Cosgrove's Five Ah-Ha! Moments:
The Education of a Misguided Trainer
by Alwyn Cosgrove
In my career I've had several moments of clarity when I learned
something new, or when something I had believed was either verified,
brought into question, or flat out disproved. These
mini-epiphanies are what I call my "ah-ha!" moments. In every case,
these "ah-ha!" moments allowed my thought processes to take a
significant step forward, which in turn brought me to a new level in my
training education.
An Ah-ha moment. I
was talking to Mike Boyle ("the Barbara Walters of the fitness
industry") at a recent seminar and I shared this idea of the "ah-ha!"
moment with him. He suggested that it would make a good article, which
I guess was another "ah-ha!" for me. Anyway, here are a few
things that I became aware of at some point over the past couple of
decades that made a significant change in how I do things.

Ah-ha! #1: Poor range of motion may actually be an issue of stability, not of mobility. This
was from a Gray Cook presentation. Look at the two guys pictured above
performing an overhead squat. The guy on the right can't get the depth.
He's well above parallel with angles of above 90 degrees at the hip and
knee. So obviously, he has a problem with mobility, right? Now,
is his problem tight lats, tight hip flexors, or maybe a restriction at
the ankle? The answer is maybe none of the above, because when we put these guys on their backs and remove the load, look what happens: The
mobility issue seems to resolve itself. Not completely, but very
considerably. The person who couldn't get below 90 degrees has achieved
a range well beyond 90 degrees. So the difference in squat form and depth was not a mobility issue, it was a stability
issue. Essentially, the body is shutting down the range of motion. Not
because of tightness or a restriction, but because it perceives a
threat due to the lack of stability. Up until this point, I'd
used a Vladimir Janda approach to movement dysfunction: if hip flexors
are tight, we stretch them and strengthen the antagonist. Gray opened
my eyes to this. Conclusion: a range of motion deficit or asymmetry may not be related to tissue length or tension at all, but rather to core stability.

Ah-ha! #2: For fat loss, the post-workout period is where the most important "something" happens. Here's a study that I came across about ten years ago (about 4 or 5 years after it was published, I'm embarrassed to admit):
Tremblay A, Simoneau JA, Bouchard C.
Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism.
Metabolism. 1994 Jul; 43(7):814-8. The
premise of the study was to compare twenty (20) weeks of steady state
endurance training and fifteen (15) weeks of interval training. When
comparing total calories burned from exercise, the researchers found
the endurance training burned 28,661 calories, while the interval
training group burned 13,614 calories. In other words, the
interval-training group burned less than half the calories of the
endurance-training group. However, when the researchers
adjusted the results to correct for the difference in energy cost, the
interval-training group showed a 900% greater loss in subcutaneous fat
than the endurance group. In other words, calorie for calorie, interval
training was nine times more effective than steady state exercise.
Interval training is nine times more effective than steady-state cardio for burning fat. Additionally,
the researchers noted the metabolic adaptations taking place in the
skeletal muscle in response to the interval training program appear to
favor the process of fat oxidation. This piqued my interest
because until this point we'd been told that it's all about "calories
in versus calories out." So we assumed (or at least I assumed)
that burning more calories in training would result in greater fat
loss. This study (and several others since) have shown that to be
completely incorrect. So the "ah-ha!" moment showed me that we
can't ignore the post workout period. That's where the adaptations
happen. That's where the results are. Why did this occur? I've
hypothesized that it's related to EPOC, a post exercise elevation of
metabolism, but some studies have shown that EPOC isn't as big of a
contributor to caloric burn as we originally thought: calories burned
during the exercise period is the biggest factor. And it still doesn't explain the very significant difference in real world fat loss. Simply
put, the subjects doing interval training lost more fat by burning
fewer calories than the steady state group. So maybe, as the study
showed, total body fat oxidation seems to increase as a result of the
adaptations to interval training. But that still
doesn't explain it. An increase in fat oxidation doesn't necessarily
mean an increase in total caloric burn or fat lost (as other studies
have shown that fuel source during exercise appears to be irrelevant,
so fuel source at rest shouldn't matter either unless there is a total
caloric deficit). The bottom line is that perhaps we don't know why. But we do know that it's more effective because of something that happens post workout. And that something is beneficial. Looking
at aerobics for fat loss and ignoring the post workout period is
short-sighted. If we studied weight training the same way, looking only
at what happens during the workout and ignoring the post-workout
adaptations, we'd have to conclude that weight training destroys muscle
tissue, making you smaller and weaker. And we know that's not true. Conclusion: the workout is the stimulus. The adaptation is the goal.

Ah-ha! #3: Cardiovascular programming is an ass-backward concept. I
don't know when I first thought this, but it was confirmed to me when
viewing Lance Armstrong's performance in the New York Marathon. Throughout
my college education, countless training certification programs and
seminars, I'd been taught the same thing: that cardiovascular exercise
was necessary to improve the cardiovascular system and subsequently
aerobic performance. But there seemed to be an inherent flaw in that
argument. Let's say I tested your aerobic fitness through a treadmill test. Then
let's say that for the next sixteen weeks, we developed a five-day per
week aerobic training program that involved you running at various
heart rates and for various lengths of times. The program would
progressively increase in difficulty and duration, and the end result
was a very significant improvement in your aerobic fitness. At the end of this sixteen-week period, how much do you expect your swimming
times to have improved? Marginally, if at all, right? It seems almost
stupid to ask. But wait a second. If you have one cardiovascular
system, why doesn't your cardiovascular system improve across the board
regardless of the activity? More to the point, why didn't Lance
Armstrong, with perhaps the highest recorded VO2 max in history, win
the New York Marathon? Or beat people with lesser aerobic levels than
himself? The seven-time winner of the Tour de France, the greatest endurance cyclist, quite possibly the greatest endurance athlete in the world, finished the Marathon in 868th place, and described the event as the "hardest physical thing" he'd ever done.
"I'd rather be cycling." The
flaw in this thinking was looking solely at VO2 max: the "engine," as
it were. It's fair to say that Lance had a "Formula One" engine, but
his wheels and chassis were built for a different kind of race. In
other words, he just didn't have the structural development for
running. Lance was a cyclist: his body had adapted to the demands of cycling, but not to the specific demands of running. In fact, the longest distance he'd ever
run prior to the Marathon was 16 miles. Lance had developed strength,
postural endurance, and flexibility in the correct "cycling muscles,"
but it didn't transfer to running the way his VO2 max did. The
muscles don't move because of cardiovascular demand. It's the reverse.
The cardio system is elevated because of muscular demand. We need to
program the body based on the movements it's going to perform, not
based on the cardiovascular system. Basically, if that
muscular system can't handle the stress of performing thousands of
repetitions (which is what you're doing, after all, when running or
cycling), then we have to condition that muscular system first. And by
doing so, we automatically improve cardiovascular conditioning. The only reason there's any
demand on the cardiovascular system is because the muscular system
places that demand: the muscles require oxygen in order to continue to
work. In fact, cardiovascular exercise is impossible without moving the
muscle first. I've seen this across various sports. The cardio conditioning required to run a 10K won't transfer to motocross or jujitsu. Conclusion:
If cardio training doesn't transfer well from one activity to another,
and it only 'kicks' in because of muscular demand, we should program
muscular activity first in order to create a cardiovascular response.

A-ha! #4: Strength is the single greatest equalizer in sport; therefore
strength training is the most important physical preparation quality While
in college we were in the midst of the aerobic training and endurance
activity focused period. Strength training studies were few and far
between, to be honest. And any strength training studies were rarely
performed on the more advanced programs we have available today. It was
as if strength development was ignored completely, as all "training
programs" for sport were based around various cardiovascular
improvement programs. While competing in various martial arts
systems it struck me that all combat sports exist in a weight category
system. The idea was not to prevent a fighter from facing a heavier
fighter; it was based on the idea that the heavier fighter was stronger
and therefore more dangerous. Also, men and women (even of
the same weight) didn't face each other in fighting sports.
Incidentally, Lucia Rijker, the female boxer and kickboxer, lost only
one kickboxing match ever. By knockout. In the second round. In a match against the male world champion at the same weight.
She fights like a girl. A really strong girl. So matching athletes up had nothing to do with weight or sex; it had to do with the idea that males were stronger than females, and heavier athletes were stronger than lighter athletes. And
when I thought about it more, even looking at activities such as
marathon running, long distance cycling or figure skating, activities
where excess weight may be a disadvantage, males still tended to perform better than females. Conclusion:
Being stronger is the single biggest advantage in most sports.
Obviously not the only advantage, but definitely a serious difference
maker. It was at this point (when I was still in college) that I
started to realize that improving strength had to be a primary
objective in any sports training program, despite what my professors
were saying.
"...and may the strongest man win."