People who regularly strength train already take this into account. Hence, you will see body builders focus more on high rep workouts, whereas powerlifters and olympic lifters focus more on low rep workouts. (They all incorporate both kinds of training, but what they focus on differs.)
I'm surprised this hadn't already been experimentally established. Verifying this experimentally is good, but it's certainly not a "new paradigm." And I don't like the recommendations from the press release: the kind of training you need depends on what you want to do.
Hmm. I'm not sure if they address the different kinds of muscle that is built. The generally accepted model among strength trainers is that low weight, high rep training builds red "twitch" muscle and high weight, low rep training builds white "slow" muscle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_muscle#Muscle_fibers
The only mention is in the conclusions:
In contrast to recommendations [31], that heavy loads (i.e., high intensity) are necessary to optimally stimulate MYO protein synthesis, it is now apparent that the extent of MYO protein synthesis after resistance exercise is not entirely load dependent, but appears to be related to exercise volume and, we speculate, to muscle fibre activation and most likely to the extent of type II fibre recruitment.
If I understand correctly, they're detecting a protein associated with muscle growth. But they're speculating on what kind of muscle is actually grown. Since it's already assumed that high-weight, low-rep training does not lead to significant muscle hypertrophy, it would be worthwhile to find out if the muscle that's developed is, indeed, different. If it is, then there's still value in doing both kinds of training. (Personally, I assume this is the case.)
A Revolutionary Approach To Speed & Strength Training[1] shows, in great detail, the effects of various types of exercise (including no exercise) on the ratios of fast twitch to slow twitch muscle.
If it worked like you described then you'd have marathon runners lifting huge weights in training and sprinters would be running long distance to improve.
"Hence, you will see body builders focus more on high rep workouts, whereas powerlifters and olympic lifters focus more on low rep workouts."
Bodybuilders usually do sets of 10 or 20 at most, not the sets of 100+ that it would take to reach fatigue at 30% of max. I've done sets of 100 with 95-115lbs, and it definitely does not bulk up your muscles. The only reason to do workouts like that is to improve your muscle quality.
Well with rowing the goal is to generate the greatest sum total of force with your legs over roughly 6:30 at roughly 37 reps per minute. So it's being able to maximize that stat given a fixed amount of muscle weight.
Maybe. I'd tend to think of conditioning and endurance to both refer to cardiovascular fitness. And while doing 4-6 sets of 100 squats will give you some cardio, it certainly isn't the most efficient way to gain cardio. So if there is any real reason for doing the activity, it certainly must have something to do with the actual leg muscles rather than overall cardio wellness.
There's such a thing as anaerobic conditioning. That is, you can condition your body to better and longer well while anaerobic. Think of football players, or combat athletes (boxers, wrestlers, MMA fighters, etc).
Further, there's more to conditioning than just your cardiovascular system - muscle endurance matters for most sports.
Many fitness people call this "stamina", or sometimes explicitly "muscular endurance", to avoid confusing it with aerobic endurance or conditioning. In fact, "conditioning" alone is almost always used to mean "aerobic conditioning".
Any bodybuilder will tell you that more than 10-12 reps is useless. A few will lift heavier weights, then fall back to lighter weights and extends repetitions out past that, but it is not as common. There has been an ongoing dispute about whether going to muscle failure is a good thing, and this seems to resolve it.
> low weight, high rep training builds red "twitch" muscle and high weight, low rep training builds white "slow" muscle
There's more to it than the fiber type.
High volume training like this induces sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. The muscle gets bigger (puffed up), but explosive speed can actually decrease. Capillary density is decreased so aerobic endurance is compromised.
People who train for combat sports are well aware of all this. Bodybuilder style high volume workouts can decrease hand speed & punching power, and endurance. The emphasis must be on fast explosive movements.
Another aspect is that a major fraction of strength gains come from training the nervous system. The nervous system must learn how to fully engage a muscle. This is best done with fewer more intense reps than with higher volume, bodybuilder style lifting.
I'm not fully convinced that the bodybuilder style workouts themselves decrease speed, power and endurance. It could also be that, in order to see significant muscular hypertrophy, you have to de-emphasize conditioning.
I say this because Crossfit-style workouts incorporate high volume, weighted movements, and they are amazing at increasing power and endurance.
If you focus on body builder type workouts, then you won't be training your aerobic power, which means less endurance. That's really just a case of if you don't practice, you don't get better -- you can work around that by combining body building with endurance exercise, but that would mean taking time away from bodybuilding, which is a question of priorities and goals.
As for speed and power, they definitely decrease with bodybuilding workouts. Bodybuilding workouts DO build strength, but they also lead to higher muscle tension.
In martial arts, the LAST thing you want is a lot of muscle tension -- the big, strong guys that train with me tend to get very frustrated by how effortless my blocks are when they attack me, and how painful my short strikes are -- again with an apparent lack of effort. In fact, more effort almost invariably leads to LESS power, as well as less speed -- because of a few factors:
1) You tend to use fewer muscles, and smaller ones
2) You tend to fight yourself a lot more, which holds you back
3) You tend to unbalance yourself, which compromises your ability to move and therefore your efficiency.
Having said all that, you CAN build muscle without taking on those disadvantages, but the trade off is that you will end up spending a significant portion of your training time on something other than body building in order to do it.
But Crossfit high-volume movements are relatively low weight -- you should be doing 50-60% of your 1 Rep Max of a given movement in a metcon workout. The crossfit workouts "as prescribed" assume a base level of strength acquired from doing high weight, low volume lift days.
I'm surprised this hadn't already been experimentally established. Verifying this experimentally is good, but it's certainly not a "new paradigm." And I don't like the recommendations from the press release: the kind of training you need depends on what you want to do.
Hmm. I'm not sure if they address the different kinds of muscle that is built. The generally accepted model among strength trainers is that low weight, high rep training builds red "twitch" muscle and high weight, low rep training builds white "slow" muscle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_muscle#Muscle_fibers
The only mention is in the conclusions:
In contrast to recommendations [31], that heavy loads (i.e., high intensity) are necessary to optimally stimulate MYO protein synthesis, it is now apparent that the extent of MYO protein synthesis after resistance exercise is not entirely load dependent, but appears to be related to exercise volume and, we speculate, to muscle fibre activation and most likely to the extent of type II fibre recruitment.
If I understand correctly, they're detecting a protein associated with muscle growth. But they're speculating on what kind of muscle is actually grown. Since it's already assumed that high-weight, low-rep training does not lead to significant muscle hypertrophy, it would be worthwhile to find out if the muscle that's developed is, indeed, different. If it is, then there's still value in doing both kinds of training. (Personally, I assume this is the case.)