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I'm no sports physiologist, but it was one of my favorite classes in college. From what I remember, our muscles contain both fast twitch and slow twitch fibers, and each of us is genetically predisposed to have more of one kind than another. The fast twitch fibers fire off faster than the slow twitch fibers can, and the slow twitch fibers can continue much longer.
People with more fast-twitch fibers are the good sprinters and tend to look more muscular. People with more slow twitch fibers look less cut are the good endurance runners. You can develop your muscles in one direction or another, but generally someone with mostly slow twitch muscle fibers is not going to win a gold medal in the 100 yard dash, ever. A lot of it is the genetic lotto. If you're of a particular human race, your group may be more likely to show strength in one of these areas.
I would argue that it's the opposite of what your hubby says.
He says the slow/heavy type workouts only develop your slow twitch muscle fibers. But it's lighter, endurance weightlifting and running that develops slow-twitch fibers. And conversely the big, cut sprinters, the fast-twitch types, lift slow and heavy and rarely do any endurance work like long runs.
An example: doing s/h would let you lift a 50lb box quickly and easily (fast twitch). Doing power hour would make you better at lifting a 20lb box 100 times(slow twitch).
It's been my experience that both types of lifting make me run faster. I imagine you can't help developing both no matter how you lift.
This is just an interesting tidbit--I read that if you're a soccer player, a game which requires interval sprints, then training with long runs can actually make you slower when it's time to sprint! It was a paper about high school track training.
This is just an armchair opinion, what does everyone else think?
Kath
