Smarter Workouts: The Science of Exercise Made Simple gives you the solution you need with efficient and effective workout programs that use only one piece of equipment. You can work out in a short period of time without spending a lot of money on expensive equipment or gym memberships—all while targeting your personal goals.
Exercise doesn’t have to be difficult to figure out. In Smarter Workouts, fitness expert Pete McCall explains the effects of exercise on your body so you can identify what will work best for you. He gives you access to fat-burning workouts that help you work smarter to produce real results. First, choose your target: improving mobility for better balance and coordination, strengthening your core for better functional movement, or amping up your metabolism with sweat-inducing conditioning work. Then select one of seven equipment options to perform your workout:
- Bodyweight
- Dumbbell
- Kettlebell
- Medicine ball
- Stability ball
- Sandbag
- Resistance band
Earn continuing education credits/units! A continuing education exam that uses this book is also available. It may be purchased separately or as part of a package that includes both the book and exam.
Part I. The Science and Why It Matters
Chapter 1. How Exercise Changes Your Body
Chapter 2. Movement and Intensity in Practice
Part II. Exercises and Workouts
Chapter 3. Mobility Training
Chapter 4. Core Strength Training
Chapter 5. Metabolic Conditioning
Part III. Get Fit and Stay Fit
Chapter 6. Designing Your Exercise Program
Chapter 7. Lifetime Programming
Pete McCall is the owner and president of PMc Fitness Solutions. He is certified as a personal trainer through the American Council on Exercise (ACE) and the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) and also holds a CSCS (Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist) certification from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).
For more than 15 years, McCall has been teaching and writing workshops and courses designed to meet continuing education requirements for certified fitness professionals. He has presented at conferences around the world and is one of only a handful of fitness professionals who have assisted in writing personal training textbooks for both NASM and ACE. He also contributed to the development of ACE’s Integrated Fitness Training Model of exercise program design.
Throughout his career, McCall has worked with leading brands and established companies in the fitness industry, including Reebok and 24 Hour Fitness, where he is also a regular contributor to their online magazine, and Core Health & Fitness (the parent company of Nautilus, StairMaster, Star Trac, and Schwinn Indoor Cycling), where he is a master trainer and education content creator. He is a spokesperson for ACE and has been featured as a fitness expert in national publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Health, Shape, and Self.
McCall earned his master’s degree in exercise science and health promotion from the California University of Pennsylvania.
"Pete's been a leader in the industry for years. His work in both fitness and sports makes him uniquely qualified to write Smarter Workouts."
—Michael Boyle, Author of New Functional Training for Sports
"Pete is a masterful trainer and educator who has the ability to simplify complex exercises and workout programs. Pick your favorite at-home exercise tool and let Pete teach you a smart, effective, efficient, and safe workout to perform on your own."
—Rick Richey, DHSc, MS, LMT, NASM Faculty, Owner of RēCOVER and Independent Training Spot
“Stop struggling with exercises that don’t work for you. Smarter Workouts provides you with the workouts that are best for your body and will give you the results you’ve been looking for.”
—Lisa Wheeler, Owner of Wheels in Motion Productions, Former Vice President of Fitness for Daily Burn
“Exercise doesn’t have to be hard to figure out. Pete McCall teaches you to train smarter, not harder.”
—Amy Dixon, Director of Group Fitness Programming for Equinox
"Pete has been an industry influencer, a respected partner, and a trusted friend for more than a decade. He has a great ability to distill complex concepts into simple, bite-sized morsels for his clients, and he does just that in Smarter Workouts. If Pete is doing it, you know it's going to be great.”
—Randy Hetrick, Founder and CEO of TRX
“For many individuals, starting an exercise program can be a rather daunting task. As a result, far too many individuals remain physically inactive. In Smarter Workouts: The Science of Exercise Made Simple, Pete McCall, a fitness industry veteran of over 20 years, provides a straightforward roadmap to help individuals safely experience the joys and innumerable benefits of a physically active lifestyle. Clearly written and well-illustrated, this book is must reading for anyone interested in protecting their most valuable asset—their health.”
—Cedric X. Bryant, PhD, FACSM, President and Chief Science Officer of American Council on Exercise
How exercise changes your body
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body.
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body. Mobility training can improve movement efficiency and strengthen the fascia and elastic connective tissues, helping them to be more resistant to injury. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appearance, strength training and metabolic conditioning can be used to improve the ability to convert food to energy, change hormone levels, and increase muscle force output, all of which are critical for performing your favorite pastimes or essential activities of daily living. Using exercise to achieve these and other desired results relies on a number of different variables, including sex, age, resistance-training experience, genetics, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and emotional and physical stressors. Each of these influences how your physiological systems adapt to exercise in general or resistance training specifically; for example, too much stress at work or a lack of sleep may significantly reduce your ability to grow muscle.
An exercise is a movement, and movement is a skill that requires practice to master. It may be tempting to change exercises frequently; however, maintaining some consistency with the same exercises over a period of six to eight weeks can help improve coordination and movement skill as well as muscular strength. Efficient movement patterns require synergistic coordination between all systems of the human body. Exercise programs that emphasize using movement patterns use a number of muscles at the same time, which can make the workouts more metabolically challenging, helping you burn more calories, which is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight.
To create and sustain the energy for dynamic, multidirectional movement patterns, the different components of the body need to develop the ability to function as a single system controlled by the CNS. Compared to the limitations of traditional muscle isolation exercises, using only one piece of equipment to challenge the body to move in all directions can result in a more creative, engaging, effective, and fun workout experience. Multijoint movements such as squats to shoulder presses with dumbbells, lifts with a medicine ball, or kettlebell swings are all examples of exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue and, in turn, challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled, which can provide a number of health-promoting benefits.
Organizing workout variables
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect.
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect. Workout programs based on learning and performing movement patterns can provide you with more options for how to exercise, which can ultimately lead to greater results. Whether it's exercise to improve muscular strength, enhance metabolic efficiency, or increase mobility, exercise programs contain the same basic elements known as the variables of exercise program design, which are exercise selection, intensity, repetitions, tempo, rest interval, sets, and frequency of exercise sessions. How these variables are organized and applied will determine the results from an exercise program.
Designing a Workout Is Like Cooking a Meal
Simply throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan and hoping that it turns into an appetizing and edible meal is not an effective way to cook. Likewise, hopping from one piece of equipment to the next, bouncing around between different fitness trends or doing exercises only for specific muscles are not effective methods of exercising. The first step of cooking is determining exactly what to make. In a similar fashion, the first step in designing an exercise program is determining the specific outcome you are trying to achieve. In cooking, the dish you want to prepare will determine the ingredients, the utensils used for preparing the food, and finally the best pots and pans for doing the actual cooking. Your fitness goal will determine the best equipment to use, the specific exercises you do, and how often you do them.
To prepare a successful meal it is important to know how to organize the ingredients, how much of each to use, the order in which they're added, and finally the optimal temperature and length of time in the oven. Using too much or too little of a specific ingredient, the wrong temperature, or wrong length of time can drastically change the outcome of a dish. Exercise is very much the same way; performing exercises that are not relevant to your goal, using too much or too little resistance, or doing too many or too few repetitions could drastically change the outcome of the workout. The variables of exercise program design (table 2.1) can be applied based on what you want to achieve from an exercise program. Add muscle? Lose excess body weight? Enhance athletic performance? Improve health? The variables can be adjusted to provide the appropriate mechanical or metabolic overload in a manner that creates a safe yet effective stimulus to meet your objectives.
Finding the Motivation to Exercise
Lack of time is one of the most popular excuses for avoiding exercise. Another reason for skipping exercise is that there is almost too much information available, making it hard to identify the types that you should be doing for the results you want. These two reasons alone demonstrate why it's easy to find other things to do instead of exercise; you'd rather spend your limited free time doing something you enjoy instead of something that feels awkward or uncomfortable. Most importantly, you probably just want to know how to exercise in a manner that will provide the greatest amount of benefits without an extensive time or cost commitment.
First, exercise is something you do in your free time, so it should be an activity that you at least don't mind doing. (Enjoy doing would be more preferable, but it's necessary to set realistic expectations.) To identify the types of exercise that can bring you the greatest amount of enjoyment, think back to the types of activities that brought you the most pleasure. Understanding just a little about muscle fiber physiology can help you identify the types of exercise activities that will feel right for your body. If you've always gravitated toward endurance sports such as running, cycling, or swimming for long distances, you may have more type I muscle fibers, which are extremely efficient at aerobic metabolism. However, if you've found that you enjoy field sports such as soccer or football, court sports such as tennis or basketball because of the fast-paced running and rapid changes of direction, sprinting, or dancing, you probably have higher levels of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for creating the powerful muscle contractions needed for those activities.
If you have been struggling to follow an exercise program consistently for the long term, maybe your focus is in the wrong area. Rather than placing all of the emphasis on the outcome of exercise, why not adjust your thinking and focus on the process? You are better off choosing activities that are easily accessible and that you enjoy doing as opposed to workout programs that you think you should do even if you don't look forward to them and especially if it is at an out-of-the-way location that can be difficult to get to.
Principles of Exercise Program Design
Understanding how the different systems function as discrete components can help you identify the best methods for synergistically coordinating their actions to produce the desired results from an exercise program. Participation in a regular exercise program is essential for achieving and maintaining good health, which can help you avoid having to pay expensive medical costs as you age. Exercise provides numerous health benefits, including increased bone mineral density, improved blood lipid profiles, elevated mitochondrial density, increased aerobic capacity, lowered blood pressure, and improved glucose tolerance. All these benefits help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases while providing various cognitive benefits, such as improving memory recall, making exercise as important for your brain as it is for your muscles. Exercise should engage all of the physiological systems reviewed in chapter 1, with a specific emphasis on enhancing mobility, strengthening the core, and improving metabolic efficiency. Identifying the best exercise program for your particular needs first requires a basic understanding of how exercise changes the human body.
The SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) states that the type of exercise stimulus placed on the body will determine the expected physiological outcome. Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus. The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular, and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively more challenging exercise program.
According to the SAID principle, an individual who performs only muscle-isolation exercises can expect to strengthen the specific muscles used during exercise but may not achieve the intermuscular coordination necessary to improve skills such as coordination and dynamic balance.
Applying the Variables to Design Your Workouts
One thing most top fitness professionals agree on is that an effective exercise program doesn't need to be overly complicated. It's not necessary to do overly complicated moves or change the exercises you do every workout; only five basic movement patterns determine the exercises you should do during the workout. Simply changing one or two of the variables, like the amount of intensity, number of repetitions, or length of the rest interval, can significantly change the demands imposed on your body. As you get started with your exercise program, you should be aware that research can provide some general insights about how fitness may affect your body, but there are many factors besides the variables of exercise program design, like nutrition, sleep patterns, and overall stress levels, that will determine your specific response.
Inducing metabolic and mechanical stress in the gym does help promote muscle growth; however, what you do in the gym is only one component of the equation for achieving results. T and GH are produced during the REM cycles of sleep, meaning that after a hard workout, a full night's rest is essential for promoting muscle growth and achieving optimal recovery. Insufficient rest does not allow for optimal muscle protein synthesis to repair tissues damaged during exercise, nor does it allow for adequate replenishment of the muscle glycogen used to produce ATP and could lead to an accumulation of energy-producing hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol, which can reduce the ability to generate new muscle tissue. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, lingering illness, and cessation of gains from exercise are all symptoms of overtraining, which can significantly affect your ability to achieve your fitness goals.
The postworkout recovery period is often the most overlooked variable of any exercise program. Whether it is mechanical or metabolic stress that provides the stimulus for muscle growth is not as important as allowing the time for T, GH, and IGF-1 to promote muscle protein synthesis after the exercise is over. Exercise is when a physical stimulus is applied to a muscle and is only part of the equation responsible for muscle growth. Adequate recovery is important to allow the trained muscles sufficient time to replace muscle glycogen and the physiological process to repair and rebuild new tissue (Bishop, Jones, and Woods 2008; Hausswirth and Mujika 2013). The frequency of your workouts will depend on a number of factors, including your specific training goals, overall exercise experience, level of physical conditioning, and the amount of time you have available. After a higher-intensity core strength or metabolic conditioning workout, an appropriate recovery period is approximately 48 to 72 hours before training at the same intensity. Lower-intensity mobility workouts can be performed the next day to either expend the energy for weight management goals or as a form of active recovery.
Structuring Your Workouts
When it comes to workouts to enhance core strength or improve metabolic conditioning, repeatedly performing the same exercises with the same amount of weight could limit the amount of mechanical or metabolic stress placed on the involved tissue, which then minimizes the training effect. It's important to change workouts on a regular and consistent basis. Changing too often will not allow your body time to adapt, and following the same program for too long could result in a plateau. (The specifics of how and when to adjust your workouts will be covered in chapter 6.) To produce the desired results, the acute variables of exercise program design must be applied in a structured, systematic manner that either imposes a mechanical stress on the muscle, fascia, and elastic connective tissue or creates a sizable metabolic demand.
Increasing exercise intensity can be done a couple of ways: performing a strength exercise to a point of momentary muscle fatigue or increasing the work rate by moving at a faster speed to challenge the metabolic energy pathways that fuel the muscles. Valdimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer identify three specific types of strength training, two of which can be applied to improve core strength or enhance metabolic conditioning with only one piece of exercise equipment. The three methods are the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repeated effort method. The maximal effort method, as the name suggests, is for enhancing maximal muscle force output using extremely heavy amounts of weight, which, while a worthy outcome, is not relevant to workouts that can easily be done with one piece of equipment at home or a fitness facility. The other two methods, the repeated effort and dynamic effort methods, can be adapted to use only one piece of equipment, making them efficient and effective solutions regardless of where you work out (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
Repeated Effort Method
The repeated effort (RE) method of strength training requires the use of a nonmaximal load performed until momentary muscle failure (the inability to perform another repetition) to ensure proper stimulation of the motor units and depletion of energy stores. Applying the RE method of exercise requires performing the final few repetitions per set in a fatigued state in order to stimulate all of the involved muscle fibers. The RE method is an effective means to stimulate the adaptation of increasing lean muscle mass. This method uses slower motor units for the initial repetitions; as these motor units begin to fatigue, the muscle will recruit type II high threshold motor units to sustain the necessary force production.
One limitation to the RE method is that as the type II motor units are activated, they fatigue quickly, leading to the end of the set. If the load is not sufficient or the set is not performed to fatigue, it will not stimulate the fast motor units most responsible for changing muscle definition.
One significant benefit of this method is that as anaerobic type II fibers are recruited, they create energy through anaerobic glycolysis, which produces metabolic waste such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, changing blood acidity. Research suggests that acidosis, the change in blood acidity due to an accumulation of blood lactate, is associated with increases in GH and IGF-1 to promote tissue repair during the recovery phase (Schoenfeld 2010).
The RE method provides two key advantages when using just one piece of exercise equipment: It has a greater impact on the metabolic function of the muscle, provoking greater levels of growth, as well as involving a significant number of motor units, leading to strength gains.
Dynamic Effort Method
The dynamic effort (DE) method of strength training uses nonmaximal loads with the highest attainable velocity of movement to apply the muscle motor unit stimulation. Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer suggest that the DE method is an effective means of increasing the rate of force development and developing explosive strength, but when using a submaximal load for bursts of high-intensity movement speed, it can be an effective means of metabolic conditioning as well (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
The DE method activates the contractile element of muscle to create an isometric contraction and place tension on the bodywide network of fascia and elastic connective tissue. When the contractile element shortens, it loads the fascia with elastic mechanical energy, which, when rapidly shortened, creates an explosive shortening action to generate movement.
When using the DE method with one piece of equipment for metabolic conditioning, the goal is to perform a move at an explosive or fast pace until either becoming out of breath or feeling the sensation of burning in the involved muscles, both of which are important markers of a metabolic overload.
Effective Equipment for Developing Mobility, Core Strength, and Metabolic Conditioning
One inside tip that many fitness professionals know is that it's not the actual equipment you use, but how you apply it that leads to physical changes. Yes, different types of exercise equipment place different stresses on the body, resulting in slightly different adaptations. And, yes, to some degree weight is weight: A medicine ball that weighs 10 pounds is the same weight as two 5-pound dumbbells. However, the movements you do during an exercise plus the way you apply the other variables of program design, such as sets and rest intervals, actually determine the changes that will happen to your body. Staying with the example of the medicine ball and two dumbbells, even though they weigh the same amount, the way they are used in a workout will result in completely different outcomes. A medicine ball is held in both hands while the dumbbells allow each arm to move independently, imposing a number of stresses on the various systems of the body.
The equipment selected for the workouts in this book (table 2.2) was chosen specifically because they are capable of imposing the appropriate demands for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning as well as being very affordable and easy to use in a home setting where space may be limited. In addition, the equipment selected can be found in most commercial health clubs or fitness facilities. Learning to use one piece of equipment for an effective workout gives you options for when you want the convenience of exercising at home or when both space and equipment are in short supply at the gym. When you make it to the gym only to see that all of the equipment is being used and people are waiting in line to take their turn, you can smile knowing that you'll still get a great workout. All you need to do is grab a single piece of equipment, secure a little space, and have at it. You'll be sweating and working toward your goals in no time!
Movement is exercise and exercise is movement. Knowing how to move with the pieces of equipment listed above, along with knowing how to organize the variables of an exercise program, can help ensure that you are doing workouts that will produce the results you want. All of the top fitness instructors know that exercise is both a science and an art: The science can provide insights on how the human body will adapt to specific types of overload, but the art comes from finding the best types of exercise that feel right for your particular needs. One piece of equipment, like a kettlebell, can be used for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning based on how the variables of exercise program design are applied. The next chapters show you dozens of exercises to help you get the results you want, simply and effectively.
Learn to work out smarter
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it.
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it. But short of that, how much do you really know about exercise and how it affects your body? You may have a number of questions: What is exercise? Why is it so important? How do different types of exercise create changes in the body? What types of exercise should I be doing? How can I identify the best type for my needs? How often should I be exercising and how hard? Where is the best place to achieve the recommended amount of exercise? Do I need to pay for a costly health club or buy lots of expensive exercise equipment that I'm not going to know how to use?
As someone who has been a personal trainer for 20 years and in the business of educating other personal trainers for most of the past 15, including being a media spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, these questions come up all the time from people I meet in health clubs and from fitness reporters working on stories for consumer magazines. Yes, it can be difficult to sort through all the information to find accurate, reliable, evidence-based information; all too often marketers promote a new exercise fad or gimmick without explaining how it works to change your body. If you take the time to learn why exercise is important, the basic science of how various types of exercise apply different kinds of stimuli to your body, and, most importantly, which types you should be doing to help improve your health and achieve the specific results you want, then you will have the tools you need in order to make exercise an integral part of your life.
Here's a startling reality: Each and every single individual will have a different response to exercise. No one who makes a living as a personal trainer, strength coach, group fitness instructor, or health coach can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that exercise will deliver specific results. If anyone ever promises or guarantees that you can get a specific outcome from following their workout program, then your first exercise is to run away, because it is virtually impossible to guarantee specific results. The results you experience from any exercise program will vary based on the types of exercise that you do as well as a number of other lifestyle habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and overall stress levels.
The only thing that is known about exercise and the human body is that regular exercise can promote good health and significantly lower the risk of developing a number of chronic health conditions, while lack of regular exercise and a sedentary lifestyle can reduce life expectancy. Aging is unavoidable, and the normal biological aging process affects all systems in the human body. Evidence suggests that adults with a sedentary lifestyle can expect to experience a more rapid degradation of bodily functions and face a greater risk of premature death than those who make exercise a regular habit (Candow et al. 2011; Taylor and Johnson 2008). If you want to maintain good health and add years to your life while giving you the ability to enjoy all of the things that you love to do, then it is necessary to learn how to make exercise a regular habit.
Find your fountain of youth
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement.
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially of moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).
From plastic surgery to Botox injections to anti-aging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of anabolic steroids, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative). The good news is that a healthy lifestyle that includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training can help slow down the aging process and be the proverbial fountain of youth. And here's a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, invest your time in moderate to vigorous exercise to minimize those effects of aging. High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.
What's Age Got to Do With It?
We are all familiar with chronological age, which starts the moment we are born and is measured in years. Biological age refers to the condition of tissues and physiological systems; healthy lifestyle habits can help reduce our biological age, meaning that even though an individual could have a chronological age of 65, her biological age could only be 45. Functional age is a combination of one's functional work capacity and physical ability, and in many cases can be years younger than the actual chronological age (Taylor and Johnson 2008). We all know those individuals whose energy, enthusiasm, physical ability, and overall zest for life are years younger than their actual age. Chances are that those people are probably very active. Being active is the true fountain of youth. Being fit means being healthy and having the ability to perform physical tasks, not having a particular appearance or shape. The true sense of being fit is having the energy and ability to enjoy your favorite activities throughout your entire lifespan.
Exercise Throughout the Aging Process
Following an exercise program that includes progressively challenging workouts for both strength (the core strength programs in this book) and power (the metabolic conditioning programs) can help minimize the normal physiological effects of the biological aging process and improve your quality of life.
To provide you with a little extra motivation for starting and adhering to a long-term exercise program, table 7.2 gives an overview of the benefits of exercise during each decade of the adult lifespan.
Note: Cancer and other chronic conditions were specifically omitted from table 7.2 because they can strike at almost any stage of life. While there is no cure for cancer, establishing healthy behaviors and avoiding or limiting certain activities such as smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, and remaining sedentary for extended periods of time can certainly lower the risk of developing it and other conditions. There is no sense wasting any energy worrying about cancer; do your best to be as active as possible and make healthy choices in an attempt to reduce your risk.
Certain Exercise Programs Can Slow Down the Biological Aging Process (Really!)
Being older does not mean you can't do high-intensity exercises. Older adults can and should participate in higher-intensity exercise as long as there are no medical concerns and they follow an appropriate progression of intensity. Strength training can improve the force output of muscles, independent of age and gender, especially when there is a sufficient intensity of exercise (Hakkinen 2011).
Higher-intensity exercises like those done in metabolic conditioning and core strength training programs can promote the production of anabolic hormones that provide important anti-aging benefits.
Exercise not only creates better-functioning muscles but also a brain capable of maintaining its optimal performance throughout the aging process (Chaddock, Voss, and Kramer 2012). Research on the effects of resistance training on older adults and cognitive function has shown that resistance training has a positive effect on cognition, information processing, attention, memory formation, and executive function (Chang et. al 2012). So, as you get older, be sure to include high-intensity exercises and strength training as part of your overall training plan.
What the Science Says: What an Old Car Can Teach You About Your Body
Rebuilding and restoring an old car to like-new condition often requires replacing many worn-out parts and repainting the exterior. Even though medical technology has madeimportant advances in the area of prosthetics, due to cost and the painful recovery process, simply replacing old parts isn't an option as we age. However, gradually progressing the intensity of an exercise program to where you are strength training to a point of momentary fatigue or creating significant metabolic overload can help add new muscle, which can significantly improve your appearance in much the same way that a good paint job can help an older car look like new. In their research on how older males respond to resistance training, Izquierdo and colleagues observed that the skeletal muscle of older adults seems to retain the capacity to experience hypertrophy when the volume, intensity, and duration of the training period are sufficient (Izquierdo et al. 2001).
Just as properly maintaining the engine, waxing the paint, and storing it out of the sun can greatly enhance the longevity of an automobile, exercise programs that stimulate the production of the hormones T, GH, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) can improve our appearance and extend our functional life span as we age.
How exercise changes your body
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body.
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body. Mobility training can improve movement efficiency and strengthen the fascia and elastic connective tissues, helping them to be more resistant to injury. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appearance, strength training and metabolic conditioning can be used to improve the ability to convert food to energy, change hormone levels, and increase muscle force output, all of which are critical for performing your favorite pastimes or essential activities of daily living. Using exercise to achieve these and other desired results relies on a number of different variables, including sex, age, resistance-training experience, genetics, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and emotional and physical stressors. Each of these influences how your physiological systems adapt to exercise in general or resistance training specifically; for example, too much stress at work or a lack of sleep may significantly reduce your ability to grow muscle.
An exercise is a movement, and movement is a skill that requires practice to master. It may be tempting to change exercises frequently; however, maintaining some consistency with the same exercises over a period of six to eight weeks can help improve coordination and movement skill as well as muscular strength. Efficient movement patterns require synergistic coordination between all systems of the human body. Exercise programs that emphasize using movement patterns use a number of muscles at the same time, which can make the workouts more metabolically challenging, helping you burn more calories, which is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight.
To create and sustain the energy for dynamic, multidirectional movement patterns, the different components of the body need to develop the ability to function as a single system controlled by the CNS. Compared to the limitations of traditional muscle isolation exercises, using only one piece of equipment to challenge the body to move in all directions can result in a more creative, engaging, effective, and fun workout experience. Multijoint movements such as squats to shoulder presses with dumbbells, lifts with a medicine ball, or kettlebell swings are all examples of exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue and, in turn, challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled, which can provide a number of health-promoting benefits.
Organizing workout variables
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect.
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect. Workout programs based on learning and performing movement patterns can provide you with more options for how to exercise, which can ultimately lead to greater results. Whether it's exercise to improve muscular strength, enhance metabolic efficiency, or increase mobility, exercise programs contain the same basic elements known as the variables of exercise program design, which are exercise selection, intensity, repetitions, tempo, rest interval, sets, and frequency of exercise sessions. How these variables are organized and applied will determine the results from an exercise program.
Designing a Workout Is Like Cooking a Meal
Simply throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan and hoping that it turns into an appetizing and edible meal is not an effective way to cook. Likewise, hopping from one piece of equipment to the next, bouncing around between different fitness trends or doing exercises only for specific muscles are not effective methods of exercising. The first step of cooking is determining exactly what to make. In a similar fashion, the first step in designing an exercise program is determining the specific outcome you are trying to achieve. In cooking, the dish you want to prepare will determine the ingredients, the utensils used for preparing the food, and finally the best pots and pans for doing the actual cooking. Your fitness goal will determine the best equipment to use, the specific exercises you do, and how often you do them.
To prepare a successful meal it is important to know how to organize the ingredients, how much of each to use, the order in which they're added, and finally the optimal temperature and length of time in the oven. Using too much or too little of a specific ingredient, the wrong temperature, or wrong length of time can drastically change the outcome of a dish. Exercise is very much the same way; performing exercises that are not relevant to your goal, using too much or too little resistance, or doing too many or too few repetitions could drastically change the outcome of the workout. The variables of exercise program design (table 2.1) can be applied based on what you want to achieve from an exercise program. Add muscle? Lose excess body weight? Enhance athletic performance? Improve health? The variables can be adjusted to provide the appropriate mechanical or metabolic overload in a manner that creates a safe yet effective stimulus to meet your objectives.
Finding the Motivation to Exercise
Lack of time is one of the most popular excuses for avoiding exercise. Another reason for skipping exercise is that there is almost too much information available, making it hard to identify the types that you should be doing for the results you want. These two reasons alone demonstrate why it's easy to find other things to do instead of exercise; you'd rather spend your limited free time doing something you enjoy instead of something that feels awkward or uncomfortable. Most importantly, you probably just want to know how to exercise in a manner that will provide the greatest amount of benefits without an extensive time or cost commitment.
First, exercise is something you do in your free time, so it should be an activity that you at least don't mind doing. (Enjoy doing would be more preferable, but it's necessary to set realistic expectations.) To identify the types of exercise that can bring you the greatest amount of enjoyment, think back to the types of activities that brought you the most pleasure. Understanding just a little about muscle fiber physiology can help you identify the types of exercise activities that will feel right for your body. If you've always gravitated toward endurance sports such as running, cycling, or swimming for long distances, you may have more type I muscle fibers, which are extremely efficient at aerobic metabolism. However, if you've found that you enjoy field sports such as soccer or football, court sports such as tennis or basketball because of the fast-paced running and rapid changes of direction, sprinting, or dancing, you probably have higher levels of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for creating the powerful muscle contractions needed for those activities.
If you have been struggling to follow an exercise program consistently for the long term, maybe your focus is in the wrong area. Rather than placing all of the emphasis on the outcome of exercise, why not adjust your thinking and focus on the process? You are better off choosing activities that are easily accessible and that you enjoy doing as opposed to workout programs that you think you should do even if you don't look forward to them and especially if it is at an out-of-the-way location that can be difficult to get to.
Principles of Exercise Program Design
Understanding how the different systems function as discrete components can help you identify the best methods for synergistically coordinating their actions to produce the desired results from an exercise program. Participation in a regular exercise program is essential for achieving and maintaining good health, which can help you avoid having to pay expensive medical costs as you age. Exercise provides numerous health benefits, including increased bone mineral density, improved blood lipid profiles, elevated mitochondrial density, increased aerobic capacity, lowered blood pressure, and improved glucose tolerance. All these benefits help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases while providing various cognitive benefits, such as improving memory recall, making exercise as important for your brain as it is for your muscles. Exercise should engage all of the physiological systems reviewed in chapter 1, with a specific emphasis on enhancing mobility, strengthening the core, and improving metabolic efficiency. Identifying the best exercise program for your particular needs first requires a basic understanding of how exercise changes the human body.
The SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) states that the type of exercise stimulus placed on the body will determine the expected physiological outcome. Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus. The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular, and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively more challenging exercise program.
According to the SAID principle, an individual who performs only muscle-isolation exercises can expect to strengthen the specific muscles used during exercise but may not achieve the intermuscular coordination necessary to improve skills such as coordination and dynamic balance.
Applying the Variables to Design Your Workouts
One thing most top fitness professionals agree on is that an effective exercise program doesn't need to be overly complicated. It's not necessary to do overly complicated moves or change the exercises you do every workout; only five basic movement patterns determine the exercises you should do during the workout. Simply changing one or two of the variables, like the amount of intensity, number of repetitions, or length of the rest interval, can significantly change the demands imposed on your body. As you get started with your exercise program, you should be aware that research can provide some general insights about how fitness may affect your body, but there are many factors besides the variables of exercise program design, like nutrition, sleep patterns, and overall stress levels, that will determine your specific response.
Inducing metabolic and mechanical stress in the gym does help promote muscle growth; however, what you do in the gym is only one component of the equation for achieving results. T and GH are produced during the REM cycles of sleep, meaning that after a hard workout, a full night's rest is essential for promoting muscle growth and achieving optimal recovery. Insufficient rest does not allow for optimal muscle protein synthesis to repair tissues damaged during exercise, nor does it allow for adequate replenishment of the muscle glycogen used to produce ATP and could lead to an accumulation of energy-producing hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol, which can reduce the ability to generate new muscle tissue. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, lingering illness, and cessation of gains from exercise are all symptoms of overtraining, which can significantly affect your ability to achieve your fitness goals.
The postworkout recovery period is often the most overlooked variable of any exercise program. Whether it is mechanical or metabolic stress that provides the stimulus for muscle growth is not as important as allowing the time for T, GH, and IGF-1 to promote muscle protein synthesis after the exercise is over. Exercise is when a physical stimulus is applied to a muscle and is only part of the equation responsible for muscle growth. Adequate recovery is important to allow the trained muscles sufficient time to replace muscle glycogen and the physiological process to repair and rebuild new tissue (Bishop, Jones, and Woods 2008; Hausswirth and Mujika 2013). The frequency of your workouts will depend on a number of factors, including your specific training goals, overall exercise experience, level of physical conditioning, and the amount of time you have available. After a higher-intensity core strength or metabolic conditioning workout, an appropriate recovery period is approximately 48 to 72 hours before training at the same intensity. Lower-intensity mobility workouts can be performed the next day to either expend the energy for weight management goals or as a form of active recovery.
Structuring Your Workouts
When it comes to workouts to enhance core strength or improve metabolic conditioning, repeatedly performing the same exercises with the same amount of weight could limit the amount of mechanical or metabolic stress placed on the involved tissue, which then minimizes the training effect. It's important to change workouts on a regular and consistent basis. Changing too often will not allow your body time to adapt, and following the same program for too long could result in a plateau. (The specifics of how and when to adjust your workouts will be covered in chapter 6.) To produce the desired results, the acute variables of exercise program design must be applied in a structured, systematic manner that either imposes a mechanical stress on the muscle, fascia, and elastic connective tissue or creates a sizable metabolic demand.
Increasing exercise intensity can be done a couple of ways: performing a strength exercise to a point of momentary muscle fatigue or increasing the work rate by moving at a faster speed to challenge the metabolic energy pathways that fuel the muscles. Valdimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer identify three specific types of strength training, two of which can be applied to improve core strength or enhance metabolic conditioning with only one piece of exercise equipment. The three methods are the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repeated effort method. The maximal effort method, as the name suggests, is for enhancing maximal muscle force output using extremely heavy amounts of weight, which, while a worthy outcome, is not relevant to workouts that can easily be done with one piece of equipment at home or a fitness facility. The other two methods, the repeated effort and dynamic effort methods, can be adapted to use only one piece of equipment, making them efficient and effective solutions regardless of where you work out (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
Repeated Effort Method
The repeated effort (RE) method of strength training requires the use of a nonmaximal load performed until momentary muscle failure (the inability to perform another repetition) to ensure proper stimulation of the motor units and depletion of energy stores. Applying the RE method of exercise requires performing the final few repetitions per set in a fatigued state in order to stimulate all of the involved muscle fibers. The RE method is an effective means to stimulate the adaptation of increasing lean muscle mass. This method uses slower motor units for the initial repetitions; as these motor units begin to fatigue, the muscle will recruit type II high threshold motor units to sustain the necessary force production.
One limitation to the RE method is that as the type II motor units are activated, they fatigue quickly, leading to the end of the set. If the load is not sufficient or the set is not performed to fatigue, it will not stimulate the fast motor units most responsible for changing muscle definition.
One significant benefit of this method is that as anaerobic type II fibers are recruited, they create energy through anaerobic glycolysis, which produces metabolic waste such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, changing blood acidity. Research suggests that acidosis, the change in blood acidity due to an accumulation of blood lactate, is associated with increases in GH and IGF-1 to promote tissue repair during the recovery phase (Schoenfeld 2010).
The RE method provides two key advantages when using just one piece of exercise equipment: It has a greater impact on the metabolic function of the muscle, provoking greater levels of growth, as well as involving a significant number of motor units, leading to strength gains.
Dynamic Effort Method
The dynamic effort (DE) method of strength training uses nonmaximal loads with the highest attainable velocity of movement to apply the muscle motor unit stimulation. Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer suggest that the DE method is an effective means of increasing the rate of force development and developing explosive strength, but when using a submaximal load for bursts of high-intensity movement speed, it can be an effective means of metabolic conditioning as well (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
The DE method activates the contractile element of muscle to create an isometric contraction and place tension on the bodywide network of fascia and elastic connective tissue. When the contractile element shortens, it loads the fascia with elastic mechanical energy, which, when rapidly shortened, creates an explosive shortening action to generate movement.
When using the DE method with one piece of equipment for metabolic conditioning, the goal is to perform a move at an explosive or fast pace until either becoming out of breath or feeling the sensation of burning in the involved muscles, both of which are important markers of a metabolic overload.
Effective Equipment for Developing Mobility, Core Strength, and Metabolic Conditioning
One inside tip that many fitness professionals know is that it's not the actual equipment you use, but how you apply it that leads to physical changes. Yes, different types of exercise equipment place different stresses on the body, resulting in slightly different adaptations. And, yes, to some degree weight is weight: A medicine ball that weighs 10 pounds is the same weight as two 5-pound dumbbells. However, the movements you do during an exercise plus the way you apply the other variables of program design, such as sets and rest intervals, actually determine the changes that will happen to your body. Staying with the example of the medicine ball and two dumbbells, even though they weigh the same amount, the way they are used in a workout will result in completely different outcomes. A medicine ball is held in both hands while the dumbbells allow each arm to move independently, imposing a number of stresses on the various systems of the body.
The equipment selected for the workouts in this book (table 2.2) was chosen specifically because they are capable of imposing the appropriate demands for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning as well as being very affordable and easy to use in a home setting where space may be limited. In addition, the equipment selected can be found in most commercial health clubs or fitness facilities. Learning to use one piece of equipment for an effective workout gives you options for when you want the convenience of exercising at home or when both space and equipment are in short supply at the gym. When you make it to the gym only to see that all of the equipment is being used and people are waiting in line to take their turn, you can smile knowing that you'll still get a great workout. All you need to do is grab a single piece of equipment, secure a little space, and have at it. You'll be sweating and working toward your goals in no time!
Movement is exercise and exercise is movement. Knowing how to move with the pieces of equipment listed above, along with knowing how to organize the variables of an exercise program, can help ensure that you are doing workouts that will produce the results you want. All of the top fitness instructors know that exercise is both a science and an art: The science can provide insights on how the human body will adapt to specific types of overload, but the art comes from finding the best types of exercise that feel right for your particular needs. One piece of equipment, like a kettlebell, can be used for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning based on how the variables of exercise program design are applied. The next chapters show you dozens of exercises to help you get the results you want, simply and effectively.
Learn to work out smarter
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it.
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it. But short of that, how much do you really know about exercise and how it affects your body? You may have a number of questions: What is exercise? Why is it so important? How do different types of exercise create changes in the body? What types of exercise should I be doing? How can I identify the best type for my needs? How often should I be exercising and how hard? Where is the best place to achieve the recommended amount of exercise? Do I need to pay for a costly health club or buy lots of expensive exercise equipment that I'm not going to know how to use?
As someone who has been a personal trainer for 20 years and in the business of educating other personal trainers for most of the past 15, including being a media spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, these questions come up all the time from people I meet in health clubs and from fitness reporters working on stories for consumer magazines. Yes, it can be difficult to sort through all the information to find accurate, reliable, evidence-based information; all too often marketers promote a new exercise fad or gimmick without explaining how it works to change your body. If you take the time to learn why exercise is important, the basic science of how various types of exercise apply different kinds of stimuli to your body, and, most importantly, which types you should be doing to help improve your health and achieve the specific results you want, then you will have the tools you need in order to make exercise an integral part of your life.
Here's a startling reality: Each and every single individual will have a different response to exercise. No one who makes a living as a personal trainer, strength coach, group fitness instructor, or health coach can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that exercise will deliver specific results. If anyone ever promises or guarantees that you can get a specific outcome from following their workout program, then your first exercise is to run away, because it is virtually impossible to guarantee specific results. The results you experience from any exercise program will vary based on the types of exercise that you do as well as a number of other lifestyle habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and overall stress levels.
The only thing that is known about exercise and the human body is that regular exercise can promote good health and significantly lower the risk of developing a number of chronic health conditions, while lack of regular exercise and a sedentary lifestyle can reduce life expectancy. Aging is unavoidable, and the normal biological aging process affects all systems in the human body. Evidence suggests that adults with a sedentary lifestyle can expect to experience a more rapid degradation of bodily functions and face a greater risk of premature death than those who make exercise a regular habit (Candow et al. 2011; Taylor and Johnson 2008). If you want to maintain good health and add years to your life while giving you the ability to enjoy all of the things that you love to do, then it is necessary to learn how to make exercise a regular habit.
Find your fountain of youth
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement.
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially of moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).
From plastic surgery to Botox injections to anti-aging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of anabolic steroids, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative). The good news is that a healthy lifestyle that includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training can help slow down the aging process and be the proverbial fountain of youth. And here's a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, invest your time in moderate to vigorous exercise to minimize those effects of aging. High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.
What's Age Got to Do With It?
We are all familiar with chronological age, which starts the moment we are born and is measured in years. Biological age refers to the condition of tissues and physiological systems; healthy lifestyle habits can help reduce our biological age, meaning that even though an individual could have a chronological age of 65, her biological age could only be 45. Functional age is a combination of one's functional work capacity and physical ability, and in many cases can be years younger than the actual chronological age (Taylor and Johnson 2008). We all know those individuals whose energy, enthusiasm, physical ability, and overall zest for life are years younger than their actual age. Chances are that those people are probably very active. Being active is the true fountain of youth. Being fit means being healthy and having the ability to perform physical tasks, not having a particular appearance or shape. The true sense of being fit is having the energy and ability to enjoy your favorite activities throughout your entire lifespan.
Exercise Throughout the Aging Process
Following an exercise program that includes progressively challenging workouts for both strength (the core strength programs in this book) and power (the metabolic conditioning programs) can help minimize the normal physiological effects of the biological aging process and improve your quality of life.
To provide you with a little extra motivation for starting and adhering to a long-term exercise program, table 7.2 gives an overview of the benefits of exercise during each decade of the adult lifespan.
Note: Cancer and other chronic conditions were specifically omitted from table 7.2 because they can strike at almost any stage of life. While there is no cure for cancer, establishing healthy behaviors and avoiding or limiting certain activities such as smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, and remaining sedentary for extended periods of time can certainly lower the risk of developing it and other conditions. There is no sense wasting any energy worrying about cancer; do your best to be as active as possible and make healthy choices in an attempt to reduce your risk.
Certain Exercise Programs Can Slow Down the Biological Aging Process (Really!)
Being older does not mean you can't do high-intensity exercises. Older adults can and should participate in higher-intensity exercise as long as there are no medical concerns and they follow an appropriate progression of intensity. Strength training can improve the force output of muscles, independent of age and gender, especially when there is a sufficient intensity of exercise (Hakkinen 2011).
Higher-intensity exercises like those done in metabolic conditioning and core strength training programs can promote the production of anabolic hormones that provide important anti-aging benefits.
Exercise not only creates better-functioning muscles but also a brain capable of maintaining its optimal performance throughout the aging process (Chaddock, Voss, and Kramer 2012). Research on the effects of resistance training on older adults and cognitive function has shown that resistance training has a positive effect on cognition, information processing, attention, memory formation, and executive function (Chang et. al 2012). So, as you get older, be sure to include high-intensity exercises and strength training as part of your overall training plan.
What the Science Says: What an Old Car Can Teach You About Your Body
Rebuilding and restoring an old car to like-new condition often requires replacing many worn-out parts and repainting the exterior. Even though medical technology has madeimportant advances in the area of prosthetics, due to cost and the painful recovery process, simply replacing old parts isn't an option as we age. However, gradually progressing the intensity of an exercise program to where you are strength training to a point of momentary fatigue or creating significant metabolic overload can help add new muscle, which can significantly improve your appearance in much the same way that a good paint job can help an older car look like new. In their research on how older males respond to resistance training, Izquierdo and colleagues observed that the skeletal muscle of older adults seems to retain the capacity to experience hypertrophy when the volume, intensity, and duration of the training period are sufficient (Izquierdo et al. 2001).
Just as properly maintaining the engine, waxing the paint, and storing it out of the sun can greatly enhance the longevity of an automobile, exercise programs that stimulate the production of the hormones T, GH, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) can improve our appearance and extend our functional life span as we age.
How exercise changes your body
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body.
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body. Mobility training can improve movement efficiency and strengthen the fascia and elastic connective tissues, helping them to be more resistant to injury. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appearance, strength training and metabolic conditioning can be used to improve the ability to convert food to energy, change hormone levels, and increase muscle force output, all of which are critical for performing your favorite pastimes or essential activities of daily living. Using exercise to achieve these and other desired results relies on a number of different variables, including sex, age, resistance-training experience, genetics, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and emotional and physical stressors. Each of these influences how your physiological systems adapt to exercise in general or resistance training specifically; for example, too much stress at work or a lack of sleep may significantly reduce your ability to grow muscle.
An exercise is a movement, and movement is a skill that requires practice to master. It may be tempting to change exercises frequently; however, maintaining some consistency with the same exercises over a period of six to eight weeks can help improve coordination and movement skill as well as muscular strength. Efficient movement patterns require synergistic coordination between all systems of the human body. Exercise programs that emphasize using movement patterns use a number of muscles at the same time, which can make the workouts more metabolically challenging, helping you burn more calories, which is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight.
To create and sustain the energy for dynamic, multidirectional movement patterns, the different components of the body need to develop the ability to function as a single system controlled by the CNS. Compared to the limitations of traditional muscle isolation exercises, using only one piece of equipment to challenge the body to move in all directions can result in a more creative, engaging, effective, and fun workout experience. Multijoint movements such as squats to shoulder presses with dumbbells, lifts with a medicine ball, or kettlebell swings are all examples of exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue and, in turn, challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled, which can provide a number of health-promoting benefits.
Organizing workout variables
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect.
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect. Workout programs based on learning and performing movement patterns can provide you with more options for how to exercise, which can ultimately lead to greater results. Whether it's exercise to improve muscular strength, enhance metabolic efficiency, or increase mobility, exercise programs contain the same basic elements known as the variables of exercise program design, which are exercise selection, intensity, repetitions, tempo, rest interval, sets, and frequency of exercise sessions. How these variables are organized and applied will determine the results from an exercise program.
Designing a Workout Is Like Cooking a Meal
Simply throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan and hoping that it turns into an appetizing and edible meal is not an effective way to cook. Likewise, hopping from one piece of equipment to the next, bouncing around between different fitness trends or doing exercises only for specific muscles are not effective methods of exercising. The first step of cooking is determining exactly what to make. In a similar fashion, the first step in designing an exercise program is determining the specific outcome you are trying to achieve. In cooking, the dish you want to prepare will determine the ingredients, the utensils used for preparing the food, and finally the best pots and pans for doing the actual cooking. Your fitness goal will determine the best equipment to use, the specific exercises you do, and how often you do them.
To prepare a successful meal it is important to know how to organize the ingredients, how much of each to use, the order in which they're added, and finally the optimal temperature and length of time in the oven. Using too much or too little of a specific ingredient, the wrong temperature, or wrong length of time can drastically change the outcome of a dish. Exercise is very much the same way; performing exercises that are not relevant to your goal, using too much or too little resistance, or doing too many or too few repetitions could drastically change the outcome of the workout. The variables of exercise program design (table 2.1) can be applied based on what you want to achieve from an exercise program. Add muscle? Lose excess body weight? Enhance athletic performance? Improve health? The variables can be adjusted to provide the appropriate mechanical or metabolic overload in a manner that creates a safe yet effective stimulus to meet your objectives.
Finding the Motivation to Exercise
Lack of time is one of the most popular excuses for avoiding exercise. Another reason for skipping exercise is that there is almost too much information available, making it hard to identify the types that you should be doing for the results you want. These two reasons alone demonstrate why it's easy to find other things to do instead of exercise; you'd rather spend your limited free time doing something you enjoy instead of something that feels awkward or uncomfortable. Most importantly, you probably just want to know how to exercise in a manner that will provide the greatest amount of benefits without an extensive time or cost commitment.
First, exercise is something you do in your free time, so it should be an activity that you at least don't mind doing. (Enjoy doing would be more preferable, but it's necessary to set realistic expectations.) To identify the types of exercise that can bring you the greatest amount of enjoyment, think back to the types of activities that brought you the most pleasure. Understanding just a little about muscle fiber physiology can help you identify the types of exercise activities that will feel right for your body. If you've always gravitated toward endurance sports such as running, cycling, or swimming for long distances, you may have more type I muscle fibers, which are extremely efficient at aerobic metabolism. However, if you've found that you enjoy field sports such as soccer or football, court sports such as tennis or basketball because of the fast-paced running and rapid changes of direction, sprinting, or dancing, you probably have higher levels of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for creating the powerful muscle contractions needed for those activities.
If you have been struggling to follow an exercise program consistently for the long term, maybe your focus is in the wrong area. Rather than placing all of the emphasis on the outcome of exercise, why not adjust your thinking and focus on the process? You are better off choosing activities that are easily accessible and that you enjoy doing as opposed to workout programs that you think you should do even if you don't look forward to them and especially if it is at an out-of-the-way location that can be difficult to get to.
Principles of Exercise Program Design
Understanding how the different systems function as discrete components can help you identify the best methods for synergistically coordinating their actions to produce the desired results from an exercise program. Participation in a regular exercise program is essential for achieving and maintaining good health, which can help you avoid having to pay expensive medical costs as you age. Exercise provides numerous health benefits, including increased bone mineral density, improved blood lipid profiles, elevated mitochondrial density, increased aerobic capacity, lowered blood pressure, and improved glucose tolerance. All these benefits help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases while providing various cognitive benefits, such as improving memory recall, making exercise as important for your brain as it is for your muscles. Exercise should engage all of the physiological systems reviewed in chapter 1, with a specific emphasis on enhancing mobility, strengthening the core, and improving metabolic efficiency. Identifying the best exercise program for your particular needs first requires a basic understanding of how exercise changes the human body.
The SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) states that the type of exercise stimulus placed on the body will determine the expected physiological outcome. Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus. The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular, and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively more challenging exercise program.
According to the SAID principle, an individual who performs only muscle-isolation exercises can expect to strengthen the specific muscles used during exercise but may not achieve the intermuscular coordination necessary to improve skills such as coordination and dynamic balance.
Applying the Variables to Design Your Workouts
One thing most top fitness professionals agree on is that an effective exercise program doesn't need to be overly complicated. It's not necessary to do overly complicated moves or change the exercises you do every workout; only five basic movement patterns determine the exercises you should do during the workout. Simply changing one or two of the variables, like the amount of intensity, number of repetitions, or length of the rest interval, can significantly change the demands imposed on your body. As you get started with your exercise program, you should be aware that research can provide some general insights about how fitness may affect your body, but there are many factors besides the variables of exercise program design, like nutrition, sleep patterns, and overall stress levels, that will determine your specific response.
Inducing metabolic and mechanical stress in the gym does help promote muscle growth; however, what you do in the gym is only one component of the equation for achieving results. T and GH are produced during the REM cycles of sleep, meaning that after a hard workout, a full night's rest is essential for promoting muscle growth and achieving optimal recovery. Insufficient rest does not allow for optimal muscle protein synthesis to repair tissues damaged during exercise, nor does it allow for adequate replenishment of the muscle glycogen used to produce ATP and could lead to an accumulation of energy-producing hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol, which can reduce the ability to generate new muscle tissue. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, lingering illness, and cessation of gains from exercise are all symptoms of overtraining, which can significantly affect your ability to achieve your fitness goals.
The postworkout recovery period is often the most overlooked variable of any exercise program. Whether it is mechanical or metabolic stress that provides the stimulus for muscle growth is not as important as allowing the time for T, GH, and IGF-1 to promote muscle protein synthesis after the exercise is over. Exercise is when a physical stimulus is applied to a muscle and is only part of the equation responsible for muscle growth. Adequate recovery is important to allow the trained muscles sufficient time to replace muscle glycogen and the physiological process to repair and rebuild new tissue (Bishop, Jones, and Woods 2008; Hausswirth and Mujika 2013). The frequency of your workouts will depend on a number of factors, including your specific training goals, overall exercise experience, level of physical conditioning, and the amount of time you have available. After a higher-intensity core strength or metabolic conditioning workout, an appropriate recovery period is approximately 48 to 72 hours before training at the same intensity. Lower-intensity mobility workouts can be performed the next day to either expend the energy for weight management goals or as a form of active recovery.
Structuring Your Workouts
When it comes to workouts to enhance core strength or improve metabolic conditioning, repeatedly performing the same exercises with the same amount of weight could limit the amount of mechanical or metabolic stress placed on the involved tissue, which then minimizes the training effect. It's important to change workouts on a regular and consistent basis. Changing too often will not allow your body time to adapt, and following the same program for too long could result in a plateau. (The specifics of how and when to adjust your workouts will be covered in chapter 6.) To produce the desired results, the acute variables of exercise program design must be applied in a structured, systematic manner that either imposes a mechanical stress on the muscle, fascia, and elastic connective tissue or creates a sizable metabolic demand.
Increasing exercise intensity can be done a couple of ways: performing a strength exercise to a point of momentary muscle fatigue or increasing the work rate by moving at a faster speed to challenge the metabolic energy pathways that fuel the muscles. Valdimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer identify three specific types of strength training, two of which can be applied to improve core strength or enhance metabolic conditioning with only one piece of exercise equipment. The three methods are the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repeated effort method. The maximal effort method, as the name suggests, is for enhancing maximal muscle force output using extremely heavy amounts of weight, which, while a worthy outcome, is not relevant to workouts that can easily be done with one piece of equipment at home or a fitness facility. The other two methods, the repeated effort and dynamic effort methods, can be adapted to use only one piece of equipment, making them efficient and effective solutions regardless of where you work out (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
Repeated Effort Method
The repeated effort (RE) method of strength training requires the use of a nonmaximal load performed until momentary muscle failure (the inability to perform another repetition) to ensure proper stimulation of the motor units and depletion of energy stores. Applying the RE method of exercise requires performing the final few repetitions per set in a fatigued state in order to stimulate all of the involved muscle fibers. The RE method is an effective means to stimulate the adaptation of increasing lean muscle mass. This method uses slower motor units for the initial repetitions; as these motor units begin to fatigue, the muscle will recruit type II high threshold motor units to sustain the necessary force production.
One limitation to the RE method is that as the type II motor units are activated, they fatigue quickly, leading to the end of the set. If the load is not sufficient or the set is not performed to fatigue, it will not stimulate the fast motor units most responsible for changing muscle definition.
One significant benefit of this method is that as anaerobic type II fibers are recruited, they create energy through anaerobic glycolysis, which produces metabolic waste such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, changing blood acidity. Research suggests that acidosis, the change in blood acidity due to an accumulation of blood lactate, is associated with increases in GH and IGF-1 to promote tissue repair during the recovery phase (Schoenfeld 2010).
The RE method provides two key advantages when using just one piece of exercise equipment: It has a greater impact on the metabolic function of the muscle, provoking greater levels of growth, as well as involving a significant number of motor units, leading to strength gains.
Dynamic Effort Method
The dynamic effort (DE) method of strength training uses nonmaximal loads with the highest attainable velocity of movement to apply the muscle motor unit stimulation. Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer suggest that the DE method is an effective means of increasing the rate of force development and developing explosive strength, but when using a submaximal load for bursts of high-intensity movement speed, it can be an effective means of metabolic conditioning as well (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
The DE method activates the contractile element of muscle to create an isometric contraction and place tension on the bodywide network of fascia and elastic connective tissue. When the contractile element shortens, it loads the fascia with elastic mechanical energy, which, when rapidly shortened, creates an explosive shortening action to generate movement.
When using the DE method with one piece of equipment for metabolic conditioning, the goal is to perform a move at an explosive or fast pace until either becoming out of breath or feeling the sensation of burning in the involved muscles, both of which are important markers of a metabolic overload.
Effective Equipment for Developing Mobility, Core Strength, and Metabolic Conditioning
One inside tip that many fitness professionals know is that it's not the actual equipment you use, but how you apply it that leads to physical changes. Yes, different types of exercise equipment place different stresses on the body, resulting in slightly different adaptations. And, yes, to some degree weight is weight: A medicine ball that weighs 10 pounds is the same weight as two 5-pound dumbbells. However, the movements you do during an exercise plus the way you apply the other variables of program design, such as sets and rest intervals, actually determine the changes that will happen to your body. Staying with the example of the medicine ball and two dumbbells, even though they weigh the same amount, the way they are used in a workout will result in completely different outcomes. A medicine ball is held in both hands while the dumbbells allow each arm to move independently, imposing a number of stresses on the various systems of the body.
The equipment selected for the workouts in this book (table 2.2) was chosen specifically because they are capable of imposing the appropriate demands for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning as well as being very affordable and easy to use in a home setting where space may be limited. In addition, the equipment selected can be found in most commercial health clubs or fitness facilities. Learning to use one piece of equipment for an effective workout gives you options for when you want the convenience of exercising at home or when both space and equipment are in short supply at the gym. When you make it to the gym only to see that all of the equipment is being used and people are waiting in line to take their turn, you can smile knowing that you'll still get a great workout. All you need to do is grab a single piece of equipment, secure a little space, and have at it. You'll be sweating and working toward your goals in no time!
Movement is exercise and exercise is movement. Knowing how to move with the pieces of equipment listed above, along with knowing how to organize the variables of an exercise program, can help ensure that you are doing workouts that will produce the results you want. All of the top fitness instructors know that exercise is both a science and an art: The science can provide insights on how the human body will adapt to specific types of overload, but the art comes from finding the best types of exercise that feel right for your particular needs. One piece of equipment, like a kettlebell, can be used for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning based on how the variables of exercise program design are applied. The next chapters show you dozens of exercises to help you get the results you want, simply and effectively.
Learn to work out smarter
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it.
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it. But short of that, how much do you really know about exercise and how it affects your body? You may have a number of questions: What is exercise? Why is it so important? How do different types of exercise create changes in the body? What types of exercise should I be doing? How can I identify the best type for my needs? How often should I be exercising and how hard? Where is the best place to achieve the recommended amount of exercise? Do I need to pay for a costly health club or buy lots of expensive exercise equipment that I'm not going to know how to use?
As someone who has been a personal trainer for 20 years and in the business of educating other personal trainers for most of the past 15, including being a media spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, these questions come up all the time from people I meet in health clubs and from fitness reporters working on stories for consumer magazines. Yes, it can be difficult to sort through all the information to find accurate, reliable, evidence-based information; all too often marketers promote a new exercise fad or gimmick without explaining how it works to change your body. If you take the time to learn why exercise is important, the basic science of how various types of exercise apply different kinds of stimuli to your body, and, most importantly, which types you should be doing to help improve your health and achieve the specific results you want, then you will have the tools you need in order to make exercise an integral part of your life.
Here's a startling reality: Each and every single individual will have a different response to exercise. No one who makes a living as a personal trainer, strength coach, group fitness instructor, or health coach can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that exercise will deliver specific results. If anyone ever promises or guarantees that you can get a specific outcome from following their workout program, then your first exercise is to run away, because it is virtually impossible to guarantee specific results. The results you experience from any exercise program will vary based on the types of exercise that you do as well as a number of other lifestyle habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and overall stress levels.
The only thing that is known about exercise and the human body is that regular exercise can promote good health and significantly lower the risk of developing a number of chronic health conditions, while lack of regular exercise and a sedentary lifestyle can reduce life expectancy. Aging is unavoidable, and the normal biological aging process affects all systems in the human body. Evidence suggests that adults with a sedentary lifestyle can expect to experience a more rapid degradation of bodily functions and face a greater risk of premature death than those who make exercise a regular habit (Candow et al. 2011; Taylor and Johnson 2008). If you want to maintain good health and add years to your life while giving you the ability to enjoy all of the things that you love to do, then it is necessary to learn how to make exercise a regular habit.
Find your fountain of youth
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement.
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially of moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).
From plastic surgery to Botox injections to anti-aging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of anabolic steroids, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative). The good news is that a healthy lifestyle that includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training can help slow down the aging process and be the proverbial fountain of youth. And here's a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, invest your time in moderate to vigorous exercise to minimize those effects of aging. High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.
What's Age Got to Do With It?
We are all familiar with chronological age, which starts the moment we are born and is measured in years. Biological age refers to the condition of tissues and physiological systems; healthy lifestyle habits can help reduce our biological age, meaning that even though an individual could have a chronological age of 65, her biological age could only be 45. Functional age is a combination of one's functional work capacity and physical ability, and in many cases can be years younger than the actual chronological age (Taylor and Johnson 2008). We all know those individuals whose energy, enthusiasm, physical ability, and overall zest for life are years younger than their actual age. Chances are that those people are probably very active. Being active is the true fountain of youth. Being fit means being healthy and having the ability to perform physical tasks, not having a particular appearance or shape. The true sense of being fit is having the energy and ability to enjoy your favorite activities throughout your entire lifespan.
Exercise Throughout the Aging Process
Following an exercise program that includes progressively challenging workouts for both strength (the core strength programs in this book) and power (the metabolic conditioning programs) can help minimize the normal physiological effects of the biological aging process and improve your quality of life.
To provide you with a little extra motivation for starting and adhering to a long-term exercise program, table 7.2 gives an overview of the benefits of exercise during each decade of the adult lifespan.
Note: Cancer and other chronic conditions were specifically omitted from table 7.2 because they can strike at almost any stage of life. While there is no cure for cancer, establishing healthy behaviors and avoiding or limiting certain activities such as smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, and remaining sedentary for extended periods of time can certainly lower the risk of developing it and other conditions. There is no sense wasting any energy worrying about cancer; do your best to be as active as possible and make healthy choices in an attempt to reduce your risk.
Certain Exercise Programs Can Slow Down the Biological Aging Process (Really!)
Being older does not mean you can't do high-intensity exercises. Older adults can and should participate in higher-intensity exercise as long as there are no medical concerns and they follow an appropriate progression of intensity. Strength training can improve the force output of muscles, independent of age and gender, especially when there is a sufficient intensity of exercise (Hakkinen 2011).
Higher-intensity exercises like those done in metabolic conditioning and core strength training programs can promote the production of anabolic hormones that provide important anti-aging benefits.
Exercise not only creates better-functioning muscles but also a brain capable of maintaining its optimal performance throughout the aging process (Chaddock, Voss, and Kramer 2012). Research on the effects of resistance training on older adults and cognitive function has shown that resistance training has a positive effect on cognition, information processing, attention, memory formation, and executive function (Chang et. al 2012). So, as you get older, be sure to include high-intensity exercises and strength training as part of your overall training plan.
What the Science Says: What an Old Car Can Teach You About Your Body
Rebuilding and restoring an old car to like-new condition often requires replacing many worn-out parts and repainting the exterior. Even though medical technology has madeimportant advances in the area of prosthetics, due to cost and the painful recovery process, simply replacing old parts isn't an option as we age. However, gradually progressing the intensity of an exercise program to where you are strength training to a point of momentary fatigue or creating significant metabolic overload can help add new muscle, which can significantly improve your appearance in much the same way that a good paint job can help an older car look like new. In their research on how older males respond to resistance training, Izquierdo and colleagues observed that the skeletal muscle of older adults seems to retain the capacity to experience hypertrophy when the volume, intensity, and duration of the training period are sufficient (Izquierdo et al. 2001).
Just as properly maintaining the engine, waxing the paint, and storing it out of the sun can greatly enhance the longevity of an automobile, exercise programs that stimulate the production of the hormones T, GH, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) can improve our appearance and extend our functional life span as we age.
How exercise changes your body
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body.
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body. Mobility training can improve movement efficiency and strengthen the fascia and elastic connective tissues, helping them to be more resistant to injury. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appearance, strength training and metabolic conditioning can be used to improve the ability to convert food to energy, change hormone levels, and increase muscle force output, all of which are critical for performing your favorite pastimes or essential activities of daily living. Using exercise to achieve these and other desired results relies on a number of different variables, including sex, age, resistance-training experience, genetics, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and emotional and physical stressors. Each of these influences how your physiological systems adapt to exercise in general or resistance training specifically; for example, too much stress at work or a lack of sleep may significantly reduce your ability to grow muscle.
An exercise is a movement, and movement is a skill that requires practice to master. It may be tempting to change exercises frequently; however, maintaining some consistency with the same exercises over a period of six to eight weeks can help improve coordination and movement skill as well as muscular strength. Efficient movement patterns require synergistic coordination between all systems of the human body. Exercise programs that emphasize using movement patterns use a number of muscles at the same time, which can make the workouts more metabolically challenging, helping you burn more calories, which is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight.
To create and sustain the energy for dynamic, multidirectional movement patterns, the different components of the body need to develop the ability to function as a single system controlled by the CNS. Compared to the limitations of traditional muscle isolation exercises, using only one piece of equipment to challenge the body to move in all directions can result in a more creative, engaging, effective, and fun workout experience. Multijoint movements such as squats to shoulder presses with dumbbells, lifts with a medicine ball, or kettlebell swings are all examples of exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue and, in turn, challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled, which can provide a number of health-promoting benefits.
Organizing workout variables
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect.
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect. Workout programs based on learning and performing movement patterns can provide you with more options for how to exercise, which can ultimately lead to greater results. Whether it's exercise to improve muscular strength, enhance metabolic efficiency, or increase mobility, exercise programs contain the same basic elements known as the variables of exercise program design, which are exercise selection, intensity, repetitions, tempo, rest interval, sets, and frequency of exercise sessions. How these variables are organized and applied will determine the results from an exercise program.
Designing a Workout Is Like Cooking a Meal
Simply throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan and hoping that it turns into an appetizing and edible meal is not an effective way to cook. Likewise, hopping from one piece of equipment to the next, bouncing around between different fitness trends or doing exercises only for specific muscles are not effective methods of exercising. The first step of cooking is determining exactly what to make. In a similar fashion, the first step in designing an exercise program is determining the specific outcome you are trying to achieve. In cooking, the dish you want to prepare will determine the ingredients, the utensils used for preparing the food, and finally the best pots and pans for doing the actual cooking. Your fitness goal will determine the best equipment to use, the specific exercises you do, and how often you do them.
To prepare a successful meal it is important to know how to organize the ingredients, how much of each to use, the order in which they're added, and finally the optimal temperature and length of time in the oven. Using too much or too little of a specific ingredient, the wrong temperature, or wrong length of time can drastically change the outcome of a dish. Exercise is very much the same way; performing exercises that are not relevant to your goal, using too much or too little resistance, or doing too many or too few repetitions could drastically change the outcome of the workout. The variables of exercise program design (table 2.1) can be applied based on what you want to achieve from an exercise program. Add muscle? Lose excess body weight? Enhance athletic performance? Improve health? The variables can be adjusted to provide the appropriate mechanical or metabolic overload in a manner that creates a safe yet effective stimulus to meet your objectives.
Finding the Motivation to Exercise
Lack of time is one of the most popular excuses for avoiding exercise. Another reason for skipping exercise is that there is almost too much information available, making it hard to identify the types that you should be doing for the results you want. These two reasons alone demonstrate why it's easy to find other things to do instead of exercise; you'd rather spend your limited free time doing something you enjoy instead of something that feels awkward or uncomfortable. Most importantly, you probably just want to know how to exercise in a manner that will provide the greatest amount of benefits without an extensive time or cost commitment.
First, exercise is something you do in your free time, so it should be an activity that you at least don't mind doing. (Enjoy doing would be more preferable, but it's necessary to set realistic expectations.) To identify the types of exercise that can bring you the greatest amount of enjoyment, think back to the types of activities that brought you the most pleasure. Understanding just a little about muscle fiber physiology can help you identify the types of exercise activities that will feel right for your body. If you've always gravitated toward endurance sports such as running, cycling, or swimming for long distances, you may have more type I muscle fibers, which are extremely efficient at aerobic metabolism. However, if you've found that you enjoy field sports such as soccer or football, court sports such as tennis or basketball because of the fast-paced running and rapid changes of direction, sprinting, or dancing, you probably have higher levels of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for creating the powerful muscle contractions needed for those activities.
If you have been struggling to follow an exercise program consistently for the long term, maybe your focus is in the wrong area. Rather than placing all of the emphasis on the outcome of exercise, why not adjust your thinking and focus on the process? You are better off choosing activities that are easily accessible and that you enjoy doing as opposed to workout programs that you think you should do even if you don't look forward to them and especially if it is at an out-of-the-way location that can be difficult to get to.
Principles of Exercise Program Design
Understanding how the different systems function as discrete components can help you identify the best methods for synergistically coordinating their actions to produce the desired results from an exercise program. Participation in a regular exercise program is essential for achieving and maintaining good health, which can help you avoid having to pay expensive medical costs as you age. Exercise provides numerous health benefits, including increased bone mineral density, improved blood lipid profiles, elevated mitochondrial density, increased aerobic capacity, lowered blood pressure, and improved glucose tolerance. All these benefits help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases while providing various cognitive benefits, such as improving memory recall, making exercise as important for your brain as it is for your muscles. Exercise should engage all of the physiological systems reviewed in chapter 1, with a specific emphasis on enhancing mobility, strengthening the core, and improving metabolic efficiency. Identifying the best exercise program for your particular needs first requires a basic understanding of how exercise changes the human body.
The SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) states that the type of exercise stimulus placed on the body will determine the expected physiological outcome. Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus. The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular, and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively more challenging exercise program.
According to the SAID principle, an individual who performs only muscle-isolation exercises can expect to strengthen the specific muscles used during exercise but may not achieve the intermuscular coordination necessary to improve skills such as coordination and dynamic balance.
Applying the Variables to Design Your Workouts
One thing most top fitness professionals agree on is that an effective exercise program doesn't need to be overly complicated. It's not necessary to do overly complicated moves or change the exercises you do every workout; only five basic movement patterns determine the exercises you should do during the workout. Simply changing one or two of the variables, like the amount of intensity, number of repetitions, or length of the rest interval, can significantly change the demands imposed on your body. As you get started with your exercise program, you should be aware that research can provide some general insights about how fitness may affect your body, but there are many factors besides the variables of exercise program design, like nutrition, sleep patterns, and overall stress levels, that will determine your specific response.
Inducing metabolic and mechanical stress in the gym does help promote muscle growth; however, what you do in the gym is only one component of the equation for achieving results. T and GH are produced during the REM cycles of sleep, meaning that after a hard workout, a full night's rest is essential for promoting muscle growth and achieving optimal recovery. Insufficient rest does not allow for optimal muscle protein synthesis to repair tissues damaged during exercise, nor does it allow for adequate replenishment of the muscle glycogen used to produce ATP and could lead to an accumulation of energy-producing hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol, which can reduce the ability to generate new muscle tissue. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, lingering illness, and cessation of gains from exercise are all symptoms of overtraining, which can significantly affect your ability to achieve your fitness goals.
The postworkout recovery period is often the most overlooked variable of any exercise program. Whether it is mechanical or metabolic stress that provides the stimulus for muscle growth is not as important as allowing the time for T, GH, and IGF-1 to promote muscle protein synthesis after the exercise is over. Exercise is when a physical stimulus is applied to a muscle and is only part of the equation responsible for muscle growth. Adequate recovery is important to allow the trained muscles sufficient time to replace muscle glycogen and the physiological process to repair and rebuild new tissue (Bishop, Jones, and Woods 2008; Hausswirth and Mujika 2013). The frequency of your workouts will depend on a number of factors, including your specific training goals, overall exercise experience, level of physical conditioning, and the amount of time you have available. After a higher-intensity core strength or metabolic conditioning workout, an appropriate recovery period is approximately 48 to 72 hours before training at the same intensity. Lower-intensity mobility workouts can be performed the next day to either expend the energy for weight management goals or as a form of active recovery.
Structuring Your Workouts
When it comes to workouts to enhance core strength or improve metabolic conditioning, repeatedly performing the same exercises with the same amount of weight could limit the amount of mechanical or metabolic stress placed on the involved tissue, which then minimizes the training effect. It's important to change workouts on a regular and consistent basis. Changing too often will not allow your body time to adapt, and following the same program for too long could result in a plateau. (The specifics of how and when to adjust your workouts will be covered in chapter 6.) To produce the desired results, the acute variables of exercise program design must be applied in a structured, systematic manner that either imposes a mechanical stress on the muscle, fascia, and elastic connective tissue or creates a sizable metabolic demand.
Increasing exercise intensity can be done a couple of ways: performing a strength exercise to a point of momentary muscle fatigue or increasing the work rate by moving at a faster speed to challenge the metabolic energy pathways that fuel the muscles. Valdimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer identify three specific types of strength training, two of which can be applied to improve core strength or enhance metabolic conditioning with only one piece of exercise equipment. The three methods are the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repeated effort method. The maximal effort method, as the name suggests, is for enhancing maximal muscle force output using extremely heavy amounts of weight, which, while a worthy outcome, is not relevant to workouts that can easily be done with one piece of equipment at home or a fitness facility. The other two methods, the repeated effort and dynamic effort methods, can be adapted to use only one piece of equipment, making them efficient and effective solutions regardless of where you work out (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
Repeated Effort Method
The repeated effort (RE) method of strength training requires the use of a nonmaximal load performed until momentary muscle failure (the inability to perform another repetition) to ensure proper stimulation of the motor units and depletion of energy stores. Applying the RE method of exercise requires performing the final few repetitions per set in a fatigued state in order to stimulate all of the involved muscle fibers. The RE method is an effective means to stimulate the adaptation of increasing lean muscle mass. This method uses slower motor units for the initial repetitions; as these motor units begin to fatigue, the muscle will recruit type II high threshold motor units to sustain the necessary force production.
One limitation to the RE method is that as the type II motor units are activated, they fatigue quickly, leading to the end of the set. If the load is not sufficient or the set is not performed to fatigue, it will not stimulate the fast motor units most responsible for changing muscle definition.
One significant benefit of this method is that as anaerobic type II fibers are recruited, they create energy through anaerobic glycolysis, which produces metabolic waste such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, changing blood acidity. Research suggests that acidosis, the change in blood acidity due to an accumulation of blood lactate, is associated with increases in GH and IGF-1 to promote tissue repair during the recovery phase (Schoenfeld 2010).
The RE method provides two key advantages when using just one piece of exercise equipment: It has a greater impact on the metabolic function of the muscle, provoking greater levels of growth, as well as involving a significant number of motor units, leading to strength gains.
Dynamic Effort Method
The dynamic effort (DE) method of strength training uses nonmaximal loads with the highest attainable velocity of movement to apply the muscle motor unit stimulation. Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer suggest that the DE method is an effective means of increasing the rate of force development and developing explosive strength, but when using a submaximal load for bursts of high-intensity movement speed, it can be an effective means of metabolic conditioning as well (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
The DE method activates the contractile element of muscle to create an isometric contraction and place tension on the bodywide network of fascia and elastic connective tissue. When the contractile element shortens, it loads the fascia with elastic mechanical energy, which, when rapidly shortened, creates an explosive shortening action to generate movement.
When using the DE method with one piece of equipment for metabolic conditioning, the goal is to perform a move at an explosive or fast pace until either becoming out of breath or feeling the sensation of burning in the involved muscles, both of which are important markers of a metabolic overload.
Effective Equipment for Developing Mobility, Core Strength, and Metabolic Conditioning
One inside tip that many fitness professionals know is that it's not the actual equipment you use, but how you apply it that leads to physical changes. Yes, different types of exercise equipment place different stresses on the body, resulting in slightly different adaptations. And, yes, to some degree weight is weight: A medicine ball that weighs 10 pounds is the same weight as two 5-pound dumbbells. However, the movements you do during an exercise plus the way you apply the other variables of program design, such as sets and rest intervals, actually determine the changes that will happen to your body. Staying with the example of the medicine ball and two dumbbells, even though they weigh the same amount, the way they are used in a workout will result in completely different outcomes. A medicine ball is held in both hands while the dumbbells allow each arm to move independently, imposing a number of stresses on the various systems of the body.
The equipment selected for the workouts in this book (table 2.2) was chosen specifically because they are capable of imposing the appropriate demands for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning as well as being very affordable and easy to use in a home setting where space may be limited. In addition, the equipment selected can be found in most commercial health clubs or fitness facilities. Learning to use one piece of equipment for an effective workout gives you options for when you want the convenience of exercising at home or when both space and equipment are in short supply at the gym. When you make it to the gym only to see that all of the equipment is being used and people are waiting in line to take their turn, you can smile knowing that you'll still get a great workout. All you need to do is grab a single piece of equipment, secure a little space, and have at it. You'll be sweating and working toward your goals in no time!
Movement is exercise and exercise is movement. Knowing how to move with the pieces of equipment listed above, along with knowing how to organize the variables of an exercise program, can help ensure that you are doing workouts that will produce the results you want. All of the top fitness instructors know that exercise is both a science and an art: The science can provide insights on how the human body will adapt to specific types of overload, but the art comes from finding the best types of exercise that feel right for your particular needs. One piece of equipment, like a kettlebell, can be used for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning based on how the variables of exercise program design are applied. The next chapters show you dozens of exercises to help you get the results you want, simply and effectively.
Learn to work out smarter
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it.
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it. But short of that, how much do you really know about exercise and how it affects your body? You may have a number of questions: What is exercise? Why is it so important? How do different types of exercise create changes in the body? What types of exercise should I be doing? How can I identify the best type for my needs? How often should I be exercising and how hard? Where is the best place to achieve the recommended amount of exercise? Do I need to pay for a costly health club or buy lots of expensive exercise equipment that I'm not going to know how to use?
As someone who has been a personal trainer for 20 years and in the business of educating other personal trainers for most of the past 15, including being a media spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, these questions come up all the time from people I meet in health clubs and from fitness reporters working on stories for consumer magazines. Yes, it can be difficult to sort through all the information to find accurate, reliable, evidence-based information; all too often marketers promote a new exercise fad or gimmick without explaining how it works to change your body. If you take the time to learn why exercise is important, the basic science of how various types of exercise apply different kinds of stimuli to your body, and, most importantly, which types you should be doing to help improve your health and achieve the specific results you want, then you will have the tools you need in order to make exercise an integral part of your life.
Here's a startling reality: Each and every single individual will have a different response to exercise. No one who makes a living as a personal trainer, strength coach, group fitness instructor, or health coach can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that exercise will deliver specific results. If anyone ever promises or guarantees that you can get a specific outcome from following their workout program, then your first exercise is to run away, because it is virtually impossible to guarantee specific results. The results you experience from any exercise program will vary based on the types of exercise that you do as well as a number of other lifestyle habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and overall stress levels.
The only thing that is known about exercise and the human body is that regular exercise can promote good health and significantly lower the risk of developing a number of chronic health conditions, while lack of regular exercise and a sedentary lifestyle can reduce life expectancy. Aging is unavoidable, and the normal biological aging process affects all systems in the human body. Evidence suggests that adults with a sedentary lifestyle can expect to experience a more rapid degradation of bodily functions and face a greater risk of premature death than those who make exercise a regular habit (Candow et al. 2011; Taylor and Johnson 2008). If you want to maintain good health and add years to your life while giving you the ability to enjoy all of the things that you love to do, then it is necessary to learn how to make exercise a regular habit.
Find your fountain of youth
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement.
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially of moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).
From plastic surgery to Botox injections to anti-aging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of anabolic steroids, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative). The good news is that a healthy lifestyle that includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training can help slow down the aging process and be the proverbial fountain of youth. And here's a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, invest your time in moderate to vigorous exercise to minimize those effects of aging. High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.
What's Age Got to Do With It?
We are all familiar with chronological age, which starts the moment we are born and is measured in years. Biological age refers to the condition of tissues and physiological systems; healthy lifestyle habits can help reduce our biological age, meaning that even though an individual could have a chronological age of 65, her biological age could only be 45. Functional age is a combination of one's functional work capacity and physical ability, and in many cases can be years younger than the actual chronological age (Taylor and Johnson 2008). We all know those individuals whose energy, enthusiasm, physical ability, and overall zest for life are years younger than their actual age. Chances are that those people are probably very active. Being active is the true fountain of youth. Being fit means being healthy and having the ability to perform physical tasks, not having a particular appearance or shape. The true sense of being fit is having the energy and ability to enjoy your favorite activities throughout your entire lifespan.
Exercise Throughout the Aging Process
Following an exercise program that includes progressively challenging workouts for both strength (the core strength programs in this book) and power (the metabolic conditioning programs) can help minimize the normal physiological effects of the biological aging process and improve your quality of life.
To provide you with a little extra motivation for starting and adhering to a long-term exercise program, table 7.2 gives an overview of the benefits of exercise during each decade of the adult lifespan.
Note: Cancer and other chronic conditions were specifically omitted from table 7.2 because they can strike at almost any stage of life. While there is no cure for cancer, establishing healthy behaviors and avoiding or limiting certain activities such as smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, and remaining sedentary for extended periods of time can certainly lower the risk of developing it and other conditions. There is no sense wasting any energy worrying about cancer; do your best to be as active as possible and make healthy choices in an attempt to reduce your risk.
Certain Exercise Programs Can Slow Down the Biological Aging Process (Really!)
Being older does not mean you can't do high-intensity exercises. Older adults can and should participate in higher-intensity exercise as long as there are no medical concerns and they follow an appropriate progression of intensity. Strength training can improve the force output of muscles, independent of age and gender, especially when there is a sufficient intensity of exercise (Hakkinen 2011).
Higher-intensity exercises like those done in metabolic conditioning and core strength training programs can promote the production of anabolic hormones that provide important anti-aging benefits.
Exercise not only creates better-functioning muscles but also a brain capable of maintaining its optimal performance throughout the aging process (Chaddock, Voss, and Kramer 2012). Research on the effects of resistance training on older adults and cognitive function has shown that resistance training has a positive effect on cognition, information processing, attention, memory formation, and executive function (Chang et. al 2012). So, as you get older, be sure to include high-intensity exercises and strength training as part of your overall training plan.
What the Science Says: What an Old Car Can Teach You About Your Body
Rebuilding and restoring an old car to like-new condition often requires replacing many worn-out parts and repainting the exterior. Even though medical technology has madeimportant advances in the area of prosthetics, due to cost and the painful recovery process, simply replacing old parts isn't an option as we age. However, gradually progressing the intensity of an exercise program to where you are strength training to a point of momentary fatigue or creating significant metabolic overload can help add new muscle, which can significantly improve your appearance in much the same way that a good paint job can help an older car look like new. In their research on how older males respond to resistance training, Izquierdo and colleagues observed that the skeletal muscle of older adults seems to retain the capacity to experience hypertrophy when the volume, intensity, and duration of the training period are sufficient (Izquierdo et al. 2001).
Just as properly maintaining the engine, waxing the paint, and storing it out of the sun can greatly enhance the longevity of an automobile, exercise programs that stimulate the production of the hormones T, GH, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) can improve our appearance and extend our functional life span as we age.
How exercise changes your body
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body.
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body. Mobility training can improve movement efficiency and strengthen the fascia and elastic connective tissues, helping them to be more resistant to injury. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appearance, strength training and metabolic conditioning can be used to improve the ability to convert food to energy, change hormone levels, and increase muscle force output, all of which are critical for performing your favorite pastimes or essential activities of daily living. Using exercise to achieve these and other desired results relies on a number of different variables, including sex, age, resistance-training experience, genetics, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and emotional and physical stressors. Each of these influences how your physiological systems adapt to exercise in general or resistance training specifically; for example, too much stress at work or a lack of sleep may significantly reduce your ability to grow muscle.
An exercise is a movement, and movement is a skill that requires practice to master. It may be tempting to change exercises frequently; however, maintaining some consistency with the same exercises over a period of six to eight weeks can help improve coordination and movement skill as well as muscular strength. Efficient movement patterns require synergistic coordination between all systems of the human body. Exercise programs that emphasize using movement patterns use a number of muscles at the same time, which can make the workouts more metabolically challenging, helping you burn more calories, which is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight.
To create and sustain the energy for dynamic, multidirectional movement patterns, the different components of the body need to develop the ability to function as a single system controlled by the CNS. Compared to the limitations of traditional muscle isolation exercises, using only one piece of equipment to challenge the body to move in all directions can result in a more creative, engaging, effective, and fun workout experience. Multijoint movements such as squats to shoulder presses with dumbbells, lifts with a medicine ball, or kettlebell swings are all examples of exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue and, in turn, challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled, which can provide a number of health-promoting benefits.
Organizing workout variables
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect.
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect. Workout programs based on learning and performing movement patterns can provide you with more options for how to exercise, which can ultimately lead to greater results. Whether it's exercise to improve muscular strength, enhance metabolic efficiency, or increase mobility, exercise programs contain the same basic elements known as the variables of exercise program design, which are exercise selection, intensity, repetitions, tempo, rest interval, sets, and frequency of exercise sessions. How these variables are organized and applied will determine the results from an exercise program.
Designing a Workout Is Like Cooking a Meal
Simply throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan and hoping that it turns into an appetizing and edible meal is not an effective way to cook. Likewise, hopping from one piece of equipment to the next, bouncing around between different fitness trends or doing exercises only for specific muscles are not effective methods of exercising. The first step of cooking is determining exactly what to make. In a similar fashion, the first step in designing an exercise program is determining the specific outcome you are trying to achieve. In cooking, the dish you want to prepare will determine the ingredients, the utensils used for preparing the food, and finally the best pots and pans for doing the actual cooking. Your fitness goal will determine the best equipment to use, the specific exercises you do, and how often you do them.
To prepare a successful meal it is important to know how to organize the ingredients, how much of each to use, the order in which they're added, and finally the optimal temperature and length of time in the oven. Using too much or too little of a specific ingredient, the wrong temperature, or wrong length of time can drastically change the outcome of a dish. Exercise is very much the same way; performing exercises that are not relevant to your goal, using too much or too little resistance, or doing too many or too few repetitions could drastically change the outcome of the workout. The variables of exercise program design (table 2.1) can be applied based on what you want to achieve from an exercise program. Add muscle? Lose excess body weight? Enhance athletic performance? Improve health? The variables can be adjusted to provide the appropriate mechanical or metabolic overload in a manner that creates a safe yet effective stimulus to meet your objectives.
Finding the Motivation to Exercise
Lack of time is one of the most popular excuses for avoiding exercise. Another reason for skipping exercise is that there is almost too much information available, making it hard to identify the types that you should be doing for the results you want. These two reasons alone demonstrate why it's easy to find other things to do instead of exercise; you'd rather spend your limited free time doing something you enjoy instead of something that feels awkward or uncomfortable. Most importantly, you probably just want to know how to exercise in a manner that will provide the greatest amount of benefits without an extensive time or cost commitment.
First, exercise is something you do in your free time, so it should be an activity that you at least don't mind doing. (Enjoy doing would be more preferable, but it's necessary to set realistic expectations.) To identify the types of exercise that can bring you the greatest amount of enjoyment, think back to the types of activities that brought you the most pleasure. Understanding just a little about muscle fiber physiology can help you identify the types of exercise activities that will feel right for your body. If you've always gravitated toward endurance sports such as running, cycling, or swimming for long distances, you may have more type I muscle fibers, which are extremely efficient at aerobic metabolism. However, if you've found that you enjoy field sports such as soccer or football, court sports such as tennis or basketball because of the fast-paced running and rapid changes of direction, sprinting, or dancing, you probably have higher levels of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for creating the powerful muscle contractions needed for those activities.
If you have been struggling to follow an exercise program consistently for the long term, maybe your focus is in the wrong area. Rather than placing all of the emphasis on the outcome of exercise, why not adjust your thinking and focus on the process? You are better off choosing activities that are easily accessible and that you enjoy doing as opposed to workout programs that you think you should do even if you don't look forward to them and especially if it is at an out-of-the-way location that can be difficult to get to.
Principles of Exercise Program Design
Understanding how the different systems function as discrete components can help you identify the best methods for synergistically coordinating their actions to produce the desired results from an exercise program. Participation in a regular exercise program is essential for achieving and maintaining good health, which can help you avoid having to pay expensive medical costs as you age. Exercise provides numerous health benefits, including increased bone mineral density, improved blood lipid profiles, elevated mitochondrial density, increased aerobic capacity, lowered blood pressure, and improved glucose tolerance. All these benefits help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases while providing various cognitive benefits, such as improving memory recall, making exercise as important for your brain as it is for your muscles. Exercise should engage all of the physiological systems reviewed in chapter 1, with a specific emphasis on enhancing mobility, strengthening the core, and improving metabolic efficiency. Identifying the best exercise program for your particular needs first requires a basic understanding of how exercise changes the human body.
The SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) states that the type of exercise stimulus placed on the body will determine the expected physiological outcome. Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus. The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular, and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively more challenging exercise program.
According to the SAID principle, an individual who performs only muscle-isolation exercises can expect to strengthen the specific muscles used during exercise but may not achieve the intermuscular coordination necessary to improve skills such as coordination and dynamic balance.
Applying the Variables to Design Your Workouts
One thing most top fitness professionals agree on is that an effective exercise program doesn't need to be overly complicated. It's not necessary to do overly complicated moves or change the exercises you do every workout; only five basic movement patterns determine the exercises you should do during the workout. Simply changing one or two of the variables, like the amount of intensity, number of repetitions, or length of the rest interval, can significantly change the demands imposed on your body. As you get started with your exercise program, you should be aware that research can provide some general insights about how fitness may affect your body, but there are many factors besides the variables of exercise program design, like nutrition, sleep patterns, and overall stress levels, that will determine your specific response.
Inducing metabolic and mechanical stress in the gym does help promote muscle growth; however, what you do in the gym is only one component of the equation for achieving results. T and GH are produced during the REM cycles of sleep, meaning that after a hard workout, a full night's rest is essential for promoting muscle growth and achieving optimal recovery. Insufficient rest does not allow for optimal muscle protein synthesis to repair tissues damaged during exercise, nor does it allow for adequate replenishment of the muscle glycogen used to produce ATP and could lead to an accumulation of energy-producing hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol, which can reduce the ability to generate new muscle tissue. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, lingering illness, and cessation of gains from exercise are all symptoms of overtraining, which can significantly affect your ability to achieve your fitness goals.
The postworkout recovery period is often the most overlooked variable of any exercise program. Whether it is mechanical or metabolic stress that provides the stimulus for muscle growth is not as important as allowing the time for T, GH, and IGF-1 to promote muscle protein synthesis after the exercise is over. Exercise is when a physical stimulus is applied to a muscle and is only part of the equation responsible for muscle growth. Adequate recovery is important to allow the trained muscles sufficient time to replace muscle glycogen and the physiological process to repair and rebuild new tissue (Bishop, Jones, and Woods 2008; Hausswirth and Mujika 2013). The frequency of your workouts will depend on a number of factors, including your specific training goals, overall exercise experience, level of physical conditioning, and the amount of time you have available. After a higher-intensity core strength or metabolic conditioning workout, an appropriate recovery period is approximately 48 to 72 hours before training at the same intensity. Lower-intensity mobility workouts can be performed the next day to either expend the energy for weight management goals or as a form of active recovery.
Structuring Your Workouts
When it comes to workouts to enhance core strength or improve metabolic conditioning, repeatedly performing the same exercises with the same amount of weight could limit the amount of mechanical or metabolic stress placed on the involved tissue, which then minimizes the training effect. It's important to change workouts on a regular and consistent basis. Changing too often will not allow your body time to adapt, and following the same program for too long could result in a plateau. (The specifics of how and when to adjust your workouts will be covered in chapter 6.) To produce the desired results, the acute variables of exercise program design must be applied in a structured, systematic manner that either imposes a mechanical stress on the muscle, fascia, and elastic connective tissue or creates a sizable metabolic demand.
Increasing exercise intensity can be done a couple of ways: performing a strength exercise to a point of momentary muscle fatigue or increasing the work rate by moving at a faster speed to challenge the metabolic energy pathways that fuel the muscles. Valdimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer identify three specific types of strength training, two of which can be applied to improve core strength or enhance metabolic conditioning with only one piece of exercise equipment. The three methods are the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repeated effort method. The maximal effort method, as the name suggests, is for enhancing maximal muscle force output using extremely heavy amounts of weight, which, while a worthy outcome, is not relevant to workouts that can easily be done with one piece of equipment at home or a fitness facility. The other two methods, the repeated effort and dynamic effort methods, can be adapted to use only one piece of equipment, making them efficient and effective solutions regardless of where you work out (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
Repeated Effort Method
The repeated effort (RE) method of strength training requires the use of a nonmaximal load performed until momentary muscle failure (the inability to perform another repetition) to ensure proper stimulation of the motor units and depletion of energy stores. Applying the RE method of exercise requires performing the final few repetitions per set in a fatigued state in order to stimulate all of the involved muscle fibers. The RE method is an effective means to stimulate the adaptation of increasing lean muscle mass. This method uses slower motor units for the initial repetitions; as these motor units begin to fatigue, the muscle will recruit type II high threshold motor units to sustain the necessary force production.
One limitation to the RE method is that as the type II motor units are activated, they fatigue quickly, leading to the end of the set. If the load is not sufficient or the set is not performed to fatigue, it will not stimulate the fast motor units most responsible for changing muscle definition.
One significant benefit of this method is that as anaerobic type II fibers are recruited, they create energy through anaerobic glycolysis, which produces metabolic waste such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, changing blood acidity. Research suggests that acidosis, the change in blood acidity due to an accumulation of blood lactate, is associated with increases in GH and IGF-1 to promote tissue repair during the recovery phase (Schoenfeld 2010).
The RE method provides two key advantages when using just one piece of exercise equipment: It has a greater impact on the metabolic function of the muscle, provoking greater levels of growth, as well as involving a significant number of motor units, leading to strength gains.
Dynamic Effort Method
The dynamic effort (DE) method of strength training uses nonmaximal loads with the highest attainable velocity of movement to apply the muscle motor unit stimulation. Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer suggest that the DE method is an effective means of increasing the rate of force development and developing explosive strength, but when using a submaximal load for bursts of high-intensity movement speed, it can be an effective means of metabolic conditioning as well (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
The DE method activates the contractile element of muscle to create an isometric contraction and place tension on the bodywide network of fascia and elastic connective tissue. When the contractile element shortens, it loads the fascia with elastic mechanical energy, which, when rapidly shortened, creates an explosive shortening action to generate movement.
When using the DE method with one piece of equipment for metabolic conditioning, the goal is to perform a move at an explosive or fast pace until either becoming out of breath or feeling the sensation of burning in the involved muscles, both of which are important markers of a metabolic overload.
Effective Equipment for Developing Mobility, Core Strength, and Metabolic Conditioning
One inside tip that many fitness professionals know is that it's not the actual equipment you use, but how you apply it that leads to physical changes. Yes, different types of exercise equipment place different stresses on the body, resulting in slightly different adaptations. And, yes, to some degree weight is weight: A medicine ball that weighs 10 pounds is the same weight as two 5-pound dumbbells. However, the movements you do during an exercise plus the way you apply the other variables of program design, such as sets and rest intervals, actually determine the changes that will happen to your body. Staying with the example of the medicine ball and two dumbbells, even though they weigh the same amount, the way they are used in a workout will result in completely different outcomes. A medicine ball is held in both hands while the dumbbells allow each arm to move independently, imposing a number of stresses on the various systems of the body.
The equipment selected for the workouts in this book (table 2.2) was chosen specifically because they are capable of imposing the appropriate demands for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning as well as being very affordable and easy to use in a home setting where space may be limited. In addition, the equipment selected can be found in most commercial health clubs or fitness facilities. Learning to use one piece of equipment for an effective workout gives you options for when you want the convenience of exercising at home or when both space and equipment are in short supply at the gym. When you make it to the gym only to see that all of the equipment is being used and people are waiting in line to take their turn, you can smile knowing that you'll still get a great workout. All you need to do is grab a single piece of equipment, secure a little space, and have at it. You'll be sweating and working toward your goals in no time!
Movement is exercise and exercise is movement. Knowing how to move with the pieces of equipment listed above, along with knowing how to organize the variables of an exercise program, can help ensure that you are doing workouts that will produce the results you want. All of the top fitness instructors know that exercise is both a science and an art: The science can provide insights on how the human body will adapt to specific types of overload, but the art comes from finding the best types of exercise that feel right for your particular needs. One piece of equipment, like a kettlebell, can be used for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning based on how the variables of exercise program design are applied. The next chapters show you dozens of exercises to help you get the results you want, simply and effectively.
Learn to work out smarter
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it.
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it. But short of that, how much do you really know about exercise and how it affects your body? You may have a number of questions: What is exercise? Why is it so important? How do different types of exercise create changes in the body? What types of exercise should I be doing? How can I identify the best type for my needs? How often should I be exercising and how hard? Where is the best place to achieve the recommended amount of exercise? Do I need to pay for a costly health club or buy lots of expensive exercise equipment that I'm not going to know how to use?
As someone who has been a personal trainer for 20 years and in the business of educating other personal trainers for most of the past 15, including being a media spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, these questions come up all the time from people I meet in health clubs and from fitness reporters working on stories for consumer magazines. Yes, it can be difficult to sort through all the information to find accurate, reliable, evidence-based information; all too often marketers promote a new exercise fad or gimmick without explaining how it works to change your body. If you take the time to learn why exercise is important, the basic science of how various types of exercise apply different kinds of stimuli to your body, and, most importantly, which types you should be doing to help improve your health and achieve the specific results you want, then you will have the tools you need in order to make exercise an integral part of your life.
Here's a startling reality: Each and every single individual will have a different response to exercise. No one who makes a living as a personal trainer, strength coach, group fitness instructor, or health coach can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that exercise will deliver specific results. If anyone ever promises or guarantees that you can get a specific outcome from following their workout program, then your first exercise is to run away, because it is virtually impossible to guarantee specific results. The results you experience from any exercise program will vary based on the types of exercise that you do as well as a number of other lifestyle habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and overall stress levels.
The only thing that is known about exercise and the human body is that regular exercise can promote good health and significantly lower the risk of developing a number of chronic health conditions, while lack of regular exercise and a sedentary lifestyle can reduce life expectancy. Aging is unavoidable, and the normal biological aging process affects all systems in the human body. Evidence suggests that adults with a sedentary lifestyle can expect to experience a more rapid degradation of bodily functions and face a greater risk of premature death than those who make exercise a regular habit (Candow et al. 2011; Taylor and Johnson 2008). If you want to maintain good health and add years to your life while giving you the ability to enjoy all of the things that you love to do, then it is necessary to learn how to make exercise a regular habit.
Find your fountain of youth
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement.
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially of moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).
From plastic surgery to Botox injections to anti-aging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of anabolic steroids, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative). The good news is that a healthy lifestyle that includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training can help slow down the aging process and be the proverbial fountain of youth. And here's a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, invest your time in moderate to vigorous exercise to minimize those effects of aging. High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.
What's Age Got to Do With It?
We are all familiar with chronological age, which starts the moment we are born and is measured in years. Biological age refers to the condition of tissues and physiological systems; healthy lifestyle habits can help reduce our biological age, meaning that even though an individual could have a chronological age of 65, her biological age could only be 45. Functional age is a combination of one's functional work capacity and physical ability, and in many cases can be years younger than the actual chronological age (Taylor and Johnson 2008). We all know those individuals whose energy, enthusiasm, physical ability, and overall zest for life are years younger than their actual age. Chances are that those people are probably very active. Being active is the true fountain of youth. Being fit means being healthy and having the ability to perform physical tasks, not having a particular appearance or shape. The true sense of being fit is having the energy and ability to enjoy your favorite activities throughout your entire lifespan.
Exercise Throughout the Aging Process
Following an exercise program that includes progressively challenging workouts for both strength (the core strength programs in this book) and power (the metabolic conditioning programs) can help minimize the normal physiological effects of the biological aging process and improve your quality of life.
To provide you with a little extra motivation for starting and adhering to a long-term exercise program, table 7.2 gives an overview of the benefits of exercise during each decade of the adult lifespan.
Note: Cancer and other chronic conditions were specifically omitted from table 7.2 because they can strike at almost any stage of life. While there is no cure for cancer, establishing healthy behaviors and avoiding or limiting certain activities such as smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, and remaining sedentary for extended periods of time can certainly lower the risk of developing it and other conditions. There is no sense wasting any energy worrying about cancer; do your best to be as active as possible and make healthy choices in an attempt to reduce your risk.
Certain Exercise Programs Can Slow Down the Biological Aging Process (Really!)
Being older does not mean you can't do high-intensity exercises. Older adults can and should participate in higher-intensity exercise as long as there are no medical concerns and they follow an appropriate progression of intensity. Strength training can improve the force output of muscles, independent of age and gender, especially when there is a sufficient intensity of exercise (Hakkinen 2011).
Higher-intensity exercises like those done in metabolic conditioning and core strength training programs can promote the production of anabolic hormones that provide important anti-aging benefits.
Exercise not only creates better-functioning muscles but also a brain capable of maintaining its optimal performance throughout the aging process (Chaddock, Voss, and Kramer 2012). Research on the effects of resistance training on older adults and cognitive function has shown that resistance training has a positive effect on cognition, information processing, attention, memory formation, and executive function (Chang et. al 2012). So, as you get older, be sure to include high-intensity exercises and strength training as part of your overall training plan.
What the Science Says: What an Old Car Can Teach You About Your Body
Rebuilding and restoring an old car to like-new condition often requires replacing many worn-out parts and repainting the exterior. Even though medical technology has madeimportant advances in the area of prosthetics, due to cost and the painful recovery process, simply replacing old parts isn't an option as we age. However, gradually progressing the intensity of an exercise program to where you are strength training to a point of momentary fatigue or creating significant metabolic overload can help add new muscle, which can significantly improve your appearance in much the same way that a good paint job can help an older car look like new. In their research on how older males respond to resistance training, Izquierdo and colleagues observed that the skeletal muscle of older adults seems to retain the capacity to experience hypertrophy when the volume, intensity, and duration of the training period are sufficient (Izquierdo et al. 2001).
Just as properly maintaining the engine, waxing the paint, and storing it out of the sun can greatly enhance the longevity of an automobile, exercise programs that stimulate the production of the hormones T, GH, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) can improve our appearance and extend our functional life span as we age.
How exercise changes your body
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body.
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body. Mobility training can improve movement efficiency and strengthen the fascia and elastic connective tissues, helping them to be more resistant to injury. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appearance, strength training and metabolic conditioning can be used to improve the ability to convert food to energy, change hormone levels, and increase muscle force output, all of which are critical for performing your favorite pastimes or essential activities of daily living. Using exercise to achieve these and other desired results relies on a number of different variables, including sex, age, resistance-training experience, genetics, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and emotional and physical stressors. Each of these influences how your physiological systems adapt to exercise in general or resistance training specifically; for example, too much stress at work or a lack of sleep may significantly reduce your ability to grow muscle.
An exercise is a movement, and movement is a skill that requires practice to master. It may be tempting to change exercises frequently; however, maintaining some consistency with the same exercises over a period of six to eight weeks can help improve coordination and movement skill as well as muscular strength. Efficient movement patterns require synergistic coordination between all systems of the human body. Exercise programs that emphasize using movement patterns use a number of muscles at the same time, which can make the workouts more metabolically challenging, helping you burn more calories, which is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight.
To create and sustain the energy for dynamic, multidirectional movement patterns, the different components of the body need to develop the ability to function as a single system controlled by the CNS. Compared to the limitations of traditional muscle isolation exercises, using only one piece of equipment to challenge the body to move in all directions can result in a more creative, engaging, effective, and fun workout experience. Multijoint movements such as squats to shoulder presses with dumbbells, lifts with a medicine ball, or kettlebell swings are all examples of exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue and, in turn, challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled, which can provide a number of health-promoting benefits.
Organizing workout variables
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect.
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect. Workout programs based on learning and performing movement patterns can provide you with more options for how to exercise, which can ultimately lead to greater results. Whether it's exercise to improve muscular strength, enhance metabolic efficiency, or increase mobility, exercise programs contain the same basic elements known as the variables of exercise program design, which are exercise selection, intensity, repetitions, tempo, rest interval, sets, and frequency of exercise sessions. How these variables are organized and applied will determine the results from an exercise program.
Designing a Workout Is Like Cooking a Meal
Simply throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan and hoping that it turns into an appetizing and edible meal is not an effective way to cook. Likewise, hopping from one piece of equipment to the next, bouncing around between different fitness trends or doing exercises only for specific muscles are not effective methods of exercising. The first step of cooking is determining exactly what to make. In a similar fashion, the first step in designing an exercise program is determining the specific outcome you are trying to achieve. In cooking, the dish you want to prepare will determine the ingredients, the utensils used for preparing the food, and finally the best pots and pans for doing the actual cooking. Your fitness goal will determine the best equipment to use, the specific exercises you do, and how often you do them.
To prepare a successful meal it is important to know how to organize the ingredients, how much of each to use, the order in which they're added, and finally the optimal temperature and length of time in the oven. Using too much or too little of a specific ingredient, the wrong temperature, or wrong length of time can drastically change the outcome of a dish. Exercise is very much the same way; performing exercises that are not relevant to your goal, using too much or too little resistance, or doing too many or too few repetitions could drastically change the outcome of the workout. The variables of exercise program design (table 2.1) can be applied based on what you want to achieve from an exercise program. Add muscle? Lose excess body weight? Enhance athletic performance? Improve health? The variables can be adjusted to provide the appropriate mechanical or metabolic overload in a manner that creates a safe yet effective stimulus to meet your objectives.
Finding the Motivation to Exercise
Lack of time is one of the most popular excuses for avoiding exercise. Another reason for skipping exercise is that there is almost too much information available, making it hard to identify the types that you should be doing for the results you want. These two reasons alone demonstrate why it's easy to find other things to do instead of exercise; you'd rather spend your limited free time doing something you enjoy instead of something that feels awkward or uncomfortable. Most importantly, you probably just want to know how to exercise in a manner that will provide the greatest amount of benefits without an extensive time or cost commitment.
First, exercise is something you do in your free time, so it should be an activity that you at least don't mind doing. (Enjoy doing would be more preferable, but it's necessary to set realistic expectations.) To identify the types of exercise that can bring you the greatest amount of enjoyment, think back to the types of activities that brought you the most pleasure. Understanding just a little about muscle fiber physiology can help you identify the types of exercise activities that will feel right for your body. If you've always gravitated toward endurance sports such as running, cycling, or swimming for long distances, you may have more type I muscle fibers, which are extremely efficient at aerobic metabolism. However, if you've found that you enjoy field sports such as soccer or football, court sports such as tennis or basketball because of the fast-paced running and rapid changes of direction, sprinting, or dancing, you probably have higher levels of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for creating the powerful muscle contractions needed for those activities.
If you have been struggling to follow an exercise program consistently for the long term, maybe your focus is in the wrong area. Rather than placing all of the emphasis on the outcome of exercise, why not adjust your thinking and focus on the process? You are better off choosing activities that are easily accessible and that you enjoy doing as opposed to workout programs that you think you should do even if you don't look forward to them and especially if it is at an out-of-the-way location that can be difficult to get to.
Principles of Exercise Program Design
Understanding how the different systems function as discrete components can help you identify the best methods for synergistically coordinating their actions to produce the desired results from an exercise program. Participation in a regular exercise program is essential for achieving and maintaining good health, which can help you avoid having to pay expensive medical costs as you age. Exercise provides numerous health benefits, including increased bone mineral density, improved blood lipid profiles, elevated mitochondrial density, increased aerobic capacity, lowered blood pressure, and improved glucose tolerance. All these benefits help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases while providing various cognitive benefits, such as improving memory recall, making exercise as important for your brain as it is for your muscles. Exercise should engage all of the physiological systems reviewed in chapter 1, with a specific emphasis on enhancing mobility, strengthening the core, and improving metabolic efficiency. Identifying the best exercise program for your particular needs first requires a basic understanding of how exercise changes the human body.
The SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) states that the type of exercise stimulus placed on the body will determine the expected physiological outcome. Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus. The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular, and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively more challenging exercise program.
According to the SAID principle, an individual who performs only muscle-isolation exercises can expect to strengthen the specific muscles used during exercise but may not achieve the intermuscular coordination necessary to improve skills such as coordination and dynamic balance.
Applying the Variables to Design Your Workouts
One thing most top fitness professionals agree on is that an effective exercise program doesn't need to be overly complicated. It's not necessary to do overly complicated moves or change the exercises you do every workout; only five basic movement patterns determine the exercises you should do during the workout. Simply changing one or two of the variables, like the amount of intensity, number of repetitions, or length of the rest interval, can significantly change the demands imposed on your body. As you get started with your exercise program, you should be aware that research can provide some general insights about how fitness may affect your body, but there are many factors besides the variables of exercise program design, like nutrition, sleep patterns, and overall stress levels, that will determine your specific response.
Inducing metabolic and mechanical stress in the gym does help promote muscle growth; however, what you do in the gym is only one component of the equation for achieving results. T and GH are produced during the REM cycles of sleep, meaning that after a hard workout, a full night's rest is essential for promoting muscle growth and achieving optimal recovery. Insufficient rest does not allow for optimal muscle protein synthesis to repair tissues damaged during exercise, nor does it allow for adequate replenishment of the muscle glycogen used to produce ATP and could lead to an accumulation of energy-producing hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol, which can reduce the ability to generate new muscle tissue. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, lingering illness, and cessation of gains from exercise are all symptoms of overtraining, which can significantly affect your ability to achieve your fitness goals.
The postworkout recovery period is often the most overlooked variable of any exercise program. Whether it is mechanical or metabolic stress that provides the stimulus for muscle growth is not as important as allowing the time for T, GH, and IGF-1 to promote muscle protein synthesis after the exercise is over. Exercise is when a physical stimulus is applied to a muscle and is only part of the equation responsible for muscle growth. Adequate recovery is important to allow the trained muscles sufficient time to replace muscle glycogen and the physiological process to repair and rebuild new tissue (Bishop, Jones, and Woods 2008; Hausswirth and Mujika 2013). The frequency of your workouts will depend on a number of factors, including your specific training goals, overall exercise experience, level of physical conditioning, and the amount of time you have available. After a higher-intensity core strength or metabolic conditioning workout, an appropriate recovery period is approximately 48 to 72 hours before training at the same intensity. Lower-intensity mobility workouts can be performed the next day to either expend the energy for weight management goals or as a form of active recovery.
Structuring Your Workouts
When it comes to workouts to enhance core strength or improve metabolic conditioning, repeatedly performing the same exercises with the same amount of weight could limit the amount of mechanical or metabolic stress placed on the involved tissue, which then minimizes the training effect. It's important to change workouts on a regular and consistent basis. Changing too often will not allow your body time to adapt, and following the same program for too long could result in a plateau. (The specifics of how and when to adjust your workouts will be covered in chapter 6.) To produce the desired results, the acute variables of exercise program design must be applied in a structured, systematic manner that either imposes a mechanical stress on the muscle, fascia, and elastic connective tissue or creates a sizable metabolic demand.
Increasing exercise intensity can be done a couple of ways: performing a strength exercise to a point of momentary muscle fatigue or increasing the work rate by moving at a faster speed to challenge the metabolic energy pathways that fuel the muscles. Valdimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer identify three specific types of strength training, two of which can be applied to improve core strength or enhance metabolic conditioning with only one piece of exercise equipment. The three methods are the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repeated effort method. The maximal effort method, as the name suggests, is for enhancing maximal muscle force output using extremely heavy amounts of weight, which, while a worthy outcome, is not relevant to workouts that can easily be done with one piece of equipment at home or a fitness facility. The other two methods, the repeated effort and dynamic effort methods, can be adapted to use only one piece of equipment, making them efficient and effective solutions regardless of where you work out (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
Repeated Effort Method
The repeated effort (RE) method of strength training requires the use of a nonmaximal load performed until momentary muscle failure (the inability to perform another repetition) to ensure proper stimulation of the motor units and depletion of energy stores. Applying the RE method of exercise requires performing the final few repetitions per set in a fatigued state in order to stimulate all of the involved muscle fibers. The RE method is an effective means to stimulate the adaptation of increasing lean muscle mass. This method uses slower motor units for the initial repetitions; as these motor units begin to fatigue, the muscle will recruit type II high threshold motor units to sustain the necessary force production.
One limitation to the RE method is that as the type II motor units are activated, they fatigue quickly, leading to the end of the set. If the load is not sufficient or the set is not performed to fatigue, it will not stimulate the fast motor units most responsible for changing muscle definition.
One significant benefit of this method is that as anaerobic type II fibers are recruited, they create energy through anaerobic glycolysis, which produces metabolic waste such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, changing blood acidity. Research suggests that acidosis, the change in blood acidity due to an accumulation of blood lactate, is associated with increases in GH and IGF-1 to promote tissue repair during the recovery phase (Schoenfeld 2010).
The RE method provides two key advantages when using just one piece of exercise equipment: It has a greater impact on the metabolic function of the muscle, provoking greater levels of growth, as well as involving a significant number of motor units, leading to strength gains.
Dynamic Effort Method
The dynamic effort (DE) method of strength training uses nonmaximal loads with the highest attainable velocity of movement to apply the muscle motor unit stimulation. Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer suggest that the DE method is an effective means of increasing the rate of force development and developing explosive strength, but when using a submaximal load for bursts of high-intensity movement speed, it can be an effective means of metabolic conditioning as well (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
The DE method activates the contractile element of muscle to create an isometric contraction and place tension on the bodywide network of fascia and elastic connective tissue. When the contractile element shortens, it loads the fascia with elastic mechanical energy, which, when rapidly shortened, creates an explosive shortening action to generate movement.
When using the DE method with one piece of equipment for metabolic conditioning, the goal is to perform a move at an explosive or fast pace until either becoming out of breath or feeling the sensation of burning in the involved muscles, both of which are important markers of a metabolic overload.
Effective Equipment for Developing Mobility, Core Strength, and Metabolic Conditioning
One inside tip that many fitness professionals know is that it's not the actual equipment you use, but how you apply it that leads to physical changes. Yes, different types of exercise equipment place different stresses on the body, resulting in slightly different adaptations. And, yes, to some degree weight is weight: A medicine ball that weighs 10 pounds is the same weight as two 5-pound dumbbells. However, the movements you do during an exercise plus the way you apply the other variables of program design, such as sets and rest intervals, actually determine the changes that will happen to your body. Staying with the example of the medicine ball and two dumbbells, even though they weigh the same amount, the way they are used in a workout will result in completely different outcomes. A medicine ball is held in both hands while the dumbbells allow each arm to move independently, imposing a number of stresses on the various systems of the body.
The equipment selected for the workouts in this book (table 2.2) was chosen specifically because they are capable of imposing the appropriate demands for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning as well as being very affordable and easy to use in a home setting where space may be limited. In addition, the equipment selected can be found in most commercial health clubs or fitness facilities. Learning to use one piece of equipment for an effective workout gives you options for when you want the convenience of exercising at home or when both space and equipment are in short supply at the gym. When you make it to the gym only to see that all of the equipment is being used and people are waiting in line to take their turn, you can smile knowing that you'll still get a great workout. All you need to do is grab a single piece of equipment, secure a little space, and have at it. You'll be sweating and working toward your goals in no time!
Movement is exercise and exercise is movement. Knowing how to move with the pieces of equipment listed above, along with knowing how to organize the variables of an exercise program, can help ensure that you are doing workouts that will produce the results you want. All of the top fitness instructors know that exercise is both a science and an art: The science can provide insights on how the human body will adapt to specific types of overload, but the art comes from finding the best types of exercise that feel right for your particular needs. One piece of equipment, like a kettlebell, can be used for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning based on how the variables of exercise program design are applied. The next chapters show you dozens of exercises to help you get the results you want, simply and effectively.
Learn to work out smarter
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it.
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it. But short of that, how much do you really know about exercise and how it affects your body? You may have a number of questions: What is exercise? Why is it so important? How do different types of exercise create changes in the body? What types of exercise should I be doing? How can I identify the best type for my needs? How often should I be exercising and how hard? Where is the best place to achieve the recommended amount of exercise? Do I need to pay for a costly health club or buy lots of expensive exercise equipment that I'm not going to know how to use?
As someone who has been a personal trainer for 20 years and in the business of educating other personal trainers for most of the past 15, including being a media spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, these questions come up all the time from people I meet in health clubs and from fitness reporters working on stories for consumer magazines. Yes, it can be difficult to sort through all the information to find accurate, reliable, evidence-based information; all too often marketers promote a new exercise fad or gimmick without explaining how it works to change your body. If you take the time to learn why exercise is important, the basic science of how various types of exercise apply different kinds of stimuli to your body, and, most importantly, which types you should be doing to help improve your health and achieve the specific results you want, then you will have the tools you need in order to make exercise an integral part of your life.
Here's a startling reality: Each and every single individual will have a different response to exercise. No one who makes a living as a personal trainer, strength coach, group fitness instructor, or health coach can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that exercise will deliver specific results. If anyone ever promises or guarantees that you can get a specific outcome from following their workout program, then your first exercise is to run away, because it is virtually impossible to guarantee specific results. The results you experience from any exercise program will vary based on the types of exercise that you do as well as a number of other lifestyle habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and overall stress levels.
The only thing that is known about exercise and the human body is that regular exercise can promote good health and significantly lower the risk of developing a number of chronic health conditions, while lack of regular exercise and a sedentary lifestyle can reduce life expectancy. Aging is unavoidable, and the normal biological aging process affects all systems in the human body. Evidence suggests that adults with a sedentary lifestyle can expect to experience a more rapid degradation of bodily functions and face a greater risk of premature death than those who make exercise a regular habit (Candow et al. 2011; Taylor and Johnson 2008). If you want to maintain good health and add years to your life while giving you the ability to enjoy all of the things that you love to do, then it is necessary to learn how to make exercise a regular habit.
Find your fountain of youth
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement.
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially of moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).
From plastic surgery to Botox injections to anti-aging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of anabolic steroids, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative). The good news is that a healthy lifestyle that includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training can help slow down the aging process and be the proverbial fountain of youth. And here's a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, invest your time in moderate to vigorous exercise to minimize those effects of aging. High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.
What's Age Got to Do With It?
We are all familiar with chronological age, which starts the moment we are born and is measured in years. Biological age refers to the condition of tissues and physiological systems; healthy lifestyle habits can help reduce our biological age, meaning that even though an individual could have a chronological age of 65, her biological age could only be 45. Functional age is a combination of one's functional work capacity and physical ability, and in many cases can be years younger than the actual chronological age (Taylor and Johnson 2008). We all know those individuals whose energy, enthusiasm, physical ability, and overall zest for life are years younger than their actual age. Chances are that those people are probably very active. Being active is the true fountain of youth. Being fit means being healthy and having the ability to perform physical tasks, not having a particular appearance or shape. The true sense of being fit is having the energy and ability to enjoy your favorite activities throughout your entire lifespan.
Exercise Throughout the Aging Process
Following an exercise program that includes progressively challenging workouts for both strength (the core strength programs in this book) and power (the metabolic conditioning programs) can help minimize the normal physiological effects of the biological aging process and improve your quality of life.
To provide you with a little extra motivation for starting and adhering to a long-term exercise program, table 7.2 gives an overview of the benefits of exercise during each decade of the adult lifespan.
Note: Cancer and other chronic conditions were specifically omitted from table 7.2 because they can strike at almost any stage of life. While there is no cure for cancer, establishing healthy behaviors and avoiding or limiting certain activities such as smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, and remaining sedentary for extended periods of time can certainly lower the risk of developing it and other conditions. There is no sense wasting any energy worrying about cancer; do your best to be as active as possible and make healthy choices in an attempt to reduce your risk.
Certain Exercise Programs Can Slow Down the Biological Aging Process (Really!)
Being older does not mean you can't do high-intensity exercises. Older adults can and should participate in higher-intensity exercise as long as there are no medical concerns and they follow an appropriate progression of intensity. Strength training can improve the force output of muscles, independent of age and gender, especially when there is a sufficient intensity of exercise (Hakkinen 2011).
Higher-intensity exercises like those done in metabolic conditioning and core strength training programs can promote the production of anabolic hormones that provide important anti-aging benefits.
Exercise not only creates better-functioning muscles but also a brain capable of maintaining its optimal performance throughout the aging process (Chaddock, Voss, and Kramer 2012). Research on the effects of resistance training on older adults and cognitive function has shown that resistance training has a positive effect on cognition, information processing, attention, memory formation, and executive function (Chang et. al 2012). So, as you get older, be sure to include high-intensity exercises and strength training as part of your overall training plan.
What the Science Says: What an Old Car Can Teach You About Your Body
Rebuilding and restoring an old car to like-new condition often requires replacing many worn-out parts and repainting the exterior. Even though medical technology has madeimportant advances in the area of prosthetics, due to cost and the painful recovery process, simply replacing old parts isn't an option as we age. However, gradually progressing the intensity of an exercise program to where you are strength training to a point of momentary fatigue or creating significant metabolic overload can help add new muscle, which can significantly improve your appearance in much the same way that a good paint job can help an older car look like new. In their research on how older males respond to resistance training, Izquierdo and colleagues observed that the skeletal muscle of older adults seems to retain the capacity to experience hypertrophy when the volume, intensity, and duration of the training period are sufficient (Izquierdo et al. 2001).
Just as properly maintaining the engine, waxing the paint, and storing it out of the sun can greatly enhance the longevity of an automobile, exercise programs that stimulate the production of the hormones T, GH, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) can improve our appearance and extend our functional life span as we age.
How exercise changes your body
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body.
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body. Mobility training can improve movement efficiency and strengthen the fascia and elastic connective tissues, helping them to be more resistant to injury. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appearance, strength training and metabolic conditioning can be used to improve the ability to convert food to energy, change hormone levels, and increase muscle force output, all of which are critical for performing your favorite pastimes or essential activities of daily living. Using exercise to achieve these and other desired results relies on a number of different variables, including sex, age, resistance-training experience, genetics, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and emotional and physical stressors. Each of these influences how your physiological systems adapt to exercise in general or resistance training specifically; for example, too much stress at work or a lack of sleep may significantly reduce your ability to grow muscle.
An exercise is a movement, and movement is a skill that requires practice to master. It may be tempting to change exercises frequently; however, maintaining some consistency with the same exercises over a period of six to eight weeks can help improve coordination and movement skill as well as muscular strength. Efficient movement patterns require synergistic coordination between all systems of the human body. Exercise programs that emphasize using movement patterns use a number of muscles at the same time, which can make the workouts more metabolically challenging, helping you burn more calories, which is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight.
To create and sustain the energy for dynamic, multidirectional movement patterns, the different components of the body need to develop the ability to function as a single system controlled by the CNS. Compared to the limitations of traditional muscle isolation exercises, using only one piece of equipment to challenge the body to move in all directions can result in a more creative, engaging, effective, and fun workout experience. Multijoint movements such as squats to shoulder presses with dumbbells, lifts with a medicine ball, or kettlebell swings are all examples of exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue and, in turn, challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled, which can provide a number of health-promoting benefits.
Organizing workout variables
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect.
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect. Workout programs based on learning and performing movement patterns can provide you with more options for how to exercise, which can ultimately lead to greater results. Whether it's exercise to improve muscular strength, enhance metabolic efficiency, or increase mobility, exercise programs contain the same basic elements known as the variables of exercise program design, which are exercise selection, intensity, repetitions, tempo, rest interval, sets, and frequency of exercise sessions. How these variables are organized and applied will determine the results from an exercise program.
Designing a Workout Is Like Cooking a Meal
Simply throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan and hoping that it turns into an appetizing and edible meal is not an effective way to cook. Likewise, hopping from one piece of equipment to the next, bouncing around between different fitness trends or doing exercises only for specific muscles are not effective methods of exercising. The first step of cooking is determining exactly what to make. In a similar fashion, the first step in designing an exercise program is determining the specific outcome you are trying to achieve. In cooking, the dish you want to prepare will determine the ingredients, the utensils used for preparing the food, and finally the best pots and pans for doing the actual cooking. Your fitness goal will determine the best equipment to use, the specific exercises you do, and how often you do them.
To prepare a successful meal it is important to know how to organize the ingredients, how much of each to use, the order in which they're added, and finally the optimal temperature and length of time in the oven. Using too much or too little of a specific ingredient, the wrong temperature, or wrong length of time can drastically change the outcome of a dish. Exercise is very much the same way; performing exercises that are not relevant to your goal, using too much or too little resistance, or doing too many or too few repetitions could drastically change the outcome of the workout. The variables of exercise program design (table 2.1) can be applied based on what you want to achieve from an exercise program. Add muscle? Lose excess body weight? Enhance athletic performance? Improve health? The variables can be adjusted to provide the appropriate mechanical or metabolic overload in a manner that creates a safe yet effective stimulus to meet your objectives.
Finding the Motivation to Exercise
Lack of time is one of the most popular excuses for avoiding exercise. Another reason for skipping exercise is that there is almost too much information available, making it hard to identify the types that you should be doing for the results you want. These two reasons alone demonstrate why it's easy to find other things to do instead of exercise; you'd rather spend your limited free time doing something you enjoy instead of something that feels awkward or uncomfortable. Most importantly, you probably just want to know how to exercise in a manner that will provide the greatest amount of benefits without an extensive time or cost commitment.
First, exercise is something you do in your free time, so it should be an activity that you at least don't mind doing. (Enjoy doing would be more preferable, but it's necessary to set realistic expectations.) To identify the types of exercise that can bring you the greatest amount of enjoyment, think back to the types of activities that brought you the most pleasure. Understanding just a little about muscle fiber physiology can help you identify the types of exercise activities that will feel right for your body. If you've always gravitated toward endurance sports such as running, cycling, or swimming for long distances, you may have more type I muscle fibers, which are extremely efficient at aerobic metabolism. However, if you've found that you enjoy field sports such as soccer or football, court sports such as tennis or basketball because of the fast-paced running and rapid changes of direction, sprinting, or dancing, you probably have higher levels of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for creating the powerful muscle contractions needed for those activities.
If you have been struggling to follow an exercise program consistently for the long term, maybe your focus is in the wrong area. Rather than placing all of the emphasis on the outcome of exercise, why not adjust your thinking and focus on the process? You are better off choosing activities that are easily accessible and that you enjoy doing as opposed to workout programs that you think you should do even if you don't look forward to them and especially if it is at an out-of-the-way location that can be difficult to get to.
Principles of Exercise Program Design
Understanding how the different systems function as discrete components can help you identify the best methods for synergistically coordinating their actions to produce the desired results from an exercise program. Participation in a regular exercise program is essential for achieving and maintaining good health, which can help you avoid having to pay expensive medical costs as you age. Exercise provides numerous health benefits, including increased bone mineral density, improved blood lipid profiles, elevated mitochondrial density, increased aerobic capacity, lowered blood pressure, and improved glucose tolerance. All these benefits help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases while providing various cognitive benefits, such as improving memory recall, making exercise as important for your brain as it is for your muscles. Exercise should engage all of the physiological systems reviewed in chapter 1, with a specific emphasis on enhancing mobility, strengthening the core, and improving metabolic efficiency. Identifying the best exercise program for your particular needs first requires a basic understanding of how exercise changes the human body.
The SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) states that the type of exercise stimulus placed on the body will determine the expected physiological outcome. Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus. The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular, and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively more challenging exercise program.
According to the SAID principle, an individual who performs only muscle-isolation exercises can expect to strengthen the specific muscles used during exercise but may not achieve the intermuscular coordination necessary to improve skills such as coordination and dynamic balance.
Applying the Variables to Design Your Workouts
One thing most top fitness professionals agree on is that an effective exercise program doesn't need to be overly complicated. It's not necessary to do overly complicated moves or change the exercises you do every workout; only five basic movement patterns determine the exercises you should do during the workout. Simply changing one or two of the variables, like the amount of intensity, number of repetitions, or length of the rest interval, can significantly change the demands imposed on your body. As you get started with your exercise program, you should be aware that research can provide some general insights about how fitness may affect your body, but there are many factors besides the variables of exercise program design, like nutrition, sleep patterns, and overall stress levels, that will determine your specific response.
Inducing metabolic and mechanical stress in the gym does help promote muscle growth; however, what you do in the gym is only one component of the equation for achieving results. T and GH are produced during the REM cycles of sleep, meaning that after a hard workout, a full night's rest is essential for promoting muscle growth and achieving optimal recovery. Insufficient rest does not allow for optimal muscle protein synthesis to repair tissues damaged during exercise, nor does it allow for adequate replenishment of the muscle glycogen used to produce ATP and could lead to an accumulation of energy-producing hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol, which can reduce the ability to generate new muscle tissue. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, lingering illness, and cessation of gains from exercise are all symptoms of overtraining, which can significantly affect your ability to achieve your fitness goals.
The postworkout recovery period is often the most overlooked variable of any exercise program. Whether it is mechanical or metabolic stress that provides the stimulus for muscle growth is not as important as allowing the time for T, GH, and IGF-1 to promote muscle protein synthesis after the exercise is over. Exercise is when a physical stimulus is applied to a muscle and is only part of the equation responsible for muscle growth. Adequate recovery is important to allow the trained muscles sufficient time to replace muscle glycogen and the physiological process to repair and rebuild new tissue (Bishop, Jones, and Woods 2008; Hausswirth and Mujika 2013). The frequency of your workouts will depend on a number of factors, including your specific training goals, overall exercise experience, level of physical conditioning, and the amount of time you have available. After a higher-intensity core strength or metabolic conditioning workout, an appropriate recovery period is approximately 48 to 72 hours before training at the same intensity. Lower-intensity mobility workouts can be performed the next day to either expend the energy for weight management goals or as a form of active recovery.
Structuring Your Workouts
When it comes to workouts to enhance core strength or improve metabolic conditioning, repeatedly performing the same exercises with the same amount of weight could limit the amount of mechanical or metabolic stress placed on the involved tissue, which then minimizes the training effect. It's important to change workouts on a regular and consistent basis. Changing too often will not allow your body time to adapt, and following the same program for too long could result in a plateau. (The specifics of how and when to adjust your workouts will be covered in chapter 6.) To produce the desired results, the acute variables of exercise program design must be applied in a structured, systematic manner that either imposes a mechanical stress on the muscle, fascia, and elastic connective tissue or creates a sizable metabolic demand.
Increasing exercise intensity can be done a couple of ways: performing a strength exercise to a point of momentary muscle fatigue or increasing the work rate by moving at a faster speed to challenge the metabolic energy pathways that fuel the muscles. Valdimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer identify three specific types of strength training, two of which can be applied to improve core strength or enhance metabolic conditioning with only one piece of exercise equipment. The three methods are the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repeated effort method. The maximal effort method, as the name suggests, is for enhancing maximal muscle force output using extremely heavy amounts of weight, which, while a worthy outcome, is not relevant to workouts that can easily be done with one piece of equipment at home or a fitness facility. The other two methods, the repeated effort and dynamic effort methods, can be adapted to use only one piece of equipment, making them efficient and effective solutions regardless of where you work out (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
Repeated Effort Method
The repeated effort (RE) method of strength training requires the use of a nonmaximal load performed until momentary muscle failure (the inability to perform another repetition) to ensure proper stimulation of the motor units and depletion of energy stores. Applying the RE method of exercise requires performing the final few repetitions per set in a fatigued state in order to stimulate all of the involved muscle fibers. The RE method is an effective means to stimulate the adaptation of increasing lean muscle mass. This method uses slower motor units for the initial repetitions; as these motor units begin to fatigue, the muscle will recruit type II high threshold motor units to sustain the necessary force production.
One limitation to the RE method is that as the type II motor units are activated, they fatigue quickly, leading to the end of the set. If the load is not sufficient or the set is not performed to fatigue, it will not stimulate the fast motor units most responsible for changing muscle definition.
One significant benefit of this method is that as anaerobic type II fibers are recruited, they create energy through anaerobic glycolysis, which produces metabolic waste such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, changing blood acidity. Research suggests that acidosis, the change in blood acidity due to an accumulation of blood lactate, is associated with increases in GH and IGF-1 to promote tissue repair during the recovery phase (Schoenfeld 2010).
The RE method provides two key advantages when using just one piece of exercise equipment: It has a greater impact on the metabolic function of the muscle, provoking greater levels of growth, as well as involving a significant number of motor units, leading to strength gains.
Dynamic Effort Method
The dynamic effort (DE) method of strength training uses nonmaximal loads with the highest attainable velocity of movement to apply the muscle motor unit stimulation. Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer suggest that the DE method is an effective means of increasing the rate of force development and developing explosive strength, but when using a submaximal load for bursts of high-intensity movement speed, it can be an effective means of metabolic conditioning as well (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
The DE method activates the contractile element of muscle to create an isometric contraction and place tension on the bodywide network of fascia and elastic connective tissue. When the contractile element shortens, it loads the fascia with elastic mechanical energy, which, when rapidly shortened, creates an explosive shortening action to generate movement.
When using the DE method with one piece of equipment for metabolic conditioning, the goal is to perform a move at an explosive or fast pace until either becoming out of breath or feeling the sensation of burning in the involved muscles, both of which are important markers of a metabolic overload.
Effective Equipment for Developing Mobility, Core Strength, and Metabolic Conditioning
One inside tip that many fitness professionals know is that it's not the actual equipment you use, but how you apply it that leads to physical changes. Yes, different types of exercise equipment place different stresses on the body, resulting in slightly different adaptations. And, yes, to some degree weight is weight: A medicine ball that weighs 10 pounds is the same weight as two 5-pound dumbbells. However, the movements you do during an exercise plus the way you apply the other variables of program design, such as sets and rest intervals, actually determine the changes that will happen to your body. Staying with the example of the medicine ball and two dumbbells, even though they weigh the same amount, the way they are used in a workout will result in completely different outcomes. A medicine ball is held in both hands while the dumbbells allow each arm to move independently, imposing a number of stresses on the various systems of the body.
The equipment selected for the workouts in this book (table 2.2) was chosen specifically because they are capable of imposing the appropriate demands for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning as well as being very affordable and easy to use in a home setting where space may be limited. In addition, the equipment selected can be found in most commercial health clubs or fitness facilities. Learning to use one piece of equipment for an effective workout gives you options for when you want the convenience of exercising at home or when both space and equipment are in short supply at the gym. When you make it to the gym only to see that all of the equipment is being used and people are waiting in line to take their turn, you can smile knowing that you'll still get a great workout. All you need to do is grab a single piece of equipment, secure a little space, and have at it. You'll be sweating and working toward your goals in no time!
Movement is exercise and exercise is movement. Knowing how to move with the pieces of equipment listed above, along with knowing how to organize the variables of an exercise program, can help ensure that you are doing workouts that will produce the results you want. All of the top fitness instructors know that exercise is both a science and an art: The science can provide insights on how the human body will adapt to specific types of overload, but the art comes from finding the best types of exercise that feel right for your particular needs. One piece of equipment, like a kettlebell, can be used for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning based on how the variables of exercise program design are applied. The next chapters show you dozens of exercises to help you get the results you want, simply and effectively.
Learn to work out smarter
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it.
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it. But short of that, how much do you really know about exercise and how it affects your body? You may have a number of questions: What is exercise? Why is it so important? How do different types of exercise create changes in the body? What types of exercise should I be doing? How can I identify the best type for my needs? How often should I be exercising and how hard? Where is the best place to achieve the recommended amount of exercise? Do I need to pay for a costly health club or buy lots of expensive exercise equipment that I'm not going to know how to use?
As someone who has been a personal trainer for 20 years and in the business of educating other personal trainers for most of the past 15, including being a media spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, these questions come up all the time from people I meet in health clubs and from fitness reporters working on stories for consumer magazines. Yes, it can be difficult to sort through all the information to find accurate, reliable, evidence-based information; all too often marketers promote a new exercise fad or gimmick without explaining how it works to change your body. If you take the time to learn why exercise is important, the basic science of how various types of exercise apply different kinds of stimuli to your body, and, most importantly, which types you should be doing to help improve your health and achieve the specific results you want, then you will have the tools you need in order to make exercise an integral part of your life.
Here's a startling reality: Each and every single individual will have a different response to exercise. No one who makes a living as a personal trainer, strength coach, group fitness instructor, or health coach can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that exercise will deliver specific results. If anyone ever promises or guarantees that you can get a specific outcome from following their workout program, then your first exercise is to run away, because it is virtually impossible to guarantee specific results. The results you experience from any exercise program will vary based on the types of exercise that you do as well as a number of other lifestyle habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and overall stress levels.
The only thing that is known about exercise and the human body is that regular exercise can promote good health and significantly lower the risk of developing a number of chronic health conditions, while lack of regular exercise and a sedentary lifestyle can reduce life expectancy. Aging is unavoidable, and the normal biological aging process affects all systems in the human body. Evidence suggests that adults with a sedentary lifestyle can expect to experience a more rapid degradation of bodily functions and face a greater risk of premature death than those who make exercise a regular habit (Candow et al. 2011; Taylor and Johnson 2008). If you want to maintain good health and add years to your life while giving you the ability to enjoy all of the things that you love to do, then it is necessary to learn how to make exercise a regular habit.
Find your fountain of youth
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement.
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially of moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).
From plastic surgery to Botox injections to anti-aging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of anabolic steroids, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative). The good news is that a healthy lifestyle that includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training can help slow down the aging process and be the proverbial fountain of youth. And here's a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, invest your time in moderate to vigorous exercise to minimize those effects of aging. High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.
What's Age Got to Do With It?
We are all familiar with chronological age, which starts the moment we are born and is measured in years. Biological age refers to the condition of tissues and physiological systems; healthy lifestyle habits can help reduce our biological age, meaning that even though an individual could have a chronological age of 65, her biological age could only be 45. Functional age is a combination of one's functional work capacity and physical ability, and in many cases can be years younger than the actual chronological age (Taylor and Johnson 2008). We all know those individuals whose energy, enthusiasm, physical ability, and overall zest for life are years younger than their actual age. Chances are that those people are probably very active. Being active is the true fountain of youth. Being fit means being healthy and having the ability to perform physical tasks, not having a particular appearance or shape. The true sense of being fit is having the energy and ability to enjoy your favorite activities throughout your entire lifespan.
Exercise Throughout the Aging Process
Following an exercise program that includes progressively challenging workouts for both strength (the core strength programs in this book) and power (the metabolic conditioning programs) can help minimize the normal physiological effects of the biological aging process and improve your quality of life.
To provide you with a little extra motivation for starting and adhering to a long-term exercise program, table 7.2 gives an overview of the benefits of exercise during each decade of the adult lifespan.
Note: Cancer and other chronic conditions were specifically omitted from table 7.2 because they can strike at almost any stage of life. While there is no cure for cancer, establishing healthy behaviors and avoiding or limiting certain activities such as smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, and remaining sedentary for extended periods of time can certainly lower the risk of developing it and other conditions. There is no sense wasting any energy worrying about cancer; do your best to be as active as possible and make healthy choices in an attempt to reduce your risk.
Certain Exercise Programs Can Slow Down the Biological Aging Process (Really!)
Being older does not mean you can't do high-intensity exercises. Older adults can and should participate in higher-intensity exercise as long as there are no medical concerns and they follow an appropriate progression of intensity. Strength training can improve the force output of muscles, independent of age and gender, especially when there is a sufficient intensity of exercise (Hakkinen 2011).
Higher-intensity exercises like those done in metabolic conditioning and core strength training programs can promote the production of anabolic hormones that provide important anti-aging benefits.
Exercise not only creates better-functioning muscles but also a brain capable of maintaining its optimal performance throughout the aging process (Chaddock, Voss, and Kramer 2012). Research on the effects of resistance training on older adults and cognitive function has shown that resistance training has a positive effect on cognition, information processing, attention, memory formation, and executive function (Chang et. al 2012). So, as you get older, be sure to include high-intensity exercises and strength training as part of your overall training plan.
What the Science Says: What an Old Car Can Teach You About Your Body
Rebuilding and restoring an old car to like-new condition often requires replacing many worn-out parts and repainting the exterior. Even though medical technology has madeimportant advances in the area of prosthetics, due to cost and the painful recovery process, simply replacing old parts isn't an option as we age. However, gradually progressing the intensity of an exercise program to where you are strength training to a point of momentary fatigue or creating significant metabolic overload can help add new muscle, which can significantly improve your appearance in much the same way that a good paint job can help an older car look like new. In their research on how older males respond to resistance training, Izquierdo and colleagues observed that the skeletal muscle of older adults seems to retain the capacity to experience hypertrophy when the volume, intensity, and duration of the training period are sufficient (Izquierdo et al. 2001).
Just as properly maintaining the engine, waxing the paint, and storing it out of the sun can greatly enhance the longevity of an automobile, exercise programs that stimulate the production of the hormones T, GH, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) can improve our appearance and extend our functional life span as we age.
How exercise changes your body
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body.
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body. Mobility training can improve movement efficiency and strengthen the fascia and elastic connective tissues, helping them to be more resistant to injury. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appearance, strength training and metabolic conditioning can be used to improve the ability to convert food to energy, change hormone levels, and increase muscle force output, all of which are critical for performing your favorite pastimes or essential activities of daily living. Using exercise to achieve these and other desired results relies on a number of different variables, including sex, age, resistance-training experience, genetics, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and emotional and physical stressors. Each of these influences how your physiological systems adapt to exercise in general or resistance training specifically; for example, too much stress at work or a lack of sleep may significantly reduce your ability to grow muscle.
An exercise is a movement, and movement is a skill that requires practice to master. It may be tempting to change exercises frequently; however, maintaining some consistency with the same exercises over a period of six to eight weeks can help improve coordination and movement skill as well as muscular strength. Efficient movement patterns require synergistic coordination between all systems of the human body. Exercise programs that emphasize using movement patterns use a number of muscles at the same time, which can make the workouts more metabolically challenging, helping you burn more calories, which is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight.
To create and sustain the energy for dynamic, multidirectional movement patterns, the different components of the body need to develop the ability to function as a single system controlled by the CNS. Compared to the limitations of traditional muscle isolation exercises, using only one piece of equipment to challenge the body to move in all directions can result in a more creative, engaging, effective, and fun workout experience. Multijoint movements such as squats to shoulder presses with dumbbells, lifts with a medicine ball, or kettlebell swings are all examples of exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue and, in turn, challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled, which can provide a number of health-promoting benefits.
Organizing workout variables
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect.
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect. Workout programs based on learning and performing movement patterns can provide you with more options for how to exercise, which can ultimately lead to greater results. Whether it's exercise to improve muscular strength, enhance metabolic efficiency, or increase mobility, exercise programs contain the same basic elements known as the variables of exercise program design, which are exercise selection, intensity, repetitions, tempo, rest interval, sets, and frequency of exercise sessions. How these variables are organized and applied will determine the results from an exercise program.
Designing a Workout Is Like Cooking a Meal
Simply throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan and hoping that it turns into an appetizing and edible meal is not an effective way to cook. Likewise, hopping from one piece of equipment to the next, bouncing around between different fitness trends or doing exercises only for specific muscles are not effective methods of exercising. The first step of cooking is determining exactly what to make. In a similar fashion, the first step in designing an exercise program is determining the specific outcome you are trying to achieve. In cooking, the dish you want to prepare will determine the ingredients, the utensils used for preparing the food, and finally the best pots and pans for doing the actual cooking. Your fitness goal will determine the best equipment to use, the specific exercises you do, and how often you do them.
To prepare a successful meal it is important to know how to organize the ingredients, how much of each to use, the order in which they're added, and finally the optimal temperature and length of time in the oven. Using too much or too little of a specific ingredient, the wrong temperature, or wrong length of time can drastically change the outcome of a dish. Exercise is very much the same way; performing exercises that are not relevant to your goal, using too much or too little resistance, or doing too many or too few repetitions could drastically change the outcome of the workout. The variables of exercise program design (table 2.1) can be applied based on what you want to achieve from an exercise program. Add muscle? Lose excess body weight? Enhance athletic performance? Improve health? The variables can be adjusted to provide the appropriate mechanical or metabolic overload in a manner that creates a safe yet effective stimulus to meet your objectives.
Finding the Motivation to Exercise
Lack of time is one of the most popular excuses for avoiding exercise. Another reason for skipping exercise is that there is almost too much information available, making it hard to identify the types that you should be doing for the results you want. These two reasons alone demonstrate why it's easy to find other things to do instead of exercise; you'd rather spend your limited free time doing something you enjoy instead of something that feels awkward or uncomfortable. Most importantly, you probably just want to know how to exercise in a manner that will provide the greatest amount of benefits without an extensive time or cost commitment.
First, exercise is something you do in your free time, so it should be an activity that you at least don't mind doing. (Enjoy doing would be more preferable, but it's necessary to set realistic expectations.) To identify the types of exercise that can bring you the greatest amount of enjoyment, think back to the types of activities that brought you the most pleasure. Understanding just a little about muscle fiber physiology can help you identify the types of exercise activities that will feel right for your body. If you've always gravitated toward endurance sports such as running, cycling, or swimming for long distances, you may have more type I muscle fibers, which are extremely efficient at aerobic metabolism. However, if you've found that you enjoy field sports such as soccer or football, court sports such as tennis or basketball because of the fast-paced running and rapid changes of direction, sprinting, or dancing, you probably have higher levels of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for creating the powerful muscle contractions needed for those activities.
If you have been struggling to follow an exercise program consistently for the long term, maybe your focus is in the wrong area. Rather than placing all of the emphasis on the outcome of exercise, why not adjust your thinking and focus on the process? You are better off choosing activities that are easily accessible and that you enjoy doing as opposed to workout programs that you think you should do even if you don't look forward to them and especially if it is at an out-of-the-way location that can be difficult to get to.
Principles of Exercise Program Design
Understanding how the different systems function as discrete components can help you identify the best methods for synergistically coordinating their actions to produce the desired results from an exercise program. Participation in a regular exercise program is essential for achieving and maintaining good health, which can help you avoid having to pay expensive medical costs as you age. Exercise provides numerous health benefits, including increased bone mineral density, improved blood lipid profiles, elevated mitochondrial density, increased aerobic capacity, lowered blood pressure, and improved glucose tolerance. All these benefits help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases while providing various cognitive benefits, such as improving memory recall, making exercise as important for your brain as it is for your muscles. Exercise should engage all of the physiological systems reviewed in chapter 1, with a specific emphasis on enhancing mobility, strengthening the core, and improving metabolic efficiency. Identifying the best exercise program for your particular needs first requires a basic understanding of how exercise changes the human body.
The SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) states that the type of exercise stimulus placed on the body will determine the expected physiological outcome. Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus. The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular, and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively more challenging exercise program.
According to the SAID principle, an individual who performs only muscle-isolation exercises can expect to strengthen the specific muscles used during exercise but may not achieve the intermuscular coordination necessary to improve skills such as coordination and dynamic balance.
Applying the Variables to Design Your Workouts
One thing most top fitness professionals agree on is that an effective exercise program doesn't need to be overly complicated. It's not necessary to do overly complicated moves or change the exercises you do every workout; only five basic movement patterns determine the exercises you should do during the workout. Simply changing one or two of the variables, like the amount of intensity, number of repetitions, or length of the rest interval, can significantly change the demands imposed on your body. As you get started with your exercise program, you should be aware that research can provide some general insights about how fitness may affect your body, but there are many factors besides the variables of exercise program design, like nutrition, sleep patterns, and overall stress levels, that will determine your specific response.
Inducing metabolic and mechanical stress in the gym does help promote muscle growth; however, what you do in the gym is only one component of the equation for achieving results. T and GH are produced during the REM cycles of sleep, meaning that after a hard workout, a full night's rest is essential for promoting muscle growth and achieving optimal recovery. Insufficient rest does not allow for optimal muscle protein synthesis to repair tissues damaged during exercise, nor does it allow for adequate replenishment of the muscle glycogen used to produce ATP and could lead to an accumulation of energy-producing hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol, which can reduce the ability to generate new muscle tissue. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, lingering illness, and cessation of gains from exercise are all symptoms of overtraining, which can significantly affect your ability to achieve your fitness goals.
The postworkout recovery period is often the most overlooked variable of any exercise program. Whether it is mechanical or metabolic stress that provides the stimulus for muscle growth is not as important as allowing the time for T, GH, and IGF-1 to promote muscle protein synthesis after the exercise is over. Exercise is when a physical stimulus is applied to a muscle and is only part of the equation responsible for muscle growth. Adequate recovery is important to allow the trained muscles sufficient time to replace muscle glycogen and the physiological process to repair and rebuild new tissue (Bishop, Jones, and Woods 2008; Hausswirth and Mujika 2013). The frequency of your workouts will depend on a number of factors, including your specific training goals, overall exercise experience, level of physical conditioning, and the amount of time you have available. After a higher-intensity core strength or metabolic conditioning workout, an appropriate recovery period is approximately 48 to 72 hours before training at the same intensity. Lower-intensity mobility workouts can be performed the next day to either expend the energy for weight management goals or as a form of active recovery.
Structuring Your Workouts
When it comes to workouts to enhance core strength or improve metabolic conditioning, repeatedly performing the same exercises with the same amount of weight could limit the amount of mechanical or metabolic stress placed on the involved tissue, which then minimizes the training effect. It's important to change workouts on a regular and consistent basis. Changing too often will not allow your body time to adapt, and following the same program for too long could result in a plateau. (The specifics of how and when to adjust your workouts will be covered in chapter 6.) To produce the desired results, the acute variables of exercise program design must be applied in a structured, systematic manner that either imposes a mechanical stress on the muscle, fascia, and elastic connective tissue or creates a sizable metabolic demand.
Increasing exercise intensity can be done a couple of ways: performing a strength exercise to a point of momentary muscle fatigue or increasing the work rate by moving at a faster speed to challenge the metabolic energy pathways that fuel the muscles. Valdimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer identify three specific types of strength training, two of which can be applied to improve core strength or enhance metabolic conditioning with only one piece of exercise equipment. The three methods are the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repeated effort method. The maximal effort method, as the name suggests, is for enhancing maximal muscle force output using extremely heavy amounts of weight, which, while a worthy outcome, is not relevant to workouts that can easily be done with one piece of equipment at home or a fitness facility. The other two methods, the repeated effort and dynamic effort methods, can be adapted to use only one piece of equipment, making them efficient and effective solutions regardless of where you work out (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
Repeated Effort Method
The repeated effort (RE) method of strength training requires the use of a nonmaximal load performed until momentary muscle failure (the inability to perform another repetition) to ensure proper stimulation of the motor units and depletion of energy stores. Applying the RE method of exercise requires performing the final few repetitions per set in a fatigued state in order to stimulate all of the involved muscle fibers. The RE method is an effective means to stimulate the adaptation of increasing lean muscle mass. This method uses slower motor units for the initial repetitions; as these motor units begin to fatigue, the muscle will recruit type II high threshold motor units to sustain the necessary force production.
One limitation to the RE method is that as the type II motor units are activated, they fatigue quickly, leading to the end of the set. If the load is not sufficient or the set is not performed to fatigue, it will not stimulate the fast motor units most responsible for changing muscle definition.
One significant benefit of this method is that as anaerobic type II fibers are recruited, they create energy through anaerobic glycolysis, which produces metabolic waste such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, changing blood acidity. Research suggests that acidosis, the change in blood acidity due to an accumulation of blood lactate, is associated with increases in GH and IGF-1 to promote tissue repair during the recovery phase (Schoenfeld 2010).
The RE method provides two key advantages when using just one piece of exercise equipment: It has a greater impact on the metabolic function of the muscle, provoking greater levels of growth, as well as involving a significant number of motor units, leading to strength gains.
Dynamic Effort Method
The dynamic effort (DE) method of strength training uses nonmaximal loads with the highest attainable velocity of movement to apply the muscle motor unit stimulation. Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer suggest that the DE method is an effective means of increasing the rate of force development and developing explosive strength, but when using a submaximal load for bursts of high-intensity movement speed, it can be an effective means of metabolic conditioning as well (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
The DE method activates the contractile element of muscle to create an isometric contraction and place tension on the bodywide network of fascia and elastic connective tissue. When the contractile element shortens, it loads the fascia with elastic mechanical energy, which, when rapidly shortened, creates an explosive shortening action to generate movement.
When using the DE method with one piece of equipment for metabolic conditioning, the goal is to perform a move at an explosive or fast pace until either becoming out of breath or feeling the sensation of burning in the involved muscles, both of which are important markers of a metabolic overload.
Effective Equipment for Developing Mobility, Core Strength, and Metabolic Conditioning
One inside tip that many fitness professionals know is that it's not the actual equipment you use, but how you apply it that leads to physical changes. Yes, different types of exercise equipment place different stresses on the body, resulting in slightly different adaptations. And, yes, to some degree weight is weight: A medicine ball that weighs 10 pounds is the same weight as two 5-pound dumbbells. However, the movements you do during an exercise plus the way you apply the other variables of program design, such as sets and rest intervals, actually determine the changes that will happen to your body. Staying with the example of the medicine ball and two dumbbells, even though they weigh the same amount, the way they are used in a workout will result in completely different outcomes. A medicine ball is held in both hands while the dumbbells allow each arm to move independently, imposing a number of stresses on the various systems of the body.
The equipment selected for the workouts in this book (table 2.2) was chosen specifically because they are capable of imposing the appropriate demands for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning as well as being very affordable and easy to use in a home setting where space may be limited. In addition, the equipment selected can be found in most commercial health clubs or fitness facilities. Learning to use one piece of equipment for an effective workout gives you options for when you want the convenience of exercising at home or when both space and equipment are in short supply at the gym. When you make it to the gym only to see that all of the equipment is being used and people are waiting in line to take their turn, you can smile knowing that you'll still get a great workout. All you need to do is grab a single piece of equipment, secure a little space, and have at it. You'll be sweating and working toward your goals in no time!
Movement is exercise and exercise is movement. Knowing how to move with the pieces of equipment listed above, along with knowing how to organize the variables of an exercise program, can help ensure that you are doing workouts that will produce the results you want. All of the top fitness instructors know that exercise is both a science and an art: The science can provide insights on how the human body will adapt to specific types of overload, but the art comes from finding the best types of exercise that feel right for your particular needs. One piece of equipment, like a kettlebell, can be used for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning based on how the variables of exercise program design are applied. The next chapters show you dozens of exercises to help you get the results you want, simply and effectively.
Learn to work out smarter
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it.
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it. But short of that, how much do you really know about exercise and how it affects your body? You may have a number of questions: What is exercise? Why is it so important? How do different types of exercise create changes in the body? What types of exercise should I be doing? How can I identify the best type for my needs? How often should I be exercising and how hard? Where is the best place to achieve the recommended amount of exercise? Do I need to pay for a costly health club or buy lots of expensive exercise equipment that I'm not going to know how to use?
As someone who has been a personal trainer for 20 years and in the business of educating other personal trainers for most of the past 15, including being a media spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, these questions come up all the time from people I meet in health clubs and from fitness reporters working on stories for consumer magazines. Yes, it can be difficult to sort through all the information to find accurate, reliable, evidence-based information; all too often marketers promote a new exercise fad or gimmick without explaining how it works to change your body. If you take the time to learn why exercise is important, the basic science of how various types of exercise apply different kinds of stimuli to your body, and, most importantly, which types you should be doing to help improve your health and achieve the specific results you want, then you will have the tools you need in order to make exercise an integral part of your life.
Here's a startling reality: Each and every single individual will have a different response to exercise. No one who makes a living as a personal trainer, strength coach, group fitness instructor, or health coach can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that exercise will deliver specific results. If anyone ever promises or guarantees that you can get a specific outcome from following their workout program, then your first exercise is to run away, because it is virtually impossible to guarantee specific results. The results you experience from any exercise program will vary based on the types of exercise that you do as well as a number of other lifestyle habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and overall stress levels.
The only thing that is known about exercise and the human body is that regular exercise can promote good health and significantly lower the risk of developing a number of chronic health conditions, while lack of regular exercise and a sedentary lifestyle can reduce life expectancy. Aging is unavoidable, and the normal biological aging process affects all systems in the human body. Evidence suggests that adults with a sedentary lifestyle can expect to experience a more rapid degradation of bodily functions and face a greater risk of premature death than those who make exercise a regular habit (Candow et al. 2011; Taylor and Johnson 2008). If you want to maintain good health and add years to your life while giving you the ability to enjoy all of the things that you love to do, then it is necessary to learn how to make exercise a regular habit.
Find your fountain of youth
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement.
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially of moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).
From plastic surgery to Botox injections to anti-aging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of anabolic steroids, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative). The good news is that a healthy lifestyle that includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training can help slow down the aging process and be the proverbial fountain of youth. And here's a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, invest your time in moderate to vigorous exercise to minimize those effects of aging. High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.
What's Age Got to Do With It?
We are all familiar with chronological age, which starts the moment we are born and is measured in years. Biological age refers to the condition of tissues and physiological systems; healthy lifestyle habits can help reduce our biological age, meaning that even though an individual could have a chronological age of 65, her biological age could only be 45. Functional age is a combination of one's functional work capacity and physical ability, and in many cases can be years younger than the actual chronological age (Taylor and Johnson 2008). We all know those individuals whose energy, enthusiasm, physical ability, and overall zest for life are years younger than their actual age. Chances are that those people are probably very active. Being active is the true fountain of youth. Being fit means being healthy and having the ability to perform physical tasks, not having a particular appearance or shape. The true sense of being fit is having the energy and ability to enjoy your favorite activities throughout your entire lifespan.
Exercise Throughout the Aging Process
Following an exercise program that includes progressively challenging workouts for both strength (the core strength programs in this book) and power (the metabolic conditioning programs) can help minimize the normal physiological effects of the biological aging process and improve your quality of life.
To provide you with a little extra motivation for starting and adhering to a long-term exercise program, table 7.2 gives an overview of the benefits of exercise during each decade of the adult lifespan.
Note: Cancer and other chronic conditions were specifically omitted from table 7.2 because they can strike at almost any stage of life. While there is no cure for cancer, establishing healthy behaviors and avoiding or limiting certain activities such as smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, and remaining sedentary for extended periods of time can certainly lower the risk of developing it and other conditions. There is no sense wasting any energy worrying about cancer; do your best to be as active as possible and make healthy choices in an attempt to reduce your risk.
Certain Exercise Programs Can Slow Down the Biological Aging Process (Really!)
Being older does not mean you can't do high-intensity exercises. Older adults can and should participate in higher-intensity exercise as long as there are no medical concerns and they follow an appropriate progression of intensity. Strength training can improve the force output of muscles, independent of age and gender, especially when there is a sufficient intensity of exercise (Hakkinen 2011).
Higher-intensity exercises like those done in metabolic conditioning and core strength training programs can promote the production of anabolic hormones that provide important anti-aging benefits.
Exercise not only creates better-functioning muscles but also a brain capable of maintaining its optimal performance throughout the aging process (Chaddock, Voss, and Kramer 2012). Research on the effects of resistance training on older adults and cognitive function has shown that resistance training has a positive effect on cognition, information processing, attention, memory formation, and executive function (Chang et. al 2012). So, as you get older, be sure to include high-intensity exercises and strength training as part of your overall training plan.
What the Science Says: What an Old Car Can Teach You About Your Body
Rebuilding and restoring an old car to like-new condition often requires replacing many worn-out parts and repainting the exterior. Even though medical technology has madeimportant advances in the area of prosthetics, due to cost and the painful recovery process, simply replacing old parts isn't an option as we age. However, gradually progressing the intensity of an exercise program to where you are strength training to a point of momentary fatigue or creating significant metabolic overload can help add new muscle, which can significantly improve your appearance in much the same way that a good paint job can help an older car look like new. In their research on how older males respond to resistance training, Izquierdo and colleagues observed that the skeletal muscle of older adults seems to retain the capacity to experience hypertrophy when the volume, intensity, and duration of the training period are sufficient (Izquierdo et al. 2001).
Just as properly maintaining the engine, waxing the paint, and storing it out of the sun can greatly enhance the longevity of an automobile, exercise programs that stimulate the production of the hormones T, GH, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) can improve our appearance and extend our functional life span as we age.
How exercise changes your body
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body.
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body. Mobility training can improve movement efficiency and strengthen the fascia and elastic connective tissues, helping them to be more resistant to injury. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appearance, strength training and metabolic conditioning can be used to improve the ability to convert food to energy, change hormone levels, and increase muscle force output, all of which are critical for performing your favorite pastimes or essential activities of daily living. Using exercise to achieve these and other desired results relies on a number of different variables, including sex, age, resistance-training experience, genetics, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and emotional and physical stressors. Each of these influences how your physiological systems adapt to exercise in general or resistance training specifically; for example, too much stress at work or a lack of sleep may significantly reduce your ability to grow muscle.
An exercise is a movement, and movement is a skill that requires practice to master. It may be tempting to change exercises frequently; however, maintaining some consistency with the same exercises over a period of six to eight weeks can help improve coordination and movement skill as well as muscular strength. Efficient movement patterns require synergistic coordination between all systems of the human body. Exercise programs that emphasize using movement patterns use a number of muscles at the same time, which can make the workouts more metabolically challenging, helping you burn more calories, which is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight.
To create and sustain the energy for dynamic, multidirectional movement patterns, the different components of the body need to develop the ability to function as a single system controlled by the CNS. Compared to the limitations of traditional muscle isolation exercises, using only one piece of equipment to challenge the body to move in all directions can result in a more creative, engaging, effective, and fun workout experience. Multijoint movements such as squats to shoulder presses with dumbbells, lifts with a medicine ball, or kettlebell swings are all examples of exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue and, in turn, challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled, which can provide a number of health-promoting benefits.
Organizing workout variables
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect.
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect. Workout programs based on learning and performing movement patterns can provide you with more options for how to exercise, which can ultimately lead to greater results. Whether it's exercise to improve muscular strength, enhance metabolic efficiency, or increase mobility, exercise programs contain the same basic elements known as the variables of exercise program design, which are exercise selection, intensity, repetitions, tempo, rest interval, sets, and frequency of exercise sessions. How these variables are organized and applied will determine the results from an exercise program.
Designing a Workout Is Like Cooking a Meal
Simply throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan and hoping that it turns into an appetizing and edible meal is not an effective way to cook. Likewise, hopping from one piece of equipment to the next, bouncing around between different fitness trends or doing exercises only for specific muscles are not effective methods of exercising. The first step of cooking is determining exactly what to make. In a similar fashion, the first step in designing an exercise program is determining the specific outcome you are trying to achieve. In cooking, the dish you want to prepare will determine the ingredients, the utensils used for preparing the food, and finally the best pots and pans for doing the actual cooking. Your fitness goal will determine the best equipment to use, the specific exercises you do, and how often you do them.
To prepare a successful meal it is important to know how to organize the ingredients, how much of each to use, the order in which they're added, and finally the optimal temperature and length of time in the oven. Using too much or too little of a specific ingredient, the wrong temperature, or wrong length of time can drastically change the outcome of a dish. Exercise is very much the same way; performing exercises that are not relevant to your goal, using too much or too little resistance, or doing too many or too few repetitions could drastically change the outcome of the workout. The variables of exercise program design (table 2.1) can be applied based on what you want to achieve from an exercise program. Add muscle? Lose excess body weight? Enhance athletic performance? Improve health? The variables can be adjusted to provide the appropriate mechanical or metabolic overload in a manner that creates a safe yet effective stimulus to meet your objectives.
Finding the Motivation to Exercise
Lack of time is one of the most popular excuses for avoiding exercise. Another reason for skipping exercise is that there is almost too much information available, making it hard to identify the types that you should be doing for the results you want. These two reasons alone demonstrate why it's easy to find other things to do instead of exercise; you'd rather spend your limited free time doing something you enjoy instead of something that feels awkward or uncomfortable. Most importantly, you probably just want to know how to exercise in a manner that will provide the greatest amount of benefits without an extensive time or cost commitment.
First, exercise is something you do in your free time, so it should be an activity that you at least don't mind doing. (Enjoy doing would be more preferable, but it's necessary to set realistic expectations.) To identify the types of exercise that can bring you the greatest amount of enjoyment, think back to the types of activities that brought you the most pleasure. Understanding just a little about muscle fiber physiology can help you identify the types of exercise activities that will feel right for your body. If you've always gravitated toward endurance sports such as running, cycling, or swimming for long distances, you may have more type I muscle fibers, which are extremely efficient at aerobic metabolism. However, if you've found that you enjoy field sports such as soccer or football, court sports such as tennis or basketball because of the fast-paced running and rapid changes of direction, sprinting, or dancing, you probably have higher levels of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for creating the powerful muscle contractions needed for those activities.
If you have been struggling to follow an exercise program consistently for the long term, maybe your focus is in the wrong area. Rather than placing all of the emphasis on the outcome of exercise, why not adjust your thinking and focus on the process? You are better off choosing activities that are easily accessible and that you enjoy doing as opposed to workout programs that you think you should do even if you don't look forward to them and especially if it is at an out-of-the-way location that can be difficult to get to.
Principles of Exercise Program Design
Understanding how the different systems function as discrete components can help you identify the best methods for synergistically coordinating their actions to produce the desired results from an exercise program. Participation in a regular exercise program is essential for achieving and maintaining good health, which can help you avoid having to pay expensive medical costs as you age. Exercise provides numerous health benefits, including increased bone mineral density, improved blood lipid profiles, elevated mitochondrial density, increased aerobic capacity, lowered blood pressure, and improved glucose tolerance. All these benefits help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases while providing various cognitive benefits, such as improving memory recall, making exercise as important for your brain as it is for your muscles. Exercise should engage all of the physiological systems reviewed in chapter 1, with a specific emphasis on enhancing mobility, strengthening the core, and improving metabolic efficiency. Identifying the best exercise program for your particular needs first requires a basic understanding of how exercise changes the human body.
The SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) states that the type of exercise stimulus placed on the body will determine the expected physiological outcome. Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus. The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular, and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively more challenging exercise program.
According to the SAID principle, an individual who performs only muscle-isolation exercises can expect to strengthen the specific muscles used during exercise but may not achieve the intermuscular coordination necessary to improve skills such as coordination and dynamic balance.
Applying the Variables to Design Your Workouts
One thing most top fitness professionals agree on is that an effective exercise program doesn't need to be overly complicated. It's not necessary to do overly complicated moves or change the exercises you do every workout; only five basic movement patterns determine the exercises you should do during the workout. Simply changing one or two of the variables, like the amount of intensity, number of repetitions, or length of the rest interval, can significantly change the demands imposed on your body. As you get started with your exercise program, you should be aware that research can provide some general insights about how fitness may affect your body, but there are many factors besides the variables of exercise program design, like nutrition, sleep patterns, and overall stress levels, that will determine your specific response.
Inducing metabolic and mechanical stress in the gym does help promote muscle growth; however, what you do in the gym is only one component of the equation for achieving results. T and GH are produced during the REM cycles of sleep, meaning that after a hard workout, a full night's rest is essential for promoting muscle growth and achieving optimal recovery. Insufficient rest does not allow for optimal muscle protein synthesis to repair tissues damaged during exercise, nor does it allow for adequate replenishment of the muscle glycogen used to produce ATP and could lead to an accumulation of energy-producing hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol, which can reduce the ability to generate new muscle tissue. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, lingering illness, and cessation of gains from exercise are all symptoms of overtraining, which can significantly affect your ability to achieve your fitness goals.
The postworkout recovery period is often the most overlooked variable of any exercise program. Whether it is mechanical or metabolic stress that provides the stimulus for muscle growth is not as important as allowing the time for T, GH, and IGF-1 to promote muscle protein synthesis after the exercise is over. Exercise is when a physical stimulus is applied to a muscle and is only part of the equation responsible for muscle growth. Adequate recovery is important to allow the trained muscles sufficient time to replace muscle glycogen and the physiological process to repair and rebuild new tissue (Bishop, Jones, and Woods 2008; Hausswirth and Mujika 2013). The frequency of your workouts will depend on a number of factors, including your specific training goals, overall exercise experience, level of physical conditioning, and the amount of time you have available. After a higher-intensity core strength or metabolic conditioning workout, an appropriate recovery period is approximately 48 to 72 hours before training at the same intensity. Lower-intensity mobility workouts can be performed the next day to either expend the energy for weight management goals or as a form of active recovery.
Structuring Your Workouts
When it comes to workouts to enhance core strength or improve metabolic conditioning, repeatedly performing the same exercises with the same amount of weight could limit the amount of mechanical or metabolic stress placed on the involved tissue, which then minimizes the training effect. It's important to change workouts on a regular and consistent basis. Changing too often will not allow your body time to adapt, and following the same program for too long could result in a plateau. (The specifics of how and when to adjust your workouts will be covered in chapter 6.) To produce the desired results, the acute variables of exercise program design must be applied in a structured, systematic manner that either imposes a mechanical stress on the muscle, fascia, and elastic connective tissue or creates a sizable metabolic demand.
Increasing exercise intensity can be done a couple of ways: performing a strength exercise to a point of momentary muscle fatigue or increasing the work rate by moving at a faster speed to challenge the metabolic energy pathways that fuel the muscles. Valdimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer identify three specific types of strength training, two of which can be applied to improve core strength or enhance metabolic conditioning with only one piece of exercise equipment. The three methods are the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repeated effort method. The maximal effort method, as the name suggests, is for enhancing maximal muscle force output using extremely heavy amounts of weight, which, while a worthy outcome, is not relevant to workouts that can easily be done with one piece of equipment at home or a fitness facility. The other two methods, the repeated effort and dynamic effort methods, can be adapted to use only one piece of equipment, making them efficient and effective solutions regardless of where you work out (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
Repeated Effort Method
The repeated effort (RE) method of strength training requires the use of a nonmaximal load performed until momentary muscle failure (the inability to perform another repetition) to ensure proper stimulation of the motor units and depletion of energy stores. Applying the RE method of exercise requires performing the final few repetitions per set in a fatigued state in order to stimulate all of the involved muscle fibers. The RE method is an effective means to stimulate the adaptation of increasing lean muscle mass. This method uses slower motor units for the initial repetitions; as these motor units begin to fatigue, the muscle will recruit type II high threshold motor units to sustain the necessary force production.
One limitation to the RE method is that as the type II motor units are activated, they fatigue quickly, leading to the end of the set. If the load is not sufficient or the set is not performed to fatigue, it will not stimulate the fast motor units most responsible for changing muscle definition.
One significant benefit of this method is that as anaerobic type II fibers are recruited, they create energy through anaerobic glycolysis, which produces metabolic waste such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, changing blood acidity. Research suggests that acidosis, the change in blood acidity due to an accumulation of blood lactate, is associated with increases in GH and IGF-1 to promote tissue repair during the recovery phase (Schoenfeld 2010).
The RE method provides two key advantages when using just one piece of exercise equipment: It has a greater impact on the metabolic function of the muscle, provoking greater levels of growth, as well as involving a significant number of motor units, leading to strength gains.
Dynamic Effort Method
The dynamic effort (DE) method of strength training uses nonmaximal loads with the highest attainable velocity of movement to apply the muscle motor unit stimulation. Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer suggest that the DE method is an effective means of increasing the rate of force development and developing explosive strength, but when using a submaximal load for bursts of high-intensity movement speed, it can be an effective means of metabolic conditioning as well (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
The DE method activates the contractile element of muscle to create an isometric contraction and place tension on the bodywide network of fascia and elastic connective tissue. When the contractile element shortens, it loads the fascia with elastic mechanical energy, which, when rapidly shortened, creates an explosive shortening action to generate movement.
When using the DE method with one piece of equipment for metabolic conditioning, the goal is to perform a move at an explosive or fast pace until either becoming out of breath or feeling the sensation of burning in the involved muscles, both of which are important markers of a metabolic overload.
Effective Equipment for Developing Mobility, Core Strength, and Metabolic Conditioning
One inside tip that many fitness professionals know is that it's not the actual equipment you use, but how you apply it that leads to physical changes. Yes, different types of exercise equipment place different stresses on the body, resulting in slightly different adaptations. And, yes, to some degree weight is weight: A medicine ball that weighs 10 pounds is the same weight as two 5-pound dumbbells. However, the movements you do during an exercise plus the way you apply the other variables of program design, such as sets and rest intervals, actually determine the changes that will happen to your body. Staying with the example of the medicine ball and two dumbbells, even though they weigh the same amount, the way they are used in a workout will result in completely different outcomes. A medicine ball is held in both hands while the dumbbells allow each arm to move independently, imposing a number of stresses on the various systems of the body.
The equipment selected for the workouts in this book (table 2.2) was chosen specifically because they are capable of imposing the appropriate demands for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning as well as being very affordable and easy to use in a home setting where space may be limited. In addition, the equipment selected can be found in most commercial health clubs or fitness facilities. Learning to use one piece of equipment for an effective workout gives you options for when you want the convenience of exercising at home or when both space and equipment are in short supply at the gym. When you make it to the gym only to see that all of the equipment is being used and people are waiting in line to take their turn, you can smile knowing that you'll still get a great workout. All you need to do is grab a single piece of equipment, secure a little space, and have at it. You'll be sweating and working toward your goals in no time!
Movement is exercise and exercise is movement. Knowing how to move with the pieces of equipment listed above, along with knowing how to organize the variables of an exercise program, can help ensure that you are doing workouts that will produce the results you want. All of the top fitness instructors know that exercise is both a science and an art: The science can provide insights on how the human body will adapt to specific types of overload, but the art comes from finding the best types of exercise that feel right for your particular needs. One piece of equipment, like a kettlebell, can be used for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning based on how the variables of exercise program design are applied. The next chapters show you dozens of exercises to help you get the results you want, simply and effectively.
Learn to work out smarter
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it.
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it. But short of that, how much do you really know about exercise and how it affects your body? You may have a number of questions: What is exercise? Why is it so important? How do different types of exercise create changes in the body? What types of exercise should I be doing? How can I identify the best type for my needs? How often should I be exercising and how hard? Where is the best place to achieve the recommended amount of exercise? Do I need to pay for a costly health club or buy lots of expensive exercise equipment that I'm not going to know how to use?
As someone who has been a personal trainer for 20 years and in the business of educating other personal trainers for most of the past 15, including being a media spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, these questions come up all the time from people I meet in health clubs and from fitness reporters working on stories for consumer magazines. Yes, it can be difficult to sort through all the information to find accurate, reliable, evidence-based information; all too often marketers promote a new exercise fad or gimmick without explaining how it works to change your body. If you take the time to learn why exercise is important, the basic science of how various types of exercise apply different kinds of stimuli to your body, and, most importantly, which types you should be doing to help improve your health and achieve the specific results you want, then you will have the tools you need in order to make exercise an integral part of your life.
Here's a startling reality: Each and every single individual will have a different response to exercise. No one who makes a living as a personal trainer, strength coach, group fitness instructor, or health coach can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that exercise will deliver specific results. If anyone ever promises or guarantees that you can get a specific outcome from following their workout program, then your first exercise is to run away, because it is virtually impossible to guarantee specific results. The results you experience from any exercise program will vary based on the types of exercise that you do as well as a number of other lifestyle habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and overall stress levels.
The only thing that is known about exercise and the human body is that regular exercise can promote good health and significantly lower the risk of developing a number of chronic health conditions, while lack of regular exercise and a sedentary lifestyle can reduce life expectancy. Aging is unavoidable, and the normal biological aging process affects all systems in the human body. Evidence suggests that adults with a sedentary lifestyle can expect to experience a more rapid degradation of bodily functions and face a greater risk of premature death than those who make exercise a regular habit (Candow et al. 2011; Taylor and Johnson 2008). If you want to maintain good health and add years to your life while giving you the ability to enjoy all of the things that you love to do, then it is necessary to learn how to make exercise a regular habit.
Find your fountain of youth
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement.
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially of moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).
From plastic surgery to Botox injections to anti-aging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of anabolic steroids, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative). The good news is that a healthy lifestyle that includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training can help slow down the aging process and be the proverbial fountain of youth. And here's a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, invest your time in moderate to vigorous exercise to minimize those effects of aging. High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.
What's Age Got to Do With It?
We are all familiar with chronological age, which starts the moment we are born and is measured in years. Biological age refers to the condition of tissues and physiological systems; healthy lifestyle habits can help reduce our biological age, meaning that even though an individual could have a chronological age of 65, her biological age could only be 45. Functional age is a combination of one's functional work capacity and physical ability, and in many cases can be years younger than the actual chronological age (Taylor and Johnson 2008). We all know those individuals whose energy, enthusiasm, physical ability, and overall zest for life are years younger than their actual age. Chances are that those people are probably very active. Being active is the true fountain of youth. Being fit means being healthy and having the ability to perform physical tasks, not having a particular appearance or shape. The true sense of being fit is having the energy and ability to enjoy your favorite activities throughout your entire lifespan.
Exercise Throughout the Aging Process
Following an exercise program that includes progressively challenging workouts for both strength (the core strength programs in this book) and power (the metabolic conditioning programs) can help minimize the normal physiological effects of the biological aging process and improve your quality of life.
To provide you with a little extra motivation for starting and adhering to a long-term exercise program, table 7.2 gives an overview of the benefits of exercise during each decade of the adult lifespan.
Note: Cancer and other chronic conditions were specifically omitted from table 7.2 because they can strike at almost any stage of life. While there is no cure for cancer, establishing healthy behaviors and avoiding or limiting certain activities such as smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, and remaining sedentary for extended periods of time can certainly lower the risk of developing it and other conditions. There is no sense wasting any energy worrying about cancer; do your best to be as active as possible and make healthy choices in an attempt to reduce your risk.
Certain Exercise Programs Can Slow Down the Biological Aging Process (Really!)
Being older does not mean you can't do high-intensity exercises. Older adults can and should participate in higher-intensity exercise as long as there are no medical concerns and they follow an appropriate progression of intensity. Strength training can improve the force output of muscles, independent of age and gender, especially when there is a sufficient intensity of exercise (Hakkinen 2011).
Higher-intensity exercises like those done in metabolic conditioning and core strength training programs can promote the production of anabolic hormones that provide important anti-aging benefits.
Exercise not only creates better-functioning muscles but also a brain capable of maintaining its optimal performance throughout the aging process (Chaddock, Voss, and Kramer 2012). Research on the effects of resistance training on older adults and cognitive function has shown that resistance training has a positive effect on cognition, information processing, attention, memory formation, and executive function (Chang et. al 2012). So, as you get older, be sure to include high-intensity exercises and strength training as part of your overall training plan.
What the Science Says: What an Old Car Can Teach You About Your Body
Rebuilding and restoring an old car to like-new condition often requires replacing many worn-out parts and repainting the exterior. Even though medical technology has madeimportant advances in the area of prosthetics, due to cost and the painful recovery process, simply replacing old parts isn't an option as we age. However, gradually progressing the intensity of an exercise program to where you are strength training to a point of momentary fatigue or creating significant metabolic overload can help add new muscle, which can significantly improve your appearance in much the same way that a good paint job can help an older car look like new. In their research on how older males respond to resistance training, Izquierdo and colleagues observed that the skeletal muscle of older adults seems to retain the capacity to experience hypertrophy when the volume, intensity, and duration of the training period are sufficient (Izquierdo et al. 2001).
Just as properly maintaining the engine, waxing the paint, and storing it out of the sun can greatly enhance the longevity of an automobile, exercise programs that stimulate the production of the hormones T, GH, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) can improve our appearance and extend our functional life span as we age.
How exercise changes your body
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body.
Exercise is much more than working up a sweat; when done properly it can change the function and structure of the human body. Mobility training can improve movement efficiency and strengthen the fascia and elastic connective tissues, helping them to be more resistant to injury. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appearance, strength training and metabolic conditioning can be used to improve the ability to convert food to energy, change hormone levels, and increase muscle force output, all of which are critical for performing your favorite pastimes or essential activities of daily living. Using exercise to achieve these and other desired results relies on a number of different variables, including sex, age, resistance-training experience, genetics, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and emotional and physical stressors. Each of these influences how your physiological systems adapt to exercise in general or resistance training specifically; for example, too much stress at work or a lack of sleep may significantly reduce your ability to grow muscle.
An exercise is a movement, and movement is a skill that requires practice to master. It may be tempting to change exercises frequently; however, maintaining some consistency with the same exercises over a period of six to eight weeks can help improve coordination and movement skill as well as muscular strength. Efficient movement patterns require synergistic coordination between all systems of the human body. Exercise programs that emphasize using movement patterns use a number of muscles at the same time, which can make the workouts more metabolically challenging, helping you burn more calories, which is essential for maintaining a healthy body weight.
To create and sustain the energy for dynamic, multidirectional movement patterns, the different components of the body need to develop the ability to function as a single system controlled by the CNS. Compared to the limitations of traditional muscle isolation exercises, using only one piece of equipment to challenge the body to move in all directions can result in a more creative, engaging, effective, and fun workout experience. Multijoint movements such as squats to shoulder presses with dumbbells, lifts with a medicine ball, or kettlebell swings are all examples of exercises that involve large amounts of muscle tissue and, in turn, challenge the heart to pump blood to keep the muscles fueled, which can provide a number of health-promoting benefits.
Organizing workout variables
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect.
The human body is extremely efficient at conserving energy. The more often you perform a certain exercise with the same amount of weight or run the same distance, the more efficient your body will become at performing that work, and you could experience a reduced training effect. Workout programs based on learning and performing movement patterns can provide you with more options for how to exercise, which can ultimately lead to greater results. Whether it's exercise to improve muscular strength, enhance metabolic efficiency, or increase mobility, exercise programs contain the same basic elements known as the variables of exercise program design, which are exercise selection, intensity, repetitions, tempo, rest interval, sets, and frequency of exercise sessions. How these variables are organized and applied will determine the results from an exercise program.
Designing a Workout Is Like Cooking a Meal
Simply throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan and hoping that it turns into an appetizing and edible meal is not an effective way to cook. Likewise, hopping from one piece of equipment to the next, bouncing around between different fitness trends or doing exercises only for specific muscles are not effective methods of exercising. The first step of cooking is determining exactly what to make. In a similar fashion, the first step in designing an exercise program is determining the specific outcome you are trying to achieve. In cooking, the dish you want to prepare will determine the ingredients, the utensils used for preparing the food, and finally the best pots and pans for doing the actual cooking. Your fitness goal will determine the best equipment to use, the specific exercises you do, and how often you do them.
To prepare a successful meal it is important to know how to organize the ingredients, how much of each to use, the order in which they're added, and finally the optimal temperature and length of time in the oven. Using too much or too little of a specific ingredient, the wrong temperature, or wrong length of time can drastically change the outcome of a dish. Exercise is very much the same way; performing exercises that are not relevant to your goal, using too much or too little resistance, or doing too many or too few repetitions could drastically change the outcome of the workout. The variables of exercise program design (table 2.1) can be applied based on what you want to achieve from an exercise program. Add muscle? Lose excess body weight? Enhance athletic performance? Improve health? The variables can be adjusted to provide the appropriate mechanical or metabolic overload in a manner that creates a safe yet effective stimulus to meet your objectives.
Finding the Motivation to Exercise
Lack of time is one of the most popular excuses for avoiding exercise. Another reason for skipping exercise is that there is almost too much information available, making it hard to identify the types that you should be doing for the results you want. These two reasons alone demonstrate why it's easy to find other things to do instead of exercise; you'd rather spend your limited free time doing something you enjoy instead of something that feels awkward or uncomfortable. Most importantly, you probably just want to know how to exercise in a manner that will provide the greatest amount of benefits without an extensive time or cost commitment.
First, exercise is something you do in your free time, so it should be an activity that you at least don't mind doing. (Enjoy doing would be more preferable, but it's necessary to set realistic expectations.) To identify the types of exercise that can bring you the greatest amount of enjoyment, think back to the types of activities that brought you the most pleasure. Understanding just a little about muscle fiber physiology can help you identify the types of exercise activities that will feel right for your body. If you've always gravitated toward endurance sports such as running, cycling, or swimming for long distances, you may have more type I muscle fibers, which are extremely efficient at aerobic metabolism. However, if you've found that you enjoy field sports such as soccer or football, court sports such as tennis or basketball because of the fast-paced running and rapid changes of direction, sprinting, or dancing, you probably have higher levels of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for creating the powerful muscle contractions needed for those activities.
If you have been struggling to follow an exercise program consistently for the long term, maybe your focus is in the wrong area. Rather than placing all of the emphasis on the outcome of exercise, why not adjust your thinking and focus on the process? You are better off choosing activities that are easily accessible and that you enjoy doing as opposed to workout programs that you think you should do even if you don't look forward to them and especially if it is at an out-of-the-way location that can be difficult to get to.
Principles of Exercise Program Design
Understanding how the different systems function as discrete components can help you identify the best methods for synergistically coordinating their actions to produce the desired results from an exercise program. Participation in a regular exercise program is essential for achieving and maintaining good health, which can help you avoid having to pay expensive medical costs as you age. Exercise provides numerous health benefits, including increased bone mineral density, improved blood lipid profiles, elevated mitochondrial density, increased aerobic capacity, lowered blood pressure, and improved glucose tolerance. All these benefits help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases while providing various cognitive benefits, such as improving memory recall, making exercise as important for your brain as it is for your muscles. Exercise should engage all of the physiological systems reviewed in chapter 1, with a specific emphasis on enhancing mobility, strengthening the core, and improving metabolic efficiency. Identifying the best exercise program for your particular needs first requires a basic understanding of how exercise changes the human body.
The SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) states that the type of exercise stimulus placed on the body will determine the expected physiological outcome. Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus. The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular, and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively more challenging exercise program.
According to the SAID principle, an individual who performs only muscle-isolation exercises can expect to strengthen the specific muscles used during exercise but may not achieve the intermuscular coordination necessary to improve skills such as coordination and dynamic balance.
Applying the Variables to Design Your Workouts
One thing most top fitness professionals agree on is that an effective exercise program doesn't need to be overly complicated. It's not necessary to do overly complicated moves or change the exercises you do every workout; only five basic movement patterns determine the exercises you should do during the workout. Simply changing one or two of the variables, like the amount of intensity, number of repetitions, or length of the rest interval, can significantly change the demands imposed on your body. As you get started with your exercise program, you should be aware that research can provide some general insights about how fitness may affect your body, but there are many factors besides the variables of exercise program design, like nutrition, sleep patterns, and overall stress levels, that will determine your specific response.
Inducing metabolic and mechanical stress in the gym does help promote muscle growth; however, what you do in the gym is only one component of the equation for achieving results. T and GH are produced during the REM cycles of sleep, meaning that after a hard workout, a full night's rest is essential for promoting muscle growth and achieving optimal recovery. Insufficient rest does not allow for optimal muscle protein synthesis to repair tissues damaged during exercise, nor does it allow for adequate replenishment of the muscle glycogen used to produce ATP and could lead to an accumulation of energy-producing hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol, which can reduce the ability to generate new muscle tissue. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, lingering illness, and cessation of gains from exercise are all symptoms of overtraining, which can significantly affect your ability to achieve your fitness goals.
The postworkout recovery period is often the most overlooked variable of any exercise program. Whether it is mechanical or metabolic stress that provides the stimulus for muscle growth is not as important as allowing the time for T, GH, and IGF-1 to promote muscle protein synthesis after the exercise is over. Exercise is when a physical stimulus is applied to a muscle and is only part of the equation responsible for muscle growth. Adequate recovery is important to allow the trained muscles sufficient time to replace muscle glycogen and the physiological process to repair and rebuild new tissue (Bishop, Jones, and Woods 2008; Hausswirth and Mujika 2013). The frequency of your workouts will depend on a number of factors, including your specific training goals, overall exercise experience, level of physical conditioning, and the amount of time you have available. After a higher-intensity core strength or metabolic conditioning workout, an appropriate recovery period is approximately 48 to 72 hours before training at the same intensity. Lower-intensity mobility workouts can be performed the next day to either expend the energy for weight management goals or as a form of active recovery.
Structuring Your Workouts
When it comes to workouts to enhance core strength or improve metabolic conditioning, repeatedly performing the same exercises with the same amount of weight could limit the amount of mechanical or metabolic stress placed on the involved tissue, which then minimizes the training effect. It's important to change workouts on a regular and consistent basis. Changing too often will not allow your body time to adapt, and following the same program for too long could result in a plateau. (The specifics of how and when to adjust your workouts will be covered in chapter 6.) To produce the desired results, the acute variables of exercise program design must be applied in a structured, systematic manner that either imposes a mechanical stress on the muscle, fascia, and elastic connective tissue or creates a sizable metabolic demand.
Increasing exercise intensity can be done a couple of ways: performing a strength exercise to a point of momentary muscle fatigue or increasing the work rate by moving at a faster speed to challenge the metabolic energy pathways that fuel the muscles. Valdimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer identify three specific types of strength training, two of which can be applied to improve core strength or enhance metabolic conditioning with only one piece of exercise equipment. The three methods are the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, and the repeated effort method. The maximal effort method, as the name suggests, is for enhancing maximal muscle force output using extremely heavy amounts of weight, which, while a worthy outcome, is not relevant to workouts that can easily be done with one piece of equipment at home or a fitness facility. The other two methods, the repeated effort and dynamic effort methods, can be adapted to use only one piece of equipment, making them efficient and effective solutions regardless of where you work out (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
Repeated Effort Method
The repeated effort (RE) method of strength training requires the use of a nonmaximal load performed until momentary muscle failure (the inability to perform another repetition) to ensure proper stimulation of the motor units and depletion of energy stores. Applying the RE method of exercise requires performing the final few repetitions per set in a fatigued state in order to stimulate all of the involved muscle fibers. The RE method is an effective means to stimulate the adaptation of increasing lean muscle mass. This method uses slower motor units for the initial repetitions; as these motor units begin to fatigue, the muscle will recruit type II high threshold motor units to sustain the necessary force production.
One limitation to the RE method is that as the type II motor units are activated, they fatigue quickly, leading to the end of the set. If the load is not sufficient or the set is not performed to fatigue, it will not stimulate the fast motor units most responsible for changing muscle definition.
One significant benefit of this method is that as anaerobic type II fibers are recruited, they create energy through anaerobic glycolysis, which produces metabolic waste such as hydrogen ions and lactic acid, changing blood acidity. Research suggests that acidosis, the change in blood acidity due to an accumulation of blood lactate, is associated with increases in GH and IGF-1 to promote tissue repair during the recovery phase (Schoenfeld 2010).
The RE method provides two key advantages when using just one piece of exercise equipment: It has a greater impact on the metabolic function of the muscle, provoking greater levels of growth, as well as involving a significant number of motor units, leading to strength gains.
Dynamic Effort Method
The dynamic effort (DE) method of strength training uses nonmaximal loads with the highest attainable velocity of movement to apply the muscle motor unit stimulation. Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kraemer suggest that the DE method is an effective means of increasing the rate of force development and developing explosive strength, but when using a submaximal load for bursts of high-intensity movement speed, it can be an effective means of metabolic conditioning as well (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer 2006).
The DE method activates the contractile element of muscle to create an isometric contraction and place tension on the bodywide network of fascia and elastic connective tissue. When the contractile element shortens, it loads the fascia with elastic mechanical energy, which, when rapidly shortened, creates an explosive shortening action to generate movement.
When using the DE method with one piece of equipment for metabolic conditioning, the goal is to perform a move at an explosive or fast pace until either becoming out of breath or feeling the sensation of burning in the involved muscles, both of which are important markers of a metabolic overload.
Effective Equipment for Developing Mobility, Core Strength, and Metabolic Conditioning
One inside tip that many fitness professionals know is that it's not the actual equipment you use, but how you apply it that leads to physical changes. Yes, different types of exercise equipment place different stresses on the body, resulting in slightly different adaptations. And, yes, to some degree weight is weight: A medicine ball that weighs 10 pounds is the same weight as two 5-pound dumbbells. However, the movements you do during an exercise plus the way you apply the other variables of program design, such as sets and rest intervals, actually determine the changes that will happen to your body. Staying with the example of the medicine ball and two dumbbells, even though they weigh the same amount, the way they are used in a workout will result in completely different outcomes. A medicine ball is held in both hands while the dumbbells allow each arm to move independently, imposing a number of stresses on the various systems of the body.
The equipment selected for the workouts in this book (table 2.2) was chosen specifically because they are capable of imposing the appropriate demands for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning as well as being very affordable and easy to use in a home setting where space may be limited. In addition, the equipment selected can be found in most commercial health clubs or fitness facilities. Learning to use one piece of equipment for an effective workout gives you options for when you want the convenience of exercising at home or when both space and equipment are in short supply at the gym. When you make it to the gym only to see that all of the equipment is being used and people are waiting in line to take their turn, you can smile knowing that you'll still get a great workout. All you need to do is grab a single piece of equipment, secure a little space, and have at it. You'll be sweating and working toward your goals in no time!
Movement is exercise and exercise is movement. Knowing how to move with the pieces of equipment listed above, along with knowing how to organize the variables of an exercise program, can help ensure that you are doing workouts that will produce the results you want. All of the top fitness instructors know that exercise is both a science and an art: The science can provide insights on how the human body will adapt to specific types of overload, but the art comes from finding the best types of exercise that feel right for your particular needs. One piece of equipment, like a kettlebell, can be used for mobility, core strength training, or metabolic conditioning based on how the variables of exercise program design are applied. The next chapters show you dozens of exercises to help you get the results you want, simply and effectively.
Learn to work out smarter
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it.
Yes, you have heard that regular exercise is important. Yes, you know that you should probably be doing more of it. But short of that, how much do you really know about exercise and how it affects your body? You may have a number of questions: What is exercise? Why is it so important? How do different types of exercise create changes in the body? What types of exercise should I be doing? How can I identify the best type for my needs? How often should I be exercising and how hard? Where is the best place to achieve the recommended amount of exercise? Do I need to pay for a costly health club or buy lots of expensive exercise equipment that I'm not going to know how to use?
As someone who has been a personal trainer for 20 years and in the business of educating other personal trainers for most of the past 15, including being a media spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, these questions come up all the time from people I meet in health clubs and from fitness reporters working on stories for consumer magazines. Yes, it can be difficult to sort through all the information to find accurate, reliable, evidence-based information; all too often marketers promote a new exercise fad or gimmick without explaining how it works to change your body. If you take the time to learn why exercise is important, the basic science of how various types of exercise apply different kinds of stimuli to your body, and, most importantly, which types you should be doing to help improve your health and achieve the specific results you want, then you will have the tools you need in order to make exercise an integral part of your life.
Here's a startling reality: Each and every single individual will have a different response to exercise. No one who makes a living as a personal trainer, strength coach, group fitness instructor, or health coach can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that exercise will deliver specific results. If anyone ever promises or guarantees that you can get a specific outcome from following their workout program, then your first exercise is to run away, because it is virtually impossible to guarantee specific results. The results you experience from any exercise program will vary based on the types of exercise that you do as well as a number of other lifestyle habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and overall stress levels.
The only thing that is known about exercise and the human body is that regular exercise can promote good health and significantly lower the risk of developing a number of chronic health conditions, while lack of regular exercise and a sedentary lifestyle can reduce life expectancy. Aging is unavoidable, and the normal biological aging process affects all systems in the human body. Evidence suggests that adults with a sedentary lifestyle can expect to experience a more rapid degradation of bodily functions and face a greater risk of premature death than those who make exercise a regular habit (Candow et al. 2011; Taylor and Johnson 2008). If you want to maintain good health and add years to your life while giving you the ability to enjoy all of the things that you love to do, then it is necessary to learn how to make exercise a regular habit.
Find your fountain of youth
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement.
The effects of the aging process can greatly diminish the mechanical, metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that help our muscles control movement. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially of moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).
From plastic surgery to Botox injections to anti-aging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of anabolic steroids, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative). The good news is that a healthy lifestyle that includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training can help slow down the aging process and be the proverbial fountain of youth. And here's a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, invest your time in moderate to vigorous exercise to minimize those effects of aging. High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.
What's Age Got to Do With It?
We are all familiar with chronological age, which starts the moment we are born and is measured in years. Biological age refers to the condition of tissues and physiological systems; healthy lifestyle habits can help reduce our biological age, meaning that even though an individual could have a chronological age of 65, her biological age could only be 45. Functional age is a combination of one's functional work capacity and physical ability, and in many cases can be years younger than the actual chronological age (Taylor and Johnson 2008). We all know those individuals whose energy, enthusiasm, physical ability, and overall zest for life are years younger than their actual age. Chances are that those people are probably very active. Being active is the true fountain of youth. Being fit means being healthy and having the ability to perform physical tasks, not having a particular appearance or shape. The true sense of being fit is having the energy and ability to enjoy your favorite activities throughout your entire lifespan.
Exercise Throughout the Aging Process
Following an exercise program that includes progressively challenging workouts for both strength (the core strength programs in this book) and power (the metabolic conditioning programs) can help minimize the normal physiological effects of the biological aging process and improve your quality of life.
To provide you with a little extra motivation for starting and adhering to a long-term exercise program, table 7.2 gives an overview of the benefits of exercise during each decade of the adult lifespan.
Note: Cancer and other chronic conditions were specifically omitted from table 7.2 because they can strike at almost any stage of life. While there is no cure for cancer, establishing healthy behaviors and avoiding or limiting certain activities such as smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, and remaining sedentary for extended periods of time can certainly lower the risk of developing it and other conditions. There is no sense wasting any energy worrying about cancer; do your best to be as active as possible and make healthy choices in an attempt to reduce your risk.
Certain Exercise Programs Can Slow Down the Biological Aging Process (Really!)
Being older does not mean you can't do high-intensity exercises. Older adults can and should participate in higher-intensity exercise as long as there are no medical concerns and they follow an appropriate progression of intensity. Strength training can improve the force output of muscles, independent of age and gender, especially when there is a sufficient intensity of exercise (Hakkinen 2011).
Higher-intensity exercises like those done in metabolic conditioning and core strength training programs can promote the production of anabolic hormones that provide important anti-aging benefits.
Exercise not only creates better-functioning muscles but also a brain capable of maintaining its optimal performance throughout the aging process (Chaddock, Voss, and Kramer 2012). Research on the effects of resistance training on older adults and cognitive function has shown that resistance training has a positive effect on cognition, information processing, attention, memory formation, and executive function (Chang et. al 2012). So, as you get older, be sure to include high-intensity exercises and strength training as part of your overall training plan.
What the Science Says: What an Old Car Can Teach You About Your Body
Rebuilding and restoring an old car to like-new condition often requires replacing many worn-out parts and repainting the exterior. Even though medical technology has madeimportant advances in the area of prosthetics, due to cost and the painful recovery process, simply replacing old parts isn't an option as we age. However, gradually progressing the intensity of an exercise program to where you are strength training to a point of momentary fatigue or creating significant metabolic overload can help add new muscle, which can significantly improve your appearance in much the same way that a good paint job can help an older car look like new. In their research on how older males respond to resistance training, Izquierdo and colleagues observed that the skeletal muscle of older adults seems to retain the capacity to experience hypertrophy when the volume, intensity, and duration of the training period are sufficient (Izquierdo et al. 2001).
Just as properly maintaining the engine, waxing the paint, and storing it out of the sun can greatly enhance the longevity of an automobile, exercise programs that stimulate the production of the hormones T, GH, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) can improve our appearance and extend our functional life span as we age.