Anatomy/Physiology - Application and Math for weightlifting and barbell sports

[MAAntonius]

Hey all,

This seems like a better venue than almost any to make this inquiry. I adore weightlifting and barbell sport, and find anatomy and the applied use of ergonomics very interesting as a rather serious recreational musician as well. I love to discover the "why" behind certain postures being optimal and how different movement patterns stress different soft tissues and what's optimal.

Do any of you know any good resources for this kind of work? My introduction to barbell technique was "Starting Strength, 3rd edition" and a great anatomy resource for gym knuckleheads is "Anatomy without a Scalpel." They're both great resources for someone with little background, but from a more medical and med.-related science background, are there any texts out there that would encompass this field yet do so in a more mature, serious manner?

Thanks for any hints and suggestions!
-MAA

 

[jim mcnamara]

The National Institutes of Health - NIH - maintains a huge database of scientific papers, white papers with lesser complex science, and loads of publications for people who can barely spell 'science'. It is part of a mandate for the organization. I do not think you really want textbooks, but exercise physiology, resistance training, effects and side effects of supplements (by name like: ursolic acid, soy protein isolate...). And other topics. Like motor neurons and resistance training

Anyway two VERY important points
1. NIH and others is not trying to peddle supplements or videos or whatever, like most of what you get from google searches.
2. The science there is largely from peer-reviewed journals. This means you won't get Fred Smith's crackpot analysis of something you find that appears real but is on some site like "fredsmith.com"

WebMD.com and the Mayo Clinic website are okay, but not scientific, mostly aimed for Mary Smith and her problem with ulcers. Drugs.com is also useful for contraindications for meds you may be taking and supplements often used by the weightlifting community - example: creatine.

I just entered 'creatine' in google search and got 10 google ads, Wikipedia, and some screwball sites. Contraindications are nowhere to be found with that simple search. You will find lots of commercial sites that tell you how wonderful the stuff is and cite some papers to that effect. They somehow 'overlook' the papers that do not praise the product.

So, a direct answer to your question. Do your google search like these examples, with a prefix:

   nih: resistance training heart disease
  WebMD: creatine side effects

You may get several hundred items returned, but you can figure out from the title page whether the object you are looking at will be something useful; there is usually an abstract there. Abstracts are a few sentences that give you the general drift of the paper.

Just avoid commercial sites.