IronFist
09-27-2003, 05:10 PM
Here is an excerpt from the article linked to below. I have emphasized certain parts with bold that I found particularly controversial:
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If, as usually happens, you perform a set of heavy exercise for strength building purposes, and then sit on your ass or shoot the **** with a friend for five minutes before performing the next exercise, then you probably will increase both your muscular size and strength, will doing little or nothing in the way of improving your cardiovascular condition. But if, instead, you move almost immediately from the end of the first exercise to the start of the second exercise, with almost no rest between the two exercises, then you will increase both strength and cardiovascular condition; in fact, that style of training, properly performed, will lead to a level of cardiovascular condition that is far higher than you could ever produce by any amount of jogging or any other cardiovascular exercise. Such a style of exercise simultaneously provides anaerobic exercise for strength building and aerobic exercise for improving cardiovascular condition.
BUT, A STRONG WORD OF CAUTION: do not jump feet first into such a style of training with no preparation; doing so without a careful period of preparation will, at best, make you as sick as a poisoned dog, and might literally kill you. So devote at least two weeks, and maybe as much as four weeks, to a gradual "break in" to such training; start with a three minute rest between exercises, and then gradually reduce the rest periods until you are moving from one exercise to the next as fast as possible. Once you reach the target rate of exercise you will find that your pulse rate remains at a very high rate throughout the workout, far higher than you could ever maintain with any sort of aerobic exercise; yet your muscles are being worked anaerobically, as they must for strength-building purposes.
This is not an "easy" style of exercise nor is it "pain free," but it will produce very good results that can be produced in no other fashion. We used this style of training during research conducted at the United States Military Academy, West Point, twenty-two years ago, and the results were so outstanding that Dr. Kenneth Cooper refused to believe them, refused even though his own people performed all of the pre and post testing. Average strength for the test group increased by 60 percent in six weeks, while their cardiovascular condition reached a level so high that Cooper refused to believe it, a level he could not reach in six years of aerobic exercise.
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^ wtf???
The article is the second one on this (http://www.i-a-r-t.com/articles/aerobicmyth.html) page, called "Maximizing Aerobic Potential."
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If, as usually happens, you perform a set of heavy exercise for strength building purposes, and then sit on your ass or shoot the **** with a friend for five minutes before performing the next exercise, then you probably will increase both your muscular size and strength, will doing little or nothing in the way of improving your cardiovascular condition. But if, instead, you move almost immediately from the end of the first exercise to the start of the second exercise, with almost no rest between the two exercises, then you will increase both strength and cardiovascular condition; in fact, that style of training, properly performed, will lead to a level of cardiovascular condition that is far higher than you could ever produce by any amount of jogging or any other cardiovascular exercise. Such a style of exercise simultaneously provides anaerobic exercise for strength building and aerobic exercise for improving cardiovascular condition.
BUT, A STRONG WORD OF CAUTION: do not jump feet first into such a style of training with no preparation; doing so without a careful period of preparation will, at best, make you as sick as a poisoned dog, and might literally kill you. So devote at least two weeks, and maybe as much as four weeks, to a gradual "break in" to such training; start with a three minute rest between exercises, and then gradually reduce the rest periods until you are moving from one exercise to the next as fast as possible. Once you reach the target rate of exercise you will find that your pulse rate remains at a very high rate throughout the workout, far higher than you could ever maintain with any sort of aerobic exercise; yet your muscles are being worked anaerobically, as they must for strength-building purposes.
This is not an "easy" style of exercise nor is it "pain free," but it will produce very good results that can be produced in no other fashion. We used this style of training during research conducted at the United States Military Academy, West Point, twenty-two years ago, and the results were so outstanding that Dr. Kenneth Cooper refused to believe them, refused even though his own people performed all of the pre and post testing. Average strength for the test group increased by 60 percent in six weeks, while their cardiovascular condition reached a level so high that Cooper refused to believe it, a level he could not reach in six years of aerobic exercise.
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^ wtf???
The article is the second one on this (http://www.i-a-r-t.com/articles/aerobicmyth.html) page, called "Maximizing Aerobic Potential."