Being a Penn State alum who has worked as a strength and fitness professional at the collegiate level for nearly 22 years, I read with great interest the opinions of Brooks Miller that appeared in the Daily Collegian on Monday Oct. 1 ("PSU should use new weightlifting study"). Miller's letter was in response to the story on weightlifting published Sept. 28 ("Weighing In: Weightlifters do not lift enough").

In a nutshell, Miller contended that there's "a lack of increased strength and power" in "the Penn State strength program."

To support his belief that Penn State's athletes should use periodization, Miller cited a recent study that was done by Penn State researchers. Having authored, co-authored or edited 11 books and written more than 250 articles/columns on strength and fitness, I'm quite familiar with the research in this area.

Moore didn't identify the study but it was probably one that was published in 2000. Any conclusions about improvements in strength that are drawn from this particular study are worthless since the researchers didn't report any data for absolute or percent changes in any strength measure from pre- to post-training. (The lead researcher of this recent study, by the way, left Penn State many years ago.) In fact, there's no consistent scientific evidence that has shown periodization is significantly better than the type of program that's endorsed by the Penn State strength coaches.

In addition, Miller specifically mentioned four "successful athletic programs" that use periodization as well as two teams at Penn State.

But many collegiate-level "successful athletic programs" don't use periodization such as Michigan.

This doesn't even mention at least nine teams that are in the NFL such as Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

And many "successful" teams at Penn State don't use periodization including women's basketball and volleyball.

In short, Miller's letter offered no meaningful or measurable proof that the Penn State strength program the university uses fails to increase strength and power.