No one is suggesting any program is better than universally all other programs. Because EVERYTHING CAN and WILL work to a certain extent. But you cannot say that free weights are not superior to smith machines. For the last time, the unnatural movement pattern disallows the stabilizers, synergists and supporting muscle groups to be overloaded and therefore would not add to functional strength seeing it is dismissed from the three dimentional plane the body is used to.
Thank you, I am quite aware of the three [saggital, transverse and coronal] planes and the body's movement through these planes on any given lift. However, your posts [again] assume several things, which give off a tone of dictation: not all or even most individuals on this site are concerned with "functional strength"; not all or even most individuals on this site privilege "strength" over "mass" [though, to a certain extent, sarcoplasmic and myofribillar hypertrophy are linked; the neuromuscular component of strength notwithstanding, speaking strictly about hypertrophy], and; that myself or anybody else is claiming that Smith Machines are 'superior' to free weights in any given context.
You claim you are not propagating a given approach over all others in all instances, when you clearly are: as I say, you are assuming that we all lift for "functional strength", when that is clearly not the case. As I say, making "always" statements is more often than not a sign of two things: lack of knowledge, or lack of experimentation. Most exercises have their place.
I tend to disagree. There's only one goal in bodybuilding/powerlifting, it's to progress at SOMETHING. Whether that be strength, size or endurance it's usually ALWAYS one or the other. Building muscle and/or burning fat would be categorized under size, seeing it deals with the posture and muscle density. I am suggesting that the linear progress should be taken advantage of. Changing things up for muscle confusion can and will work. But changing so that your body doesn't adapt doesn't make sense, adaption should be the goal, not something you should avoid. Changing isolation movements is fine, but the compounds should always come first.
Not so, in my opinion. Not everybody in the gym wants to be: a) Dennis Jackson, or; b) Mendelson. To say there is only one goal, again, is both ignorant and short-sighted. Goals vary on a person to person basis, particularly when a certain stage of development is reached; in order to give your point credence, we must boil our definitions to such little meeting they no longer satisfy their original intent.
In regard to adaptation, biomechanics and simple physiology would tend to disagree with you. To seek adaptation is to seek a lack of alteration in muscle fiber dynamics, composition and response which is antithetical to growth; in fact, the goal is quite the opposite of what you are saying here. I believe you mean to say "achievement" should be the goal - that is, reaching certain statuses/achievement as a sign of "linear progress".
The cellular adaptation of skeletal muscle to exercise is regulated by a signal transduction pathway - most notably, the so-called "effector proteins" which are in a general class of transcription regulators. These proteins regulate the transcription and translation of DNA, thereby controlling muscle-gene expression. These genes, in turn, then control the natural phenotypic variation of fiber types, sarcomere length, the uniformity of contraction, peptide binding sites, AMPk binding sites, Ca2+ sequestering and cholinergic sensitivity, and every other factor deemed necessary for growth. Obviously, gene expression plays a prominent role in the development of muscle.
Now, why do I mention this? Because it shows your points to be intellectually inconsistent. These transcription-induced changes in muscle-gene expression come as a result of consistently altered
movement variation. Much of the research in molecular exercise physiology relates that constant movement repetition leads to a down-regulation of the genes responsible for many of the processes I listed above - i.e., not varying your stimulus set produces passivity, and not growth. There is more.
From a neuromuscular standpoint, your case is even more grim. The classic "neurons that fire together wire together" standpoint to innervation and muscle-recruitment patterns illuminate something clearly: the higher the frequency of action potential generation between a set of neurons, the higher the probability that these neurons will form synaptic connections. What does this mean, in layman's terms? It means that the more one generates action potentials between the same set of neurons, the higher the probability the connections between them will ossify. While this sounds great, it comes with a caveat: the formation of these synaptic connections comes
necessarily at the expense of more spontaneous recruit patterns - i.e., it limits the capacity for muscular activation in non-orthodox [relative to the person] movements. So, not introducing variation of recruit patterns for the sake of avoiding adaptation limits progress -
literally.
To cease adaptations in phenotypic variation, muscle fiber composition, sarcomere length and the wide-range of other processes I spoke about is to
literally seek to cease growing. Period.
At any rate, I am not claiming Smith Machine > Free Weights. You merely have some ideas that literally fly in the face of science, and I am pointing those inconsistencies out.
