In the fitness industry it’s like with nutrition: trends chase and contradict each other. Marco Toigo, one of Europe’s leading muscle physiologists, provides clarity.
Regular exercise strengthens muscles and protects health.
Tina Zupancic / Getty
The future of top Swiss sport lies in Lorzenpark, an industrial and recreational area west of the city of Zug. There is the OYM, a state-of-the-art training center where top sport and science go hand in hand. The complex was built by private citizen Hanspeter Strebel for over 100 million francs on an area of over 8,000 square meters and opened three years ago.
Strebel is an idealist. The former pharmacist became wealthy by developing a drug for psoriasis and multiple sclerosis. The business magazine “Bilanz” ranks him among the 300 richest Swiss people with an estimated fortune of 450 million francs. The philanthropist is also president of EV Zug and a visionary who believes in the meaning of science.
They want to create the perfect athlete
The man who manages the scientific direction of Strebel’s life’s work is called Marco Toigo. He’s waiting at the reception. His handshake shows strength and vitality. He leads the visitor quickly through a stairwell up the four floors to his office. When he gets to the top, he laughs and says: “This is the first test. Anyone who arrives here out of breath will be thrown out immediately.”
Toigo is an internationally renowned muscle physiologist. Before moving to the OYM, he researched the neuromuscular and metabolic adaptation of muscle stimuli at the ETH in Zurich. He summarized his knowledge in the book “MuskelRevolution”, published in 2019.
Marco Toigo, Muskelphysiologe.
PD
Together with Strebel, Toigo is working on a shared vision, which the two describe on their website as “creating the perfect version of athletes”. The interaction of training, nutrition and recovery is essential for maximizing the performance of a top athlete. “The idea of OYM is to enable top athletes to achieve maximum individual performance improvement under ideal training, prevention, rehabilitation and nutrition conditions.”
OYM stands for “On your marks”, the ritual saying with which track and field athletes are called to the starting blocks. If you want to train here in this futuristic world between sport and science, you have to bring a lot with you. Only the best of the best get to enjoy this world of sports and science.
Christmas is approaching and with it not only the time of socializing and gluttony, but also that of remorse. Usually before the turn of the year, this leads to the resolution: Everything has to be different. Eat less, drink less, stop smoking and exercise more.
Lost in the jungle of advice
But how exactly is this supposed to work? The media is full of advice, strategies and miracle cures to help you melt away the pounds and grow your muscles. Toigo says: “When I open the newspapers, I almost see the red. It’s unbelievable what is being sold to us.”
So-called “high-intensity training”, or HIT for short, promises quick results with little effort. Older people are encouraged to train for explosive strength. At the same time, there is a debate about how many sets an optimal workout should consist of per muscle group. “This label policy,” says Toigo, “doesn’t help anyone.”
From his point of view, there is not one method, but three simple strategies that can be used individually or in combination to gain muscles.
First: the generation of high muscle forces, for example by using high weights. Second: causing muscle fatigue, for example by performing the exercise to the point of temporary exhaustion. Third: high speed of force generation through movement as quickly as possible. What all three strategies have in common is that they can be used to activate those muscle fibers that have the main effect on the strength and size adjustment of the muscles.
However, it is not enough to activate them in the short term. There needs to be a certain amount of time during which the muscle fibers mentioned are working, the so-called effective tension period. This should be in the range of one and a half to two minutes per exercise if the goal is to gain both muscle and strength. Therefore, the third strategy is not the first choice in terms of muscle growth, also because the risk of injury is increased due to the maximum rapid force generation.
Toigo says: “There are many paths that lead to the goal. Whether you choose a training set with several repetitions until exhaustion, string together several individual maximum repetitions with a break, or do several sets with a heavy load but only a few repetitions is not decisive when it comes to muscle and strength growth in popular sports. What’s important is quality and sustainable training over the years.”
“It still goes on!” – but the muscles have long been screaming “Stop!”
Especially with the strategy of fatigue, it is crucial that the muscle is stressed until it is almost completely exhausted. For reasons of repeatability, it is advisable to go to the point where the load can no longer be moved a millimeter despite maximum effort. Toigo says: “If you can’t train to this limit with this training modality, then it will be difficult.”
Shortly afterwards, his visitor finds out for himself what Toigo means by this. Suddenly he finds himself strapped to a leg machine in the OYM’s huge training area. Now the muscle physiologist asks him to lift the moderate weight with his legs until it is horizontal and to remain in this position for a few seconds, then slowly return to the starting position without putting the weight down, then take a short break. This sequence of movements is repeated until no further repetition is possible.
What initially seemed like casual fun becomes sweaty relatively quickly. After about a minute, the front thigh muscles begin to burn. “It’s still going on!” says Toigo, even if the muscles have long since shouted “Stop!” scream.
The two minutes that such a sentence lasts in the ideal case become a small eternity. The visitor puts down the weight. “With maximum effort, more repetitions would have been possible,” says Toigo.
When training with maximum load, you choose a weight that you can move slowly and in a controlled manner over the full range of motion exactly once with maximum effort. Then you stop it, pause for ten seconds and try again. If it doesn’t work despite maximum effort, reduce the load until the repetition is possible again. Do twelve maximum repetitions in a controlled manner with a ten second break between repetitions.
It doesn’t even take a movement to implement these strategies. You can also simply place the load in a defined position and try to hold it in this position for as long as possible or press it with maximum effort against an immovable resistance.
Get out of your comfort zone
The day after, climbing stairs is torture for the subject. It shows how much more the muscles would actually be capable of if they were challenged appropriately and occasionally left their comfort zone. Although “occasionally” is wrong again. Just as quickly as muscle fibers get used to higher levels of stress, they quickly return to their comfort zone if they are not challenged regularly.
Toigo is not a masochist who wants to encourage his community to castigate themselves. He says the health benefits of exercise start with relatively easy movements. But you shouldn’t expect any visible muscle growth from these.
“Sport in general, but especially muscle training, has to be learned first.” It is a misconception that anyone can simply sit down on a piece of fitness equipment and start training. Proper execution is crucial for the effectiveness of an exercise. It also reduces the risk of injury, especially with large weights or high speeds of movement.
According to the truism “No pain, no gain”, do you have to train to the limits of your endurance or even slightly beyond? Toigo dismisses the idea that the sensation of pain is not causally linked to the intensity of the training. “What one person perceives as pain may be a tickle for another.”
“No pain, no gain” has a German equivalent that sounds a little less martial: “No pain, no gain.” But that is not a guarantee of success. Toigo says: “In the end, you can’t train everything with one method. What appears externally has almost more to do with genetics than with the method in which you train. The health effect, on the other hand, begins with training. What’s really important is doing something.”
In the fitness industry it’s like with nutrition: trends chase and contradict each other. New forms of training are regularly promoted that promise to revolutionize everything that was considered established until recently. This mainly causes confusion among consumers.
The OYM, on the other hand, is not only researching the revolution in sports science. It also tries to consistently implement the findings, some of which have been known and established for decades, and to support the athletes. Even if it doesn’t make the big headlines.
