Time Under Tension

 Is lifting weights enough to build muscle?

Many people believe that simply loading up the resistance is enough to guarantee that muscle will grow -- no matter what they do with it thereafter.  It's as though they believe that muscle growth occurs because they load plates onto a bar, and it doesn't matter what they do with it -- rather than the more accurate picture that what they do, is far more important than how much they've loaded onto the bar.  

This is particularly true when trainees are older -- and don't get the fabulous results of younger trainees.  But is the difference because they are older -- and not as it is more likely to be, that they perform their movements in a perfunctory manner -- because they are old, and so is excusable in that way?  That they can still move at all, is considered perfectly acceptable and admirable, and not that they need to pay even more attention to rigor in the performance of everything -- and that is the reason people grow old prematurely -- when they adamantly stop caring, and think there is no difference.  At that stage of life, they are entirely accountable to themselves -- and nobody is going to grade and correct them on their performance, and so they give up caring -- and if nobody else is going to care, why should they themselves -- because they are only in it for the praise and rewards.

If nobody else is going to reward them for being in peak performance, why should they care?  That is also true of many of the talented performers who are past their peak popularity, or when they simply cannot delude themselves that they are up and coming prospects any longer.  That great motivation to fulfill their "unlimited" potential has passed, and they are faced with the lifelong grind into obsolescence and obscurity.

Of course the great champions of every sport and activity face this fall off even more agonizingly than the many who never were.  Many get lost in life once they are no longer at the top -- and then even act in ways to speed their own self-destruction and immolation.  Life for them is unbearable and insufferable without the constant attention and adulation -- and without it, they implode in a vacuum of meaninglessness and lack of purpose.  If they don't reinvent those motives for themselves, they face a life of torment and addiction -- to obtain that same high, but that doesn't lead to some higher meaning and purpose -- but only a path to a certain end -- with no escape or turnaround.  It is a one way street to oblivion -- and they no longer care.

We are all like that -- to a certain extent -- and becomes more obvious as the years go by.  Maybe the philosophers and psychologists talk a good game -- until in the end, they too give up.  So how to be an ever renewing fountain of hope and aspiration is the quest even the best have to confront eventually.  Some people just hope to be so busy and distracted they have no time for such thoughts -- and so when such moments of truth confront them full on, they have no answer for themselves.  Life is just one more distraction and entertainment -- they hope never ends.

But surely and certainly, it does end -- and never on their terms.  The best they can hope for, is to be blindsided -- and go as they lived, clueless and uncaring to the end.  Such lives are the opposite of what we hope ours might be -- intentional and deliberate -- and so there is a reason why things happen, and not just a blur of one thing from every other.  That is the clarity we hope to see in life -- to see things clearly, for once in our lives.  And once we have a glimpse of that, and know what it is, we can move towards the light, and not plunge further into the darkness and abyss.

So all we know is that the light and clarity is good -- and strive to move into it as completely as possible.  In the other possibilities, nothing ever makes sense -- even when the words may sound plausible for a while.  But then one wants something more than just nice-sounding words that mean nothing -- like Plato's shadows on the wall.  They are not reality -- although they sound a lot like it.

The productive part of exercise is not how much weight one places on the bar prior to performing a movement with it -- but the movement itself -- regardless of the weight, or apparatus employed.  The key concept is "time under tension" -- which again sounds nice, but few have thought to consider what it actually means.  Time under tension only begins where most people are already quitting -- or think no further movement is possible.  It is in extending the range of movement at that point that causes the most severe muscular contraction possible -- which is exactly where most people never go, and actually condition themselves not to.  That would be in straightening the arms and continuing to push beyond that resting point (bone on bone lockout) -- that most regard as the furthest extent of that movement, at which point they immediately lower their arms rather continuing to push further in the direction of the fullest contraction.

That contraction, is also compression -- contraction meaning to make a volume smaller, and by that, forcing as much as the residual fluids to move back towards the renewing organs of the heart, liver, kidneys etc.  Otherwise, the fluids remain in the tissues at the extremities, where the deterioration of the head, hands and feet are noticed by most as the aging phenomena.  The fluids have to carry the waste products back to the purification organs, or the toxicity builds up, destroying the nerves and capillaries in the characteristic manner in which modern, and particularly sedentary people age -- because they produce very few contractions that a hard-working person would normally -- since the particular work of humans, is done with movements at the head, hands and feet.

That is where human evolution is designed and optimized for movement (work).  Lacking that need for actual physical work, the next best thing is exercise designed with such movement (activation) uppermost in mind -- specifically and deliberately to produce contractions from the furthest muscular insertions at the extremities of the most articulate organs.  Otherwise, the result is the familiar edema, lymphedema, lipedema of a rapidly failing (aging) body -- which is the retention of fluids and waste products in the tissues, with no way of being deliberately, intentionally and systematically eliminated -- as Nature intended.

In light of this reality, no amount of drugs and medical appliances are going to be able to substitute for this deficit -- that Nature has provided so well for.  Nor the wrong kinds of exercise -- that do not address this critical part of the circulatory effect, but instead, is misguidedly focused on making the heart work exclusively harder -- until it ultimately has to prematurely fail -- as many top exercisers (proponents) have manifested.

The heart works perfectly -- with no need for intervention; it is all the other muscles of the body that are doing nothing to contribute to the health-maintaining critical function of optimizing the circulation.  That is the need for exercise -- and how to go about it productively.

Desperation is a Great Motivator

 Many people won't do anything until all their chances have run out -- and then they are desperate for anything that might work.  But until they get to that point, they expect a miracle to save them.  Miracles are even a greater long shot -- than the most modest thing one can do for themselves.  God is usually too busy to intercede -- especially when one has done absolutely nothing for oneself but pray to God to do everything for them.  Even the most beneficent of beings, will run out of patience.  So it is largely up to each individual, to do as much as they can for themselves -- before asking for divine interventions, because the plan already works -- but everyone must learn how it works.

That's not automatic; one is not born with that perfect knowledge, but has many years to learn as they live -- and get better by it.  Presumably, that is what life is all about -- and not the many diversions and entertainments that occupy them otherwise.  Chief among them now is just consuming all one can -- just because they can.  That seems to be the undoing of many people now

That's what "opportunity" means to many -- unlimited chances to waste them all, and not that each must be properly valued and appreciated (made greater).  It still is a world of finite resources, and not all you can eat (consume) -- at every opportunity.  Even in ancient times, the wastage of resources, made for hard times to follow.  And so a few wise ones advised on the need to live judiciously and shepherd the resources for ever better days ahead.  Usually, those voices were unheard, and in many cases, persecuted and suppressed by the ever growing madding crowd -- who thought that unlimited more was their entitlement and birthright.

But alas, the world is what we make of it -- individually, and then collectively -- and not just everybody waiting for everybody else to do it first -- for them.  Obviously, those are the societies and civilizations in decline, while more robust and rising ones emerge each day -- in new ways.

Even for the most undiscriminating, some things work better than others -- but more than a few, never figure that out, merely choosing to accept every outcome as equal to any other.  Not surprisingly, they are even seen to go backward in their lives to a time of less accountability and responsibility for their own actions and lives -- instead of moving ahead at every opportunity and challenge.  Instead, there is no progress but only repetition -- of the same behaviors that got them to their present quandaries.

Before we go too far down that path, hopefully we find a few who see things clearly, and guide us to the light.  They are not everyone, or even most people -- but the path of a few who see their own lives with that significance.  They are the self-chosen few, and it doesn't matter how many are on the other side -- lost in the wilderness of their own self-deceptions.  Chief among them are those working in the various media -- catering to whatever popular delusions and madness is the order of the day.  It might be the present investment scheme, magical potions, rituals of contemporary fads -- each outdoing every other for the limited attention bandwidths.

They think that whatever they want to think, makes it so -- if they can't get enough people to get with their program.  In that respect, they are lot like every generation before them -- with their shamans, gurus, and experts -- proclaiming to know better, for each and every other -- which is much more convenient than each learning for themselves, the truth of every matter.  So what they believe to be true, is largely what someone else has told them is the truth, and there are experts in every matter -- and not that anyone should ever experiment and find out for themselves.

Usually one lives that way -- until one comes to that moment of desperation in which they are forced to find another way -- or perish.  For the best, that often comes early in life -- when they realize that they are very different from the others, and so simply going along with all the others, only ensures their doom and abnegation.  That is most obvious with the child prodigies of every age -- realizing that what most think is impossible, is way too easy for them, and they have to be very circumspect at "showing off," lest they be brutally suppressed and censored by the self-appointed gatekeepers of the truth.

But in more humble lives, those days of reckoning can come to most -- if they choose to embrace it.  More often than not, it is the path opened to them by desperation -- as the person given no hope otherwise.  Legends are built on such transformations -- with no idea of a definitive result.  They just do because they don't know what else to do -- as all the options provided to them, have no future but the hapless known.  That's almost invariably how the weak became strong.  They refused to accept their doom, and so they worked tirelessly at changing that prognosis.

That's not a hard thing to do.  It takes dedication born out of desperation -- that that is the only thing they can do, and what makes perfectly good sense to do.  So they are "all-in," no matter what.  That's the easy part.  Finding out the right things to do may take the entirety of their lives -- but what better and more important things have they got to do with their lives?  In that way, is their greatest service to the rest of humanity -- to find that better way -- rather than the dismal familiar.

That's true of every pioneer in every field -- and particularly, the ones that have yet to be created.  And nothing less is possible.  If it is not one, it will be someone else.  That is the ongoing evolution of the species.  Supreme health is the evolution of the species -- and not simply more of sickness providing more cures.  That is the old paradigm of somebody else making everyone else well.  People have to do it for their own sake, as well as their own good -- and nobody else can do it for them.  They have to live their own lives with that sense of urgency and desperation.  It's not the power over everybody else -- but to manage their own lives as though it matters, and makes a difference.  That is the only action that ever has.

It doesn't mean that everyone has to run marathons or become a "mass" monster.  Everyone has to become their own person -- and not just the latest mass media fabrication that has gone way beyond parody.  The only silver lining in that is the realization that such instant transformations are entirely possible.  But far beyond the manifestations are the sustainable lifestyles of truly healthy people -- and what they will do because of that underlying health.  Health is not even about the absence of sickness and problems.  It is going where humankind has not gone before.

It is not one thing -- but everything.  It's foolish to talk of living longer lives if those lives are not achieved by vastly superior health that makes living longer feasible and enjoyable -- or what would be the point of simply deteriorating longer?  That doesn't make sense to anyone.  That is truly putting the cart before the horse.  What matters is the health of the horse -- and that will take us to where we want to go.