the load is controlled by the trainee, every aspect of that movement is being trained.

There are other benefits as well.  All the exercises described in this book involve varying degrees of skeletal loading.  After all, the bones are way ultimately support the weight on the bar.  Bone is living, stress-responsive tissue, just like muscle, ligament, tendon, skin, nerve, and brain.  It adapts to stress just like any other tissue, and becomes denser and harder in respnse to heavier weight.  this aspect of barbell training is very important to older trainees and women, whose body density is a major factor in continued health.

Post thoughts to comments.

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Holiday Schedule:

Saturday:
9am Class
10am 5K Run (free and open to all levels)

Monday:
8am class
9am class

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Legitness of the Week

Liz 130×1 Clean (PR)
Liz 110×3 Thruster (PR)
Tammy 110×2 Thruster (PR)
Vanessa 120×1 Thruster (PR)
Nathan 175×1 Thruster (PR)
Chris G. 175×2 Thruster (PR)
Josh 185×3 Thruster (PR)
Mike S. 130×3 Thruster (PR)
Valerie 60×3 Thruster (PR)
Nik 185×2 Thruster (PR)
Jin 175×1 Clean (PR)
Jin 140×1 Thruster (PR)
Alex 315×1 Overhead Squat (Sweat Shop Record)
Aaron 225×2 Overhead Squat (PR)
Jessica 6 consecuetive unassisted pullups (Goal Achieved!)
Alexa 95×1 Clean (PR)
Don B. 215×1 Thruster (PR)
Helen 120×2 Thruster (PR)

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Thursday’s WOD:

A.) Thruster
3-3-3-3-3

B.) Alternating Tabata
Ring Dips
Box Jumps

results:

This entry was posted on Friday, July 2nd, 2010 at 8:55 pm and is filed under General, Physiology related. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.