Your system of muscles (contractile body tissue) enables you all the movement you enjoy and depend on for survival: from the simplest endeavors such as sitting up straight to actions as complex as running, jumping and playing the violin.
Everyone has 430 voluntary muscles attached to their bone structure by the connective tissues called tendons.
Weightlifters do not have any more muscles than anyone else, they simply have larger muscles. They have lower body fat ratios which makes their underlying muscles more visible. In people who are over fat their muscle is covered up over by years of inactivity and slowly replaced by fat.
There are three basic types of muscles in the human body:
Striped (striated or skeletal) voluntary muscle which move the bones.
Smooth involuntary muscles lining blood vessels, the stomach and other internal organs.
Heart or cardiac muscles
The last two types of muscles, the smooth and heart muscle, are involuntary and are controlled by the automatic nervous system.
It is the striped muscles are the muscles which we control with our will and which we depend for our physical movement and strength.
There are two types of striped muscles, fast and slow twitch. Fast twitch muscles are used for bursts of energy and primarily used in any weight bearing activity such as weightlifting. Slow twitch muscles are used in the body’s efficient use of oxygen.
When you want to use one of your voluntary muscles your brain sends a message to a nerve impulse through your spinal cord to the appropriate muscle which in turn contracts through the release of muscle fiber chemicals called neurotransmitters.
Weightlifting, Strength and Muscle Growth
The only way to enlarge your muscles and prevent muscle loss over time is to work them against resistance. When this kind of strength training is done the process known as adaptation takes place. Better known as weightlifting. This means the muscle adapts to the stresses put on it while remaining healthy. Microscopic tears occur in the muscle bringing minor soreness. This is normal in building new muscle and should pass within a 48 hour period. Additional muscle fibers (myofilaments) are crated in the process adaptation which helps the muscles become stronger (increases their ability to contract). The individual muscle cells which have undergone hypertrophy are not only stronger, they are also healthier than before.
The process of weightlifting is anaerobic (a short bursting/high intensity activity through which energy is used without the aid of sufficient oxygen in the muscle). As a result, high-intensity weightlifting cannot be performed for long periods of time. However, anaerobic also work the heart and lungs. Weightlifting methods like circuit training can have aerobic benefits too.
Muscles, Aging and Gender
Over time, the thousands of muscle fibers of the striped muscles in inactive people are replaced by connective tissue. This will make the muscle weaker and less able to contract. Fat also sets in.
However, it is not true that people are condemned to lose their muscle and strength as they age. The doctors of Tufts University have twice performed widely publicized studies on people as old as 96 who more than doubled their strength and greatly improved their lives by doing weight-bearing exercises. Muscle can be built and maintained at any age.
Men have a far greater capacity for building muscle than women. There should be no fear in a bulking up for women. It requires more than the simple act of weightlifting. Enhancements are also needed such as steroids. Muscle building and muscle strengthening are the goals for everyone.
“Your metabolism is your body’s fat-burning engine”.
What does it mean? Well, it is pretty simple.
Your body depends upon you metabolism to supply it with energy. This energy is produced when fat, protein, and sugar are burned in your body’s cells. Of the energy produced by your metabolism, about half is used in general body maintenance, and in allowing you to complete physical activities. The rest is released from your body as body heat. Excess calories are stored as fat. That’s your metabolism. It’s an engine, which burns food (fat, sugar, and protein) as fuel.
Everyone has a metabolic rate–a rate at which his or her body burns fat.
How to Determine Your Metabolic Rate
To figure out how fast your fat-burning engine is burning calories, do this simple test (although a doctor, or sports specialist could do a more accurate accounting or your “basal metabolic rate”).
Multiply your weight by 11 t arrive at the minimum number of calories you need daily to maintain your body (with no activity). Now, multiply your metabolic rate number by your activity level rate (To determine your activity level , you need to do a little math. If you are getting little or no exercise, use 0.30 to 0.50 as your activity level multiplier. If you are “slightly” active, multiply by 0.55 to 0.65. If you get a “moderate” amount of exercise, multiply by 0.65 to 1.0. So, if you are a 175lb man wh0 exercises moderately three days a week, you would multiply 175 by 11 to reach the number 1,925. That would be the number of calories you body would need as a minimum before any activity is figured in. Then you would multiply by 0.70 to arrive at 1,348 (your additional caloric needs). By adding these two totals together you would get a rough idea of the number of calories you need to take in daily: approximately 3,273.
To a certain extent, metabolic rate can be hereditary. If one or more of your parents tend to be “heavy” there is an increased chance (though it is not a certainty) that you will have your work cut out for you in staying slim.
Your metabolic rate is not necessarily fixed.
For instance, over fat people who go on starvation diets end up worsening their metabolism problems. In a crash diet situation the body, believing there is a crisis, begins to hoard fat. Just like a squirrel storing up nuts for the winter. This famine response slows down the metabolism/engine and makes it harder to lose body fat.
Over eating is an even more certain way of gaining unwanted body fat. That’s because calories that are not used as fuel are stored. So for every 3,500 calories you consume over what your body can use a pound of fat is gained. All you have to do to gain two pounds a month is eat about 300 more calories a day than you burn off. That is about a piece of pie.
However, lest you throw your hands up in despair, stoking your metabolism to burn more fat is easier than you think. To burn more fat 24 hours a day you need to increase the size of your fat-burning engine. The best way to do that is to get exercise that increases your muscle mass. How you ask. Weightlifting!!!! You can put on pounds of muscle which will in turn burn hundreds of extra calories a day.
Weightlifting can also help stop the so-called “natural” slowing of the metabolism that starts to affect most people in their 20s and 30s. That slow down occurs because people who are inactive begin losing muscle at the rate of half a pound a year. The less muscle you have the slower the burn rate of your fat burning engine.
Again, to fire up your calorie burning metabolism, at what ever age, you need to get regular exercise that includes resistance training (weightlifting).
Doctors and exercise experts agree that the percentage of body fat you carry around is more important than how much you weigh. (Additionally, muscle–which is “healthy” tissue–weighs more than fat, though it takes up less space.
So, the bathroom scale isn’t the best measure of your health and fitness.
A body composition test measures what percentage of your total weight is body fat. Everything else is lean body mass (muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons, skin and organs).
How Much Body Fat is Too Much?
Of course, you do need some body fat, to help carry on normal body functions. For instance, fat helps protect your internal organs from injury. However, a high percentage of body fat can lead to heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses. Experts recommend men carry at least 5 percent body fat; women should carry at least 12 percent. But those are just bare minimums for maintaining health.
The recommended body fat level for most men is around 15 percent. For women (who have higher body fat levels) a 22 percent range is considered healthy. Generally speaking, the more fat you carry (above the recommended levels), the worse shape you’re in. Men usually carry their body fat in their abdomen; women carry fat in their arms and their thighs. And statistics show that Americans are increasingly carrying far too much fat.
In 1996, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that–between 1980 and 1991 an additional 8 percent of American population became over fat. By 2011 the percentage of over weight Americans has hit 68 percent. This means that 7 out of 10 Americans are now over weight or obese. The percentage of children that are over weight or obese is between 30 and 40 percent (depending on ethnicity and gender). According to the U.S. Surgeon General Office the over 300,000 people are dying every year as a result of being too fat. From diseases to heart attaches to actually choking to death. It is unhealthy to be fat.
The reasons given for these loses in “the battle of the bulge” are simple: the American people– adults and kids–are eating too much and not getting enough exercise. Fad diets are not helping, though Americans spend an estimated $40 billion a year on trying to control their waistlines. Statistics show that as much as 95 percent of those people who go on a diet regain all their weight (meaning body fat) back, often times increasing their body fat levels.
If you are concerned about your percentage of body fat, or that or your children, you should seek the guidance of a physician in planning an exercise program and low-fat diet. Under no circumstances should you put children on a diet without the advice of a doctor.
How We Lose Muscle, and Gain Fat
One of the major problems for inactive adults is the fact that–without regular weightlifting (resistance training) of some kind–the muscles you were born with and develop through your active teens and twenties, will rapidly start to be replaced by fat.
As a general rule, inactive women and men start losing muscle at the rate of half a pound a year. This half-pound annual loss of muscle also sees about a pound and a half of fat gained each year. Scientific studies have shown it does not matter if you’re doing regular aerobics, or if you overall body weight remains the same, you will be losing muscle and gaining body fat as yo approach middle age.
By the time you reach 70, most people will have lost about 30 percent of their muscle, unless they have taken steps to prevent (or reverse) the atrophy of their muscles.
Resistance training is the only way to maintain and re-build muscle. For every pound of fat you replace with muscle, your body will burn about 50 extra calories a day, even when you are at rest. An additional benefit of weightlifting is the strengthening of bones (part of your lean body mass), which helps guard against osteoporosis.
Where to Get Tested
If you are interested in getting a body composition test, talk to your doctor, or someone at a sports clinic. They routinely measure clients’ body composition, using a variety of methods.
Many doctors and professionals often measure body fat by using hand-held calipers. A hydrostatic test entails submerging clients in a pool for “underwater weighing”. And Magnetic Resonance Imaging (an MRI) measures fat and muscle by taking X-ray like “pictures” of soft body tissues, muscle, and bone, rendering each of these in different tone, or colors.
The most sensible approach to reducing your percentage of body fat is do eat a healthful, low-fat diet, and to adopt a regular exercise program that includes building and maintaining your muscles.
Aging is not age alone. It’s also a person’s lifestyle, and that is true for the mind as well as the body.
Studies show that exercise maintains your thinking agility and cuts your risk of osteoporosis, heart disease and diabetes.
The American College of Sports Medicine urges older people to do strength training. Walking is simply not enough.
Soloflex has, for years, urged customers and future customers to “use if or lose it”. If you sit around and do nothing , you will become weak, no matter what your age.
Strength training is good medicine for depression and improving your life. Yes, exercise can help you feel and look better, no matter what your age.
What are you waiting for?
For more great information on this please read Colin Hoobler’s article from The Oregonian here.
Muscle fatigue is the decline in ability of a muscle to generate force. It can be a result of vigorous exercise but abnormal fatigue may be caused by barriers to or interference with the different stages of muscle contraction. There are two main causes of muscle fatigue – limitations of nerve’s ability to generate a sustained signal and the reduced ability of calcium to stimulate contraction.
Muscle fatigue is often confused with the breaking down of muscles in normal use. You have to break a muscle down to re-built it stronger and bigger. Fatigue can often cause the person to stop exercise for periods of time. Again, you need to wear a muscle down and work it until you feel like you can not flex it one more inch but do not go to the point of damage that is sustained or requires attention.
Stay strong and work your muscles. There is not better way to stay healthy and active. Love the burn it is a valuable feeling.
The American College of Sports Medicine has released its annual fitness trend list for 2012. For all of you weight lifters we are still at the top of the trend list at number 2. Weight lifting seems to always make the list and always at the top or very close to it. Weight lifting is that important.
I suppose it is not a trend at all but it just goes to show that working out is not only great for you but always the in thing to do. We all look and feel better with healthy muscle.
To read the entire article and study please click here
. It is good information and worth the read.
Are any of you familiar with Hormesis? Not very many of us are. Dr. Andrew Weil has a fantastic article on the Huffington Post that really helps explain what it is and its importance in the human body and how we respond to it. F0r more on this please click here.
US Today has posted some of the “SEXY” ads from past Super Bowls and Soloflex is right there. Check out these fun films here.
This is pretty easy. Good Luck!!!!!
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Have you, just like most of us, thought about the standard New Years Resolution? The one that we all tell ourselves every year and still often miss the mark. Getting fit, healthy, skinny, muscly, faster, stronger, just over all happier with our weight and appearance. So many of us are at it again. Well there are many dos and don’ts. Lets start with the don’ts….
1. Do not think it all happens over night. It can take even an entire year to loose weight healthfully. So much depends on what you think you need to loose and if you go about it in the right way. Which is number 2.
2. Do not crash diet. It has been proven over and over again that you will almost always put the weight back on and often more than you had when you started. Your body goes into shock. It thinks you are not going to give it the nutrients it needs to survive and will store what ever it can once it feels some is being provided again. This does not mean you should not change your eating habits- just do not stop eating.
3. Do not think the change in your diet alone will ever give you the results you are hoping for. Exercise and Eat Right. They go hand in hand. Exercise is equally as important as the food intake. Couch potatoes eating only rice cakes are sure to be unhealthy.
4. Do not give up. Anything worth doing is usually hard. Find friends that may be trying to change their life styles and hang with them more. Make sure that everyone close to you is aware of what you are trying to do so they encourage you and understand why you say “no” to many evenings out. You will learn to eat right when you go but it will take some time.
Let’s get to the fun stuff…The Dos.
1. Do have fun with the new changes in your life. Just because you are changing your eating habits and your exercise routine does not mean you have to dread it. Particularly working out. So many different types of exercise out there that you can take advantage of muscle confusion as well as cardiovascular levels.
Let me explain what muscle confusion is first. Simple. Do not perform the same exercise on the same muscles and do not do them at the same time everyday or in the same order. Lift weights, climb, bike, walk, run, swim, dance, do it all. Just make sure you exercise. They say at least 30 minutes for 3-4 days a week. With all of the options and levels I say you can easily build up to as much as you are healthy to do.
2. Do watch your calorie intake. Not only do you want to watch the calorie in take you also want to watch where you are getting your calories from. Do eat healthful, fresh, local, organic, produce and meats. Try to avoid what comes in a box. Not very natural. Try to avoid the over load of carbs. You have heard this as much as you have heard eat right and exercise. It is true. It is hard too. So much of the really great tasting foods are in the carb zone. With all of this said- be sure and treat yourself to very small bites now and then. Just like starving you may give in too easily and go over board. A small treat now and then will actually help you stay on track.
3. Do Exercise, Exercise, Exercise. I can not talk enough about the immediate benefits as well as the long term benefits. Your entire life will change forever if you exercise on a regular basis for as long as you can. Bones will be stronger, blood flows better, skin is even healthier. Muscles are important and they can only get better and stronger if you work them. Once you work them they will work for you. Just like all good relationships you must work together.
I have not said anything that you probable do not already know I am just reminding you again. Have fun and have a healthful life. You will be so much happier when you feel better.
Thank you for reading. I hope you feel inspired.
