I remember a while ago hearing or reading that Poliquin had restricted (though not abandoned) using swiss balls and other such stabilization-type exercises because he was finding that it was often negatively affecting the strength and power of his athletes. I have recently been studying for the NASM CPT exam and as part of their program they advocate a lot of these core type exercises regardless of your goals. The rational they claim is that this is preparing the body for better muscle fiber recruitment-- basically training the nervous system. What I don’t understand is this: in programs where hypertrophy and/or strength is the promary goal, I thought that Type II fibers were mainly recruited as a result of high force production ie lifting heavy weights, lifting explosively, or lifting to failure with longer TUT. (per Waterbury’s excellent quiz). With the trend towards all this stabilization stuff, it seems like you would be minimizing recruitment of Type II fibers and hitting the Type I’s a lot more strongly. How does training your nervous system to recruit a high % of Type I fibers better prepare a person for gains in hypertrophy and or strength workouts if you aren’t even firing up many of those Type II fibers? Phyisology gurus?
i read charlie saying before about hitting slow twitch muscles when working ur core, more like tempo work ex with abs to do low intensity high repititions, since ur abs are predominantly slow twitch, as they are used to support ur trunk all day round, so train them in a way they are designed to function. plus it means thatu can maintain a good posture through ur training and competitions
it prepares you in a way simillar to gpp, it has its role but if your goals are strength, power and hypertrophy it shouldn’t be used to the extent that many “gurus” advocate
i personally use swiss balls on off days during extra workouts for a variety of exercises but stick to heavy/speed training on my main days
I don’t understand. Let’s take the most basic of core exercises crunches. It doesn’t take that much stability to do them on a swiss ball, but they are made infinitely more effective, due to a full range of motion. What specific exercises would recruit more type II fibers compared to a comparable exercise done w/o a ball. If you’re comparing doing static holds with a ball, to weighted ab exercises than there are too many variables. I don’t think it’s that fast twitch fibers (there are some in the abs) aren’t being recruited but the slow twitc hare recruited to a greater extent. I don’t see how this can reduce strength though.