Dr Mel Siff Blog

An article that I wrote a while ago on the use of persuasive techniques and
propaganda in sport and fitness may still be of interest.

————————

There are regular comments about why so many folk manage to be taken in by
self-appointed fitness and health gurus who make a fortune out of selling
dubious ideas and devices, despite lack of scientific validity or honest
disclosure of their limitations or qualifications.

However, we all know by now that making money, grasping power or achieving
fame frequently have nothing to do with correctness, morals, etiquette,
education, honesty or any other such qualities that exemplify the ideal or
well-qualified human.

If we examine history, we can wonder equally well how so many dictators,
despots, entrepreneurs, politicians and religious leaders ever managed to
become as influential and powerful as they did. In fact, the frequently
quoted maxim of big business today is do anything you like to achieve
success, but don’t get caught doing what you shouldn’t be doing!

On the other hand, history has produced some wonderful examples of the most
saintly and exemplary people from all walks of life.

So what did all of these heroes and anti-heroes (like Hitler, Stalin, Caesar,
Genghis Khan, Idi Amin and so on) have in common? Superficially, it would
appear as if the answer to this question is “nothing”. However, it is not
too difficult to conclude that they all had highly effective powers of
persuasion, propaganda and mass communication.

Interestingly, the evolution of modern marketing and advertising techniques
had a lot to do with the American experts who were called upon to counter the
massive onslaught of the Nazi propaganda machine led by Josef Goebbels and
his henchmen appointed by Hitler to sell Nazi philosophy via all the mass
means at their disposal. The Nazis were very familiar with the ancient
Grecian methods of rhetoric, logic and persuasion, so they set about adapting
and applying it to achieve their own nefarious ends.

Hitler is even credited with saying: “If you say something often enough and
loud enough, people will begin to believe you.” And that is precisely what
happened in Germany. He made great efforts to orchestrate those horrendously
successful mass rallies and overpowering speeches surrounded by all the
symbols, stages and sounds of persuasive communication, as you will have seen
on movies of the last War.

Thank goodness for the civilised world, American experts and others like
Winston Churchill developed their own very powerful counter-propaganda
machine.

Some examples of these methods of wartime persuasion may be seen on the
following website:

<http://www.nara.gov/exhall/powers/powers.html >

Today, techniques of persuasion that evolved from the ancient Greeks and
propaganda methods from World War II are used to market ideas, courses,
religions and products with an unprecedented degree of success, largely
because the mass media now reach the outermost edges of what McLuhan called
the ‘Global Village’ in a way that few people ever imagined was possible.

The following websites give information on techniques of persuasion and
marketing:

<http://www.pertinent.com/pertinfo/business/persuasion/index.html>
<http://www.dcd.net/NBP/persuasn.html >
<http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=05CCD000 > (Marketing)

See if you recognise any techniques being used by fitness, health and food
supplement gurus and entrepreneurs and learn how to immunise yourself against
them by applying the information in the above website and the following one
on recognising tricks and fallacies of argumentation:

< http://shell.rmi.net/~mhartwig/falla.htm >

In the realm of practical training, Ch 3 of “Facts & Fallacies of Fitness”
(Siff M C) summarises the major methods of persuasion, while later chapters
apply this information to help one distinguish sense from nonsense and fact
from fallacy in the lucrative world of general and sports training, as well
as in the mass market of medical and alternative therapy.

Who was it who said that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time?
A quick look around the world of fitness, health and nutrition reveals to us
that competent persuaders can fool most of the people most of the time!

Mel Siff

Further to my earlier mail on treating knee stability problems, here is some
more discussion that I have been sharing with the person who is the
unfortunate victim of those problem. He added this information:

<< Causes of my knee problems:

1. I have a hyperlordosis problem that might be related to having tight psoas
2. I seem to have a tendency to round my back at the bottom of the squat
3. There was something to do with my vastus lateralis coming into play
before my vastus medialis while I squat which contributed to my knee
instability ( note that I did not hurt my knee squatting)
4. I think there were some slight rotation problems with my shoulders
5. I think I had a slight tilt that brought my right shoulder up and my left
hip >>

***None of those tests would be considered to be scientifically definitive.
For example, while psoas ‘tightness’ may have something to do with excessive
‘hollowing’ of the lumbar spine, that is one of several possible explanations
for significant lordosis.

Anyway, tightness of psoas would tend to counteract your tendency to round
the back during the squat. Rounding of the lower spine generally has more to
do with limited flexibility in the ankle and knee joints than the psoas. In
addition, it can simply be due to ‘bad’ neuromotor habits accumulated over
prolonged periods of uncorrected training. Very often, the use of a few
hands-on kinaesthetic ‘tricks’ that I mentioned in my last letter, improve
the situation markedly in a few minutes.

If your back tends to round too much near the deepest part of your squat,
then simply squat as far as you can go with good form and gradually increase
the depth of squatting over a period of a few weeks and the rounding problem
quite happily will resolve itself.

How did they ascertain if one of the vastus muscles was ‘firing’ before the
other without using an EMG? How did they conclude that the way in which your
muscles came into play are not appropriate for your individual structure and
characteristics? It is well known that all muscles contribute to different
degrees with different timing, so what a muscle test reveals under static or
short range conditions may be totally irrelevant to what happens under full
range movement in a given sporting action. There is no set universal pattern
which applies to all of us.

Probably what had more effect on your squatting than anything else is the
fact that knee injuries are notorious for producing reflex inhibition of the
quadriceps. The body innately knows that the ability to produce very
forceful contraction, so it somehow activates inhibitory nervous processes
which counteract your ability to contract muscles that operate the injured
joint. Very often, if you have an injured knee, you will tend to become more
of a “back squatter” with a marked forward lean and you will often tilt your
injured knee in such a way as to minimise the stress on it. This will lead
to tilting of the hip, rotation of the trunk and other such problems. No
need to look for mystical causes in vasti , psoas or pyriformis muscles, or
in “muscle imbalance” – the problem may simply lie in reflexive protective
processes.

<<I thought I had been balanced by another therapist, so I’m thinking that
the tilt might have been related to the pain in my knee. >>

***Your diagnosis is probably as accurate as any therapist is going to make -
your intuitive diagnosis agrees with my above analysis based upon a knowledge
of motor control. Far too often, impressive sounding jargon is used to
justify a model of the injury and healing process, when the truth is that the
diagnosticians don’t really know. However, a diagnosis couched in
pseudoscientific language sounds a lot more convincing to the client and the
therapist – remember that both people involved in the healing situation need
to satisfy psychological needs.

The only way in which one can avoid this situation is to list several
possible causes and, by harmless trial and error (guided by movement patterns
and perception of pain), narrow them down to a short list of the most likely
causes. Of course, genuine medical examination such as radiological scans of
the area should be used to rule out the possibility of really serious
pathology, if this may be of any concern.

Dr Mel C Siff

It is interesting to note two very divergent trends in strength and fitness training for top level sport, one
which focuses on the advances made by technology and the other which
emphasizes a return to the use of no- or low-technological methods, an
approach which some refer to as “dinosaur training”.

Some of the world’s finest athletes are extolling the virtues of each and it
is apparent that each of these two approaches is bearing some useful fruit.
This afternoon, the great sprinter, Michael Johnson, was asked on TV for his
opinion of training methods, such as periodisation and cycling. His
response? He smilingly dismissed both of these concepts as they commonly are
offered by coaches today. In return he asked why should it be all that
impossible to rise progressively to a peak and stay at that high plateau level
for prolonged periods, as he stated he always does. He implied that the use of
cycling up and down over a prolonged period to peak for only a few special
events physically and mentally act against athletic success.

Yes, I am sure that there will be those will comment on the way in which he
‘pulled’ a hamstring during the recent trials to ‘prove’ that his approach is
not all that flawless, but the fact remains is that he has produced excellent
success with his methods, which are reminiscent of those used by Bulgarian
athletes.

Add to his experience the great success being enjoyed by Louie Simmons and
his Westside Club, who use no high technology at all. Instead there is an
abundance of almost dinosaurian training with chains, bands, sleds and cars
that challenge the body and mind in myriad ways of developing great sport
specific strength and power. In this case, their methods are often guided by
what we have discovered in science, but they do not rely largely on
technology for their success.

For instance, a biomechanist who was interviewed for today’s TV program on
Olympic training pointed out that the greatest advantage that distance
athletes could have is to throw their shoes away (as did Abebe Bikila of
Ethiopia and Zola Budd of South Africa), because the added weight (1lb on the
feet is equivalent to 8lbs on the back) and dissipation of energy by shock
absorbing soles forces the athlete to use more energy to cover the same
distance at the same speed.

Ironically, after Bikila turned to running exclusively with shoes, he
suffered a bone fracture of his left leg and he had to drop out of the 1968
Mexico Olympics after his previous victories in Rome and Tokyo. Zola Budd
also turned to using shoes and orthotic devices, and she ended up being
plagued by leg injuries and a running career that never reached the same top
international standard again. Circumstantial evidence, maybe, nevertheless
this is interesting and suggestive that shoes and orthotics at best offer no
significant performance advantage to endurance performance athletes. Tracks,
on the other hand, such as the renowned Harvard synthetic track most
definitely produced faster times and set the trend for the design of new
synthetic tracks.

In other words, the main benefit of shoes is to prevent damage to the sole of
the foot, but otherwise, their main effect is to make running less efficient.
Makes one wonder about the whole sports shoe business!

While we have some Western athletes who are regularly tested for metabolic
and bioenergetic efficiency excelling in endurance events, we often have
their performances overshadowed by African athletes who rely on the most
basic intuitive methods. The same scenario repeats itself in several other
types of individual and team sports.

Would anyone care to comment on the relative roles played by ‘high tech’ and
‘low tech’ training methods in the preparation of the modern elite athlete?
Is anyone convinced that athletes who are heavily supported by the hugely
expensive sports science institutes around the world will produce
performances that statistically are significantly superior to those of
athletes who rely largely on low-tech training?

Dr Mel C Siff

>>Who can say that walking, swimming, bicep curls, stair climbing, karate,
fencing and so forth are entirely non-functional for an athlete in a sport
such as football, powerlifting, wrestling or soccer?<<

How can a bicep curl be considered functional for a soccer player?

>>An exercise that is highly sport specific and “functional” at one time
might be equally “non-functional” at another time.<<

Can you give an example?

———–

*** Mel Siff:

1. Since the biceps flex the elbow, supinate the forearm and swing the arm
forwards (as during walking and running, together with corocobrachialis and
all of these actions occur in soccer, then any form of improving bicep
functioning ostensibly could be viewed as being relevant to soccer, provided
that one does not train it simply for bodybuilding aesthetics.

Now, I know that this remark of mine may well attract comments that one may
as well do a general weight training session using any old exercises and let
the sport itself attend to the specifics. Indeed, such comments would be
quite valid, e.g., for general physical preparation or for restoration at
other stages of training or competition, depending on how the various
exercises are used, but the same exercises would not universally be suitable
at all stages of training.

In other words, as I stressed before, functionality is context dependent and
cannot be regarded as a universal characteristic of given exercises or
regimes of exercise.

2. Any muscle group which is exercised or developed more than is necessary
for achieving a given sporting purpose can cause either structural and/or
functional “imbalances” that may be viewed as “non-functional” under such
conditions, often because of competing neural patterns (e.g. try to play
tennis, badminton and squash or racquetball effectively soon after one
another)..

Suppose that a gymnast or jumper does an excessive amount of hypertrophy type
exercises (e.g. because tests may have revealed that they have adequate
explosiveness, but inadequate hypertrophy), the added muscular weight can be
detrimental to any pulling movements with the upper extremities. This is one
reason why we struggle more to complete pull-ups as we gain overall muscle
mass.

Dr Mel C Siff

This is a follow-up to a discussion about peer review and the NSCA’s journals

Has the situation changed? In the August 2000 S&C Journal, the NSCA
published its latest guideline for all of its members: “The National Strength
and Conditioning Association’s Basic Guidelines for the Resistance Training
of Athletes”.

This article discussed periodisation in detail and referred to “linear” and
“non-linear” periodisation models that are not classically accepted
definitions and terminology (by the Russians and early architects of
periodisation theory). Moreover, there were semantic errors in defining
linearity as the authors of the article did. Linearity never even existed in
the long term periodisation models used by any of the Russian authorities,
since it has been well known that all of the models that have ever been used
involve CURVILINEAR changes in intensity and volume. It has also been well
known that adaptation is not a linear process.

The article stated that: “The linear model is the most classic model of
periodisation…. the linear model of periodization varies the intensity over
several weeks (or microcycles) of training….. A nonlinear periodization
model varies the intensity and volume over the week.” By no stretch of the
semantic imagination, are these acceptable definitions of linearity and
nonlinearity. Of course, we can do with language anything that we like, but
there do happen to be certain existing rules, conventions and guidelines that
should not be ignored in a reviewed publication. We have to remember that
review always examines the content and linguistic correctness of any
publication, so one cannot simply ignore the latter. If one does change the
rules, then one comments on that fact.

In introducing the “nonlinear” model, the authors omitted the fact that
variations may also be performed at the level of multiple training sessions
offered in a single day (e.g. see Matveev’s book “Fundamentals of Sports
Training”, 1977). This was even done in the “classical” model to which they
referred and it has been a very important factor in the progress of Russian
and Bulgarian weightlifters and various other athletes

In the section on the “linear model” of periodisation, the authors wrote:
“…it should be noted that the weekly fluctuations occur such that …” A
fluctuation implies changes up and down, and implies that the changes are not
at all linear. How can fluctuations exist in a “linear” model, unless those
fluctuations are linear? If that was what the authors meant, then they
should have stated that fact, because the term “linearity” is not extant in an
y of the classical works on periodisation.

LANGUAGE ISSUES

I may sound pedantic or fussy about such details, but one of my jobs at my
former university and on various scientific committees was to annually edit
and review many hundreds of professional articles, research projects, books
and speeches by senior students, university staff and commercially employed
scientists and engineers. I have probably reviewed and edited more than 10
000 such articles in my 20 years as a professional communications specialist,
so I became intimately aware of the importance of linguistic acceptability.

My university became so concerned about the problem of dubious communication
and language skills among its engineering, science and commerce students that
it set up compulsory semester or year long courses in “Professional
Communication” which students had to pass in written and oral communication.
This involved me in editing a textbook called “Professional Communication”
that is still used quite widely in my former homeland, S Africa.

After several years of living in the USA, I am very concerned about the
extremely poor command of the English language here – only a few weeks ago, a
news article stated that 30 years ago teenagers in the USA had a vocabulary
that was about THREE times larger than that of the teenagers of today. Last
night, a TV report commented that the level of English and Mathematical
skills in the USA has dropped to a ranking of below number 40 on the world
scale and that the failure rate in high school English is over 60 percent.
I am fully aware that the government and school boards are very concerned
about all of this – let us hope that the nation appreciates what this demise
in capabilities can mean for our nation.

While this may appear to be peripheral to the topics of strength science and
training which we discuss here, we have to remember that the effective
communication of all knowledge is central to the application and progress of
any discipline, so I will unabashedly continue to comment on cases where
improvement may be necessary. We cannot afford to accept something just
because our audiences “will get the general idea” of what we are trying to
say, least of all in a journal which is trying to be recognised as the leader
in its field.

PERIODISATION INFORMATION

The NSCA Training Guidelines article gave prolific detail on its own authors’
concepts of periodisation and modified versions of it made by various NSCA
members, but failed to give any references or summaries of the definitive
original models of periodisation by its pioneers in Russia – other than a
little by Zatsiorsky and Vorobyev. The name of Matveev (or Matveyev), the
greatest popularist of periodisation theory is not mentioned once, nor are
any of the important models of Bondrachuk, Arosiev, and Verkhoshansky. This
is tantamount to omitting mention of Einstein in discussions of relativity
physics. Instead, many references were made to articles or books on
periodisation written by one of the authors of the article.

While the article contained a great deal of useful information, there are
sections like that on periodisation (American: “periodization”) which would
certainly have profited from independent peer scrutiny. May I now ask,
Steven, if all articles in the S&C Journal are genuinely reviewed or are they
simply read through for the most glaring errors? I was very pleased that its
editor, Jeff Chandler, had the integrity and professionalism to admit that in
at least one case the review process was not be as thorough as it could have
been because of the stature of authors or their connections with the NSCA. I
trust that others will follow his example.

Dr Mel C Siff