Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2023-01-22

Apparently, some people lose sleep over their risk of waking up one morning looking like a contender for the Mr. Olympia title.

A typical scenario is "Andy" will ask some athlete (who doesn't look like a Mr. Olympia contender) what he or she does for abs. Translation: "I eat too much and don't train, so I have this big belly. What do you recommend?"

The athlete will typically mention something like hanging leg raises or say something like, "I never target abs. They get hit with every workout, especially leg training." This will lead to a discussion about hard compound exercises like squats and deadlifts. At which point, "Andy" will say something like, "I don't want to get big. I just want to get toned." Translation: "I am too lazy to do what you recommend, and I am looking for a shortcut that won't require any real effort."

Another common copout is, "I don't have any weights and don't want to join a gym," as if either of these is required to work a given muscle group. Most athletes train with weights because doing so is convenient and very productive for the time spent. But classic exercises like duckwalks, burpees, and push-ups use only your body weight and can produce significant metabolic stress, time under tension, and muscular damage while also giving you that in the full range of motion. In the spring, when we get a heavy crop of dandelions, I cut back on my normal leg day training because I am out there squatting dozens of times to dig them up. Those that come up again, I spray with vinegar. That first round (the squatting and digging) is brutally effective leg training.

Many people confuse "exercising" with "training". Simply being active doesn't challenge your body to produce the adaptive response. Training means you are deliberately and methodically inflicting metabolic stress, time under tension, and muscular damage to specific muscle groups in the "red line area" to stimulate the adaptive response. "Red line area" refers to automotive tachometers, which have a red area at the extreme end of the RPM scale. The engine isn't designed to operate at that high of a speed and if you push too far into the red, you'll blow the engine. If you were the engine builder, you could modify the engine to handle more RPMs, effectively shifting that whole red area up. Instead of starting at 5800 RPM, it might now start at 7200 RPM. That's similar to what you are trying to do with training.

There is some non-debate about the split routine done 5 or 6 days/week, or a whole body workout done 3 times/week. The hands-down winner is the split routine. This was the single greatest innovation in training of all time. The reason goes back to that red line thing. If you were able, somehow, to put your entire body through enough exercises to red line everything (a very long session), you would need a week or more to recover to make any gains before training again. With the split routine, you can push a given muscle group well into the red line area. By the time you come back around to that muscle group, it's recovered and you have your gains. Plus, the workouts are significantly shorter; you have just divided them up over 5 or 6 days.

The "problem" with the split routine is that, instead of pacing yourself through a very large number of exercises in a single long session, you focus on a much smaller number of exercises to really "blast" a given muscle group. This is why you see split routiners walking funny on leg day, but "whole body" types seem unfazed. With "whole body," the typical work for legs is a joke. It often involves the leg press (not a good exercise, unless for physical therapy) and maybe hamstring curls; it's pretty much a warm-up. Doing a real leg day session precludes you from also effectively working chest, shoulders, back, biceps, and triceps.

The "whole body" approach is good for a beginner and good for someone who hasn't trained in a long time. But after a few months or less, it is simply not producing further results.

As for "toned", that idea is based on the assumption muscles don't atrophy. That somehow they just go a little slack and need some tightening. No, they aren't going a little slack. The body sees no need to maintain the energy-using lean muscle mass, so reabsorbs it. The only way to stop the reabsorption process is to trigger the growth process. The growth is slow, once it reaches a certain point. We don't keep getting big gains so that we shoot right past Ronnie Coleman. At some point, age will take away every gain you make and limit what gains you can make. You want to stay ahead of age for as long as you can. You aren't going to do that by being lazy about training.

So here's what goes for the typical American man:

Age 40. Weak core, especially abs. Hips start to tilt forward. Back pain is no stranger.
Age 50. Atrophied glutes, aka "pancake butt". Visible loss of posture.
Age 60. Physical exertion is tough. A task like rotating your own tires is physically impossible.
Age 70. After a few falls, a cane seems like a good accessory.
Age 73. Outside help needed for daily chores. Walking is tiring.
Age 74. A walker is needed.
Age 75. Takes up residence in a nursing home.
Age 76. Dead.

A few years ago, an 83 year old climber scaled a mountain of some significance. Age 83, that's not a typo. So for him, the whole pancake butt and walker thing has never happened. He will die at some point, but not due to a loss of mobility.

Mindconnection eNL, 2023-01-22

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