Mythbusters Vol 2
by Nate Green


In Mythbusters Volume 1,
we let our expert panel tee off on some of the fitness industry's
most insidious myths, debunking the ones that piss them off the
most.
Now we're back with more myths, and a (mostly) new lineup of
eminent fitness professionals eager to set the record straight on
the topics they care most about.


Myth: Box squats are dangerous.
Mythbuster: Dave Tate
Two recent articles in T-Muscle, written by prominent strength
coaches, explained why they don't care for box squats.
Poliquin doesn't like them for the general population, and Boyle doesn't like them for his athletes.
Those are their personal opinions, and that's fine. But I
think a lot of readers have gotten the wrong idea, and now think
box squats are inherently dangerous. I'm starting to hear
comments like, "Heavy box squats will mess up your back."
That's just plain wrong.
It reminds me of going to the doctor's office and being told not
to squat because it's bad for your knees. The problem is that
doctors don't know how to squat, and assume no one else does,
either. Try to do a sissy squat with weight on your back, and of
course you're going to mess up your knees.
Same with the box squat: If you slam back on top of the box and
then bounce off it, of course you're going to hurt yourself. But
that's not a box squat. That's being an idiot.
The other statement that pisses me off is, "The box squat needs
to be coached." Well, no shit! Every exercise needs to be coached!
Every time I walk into a gym, 90 percent of the people who're
benching aren't doing it correctly. So is benching a bad
exercise? Do it wrong and you can mess up your shoulders or elbows.
I don't see why we have this huge contradiction.
I trained at Westside for 12 years, and every Friday we did box
squats. The only free squats we ever did were in competition. And
you know what? Not one fucking time did I ever see a single person
throw his back out by doing box squats. Not once! But I did see guys hurting themselves bench pressing, deadlifting, and doing
pin pulls and other popular exercises.
Let me add that I respect strength coaches who have the ability
to train athletes, something I don't know how to do. I train
lifters. Give those guys an athlete and they'll kick my ass. But
give me somebody who wants to squat more and I'll kick their ass.
Guaranteed.


Box squat: no harm, no foul.


Myth: Squats and deadlifts are all you need to work your
core.
Mythbuster: Mike Boyle
If you look at how the body works, I think any reasonable person
would see it's nearly impossible to work the core well enough with
exercises like squats and deadlifts. Sure, you could develop the
ability to hold heavy loads in place, but it wouldn't transfer over
to everyday life, where you have to stabilize your core in a
variety of motions.
Those movements change the mechanics of your pelvis completely.
Let's say you have your right foot on the ground, with your
left foot stepping forward. Your pelvis is stabilized by your
adductors on the inside of your right leg, your gluteus medius on
the outside of that leg, and your quadratus lumborum on the left
side of your lower back. These all work in unison to keep your
pelvis level. It's entirely different when both feet are fixed
on the ground and parallel to each other.
And while adding unilateral movements to your training is a step
in the right direction, I still think you need some isolation work
for your core.
Let's look at it in a different context. Some guys say you
don't need to do direct biceps work if you're already
doing chin-ups. But I don't think you'll find many
bodybuilders who agree with that. They'd say you have to isolate
your biceps with specialized exercises, in this case curl
variations, and they'd be correct.
Same goes for the core. I think you need to isolate those
muscles, as long as it's the right kind of isolation, like
planks and ab-wheel rollouts.
So, getting back to the myth, pulling a lot of weight off the
floor, or putting it on your back, will certainly develop
functional strength. But it only applies to your ability to support
that load in a bilateral stance. If your goal is to put those
muscles in motion, you need to do more than squats and deadlifts.
(For more on myths about isolation exercises, keep
reading.)


Myth: Bad posture means you're dysfunctional.
Mythbuster: Nick Tumminello
A lot of coaches these days will look at somebody's static
posture and come to immediate conclusions about his ability to
function. They'll look at a guy and say, "He has rounded
shoulders and his hands are slightly pronated, so he probably has
tight pecs and weak rhomboids." If asked, they'll come up with
a program on the spot to fix these problems.
But not every variation in posture is a sign of dysfunction. We
get into trouble when we assume posture inhibits performance before
we know what that performance is.
Let me give you an example. If you've ever watched the Olympics,
you've seen the gymnasts bust out some amazing feats of strength
and mobility, like the iron cross. When they dismount and hit their
landing, they're always standing perfectly straight.


Even if his posture sucks, his performance is
fine.
Then you watch them sit down to wait for their scores, or stand
with their teammates, and you see a lot of them hunch over and
exhibit horrible posture. Realistically, you can't watch those guys
and say their horrible posture is evidence of a dysfunction that
inhibits their performance. The way they stand or sit is just a
variation of normal.
Not everyone has to fit the mold of what's "optimal." It's
much more important to look at whether or not they're
performing well, and if they're able to do it without
pain.





Myth: If you're not adding reps or weight to the bar, you're not
progressing.
Mythbuster: Scott Abel
If you were learning to play a musical instrument, nobody would
simply hand you a guitar or flute and expect you to be able to play
a song. First you'd have to learn the mechanics of playing
— how to hold the instrument, how to create notes. Then
you'd learn how to create specific notes by playing scales.
Then you'd probably learn something about rhythm and tempo.
And then you'd be ready to learn to play a song.
But when it comes to strength training, you skip most of that,
and go straight from learning the mechanics — how to hold a
barbell or dumbbells; how to complete a repetition — to playing
songs. You learn about sets and reps, and how to add weight to the
bar, without learning to create specific effects from those sets
and reps, or to understand what feedback you should expect from
your muscles, and what it means.
It's like trying to make music before you know how to make
notes. You can't play a song until you can play the
scales.
To me, the "scales" of strength training are lactic-acid
buildup, oxygen debt, fatigue, and performance. If you don't
know how to induce and interpret these types of feedback, it
doesn't matter how many reps you did, or how much weight you used.
You're just lifting iron, and your muscles and mind aren't
connected at all.
Once you learn those basics, you're still a long way from
building your body, just as an aspiring violinist who can play
scales is a long way from being able to produce beautiful music.
But at least you know how and why your body reacts to different
stimuli. From there, you can develop a comprehensive program that
meets your needs and helps you reach your goals.
In other words, there's a lot more to training than
counting reps and throwing iron on the bar. Once you start
experiencing your workouts, instead of simply doing them,
you'll progress exponentially, rather than
incrementally.


Myth: You should never do static stretches before weight
training.
Mythbuster: Mike Boyle
Early in my training career, whenever we sent one of our
athletes to physical therapy, we were told he needed to stretch
more. We eventually conceded the point, and added pre-workout
static stretching. Almost immediately, we saw a significant drop in
long-term injuries.
So imagine how strange it was to see my fellow coaches turn
against pre-workout stretching in recent years. Why? Because
research linked static stretching to a decrease in power.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather be injury-free than worry
about an incredibly small decrease in immediate
power.
Frankly, I never found those studies particularly compelling. I
remember one where the researchers had their subjects perform a
vertical jump, follow that with a standing hamstring stretch for 30
seconds, and then head back to do another vertical jump. The
overall decrease in power in that study was something in the
neighborhood of 3 percent. Not 30 percent. Three. There's a
difference between something being statistically significant and
genuinely important.
In another, more recent study,
you'll see that static stretching didn't lead to a decrease in
height for the vertical jump, a favorite marker of
power.
I agree that static stretching will probably decrease power immediately after stretching. So if I'm working with a
sprinter, I'm not going to have him do static stretches right
before he runs 100 meters with a championship on the line. But I
might tell him to do it an hour before the race.
That way I know I'm doing the best I can to keep him
injury-free for future races.


Myth: Athletes don't need isolation movements.
Mythbuster: Nick Tumminello
Isolation exercises get no love. I'm surprised every time I
hear trainers say you shouldn't do biceps curls or calf raises
because they aren't "functional." I don't know
what definition of "functional" they're using, but
it's clearly different from mine.
Let me offer some examples.
Imagine a wrestler trying to flip his opponent, or a football
player cradling the ball and pushing through traffic. Of course
those guys need total-body strength, and of course they need trunk
stabilization. But they also need to be really good at holding
something in front of their bodies.
If you talk to an MMA guy about his sport-specific training
needs, one of the first things he'll say is that his arms
completely burn out from all the pulling and pushing. So why
shouldn't we have him do some curls? Why wouldn't the
football player, who needs to protect the football when bigger and
stronger players are trying to rip it away, do isolation exercises
that are specific to the situations he'll encounter on the
field?


Just don't call him "Curly."
Are the curls a priority before heavy chin-ups or push presses?
Absolutely not. But we're certainly not going to neglect them.
It's not either-or. We can do both types of exercises within a
well-designed training program.
Another example:
If your calves are weak, relative to your hamstrings and hips,
you won't be able to reach top speed. So if one of the goals
of your training is to run as fast as possible, and your calves are
the weak link in the movement chain, of course you'll need to
focus on them. They need to function at the same high level as your
hams and glutes.
Why wouldn't you add a few sets of calf raises to your
workouts?
Now imagine if you strained your calf. Not only could you not
run fast, you'd barely be able to walk.
Any physical therapist worth his paycheck would say that a
successful rehab program starts by building motor control in a
muscle. How? By isolating it. Once you've taught your calves
how to work, they'll eventually "wake up," and learn to work even
harder on major compound exercises like deadlifts.
So there you have three reasons to include isolation exercises
in a training program:

• improving sport-specific performance
• fixing weak links
• recovering from injuries
Maybe it's just me, but these seem more compelling than the
reasons for avoiding isolation exercises altogether.


Your Turn
Have any myths you need busting? Click on the "discuss" button
and let us know.

Nate Green is the author of Built for Show: Four Body Changing
Workouts for Building Muscle, Losing Fat, and Looking Good Enough
to Hook Up,
which is available in bookstores nationwide.



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