I did a phone interview with a writer who is doing a story on why Manhattan women are thinner than the national average. It was amazing talking to her. I have worked for so many years in this field that I thought everyone knew what I did. Evidently, that is not the case. I wanted to explain the basic science behind exercise. It will help you to understand the goals and gains of different types of training.
Let me first explain what the term "fitness" means. The American Council of Exercise defines fitness as:
1) Muscle strength
2) Muscle endurance
3) body composition
4) cardiovascular capability
5) flexibility
Basically, we need to have enough strength to move our bodies around and perform our daily duties. We need muscle endurance to be able to maintain the tasks we do (for an athlete that can mean running a marathon for a non athlete it can mean holding up your end of the couch you are moving so you don't drop it on your foot). Body composition is the ratio of "lean body mass" (your lean muscle tissue and your bone density) to body fat. Cardiovascular capability is pretty straight forward. Flexibility is really about the"range of motion" we have (are you able to reach up to get that bowl on the top shelf?)
Muscle Strength: There are different methods for gaining muscle strength. Muscle can be gained from repeated activities (this would fall into the "high rep" kind of training) or by overloading the muscle with weight training. Overload can also happen in daily life when you lift or push against a force and you get muscle soreness from the activity. Muscle can also be gained by explosive movement which we call in the fitness world "plyometrics" (Think about jumping as hard and high as you can and landing in a squat and jumping again).
When we lift weights , do walking lunges or do explosive movements, we get sore. The science behind getting sore is that you have made tiny tears in the muscle fibers. Fluids flood the muscle and the muscle swells causing a temporary enlargement of the muscle. The body then uses amino acids (building blocks from protein which is what your body is made of) to repair the damage and rebuild the muscle to be stronger by adding muscle fiber (everyone always asks what is in my water bottle when I teach. Amino Vital is my choice for amino acid supplementation because the chemistry behind it is perfect for muscle recovery). This allows your body to survive and function in an adapting environment (if you had to overpower other animals to eat in order to survive, your body needs to evolve and change to meet that need). I highly doubt any of us are wrestling bison in the Stop and Shop but it wasn't that long ago that dinner was much harder to come by.
Only in recent years have we come to understand how important adding lean muscle mass to our bodies is. Your metabolism is basically the measure of your lean body mass which is comprised of muscle, sinew and bone. As we age, our metabolism slows down because we lose muscle mass and bone mass.
The beauty of strength training is that it adds muscle mass and bone mass. Calcium is the building block for bone. Weight bearing exercise enables the calcium to be "packed" into the bone. Basically, we can halt the effects of aging on our bodies but doing strength training. Every pound of muscle burns close to 50 extra calories a day. If we can add 10 lbs of muscle, we basically can burn 500 calories a day doing nothing more than walking around, sleeping and eating.
As an athlete, a stronger body means better performance and even less risk of injury because your body has a natural "brace" and support system. The more variety we can add in our strength training (using functional training and varying the exercises), the more quality muscle and strength we gain. This is why Liquid Strength is so effective. We constantly vary the range of motion, speed and weight load.
Muscle endurance means the ability to "endure" or maintain a given movement for a duration. The ability for a runner to run a marathon is different from a runner doing a short sprint. The body types of these two athletes looks different and the muscle fibers that they have are different. To be truly "fit" we want to find the balance of both kinds of muscle fibers. Fast and slow twitch. In order to train our bodies to have both muscle strength and muscle endurance, we have to vary our training. Higher "rep" movements with lighter weights or no weights at all help the body to build muscle endurance. Muscle endurance is vital to be able to train for longer periods of time and do many activities (cross country ski, play a whole game of tennis, cycling etc.).
In Liquid Strength we work on muscle endurance and muscle strength. The blend of both types of training yields a strong and more elongated line.
Body Composition is the ratio of lean body mass to body fat. Although BMI (body mass index) is a good and easy ball park figure for non athletes, it is a very poor measure for anyone who is muscular at all. The best way to get a true measure of body composition is to test for body fat. This can be done with calipers that measure the subcutaneous fat at the arm, waist and leg (locations vary from device to device and for men and women) or with scales or handheld "body fat" scanners. These devices can give an idea but are reliant on hydration levels also so they can are not completely accurate. The only way to get a true body fat reading (mainly because we store fat in our muscles and under our muscles too) is under water weighing. This is an expensive and hard to find service. I believe a very well trained professional and a good pair of calipers is the most realistic and accurate choice for most people. The scale is a very poor measure of your fitness if you are doing any kind of strength training.
Cardiovascular capability is basically the measure of the how well your heart and lungs (and the delivery system of oxygen to your muscles) perform. To make this as simple as possible (there are a lot of complicated and very scientific elements to this), it is "how winded" you are when you perform at activity/sport. This is measure of heart health and it is important.
Flexibility is the most straight forward of the "elements of fitness" but what we are finding is that the measure of "range of motion" is actually more important than simple flexibility. The difference between them is: flexibility is the measure of how far your muscles and ligaments will lengthen passively (without using your muscles) such as pulling your arm behind your head in a stretch versus how far you are able to reach behind your head.
Our range of motion and flexibility decrease as we age so doing stretch class and yoga classes and strength training that explore a wider range of motion are really important to keeping your body young and healthy.
Story von Holzhausen
