Fred Hahn's Ideas and Insights on Exercise and Nutrition to Better Your Life

Moronic Musings

A friend sent me this article a few days ago and I have to say that the depth of the stupidity of it is staggering.

The fact that this sort of drivel is out there is a testament to how screwed up the field of exercise really is. Morononic musings like the article below by Mr. Scott abound.

Allow me to dissect, destroy and pulverize his blatherings.

Here we go....

Excerpts : Is Your Workout Wasting Your Time? A no-nonsense look at the often nonsensical world of fitness clubs. By Paul Scott, Best Life

"Researchers, for instance, have known that the leg-extension machine (the unit in which you sit with your shin behind a padded bar attached to a weight stack and then straighten your leg in front of you) trains you to do just one thing: become very strong at the leg-extension machine."

Really? That's it? We don't know if this statement is true as Mr. Scott does not cite any references. If true then biceps curls only get you good at biceps curls, chest presses at chest presses, squats at squats, etc. By inference Mr. Scott suggests that strength training exercises do not promote muscular hypertrophy. Where oh where has Mr. Scott been?

"In one of the few studies on this subject, researchers from the University of Kentucky studied 23 patients with knee pain to see what made them stronger: a step-up test or doing leg extensions. While they found that both groups eventually became stronger at doing leg extensions, only the group doing the step-up test actually became stronger at stepping up and doing functional activities. The reason: The seated leg-extension machine has nothing to do with how we use our legs, which are meant to hold us upright against gravity while we walk, climb, or descend."

A few things here - a step up test is a specific task. In order to get better at the step up test, you have to practice the step up test. The group doing the knee extensions should have been doing the step up test too so that they would become skilled at the task and THEN tested to see who did better. If both groups did as well you could conclude that knee extensions contributed nothing to the step up test. Secondly, step up involve knee extension and hip extension. If the test in performed in a rigorous manner, you will increase the strength of the quads, glutes and hamstrings. The leg extension is only designed to strengthen the quads.As for the leg extension exercise having noting do do with how we use our legs, tell that to a soccer player.

In fact, Chris Powers, a biokinesiology researcher at the University of California determined that although the thighbone rotates under the kneecap as we walk, using a leg-extension machine actually causes the kneecap to rotate on the thighbone. The mechanics of the leg-extension machine simply doesn't simulate what happens in functional activity (e.g., walking, running, or going down steps).

Again no reference cited. And if this is true that the knee cap rotates on the thighbone rather than the other way around, so what? When we strength train we are not attempting to mimic what we do in functional activity whatever that truly means. That is not the purpose of strength training. Do we not extend our knee in in functional activity? A football punter thinks so I'll bet.


"The leg-extension machine puts a lot of strain on the knee ligaments and the patella," says Tim Hewett, PhD, a professor in the departments of biomedical engineering and pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati "I would never consider letting our athletes use a leg-extension machine."

Yes I can hear the training room dialog now - "Boomer - get your butt off that dangerous and evil leg extension machine! Your really gonna hurt your patella doing that. Now, go on over there and snatch that barbell over your head as fast and as explosively as possible 50 times and then get out on the field and ram your cervical spine into the blocking posts till you drop."


"When it comes to promoting strength that is not meaningful, the leg-extension machine is one of many."

Unmeaningful strength - now that statement is a doozy!

Might Is Right

Today's NY Times had a nice article on the importance of strength training.

Here's a snippet from the article that I liked:

"Healthy muscles, researchers say, are  those that have been worked, stressed and pushed to their  limit..."

Here's one I sort of didn't like:

"And keeping muscles fit takes effort, which means regular training with weight lifting and cardiovascular exercise..."

Regular training sounds somewhat misleading. It sounds like weight lifting is something you should do nearly everyday. Research indicates that twice weekly strength training for 15-20 minutes a pop is all you need.

By and large, cardiovascular exercises do NOT keep muscles from atrophy (weakening) and are usually orthopedicaly compromising, meaning, bad for you. Strength training all by its lonesome improves cardiovascular health and aerobic capacity.

Strength training also allows you to perform cardio or aerobic sports better and with less chance of injury. So if you enjoy these types of things,  you'll be able to keep up with them into your later years.

The concept of keeping 'fit' is an odd one. Fit for what exactly? Just becasue you are a good runner doesn't mean you can swim well. Being fit for soccer doesn't make you fit for racquet ball. 'Fit' is a catchphrase used to describe a general condition of the body when it really describes a specific condition.

The article goes on to say:

"If you don’t work your muscles, they will atrophy, especially as you grow older."

This is not entirely true. It isn't just work that strengthens muscles and keeps them from atrophy. Walking is work. Jogging is work. Badminton is work. But these activities will NOT keep muscles from weakening as we age. Remember  what was said above:

"Healthy muscles, researchers say, are  those that have been worked, stressed and pushed to their  limit..."

And they're right. Sadly, most people have no idea what this means - or takes.

This statement:

"To maintain endurance, you  should engage in activities that  pump blood to the muscles, like walking."

Sure - walking is fine. But strength training pumps blood into the muscles better than anything.  Improvements in strength lead directly to improvements in muscular and cardio endurance. So strength training once again fills the bill all by itself.

Lastly, Dr. Kramer's comments:

"The most effective way to stimulate muscles is with a system known as progressive resistance. This approach can take about three hours a week and includes days, once a week or so, when you lift weights so heavy that you can do only three to five repetitions before your muscles are too tired to lift again. Other days are devoted to moderate resistance, with weights you can lift 8 to 10 times. And then you should have some light days, with weights you can lift 12 to 15 times before your muscles tire."

Actually this is not what is meant by progressive resistance. Progressive resistance involves making weights in an exercise heavier, little by little, as time goes on.

What Dr. Kramer is describing (and wrote a book about) is known as periodization. There is absolutely no evidence to support Dr. Kramer's opinion that periodizing your weight lifting (as he describes it above) is a necessary method for building strength.

In fact, we already learned from this article - by Dr. Kramer himself - that light lifting days where you use weights so light that you can do 12-15 reps is a waste of time.

Dr. Kramer said:

"Those who do try to lift at the gym  can end up  using weights that are not heavy enough to fully stimulate their muscles."

Using weights that allow you to do 12-15 reps in a controlled (proper) fashion would be a fairly good definition of weights that are not heavy enough to fully stimulate the muscles.

All in all it's a good article praising the benefits of strength training but it also keeps some long standing myths alive.

And truth be told, strength training offers a lot more benefits than the article mentions!

"To Be Weak Is Miserable" - Milton

Shakespeare said it in a more positive tone:

"O! 'Tis excellent to have a giants strength."

Top ten reasons to strength train:

1. Maintain and increase muscle tone, muscle mass
2. Increase bone density
3. Improve hormonal tone
4. Enhance joint flexibility
5. Decrease body fat
6. Strengthen the cardiovascular system
7. Improves mood, sleep and digestion
8. Control and regulate blood sugar
9. Ease arthritis pain

And for number 10, drum roll please:

     10. Makes you look and feel sexy.

What - you gonna argue with Will?

And all of the above  can be yours for the one low, low price of 30 minutes of your time per week.

Fast or Slow - What's the Deal?

Justin is understandably miffed by all of the talk and misinformation spouted by fitness experts who falsely accuse slow training as useless for athletics. These folks contend that by training slowly with weights you will teach your muscles to move slowly and become slow.

I find this very funny for several reasons. But the one that cracks me up the most is its converse - if training slow makes you slow does training fast make you only fast? Does this mean that when you engage in an athletic endeavor that requires a slow and steady effort all you will be able to do is flail and fling your limbs about?

This would be very funny in the decent into an iron cross on the still rings (Doink, snap!), in a bowling match (whip, flingggg!) or in mountain climbing ("grab, grab, grab, grab, ahhhhhhh....")

Here is what the fast advocates mistake (and bear in mind that they criticize slow rep training without ever having tried it for any lengthy period of time and without EVER experiencing the resulting fictitious sloth like movements caused by such) - they mistake fast twitch fiber and slow twitch fiber characteristics.

Muscles fibers are a mixed bag of force producing engines.

We have all sorts of fibers but they are mostly characterized by 1. Slow twitch 2. Medium twitch 3. Fast twitch. There are all sorts of sub-characteristics but for now we'll stick to these.

OK here is the mistake - these terms fast, slow and medium refer to the fibers fatigue characteristics NOT to their ability to produce force.

IOW if a person had all red oxygen rich slow twitch fibers in her elbow flexors (biceps) she could still bend her elbow rapidly and she could do so for long periods of time. However, her ability to produce a muscular looking arm would be negligible. Her ultimate strength would also be limited as it is the white, non-oxidative, fast twitch fibers which are most responsible for strength.

And stronger muscles can make a limb move faster than it did before all other factors being equal.

Someone who has predominately fast twitch fibers will be able to move fast too and because these are the fibers most responsible for strength they will be the people who usually excel in the sports which require great speed or quickness. However, these rare folks will lack endurance comparatively. And when these folks strength train they become VERY muscular.

These fibers are recruited in an orderly fashion, slow to fast. This is an accepted tenant of exercise physiology. So when you weight train, the speed you lift has nothing to do with the fibers recruited - you will always invoke the slow twitch first, medium second and fast twitch dead last hence the importance to perform a set to deep fatigue.

Performing your reps slowly using a weight load that will render deep fatigue in ~30-90 seconds will call ALL of the fibers into play. Over time you will become stronger and stronger means faster IF you practice the sport you wish to be better at at the same time.

Training quickly with weights will also, if taken to fatigue, call upon all the fibers and make you stronger.

But training with weights quickly is a potentially dangerous game and there appears to be some physiological issues with this type of training that brings about lesser results.

Dr. John Atha, who taught at the University of Technology, Loughborough, Leicestershire, England in the department of Human Sciences wrote a paper called Strengthening Muscle which was published in Exercise and Sports Science Vol. 9, 1981. He scoured over all of the research to date on strength training techniques and had this to say on speed training:

"The balance of evidence, therefore, seems to weigh against fast-speed training as a superior method of loading.

"Second, the loading in fast movements is not a function of speed, but the effort to overcome inertia and accelerate the load. Once the required speed has been achieved, no further force is invoked. Indeed the accelerating force must soon give way to a counter force in order to decelerate and bring the fast moving load to rest. Thus the period of acceleration and hence the period of elevated loading can last for only the first part of the movement."

"Hay, Andrews and Vaughan (1980) plotted the resultant torque for the elbow for three subjects who exercised with arm curls at a slow, moderate and fast speeds and this plot showed this pattern quite clearly revealing how the torque produced by the fastest movement changed steadily from the highest initially to the lowest finally, with this changeover occurring about halfway through the movement. As fast movements are over quickly anyway, the period of elevated load intensity and hence the purportedly enhanced training stimulus must be regarded as a transient. The stimulus thus lasts too brief a period to elicit the desired strengthening response unless the load is made so heavy that a fast lift is impossible."

"In summary, rapidly accelerating a given load to achieve a fast movement increases the effective loading on a muscle but only for the brief period of acceleration. Thereafter, the loading is greatly reduced."

Feel free to comment!

What Do I Eat?

Anne wants to know what to eat before and after a training session.

But  first of all, the question that should be answered is "What foods should I eat no matter when I eat them?"

Here I assume that organic, non-hormone ridden, pesticide sprinkled, anti-biotic free, etc. foods are being chosen. It also assumes you are aware of your food allergies if you have any to the below foods:

Meat (Eggs, Fish, Foul, beef, pork, lamb, etc.)

Dairy

Vegetables that are non starchy, or low in starch.

Fruit in season

Nuts

Now, of these foods, you want to eat a combination of these foods (not necessarily all) at each meal focusing on the protein foods more than any other.

Prior to exercise, a meal that is rich in protein and low in carbohydrate is the way to go.

The same goes for after your workout but you can get away with a touch more carbs depending on the intensity of the workout. 

I like to eat steak and eggs with sliced grilled tomatoes before a workout and a grilled chicken kabob (chicken, onions, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes) afterward.

If you are attempting to build large, bodybuilder type muscles you may want to add a baked potato after your workouts as well. Understand that genetics make the difference and don't expect to become extremely muscular from strength training no matter how you eat.

But muscular hunter gatherer peoples rarely displayed the balloon like muscles of a body builder as their diets were naturally low in carbohydrates which helps the muscle to be filled with and store more water giving that pumped, artificial appearance.

Why does the training have to be so hard?

A client asked the other day. Hard, meaning, unfun, unappealing - unlikable.

I'll let G.B. Shaw answer:

"Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness but it is greatness."

Dealing With The DOMS

A common side effect of strength training is DOMS short for delayed onset muscle soreness.

Some people experience severe DOMS, others quite mild.

DOMS is not a good or a bad thing. And no one knows what causes it. Theories abound, but the cause remains an enigma.

The other day a client told me that hers were so severe after a workout she needed to munch on a few NSAIDs just to function. This is rare.

I reminded her that a hot bath or another bout of exercise would reduce and even eliminate her soreness without burning a hole in her stomach wall.

Drinking lots of water throughout the day to stay super hydrated helps too and is good for many other things including losing fat. She admitted to barely touching a glass of water on any particular day. For shame!

So, if you get a bad case of the DOMS, drink your water, do a few slow push ups, sit ups, swing your arms, do some body weight squats or leg lifts or better still go back to the gym if possible and do another workout.

When you get home, take a nice hot shower or bath and have a cup of calming tea.

Or a small scotch. You know, whatever.

However, don't pop the pills - bad stuff.

Always be Positive

One of the things that will help your training is to think positive thoughts all the time.

The words we pick to say or think matter.

EX: Just the other day while training a veteran client as she was reaching a deep level of muscle fatigue I said: "Don't quit, don't quit!"

And lo and behold...she quit.

I said "How come you just stopped? You were about to finish that last rep and call upon those last few straggling fast twitch fibers!"

She replied: "You said to quit."

She's right - I did.

Instead I should have said: "Keep at it, keep at it!" or "Squeeze those shoulders stronger." or something akin to this.

If you have a training partner or if you train yourself, always use a positive, active prose so that your semi-subconscious gets the correct message.

Say "Breathe" not "Don't hold your breath."

Say "Shoulders down" not "Don't shrug your shoulders"

You get the picture. Very The Secret-ish and very effective!

More Functional Nonsense

My friend Nick Matheson alerted me to this article. It's long winded, but what's worse it's dead wrong.

The article is a compilation of a bunch of opinions by a few fitness experts who contend that training on exercise machines is dangerous, useless and nonfunctional.

Here we go again....

But, a snowstorm (literally) is upon me so I must vamoose rapido from my Catskill hideaway. (The snowfall is quite beautiful.)

I've got about an hour of hard snow shoveling infront of me - something my nonfunctional, machine based muscles will endeavor to achieve.

More on this tomorrow!

My Magic Wand of Strength

A while back (1991 in fact) I worked as a physical therapy aide in the new sports medicine center at The Hospital For Joint Diseases.

I was (and am) a certified trainer supervising all of the exercise programs for the physical therapists. HJD is, incidentally, where I began developing the Slow Burn system of strength training which was born out of many different slow systems and traditional strengthening programs.

One day as I was putting a senior through an intense (for her) strength workout. One of the therapists took me aside and said: "What are you trying to do to her - turn her into Arnold?"

I paused for a moment and replied: "Yes, I am."

Think of how much money this country (the world in fact) would save in rehabilitative health care costs if I had a magic wand of strength. I would wave my strength wand and ZAPPO! every frail senior who uses a cane, a walker, is in a wheel chair due to frailty, etc. would suddenly become robust and vital. They'd toss their canes, abandon their walkers and pop up out of their wheelchairs to enjoy their newfound independence. And they'd be happier.

But alas, we don't have a magic wand of strength.

Or do we?

 

Putting seniors on treadmills is a waste of their time. Placing them on a cycle when they could be in the leg press machine is a sin. Sticking them in a chair and having them spin some little hand held twisty thing is a crime. 

Seniors need strength since after all it's what they've lost.

I am amazed and saddened at how few therapists and doctors know or understand this.