Before getting underway with the gist of this blog, this TOJ wants to go on record that all exercise is good exercise. Whatever you like to do, do. Whether walking, biking, jogging, Pilates, whether alone, in a class, on a team, whatever it might be, go for it.
A few times in the past, I've suggested that sometimes it's a good idea to put the pedal to the metal and push your body very hard for a short period of time via High Intensity Training. Wait, wait! Don't click away! (I know most eyes on this blog don't fear sweat or a fast heartbeat anyway.)
Recently I've been studying stuff about senior fitness and aging. According to experts, this TOJ is an official member of the category called the "Young Old," which spans 65-74. When I read the articles by the PhD experts about the 65 year old threshold, it's alarming how cautious they are about exercise. You'd think we're like pieces of fine China, ready to crack and disintegrate at any moment. Their concern is not completely unfounded because many Boomers have sat on their butts much of their lives and are not physically ready for vigorous exercise. About half already have either an illness or musculoskeletal problem that limits their activity.
However, my concern is that frailty begets more frailty. Obviously nobody should put themselves at high risk for injury. And that's not necessary. Most risk can be removed by starting very slow, even below what you might be capable of, then systematically working up from there. By not pushing yourself a little, you accelerate the onset of frailty down the road.
A little high intensity exercise has amazing benefits. See this excellent discussion by Clarence Bass, a Master TOJ if there ever was one. Easy cardio is great, but there are some life-enhancing things that happen only when all the muscles are worked really hard.
Watch this short video of an older guy doing exemplary HIT workout that lasts about seventeen minutes. Here's what's worth noting:
First, he's on machines which are much safer than free weights for HIT because you can't get in an awkward posture that puts you at risk for injury when your muscles move towards failure.
Second, his trainer is making sure he keeps his form correct so only the targeted muscles are engaged (unlike the grunting twenty-year old guy doing a simple bench press with free weights who's arching his back and jerking his entire body to enlist every possible muscle to get the barbell up).
Third, he's using a weight he can lift only 8 reps, so he's building strength and using his fast twitch fibers (hence the powerful human growth hormones).
Fourth, he's keeping a brisk pace. He pauses only long enough to switch machines.
Fifth, he makes sure to use every major muscle group - shoulders, hips, legs.
It's that simple. Challenging, yes. But very doable. He's not collapsing, gasping for air.
Everyone can do this, at all ages. You can do it without ever going to a gym by using your own body weight in a series of calisthenics like push-ups (from your knees if that helps you), squats, lunges. If the latter two are too easy, you can make it more challenging by holding a plastic milk carton with whatever amount of water you can safely hold tight to your chest. Just move from one exercise to the other with minimal recovery.
Most days, it's fine to cruise along in a lower gear. A couple days a week you want to be like the Little Old Lady from Pasadena. Go, TOJ, go TOJ, go TOJ, go!
Showing posts with label high intensity exercise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high intensity exercise. Show all posts
Muscles: Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made Of
You've gotta shake your head in awe and wonder when you realize what muscles do, either when going about the regular tasks of daily life or exercising at your limits.
Truly one of the great miracles of life is how chemical energy, stored in our bodies as glucose or fat, is converted into power and motion - lifting, running, catching, kicking, throwing, etc. To accomplish these, our bodies have multiple energy systems at work, often simultaneously.
To move, muscles must contract, which requires what is called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). When a single phosphate molecule breaks away from an adenosine molecule in the muscle cell, energy is released that causes a muscle to contract. Each time this happens, another phosphate molecule must replace the previous one for the muscle to contract again. That phosphate must come from delivered from outside the cell. The harder and longer we exercise, the more ATP is needed. When you run out of ATP, you stop moving.
Depending on whether you are jogging slowly or sprinting hard, a different energy system will perform the job of providing the phosphate to form ATP. If you're jogging slowly (aerobic), you use oxygen with glucose or fat. If you are doing high intensity exercise (anaerobic), you will use creatine phosphate for a few seconds, then switch to pure glucose, which won't last much longer than a few minutes.
Few of us, even in our most intense workouts, ever discover the limits of our energy systems because if we push our muscles hard enough, our willpower surrenders to the the burning sensation caused by the buildup of lactic acid and we slow down or lower the barbell. On rare occasions, such as shown in the video below, we reach our chemical boundaries, sometimes in ways that are admirable and comic at the same time. You can also learn a lot about how muscles work by watching someone, like these triathlon competitors, enter the twilight zone of muscle failure.
What you just saw was somenne who can no longer deliver phosphate to the ATP in their muscle cells. The commentator is wrong that the person has run out of calories. The energy is present in the body, but in forms that can no longer be delivered and converted fast enough. Actually these women were probably starting to produce glycogen by metabolizing their own muscle tissue through a slower process called gluconeogenesis, a last ditch effort by the body to respond to signals from the brain to get fuel to the muscle cells. But it's too little, too late. The people who finished ahead of them, through a combination of genetics and training, were able to keep their energy flowing.
What's also interesting to watch is how the body naturally recruits other muscles to accomplish a task that muscles usually used in the task can no longer perform. If you are trying to open the tight lid on a bottle of ketchup, sometimes you cannot do it just with an easy twist of your fingers, but must enlist your hardest grip and the action of your forearm muscles. Often when you watch the finish of a running race, you'll see people running in abnormal or awkward ways, throwing their arms side to side or lifting their hips to pull their legs forward. When one set of muscles fail, another set will come forward to try to get the goal accomplished. In the case of the video, these womens' leg muscles were depleted of ATP, but they were still able to recruit their fueled upper bodies, still rich with ATP, and crawl to the finish.
Shakespeare was right: we are such stuff as dreams are made of.
Truly one of the great miracles of life is how chemical energy, stored in our bodies as glucose or fat, is converted into power and motion - lifting, running, catching, kicking, throwing, etc. To accomplish these, our bodies have multiple energy systems at work, often simultaneously.
To move, muscles must contract, which requires what is called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). When a single phosphate molecule breaks away from an adenosine molecule in the muscle cell, energy is released that causes a muscle to contract. Each time this happens, another phosphate molecule must replace the previous one for the muscle to contract again. That phosphate must come from delivered from outside the cell. The harder and longer we exercise, the more ATP is needed. When you run out of ATP, you stop moving.
Depending on whether you are jogging slowly or sprinting hard, a different energy system will perform the job of providing the phosphate to form ATP. If you're jogging slowly (aerobic), you use oxygen with glucose or fat. If you are doing high intensity exercise (anaerobic), you will use creatine phosphate for a few seconds, then switch to pure glucose, which won't last much longer than a few minutes.
Few of us, even in our most intense workouts, ever discover the limits of our energy systems because if we push our muscles hard enough, our willpower surrenders to the the burning sensation caused by the buildup of lactic acid and we slow down or lower the barbell. On rare occasions, such as shown in the video below, we reach our chemical boundaries, sometimes in ways that are admirable and comic at the same time. You can also learn a lot about how muscles work by watching someone, like these triathlon competitors, enter the twilight zone of muscle failure.
What you just saw was somenne who can no longer deliver phosphate to the ATP in their muscle cells. The commentator is wrong that the person has run out of calories. The energy is present in the body, but in forms that can no longer be delivered and converted fast enough. Actually these women were probably starting to produce glycogen by metabolizing their own muscle tissue through a slower process called gluconeogenesis, a last ditch effort by the body to respond to signals from the brain to get fuel to the muscle cells. But it's too little, too late. The people who finished ahead of them, through a combination of genetics and training, were able to keep their energy flowing.
What's also interesting to watch is how the body naturally recruits other muscles to accomplish a task that muscles usually used in the task can no longer perform. If you are trying to open the tight lid on a bottle of ketchup, sometimes you cannot do it just with an easy twist of your fingers, but must enlist your hardest grip and the action of your forearm muscles. Often when you watch the finish of a running race, you'll see people running in abnormal or awkward ways, throwing their arms side to side or lifting their hips to pull their legs forward. When one set of muscles fail, another set will come forward to try to get the goal accomplished. In the case of the video, these womens' leg muscles were depleted of ATP, but they were still able to recruit their fueled upper bodies, still rich with ATP, and crawl to the finish.
Shakespeare was right: we are such stuff as dreams are made of.
The One Best Exercise
I just gotta say it: There is no one best exercise for everybody. Period. Don't waste your time looking for the final exercise answer.
We are all the same in some ways, and in others we're very different. I have a friend who's a runner. That's all he likes to do. I have a friend who's a skier and biker.That's all he likes to do. I enjoy many kinds of excercise, but not yoga. (Yep, I knew it. Yoga can be dangerous. The NY Times had a great article about the injuries caused by yoga excesses.)
If you find one or more forms of exercise you like and gets you close to the results (healthy weight, feel happy, strength) you seek, you're as close to the final desitnation as you will ever get. It's the journey, there's no final destination.
Months ago, you might remember the video posted here in which Dr. Mercola discussed High Intensity Training, including how he pushed so hard he felt dizzy and nauseous to attain the maximum benefits. Well in his latest Dr. Mercola talks about how he had to back off. The exercise was so intense that he could only do it once a week. Dr. McGuff, with whom he talks on the video in this post, advocates very slow, high resistance exercise for very, very short periods of time. His priority is to gain strength and cardio fitness in the shortest period of time. (He also makes an innane comment that you never see animals jog. Has he ever watched films of caribou migrating for hundreds of miles?).
I respect the research and earnestness that people like this put into their work. Both are worthy of attention because they know the human body. But what they advocate is very one-dimensional. If an exercise is too painful or uncomfortable or repetitious, few of us will continue to do it on a regular basis. Notice in how much Dr. Mercola frets about what is the right exercise, the right intensity, the right duration.
Movement of any kind is good. Hard, easy. Fast, slow. Inside, outside. Resistance, cardio. We exercise for all kinds of reasons. To stay healthy. To feel good. To fill the time. To compete.
Today it's snowing. I went to my favorite trail for a run. It probably wasn't very efficient, as I trudged up, slipping and sliding. But I breathed hard and my legs got sore and tired. Better yet, the snow was beautiful collecting on the sage.
We are all the same in some ways, and in others we're very different. I have a friend who's a runner. That's all he likes to do. I have a friend who's a skier and biker.That's all he likes to do. I enjoy many kinds of excercise, but not yoga. (Yep, I knew it. Yoga can be dangerous. The NY Times had a great article about the injuries caused by yoga excesses.)
If you find one or more forms of exercise you like and gets you close to the results (healthy weight, feel happy, strength) you seek, you're as close to the final desitnation as you will ever get. It's the journey, there's no final destination.
Months ago, you might remember the video posted here in which Dr. Mercola discussed High Intensity Training, including how he pushed so hard he felt dizzy and nauseous to attain the maximum benefits. Well in his latest Dr. Mercola talks about how he had to back off. The exercise was so intense that he could only do it once a week. Dr. McGuff, with whom he talks on the video in this post, advocates very slow, high resistance exercise for very, very short periods of time. His priority is to gain strength and cardio fitness in the shortest period of time. (He also makes an innane comment that you never see animals jog. Has he ever watched films of caribou migrating for hundreds of miles?).
I respect the research and earnestness that people like this put into their work. Both are worthy of attention because they know the human body. But what they advocate is very one-dimensional. If an exercise is too painful or uncomfortable or repetitious, few of us will continue to do it on a regular basis. Notice in how much Dr. Mercola frets about what is the right exercise, the right intensity, the right duration.
Movement of any kind is good. Hard, easy. Fast, slow. Inside, outside. Resistance, cardio. We exercise for all kinds of reasons. To stay healthy. To feel good. To fill the time. To compete.
Today it's snowing. I went to my favorite trail for a run. It probably wasn't very efficient, as I trudged up, slipping and sliding. But I breathed hard and my legs got sore and tired. Better yet, the snow was beautiful collecting on the sage.
Over-Carbed and Under-Exercised
Months ago I talked about Doug McGuff, MD, and John Little's book entitled "Body by Science."
It's one of the most informative books on the relationship of muscles, strength and metabolism I've run across.
I recently ran across a video of a lecture by McGuff that's worth watching because he does an excellent job describing the dynamic relationship between muscles, glucose, and metabolic syndrome, the plague of civilization and underlying cause of the obesity epidemic.
Body By Science from Pinpoint Multimedia on Vimeo.
While I don't subscribe to his narrow view of exercise (he dismisses aerobic exercises like running and biking in favor of high intensity torture on weight machines), he has a deep understanding of the role of muscle in health, especially people who are trying to lose weight.
We tend to think of diet and exercise as separate topics, but after watching McGuff you'll see why it's critical to have muscle and exercise all three types of your muscle fibers hard, not just the slow twitch ones.
It's one of the most informative books on the relationship of muscles, strength and metabolism I've run across.
I recently ran across a video of a lecture by McGuff that's worth watching because he does an excellent job describing the dynamic relationship between muscles, glucose, and metabolic syndrome, the plague of civilization and underlying cause of the obesity epidemic.
Body By Science from Pinpoint Multimedia on Vimeo.
While I don't subscribe to his narrow view of exercise (he dismisses aerobic exercises like running and biking in favor of high intensity torture on weight machines), he has a deep understanding of the role of muscle in health, especially people who are trying to lose weight.
We tend to think of diet and exercise as separate topics, but after watching McGuff you'll see why it's critical to have muscle and exercise all three types of your muscle fibers hard, not just the slow twitch ones.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)