In a famous study at Ball State University in Indiana, researchers put two groups of 10 men through identical 12-week strength training programs.
The groups were evenly matched when they started, and they did the same combination of exercises, the same number of times, with the same
amount of rest. At the end of the experiment, one group had gained 32 percent more upper-body strength and 47 percent more lower-body strength
than the other. No performance-enhancing pills were involved—the only difference was that the more successful group had a personal trainer
watching over their workouts.
A good personal trainer—certified by an organization such as the National Strength and Conditioning Association, the American College of
Sports Medicine, or Can-Fit-Pro—will help you assess your fitness goals, design a safe and effective program to meet those goals, and motivate
you to put in the necessary work. But, as the Ball State study shows, there are other, less obvious ingredients that successful trainers provide—and
a series of recent studies offers some hints about how we can tap in to these benefits.
The crucial difference between the training of the two groups at Ball State was very simple: by the halfway point of the program, the supervised
group was choosing to lift heavier weights. Since both groups started with the same motivation level, it was the trainer’s presence leading that
group to set more ambitious targets. Other studies have consistently found that, left to their own devices, novice weightlifters tend to work out with
weights that are less than 50 percent of their one-repetition maximum, which is too low to maximize gains in strength and muscle size.
Even experienced strength trainers often fall into this trap, according to a 2008 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
Researchers at the College of New Jersey found that experienced women who trained on their own chose to use an average of just 42 percent of
their one-rep max for a 10-repetition set. In contrast, women who had prior experience with personal trainers chose weights averaging 51 percent
of one-rep max, even when the trainers weren’t there. “Many times, there is initial fear,” says Nicholas Ratamess, the study’s lead author. “We also
found that some women who did not have a personal trainer underestimated their own abilities because they did not routinely push themselves too
far.”
The latest attempt to address this question comes from researchers at the University of Brasilia in Brazil. They compared two groups of 100
volunteers who undertook a 12-week strength training program, supervised either by one trainer for every five athletes, or one trainer for every 25
athletes. The results display a familiar pattern: the highly supervised group improved their bench press by 16 percent, while the less supervised
group chose lighter weights and improved by only 10 percent.
In one sense, this is yet another argument for getting a personal trainer if you can afford one. But the differences here are more subtle, since
both groups had access to a trainer who could provide guidance on proper form and choosing appropriate weights. Instead, motivation and the
willingness to tackle ambitious goals seem to be the differentiating factors. As Ratamess points out, these are the kinds of benefits that an
enthusiastic training partner can also provide. For less experienced exercisers, the educational role of the personal trainer takes on greater
importance, he cautions. But beyond that, simply having someone there watching you—whether it’s a personal trainer or a workout partner—seems
to confer an additional benefit. Certainly, he says, “both have advantages compared to training independently.”
If you’re looking for that extra edge that will allow you to lift one more rep or maintain your pace near the end of a tough workout, consider the latest
research from psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele University in Britain. After hitting his thumb with a hammer, Stephens let loose with a string
of expletives—a common enough occurrence, but one that left him wondering why humans have this nearly universal habit of “cathartic swearing.”
To find out, he asked 67 volunteers to dunk their hands in ice-cold water and keep them there for as long as possible. Half of them were told to yell
a word from their list of “five words you might use after hitting yourself on the thumb with a hammer,” while the other half chose a word from their list
of “five words to describe a table.” Sure enough, swearing significantly increased the length of time subjects could withstand the pain, by 30 percent
for men and 44 percent for women—a difference that may have something to do with the fact that women swear less often, Stephens speculates.
Swearing also raised heart rates and decreased perceived pain, again with a greater effect in women than men.
The results were actually the opposite of what Stephens expected. Pain theorists had believed that swearing was a form of “catastrophizing” or
exaggerating the severity of the pain, but Stephens’s results, which appeared in 2009 in the journal NeuroReport, suggest that something else is
happening. Instead, it may be that swearing triggers feelings of aggression that allow us to tap into our fight-or-flight mechanism, pumping
adrenaline through our veins and blocking pain. Similarly, Stephens points out, sports coaches often psych their players up with pre-game
speeches laden with profanity. Whatever the precise mechanism, the finding that swearing increases pain tolerance explains why evolution has
ensured that the behavior survives in virtually all cultures. Most language is generated in the left brain, but swearing appears to arise in the older
emotion centers of the right brain: the limbic system and the basal ganglia. So the next time you’re trying to get through the painful part of a race or
workout, remember that you have the code words to access this primitive part of your brain—as long as there aren’t any children within earshot.
(Strangely, this isn’t the only study to suggest that expressing your inner jerk can boost your physical performance. In 2010, Harvard University
psychologists reported that doing a good deed like giving money to charity, or even imagining doing a good deed, enabled volunteers to hold up a
five-pound weight for longer than they could when thinking neutral thoughts. But they gained even greater strength from imagining themselves doing
evil deeds like harming someone else—even without swearing!)
For top athletes, getting enough sleep has long been considered the sort of bland good advice that is obvious but easy to ignore—like eating lots
of vegetables. A pair of recent pilot studies by Charles Samuels, the medical director of the Centre for Sleep and Human Performance in Calgary,
confirms that poor sleep quality is prevalent even in Olympic-level athletes (in this case from the national bobsleigh and skeleton teams). But the
problem is even worse for ordinary people: “It’s average athletes who are the most likely to curtail their sleep to train,” Samuels says. “They’re
getting up at 4 a.m. to run for an hour so they can get to work by 7 a.m.”
That’s not necessarily a winning strategy, especially for people who are already operating on the least amount of sleep that they can handle.
Incurring a steadily mounting sleep debt has well-known effects on mood and cognitive ability, and a few studies are now suggesting that sleep also
has direct links with physical performance. For example, Stanford University sleep researcher Cheri Mah has conducted a series of small studies
testing athletes on the university’s teams. When five varsity swimmers increased their sleep time to ten hours a night from their typical six to nine
hours, they slashed 0.15 seconds from their reaction time off the start and similarly improved their turn time, 15-meter sprint time, and kick rate.
Similarly, increased sleep improved sprint time and free-throw percentage for a group of basketball players.
With only a few participants and no control group, these results are far from definitive, but they represent a first step to quantifying the athletic
benefits of sleep. Samuels, meanwhile, has been working on a project with the Canadian downhill ski team to investigate the link between
inadequate sleep and injuries, as well as studies of how globe-trotting athletes can best adjust to crossing time zones.
It’s still a challenge to apply these results in the real world. “I know it sounds ridiculous to get 10 hours of sleep a night,” Mah admits. “That’s an
extreme.” For the typical person, she says, consistently increasing the amount of nightly sleep by even a small amount can produce positive effects.
Most adults need seven to eight hours of sleep nightly, while teens and young adults need nine or more, though there’s quite a bit of individual
variation. One of the most interesting implications of her studies with varsity athletes is that even just a few weeks of concerted sleep catch-up has
a measurable effect on performance—something to keep in mind before the next big game or race.
It’s also worth noting that, just as sleep helps exercise, the converse is also true. A 2010 study from the Federal University of São Paulo found
that moderate aerobic exercise (but not strength training or heavy aerobic exercise) increased reported sleep time by 26 percent in a group of
chronic insomniacs. One caveat, notes Samuels, is that exercise in the three hours before bedtime can actually hinder sleep in adults in their 30s
and older—if they already struggle with sleep. “If you’re a good sleeper,” he adds, “nothing matters.”
