History of Strength Training Research in Man: An Inventory and Quantitative Overview of Studies Published in English Between 1894 and 1979

Abstract

Nuzzo, JL. History of strength training research in man: an inventory and quantitative overview of studies published in English between 1894 and 1979. J Strength Cond Res 35(5): 1425–1448, 2021—Limited scholarship exists on the history of strength training research. The current review advances existing qualitative and biographical work by inventorying all experimental studies and case reports published before 1980 on the effects of ≥1 week of strength training on human health and function. Data on authors, journals, citations, study samples, training interventions, study outcomes, and study themes were extracted and summarized. Three hundred thirty-nine strength training studies were published between 1894 and 1979. Studies included 14,575 subjects, with 10,350 undergoing strength training. Subjects were usually healthy (81.1% of articles), university students (51.0%), or aged 18–65 years (86.7%). Men comprised 70.0% of subjects. Interventions typically involved isoinertial only (64.6%) or isometric only (35.4%) training. Upper-body interventions were more common (35.4%) than lower-body interventions (27.4%). Duration and frequency of training were typically 4–8 weeks (55.3%) and 3 days per week (39.2%), respectively. Isometric maximal voluntary contractions (54.0%) and one repetition maximum (20.4%) were the most common muscle strength tests. Other common outcomes included limb girths (20.9%) and muscle endurance (19.5%). Common research themes were physiology (54.3%), physical fitness (28.9%), and injury/rehabilitation (20.4%). The 339 studies have been cited 21,996 times. Moritani and deVries' 1979 article on time course of neuromuscular adaptations is the most highly cited (1,815 citations). DeLorme (5 articles and 772 citations), Hellebrandt (4 articles and 402 citations), Rasch (9 articles and 318 citations), and Berger (12 articles and 1,293 citations) made the largest contributions. Research Quarterly published the most articles (27.4%). The history of strength training research is discussed in the context of the results.

Content Analysis of Patent Applications for Strength Training Equipment Filed in the United States Before 1980

“…Thirty-four inventions involved application of resistance during golf swings, tennis swings, arm wrestling pins, swimming, skiing, or playing a musical instrument. The notion that application of a resistance to a sport-specific movement would improve performance on the sport skill was also a topic of research over the same period ( 11 ).…”

“…In addition, inventions that involved isometrics against immovable resistance were just as common in the 1960s as in the 1970s. This corresponds to the pique in interest in isometrics in research and practice in the 1950s and 1960s ( 3 , 11 , 23 ). In addition, regarding isokinetic muscle contractions, James Perrine submitted a patent application titled “Isokinetic exercise process and apparatus” in 1965 (US-3465592-A).…”

“…In the application, Perrine introduced the idea of isokinetics. This idea was quickly adopted for research purposes in the late 1960s ( 11 ). Perrine's patent was later granted in 1969.…”

“…The search was limited to patent applications written in English and filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office before 1980. The year 1979 was chosen as an end date to coincide with another recent historical analysis ( 11 ). The keyword search entered into Google Patents was (“muscle strength”) OR (“physical fitness”) OR (“barbell”) OR (“dumbbell”) OR (“Indian club”) OR (“exercise apparatus”) OR (“exercise device”) OR (“exercise machine”) OR (“isometric exercise”) OR (“isometric exerciser”) OR (“isokinetic exercise”) OR (“isokinetic exerciser”) OR (“isotonic exercise”) OR (“isotonic exerciser”) OR (“resistance exercise”) OR (“resistance training”) OR (“strength training”) OR (“weight lifting”) OR (“weight training”) country:U.S. before:filing:19791231 language:ENGLISH type:PATENT.…”

Editorial: Understanding & Improving Performance in Strength Sports

“…The development of strength has been a source of scientific interest for over a century now (Kraemer et al, 2017 ; Nuzzo, 2021a ). Many technological developments in strength equipment have been used in scientific research, and also for displays of strength (Nuzzo, 2021b ). Nowadays, a plethora of different sports fall under the category of “strength sports” with Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, and strongman being among the most popular.…”