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.