Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2023-12-03

An acquaintance of mine has an impressive collection of exercise equipment in a large area of his basement. Yet, he's not physically fit. His posture is poor, he walks with one shoulder noticeably lower than the other, and his gait is not smooth. His belly sags, his legs are small, his chest is small, and his vascularity is non-existent.

He's tried all kinds of equipment and all kinds of programs. He's got a stack of exercise videos. He consumes protein shakes and pretty much eats organic, with an emphasis on whole foods versus processed. Plus he's got dozens of bottles of supplements and vitamins cluttering his kitchen counter (not a place to store things, but those being out is how I know he takes them). So it's not that his deterioration is due to malnourishment.

This being the case, what is wrong?

He's got this idea that how intensely you train depends on what your goals are. Because "I just want to be toned" as if he might accidentally be the next Jay Cutler if he trains too hard, he doesn't push the envelope. He gives his body no reason to go into the adaptive response.

Muscle is metabolically expensive. If your body doesn't perceive a need for it, the muscle goes. The only way to stop the body from getting rid of muscle is to give it a reason to keep the muscle and even add more. To give it that reason, you must push to your limits and then exceed them. This doesn't mean you need to lift dangerously heavy weights or spend huge amounts of time in the gym. People who don't understand this last point adopt the "I just want to be toned" mentality and end up atrophied.

Here are the three triggers for the adaptive response:

Metabolic stress. This is the major trigger. I get it in every climbing session, because I go way past the point of fatigue. I also get it in every weight training session, because I take very short rests between sets (maybe 5 seconds) of supersets and short breaks (maybe 45 seconds) between sets of something like front squats. You must cross the metabolic stress threshold and stay on the other side of it as long as you can during your session to get strong stimulation of the adaptive response. Compound exercises really ratchet up the metabolic stress, which is why I start each training session with compound exercises.
Cellular damage. Isolation exercises are the best way to get this. Form is critical, you don't want to be recruiting non-target muscles just to move the weight. Really squeeze those targeted muscles at both full contraction and (more importantly) full extension.
Time under tension. Basically, this is volume. Doing more sets gets you this. So will reducing the weight and doing more reps, but you could with that approach reduce cellular damage. If you want more reps and more sets with something like pull-ups, then use assistive bands; this has the effect of reducing the weight, though of course you aren't actually reducing your body weight.

My acquaintance completely rejects the science behind training, convinced that I am doing some special exercises for my abs (I don't exercise them directly) or using some equipment he has yet to buy. I've told him most of my leg day exercises involve body weight only, and that on back and biceps day I do four sets each of two different body weight exercises. He doesn't want to do leg day, either. That's the most important muscle group to train, and training it gets you by far the biggest adaptive response.

He's sure it's an equipment issue. He's sure just doesn't have the right equipment. I've told him that traditional Shotokan training uses body weight only, and those dudes have some impressively strong legs. I even gave him an example of what Arnold Schwarzenegger did. He visited Maria Shriver at the White House when JFK was POTUS and she was there with her father Sergeant Shriver. Arnold did duckwalks and walking lunges across the White House lawn because there was no squat rack in the place. Decades later, when he was in the movie Predator, there was no way the film crew was going to lug weights deep into the jungle so Arnold could keep up his training. He used what was there, chinning on trees and using body weight.

If you're not willing to push yourself into a state of fatigue so that your body is stimulated to adapt and become stronger, then you will become weaker with each passing year. Moderate exercise doesn't cut it, because (by definition) you don't get into a state of fatigue with moderate exercise. Moderate exercise is good for blood flow, and it gives you some other benefits. But it's not enough to cause your body to preserve metabolically expensive muscle. You will get a slow atrophy to a point where you have enough muscles for moderate work. And that isn't much.

A neighbor who passed away at age 85 was vigorous until an accident at age 83. He kept his lawn up, digging weeds by hand. He would fill a paint bucket with weeds every other day in the summer. He'd squat down, dig the weed, toss it in the bucket, and stand up. He weighed 175 lbs. So he did a low squat with bodyweight maybe 100 times in a day, every other day. If he ran out of weeds, he'd do a lawn on one side or the other of his. That's one example of the kind of exercise he got with no exercise equipment. Another is he'd take his girlfriend's Chihuahua for walks. The little dog couldn't make it up these steep hills without needing to lie down after going up one.

So my neighbor would pick the dog up and run up the hill carrying the little guy. Yes, he would run. And at a fast clip! He put his body into metabolic stress routinely, and as a result never experienced atrophy until the accident that left him bed-ridden for quite some time. He never recovered from that, but until that event he was stronger and more muscular than most guys half his age. Without using any gym equipment. The important part is what he got right.

Mindconnection eNL, 2023-12-03

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