Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2023-09-03

Due to some kind of anomaly on my abdomen (it's probably a lipoma, but may be a hematoma or hernia), I wanted to have a "Primary Care" physician so I could get a proper diagnosis and probably imaging. I did a search for "independent physicians" to avoid wasting time with a "captive" Big Pharma hospital system. I found a place that gave me a really good feeling about their competence. They assigned me to a Physician's Assistant who has a Doctorate and who is also a Tri-Athlete. Ah, someone who not only understands extreme athletes but is one!

She wasn't confident in a non-imaging diagnosis for several sound reasons, so she ordered an ultrasound. It's funny, I had thought of these same reasons before going and was going to use them to justify getting referred for an ultrasound.

To become a patient, I of course had to answer many questions posed in a standard questionnaire. This part was done by a medical assistant, prior to my visit with the PA. Two questions in particular are the genesis of this column. I didn't discuss them with the PA, I could tell she would not have asked such questions herself:

How often do you exercise? Once a week, twice a week, three times or more a week?
How much time on average do you spend exercising? This was just open-ended.

So what were my answers during the interview? To the first question, I said I train six days per week plus I climb and practice martial arts. To the second question, I asked if she could humor me. No need to write anything down just yet. Then I went on to explain.

The typical gym rat does a low to moderate intensity session that barely, if ever, stimulates an adaptive response. They spend an hour at the gym, much of that time simply resting or walking around with a water bottle. My workouts are extremely high intensity, and I do a lot of supersetting which means no rest between sets. I do a set of one exercise and then immediately to a set of another. I sometimes do have to rest maybe 15 or 20 seconds because the cardio load is off the charts. You can think of supersetting as folding an omelet. It might still be a 10-inch three egg omelet, but now it takes up only half the pan.

So when you ask how many minutes, what does that really mean? If I complete a 60 minute session in 30 minutes, which number do I provide? The 30 minute session is far more productive than the 60 minute one. And because I'm not resting for 5 minutes between exercises and because I am doing 4 or 5 sets per exercise, it's comparable to a 360 minute workout by a typical gym rat. There's a reason that sprint races are short and jogging trails are long.

This concept of "minutes of exercise" came out of the CDC, a political organization that is captive to Big Pharma and that gives horribly unscientific advice. The CDC should be defunded and disbanded. I don't know of anything the CDC has gotten right in the past 50 years, but their list of "high impact" errors is long.

Volume vs. intensity

When doing individual exercises, there has always been a trade-off between intensity and volume. Traditionally, you increased the weight to get closer to your 1 rep max (1RM) and increase the intensity. But to do more volume, you would reduce the weight. So 4 reps to failure and you're really up there on the intensity scale while 12 reps to failure means you're up on the volume scale.

Using heavy weights brings problems such as strain on joints, ligaments, and tendons. Plus it's hard to maintain good form, which means you can actually lose intensity while increasing the risk of injury. Maybe even serious injury. You also reduce time under tension, thus retarding hypertrophy.
Using light weights means you have to do a ridiculous amount of total reps to get the necessary muscular damage or metabolic stress. Your time investment is much larger and your use of time is less efficient.

Volume and intensity

Now, here's the thing. Your muscles have no idea how much weight you are lifting. What your body senses is how much glycogen you are depleting, how much oxygen it is burning, and how many fibers have to be recruited to complete the desired motion against whatever resistance is imposed. Techniques like pre-exhaustion, super-setting, and creating mechanical disadvantage will give you the same muscular work with much less weight. So you simulate the use of heavy weights, thus getting your intensity where it needs to be even though the weights are light. You do back to back sets, and your metabolic stress pegs the needle and accumulates through the whole session.

Training this way has its downsides. For recovery, you need to consume L-Glutamine and either an amino complex or a protein within an hour or two. And even if you do, you will likely feel drained. I sometimes have to take a nap (10 minutes is usually all I need). To push this hard, you need creatine in your system and you need carbs (rice, sweet potatoes, and fruit) in your system. You need to make sure you make every rep count by using good form and every set count by not resting long between them (30 seconds is pushing it). You need a consistently clean diet.

So why would anybody train this way, versus choosing either volume or intensity? Or just doing X minutes of "exercise" a few minutes per week "to stay toned"? Because you are training your whole body. The adaptive response tunes your endocrine system, strengthens your bones, and of course strengthens your muscles and tendons. The recovery process is like having a drill sergeant for your liver, your immune system, and your colon. In short, you are putting your health on a far higher level than is possible any other way.

Mindconnection eNL, 2023-09-03

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