June 27, 2009
Topic:
More Unanswered Questions
We’ve gotten a little behind on answering everyone’s fitness questions so today we’re going to play catch up.
You promote heavy lifting yet it’s hard on your joints. What are the long-term side effects of lifting challenging weights for years? For starters, there have been numerous studies showing that proper lifting; even heavy weights are no more stressful on your joints than tennis, jogging or any other activity. The reality is that any activity can be stressful on the body even walk and swimming. Physical stress, whether it’s a kid running and jumping on the playground or a mother pushing a stroller causes physical stress. Weight lifting allows us to artificially simulate those life stresses in a safer, more aligned, more predictable and more progressive manner.
I saw a guy in the gym lifting weights very fast. I thought you’re supposed to move slowly but he looked very muscular. Is this cheating? Dr. Fred Hatfield, one of the first to squat over a thousand pounds coined the term compensatory acceleration training. He discovered through years of research that explosive fast lifting in the concentric or up portion of the lift recruited white muscle fibers that previously could only be recruited using super heavy loads. This is not cheating and is a very effective way to train. It’s especially great for those who are older and for certain medical reasons can’t lift heavy. Lifting explosively brings results.
I read in a magazine that sprints are better than jogging. Is this true? There are numerous benefits to sprinting when compared to long distance running or jogging. For one because sprinting is very anaerobic and you have to recruit your muscle fibers quickly, you can gain a lot of muscle in very short sprints. Other studies show that short, super intense anaerobic workouts increase insulin sensitivity, increase aerobic endurance and have a slight increase in resting metabolism. On the other hand, you must understand that you cannot sprint everyday. In fact, if you’re working out everyday and doing other exercises, I would think anything more than two super high intensity workouts a week would lead to complete neural and structural fatigue. This is where moderate intensity running comes into play. Even though you’re not gaining muscle, it doesn’t stress the muscular system as much so you can do it more often. If weight loss is the number one goal than a more moderate but regular cardio plan would be what I would prescribe. Experiment yourself.
I’ve heard that muscle gain is the real key to fat-loss because it increases your metabolism. Is this true? No. Unfortunately, new studies show that a pound of muscle doesn’t even come close to burning an extra 30-50 calories. It’s more like seven or eight calories. More metabolic studies prove that it is not meal frequency, a special food, pills or even muscle that has an impact on your metabolism except for one thing and that is movement. Muscle gain is very important but you have to move your body if you want to truly burn calories and increase metabolism you got to do more than just look at your buff arms. You got to get up and move.
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