Bodybuilding versus Sarcopenia

  What most people call training with heavy weights is resting — and the results show it. What a person really benefits from is actually moving — rather than not moving 95% of the time. That is the major reason people training with lighter weights achieve superior results — because they are exercising most of their gym time, rather than resting 99% of the time to justify lifting a heavier weight. But the heavier weight NOT being lifted produces predictably no results. If a person uses a maximum weight, they will fail not because of true muscle failure — but because of cardiopulmonary failure as the struggle to breathe becomes paramount and overriding . I’ve never seen anybody override that failure — while mistaking it for true muscle failure.

The only way to ensure coming close to true muscle failure, is to use a lighter weight to allow for the fullest relaxation as well as the alternating fullest contraction — which is the pumping effect, just as the ultimate pump of the body works. While the heart always works in that manner — alternating the fullest contraction with the fullest relaxation, the skeletal (voluntary) muscles of the body can effect varying states of contraction and/or relaxation, and unfortunately, most people aren’t aware of these extremes unless instructed, or trained on a Nautilus machine designed expressly to achieve that alternating range — around a single axis of rotation (focus). But even then, the fullest range of that articulation, is achieved by using a weight light enough to accommodate the relaxation phase and not the heaviest weight one can handle in the contraction — which is how the Nautilus machines defeated the purpose of its own design.

In using a heavy weight, the muscle never really relaxes — or is allowed to relax as an essential part of the movement. Instead, it always maintains a certain degree of contraction — even as the relaxation, and as such, there is very limited change in the muscular state — limiting the blood flow. The same is true of the other extreme, of relaxing — but never contracting, or only limited so — which is the reason certain activities can be sustained indefinitely — or risk failure at an inopportune moment. Under such circumstances, failing at that moment could risk injury — or worse. But nobody in their right mind would train to that limit each and every time — unless they could not avoid it. That would be the life or death situation actually requiring it — while not tempting fate unnecessarily, and familiarizing oneself with those limits —as the margin for safety.

However, that does not prevent the most zealous from testing those limits too often — with prematurely shortened lifespans for such abuses — as seen in the enlarged hearts of people thought to be in the best of health otherwise. The heart is the critical failure — and not meant to be pushed over the limits as though it has infinite ability to adapt. It is in every case, the limiting factor of that body — and the last thing that needs to be push to its limits. Meanwhile, most of the other muscles of the contemporary sedentary body is underused and underutilized — and that is what needs to be exercised. The heart can take care of itself — and the rest of the body, but not so all the other muscles of the body. Those have to be deliberately and intentionally programmed and exercised (conditioned) to maintain and increase their health — because that is not automatic, and the reason some are more successful than others at maintaining their health as they age.

That very few people do over time, is an indication not that something is wrong with their age — as it is their lifestyle and behaviors. If they are not getting better and healthier, they are obviously not doing what they need to do to change that to produce more favorable results — even if it is doing something different than what is producing poor results for everyone unfailingly. Just continuing to do what is not working is obviously not going to work. One has to do things differently — to work.

Bodybuilding could be done with or without weights. The critical feature is the understanding of the importance of the differing muscular states and how it is effected — by the movement itself. There is a position in which a muscle is fully relaxed, and a position in which a muscle is fully contracted — and it is the fullest expression of that difference that is the power — to maintain health, development, functioning — and not magical equipment or supplements. One needs to first have the most basic understanding of why everything could be beneficial — and not that magical thinking gets results because one believes it enough.

The King of Bodybuilding Exercises

  The King of Bodybuilding Exercises

Back in the “Golden era of Bodybuilding” — generally regarded as the 1950s-1960s — the most impressive distinguishing feature was the chest to waist differential achieved by alternating 20 repetitions of the breathing squat with 20 repetitions of the breathing pullover for up to 3 sets before moving on to anything else. At that point, it was even thought that any other exercises were unnecessary — because one could get so “pumped” up just with those two exercises — which is a condition not achieved by most contemporary training programs invariably using low repetitions with too heavy weights — while resting overlong between sets.

The major value of bodybuilding exercises is in the breathing — more than any other aspect. While many thoughts on breathing emphasize the physiology of breathing, what is fundamentally overlooked and ignored is the actual physics of breathing — or the laws that dictate the movement of air — in and out of the body, and once in the body, the movement of fluids within the body in the respiratory/circulatory process. That basic and simple law is that fluids (including gas) move from high pressure to low pressure — always, and that pressure is determined by the volume in which it is contained in. That is why artificial respiration works — by compressing the lungs and heart to produce that flow.

The most visible manifestation of that effect — is produced by the lying pullover. The chest volume expands as the arms are moved backwards, and compressed when the arms move forward — and there is no other movement that produces that extreme of articulation. That is simply what that movement does. Coupled with high repetition squats produces an enhanced requirement for that fullest articulation of the expansion and contraction of the lung function because there is no distraction to any other considerations. That is the breathing function as its purest — expansion and contraction.

Many primitive observations of the breathing movement believe that air movement is determined by the action of the diaphragm — which is only one of the walls that constitute the chest volume. Far more visible and apparent is the rise and fall of the chest — rather than the movement of the diaphragm in heavy, labored breathing. As such, that is why chest compressions are used in artificial respiration — rather than diaphragmic manipulation — if that were more essential for breathing.

But since the heart and lungs are contained within the chest cavity (volume), it is much more convenient to kill these two birds with one stone in the well-placed compression to the sternum — providing both respiration and circulation together — as the present state of the art in that understanding.

Many knowledgeable people have commented on the fact that today’s top competitive physiques do not have the same aesthetic appeal of those bodybuilders of a previous generation — particularly in the chest to waist ratio, and that some present day versions even look “pregnant,” or a bubble gut — because they don’t primarily try to achieve impresssive chest to waist differentials. They prefer to be big all-over — despite the well-established health marker that a waist circumference greater than 32″ is the greatest health risk of all, and if one is not engaging in exercise for this prime consideration, just what is the value of such exercise? — especially for health purposes?

The proven exercise that works is the lying pullover with a light weight that allows for full range of movement for at least 20 repetitions — and there is no downside to doing more — even if it doesn’t allow one to do anything else, or feel the need to. That’s why breathing is considered a practice of high regard in many venerable cultures — along with fasting. The latest state of the art science and medicine are rediscovering those two exercises as its own “Golden Age” of understanding of long-lost wisdom.

Often, the hardest thing to see is the obvious.