This post is in sequence with 3 Most Important Aspects of Living.
So we learnt some basic things about how our body works and our body is a COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM.
The #1 Misconception about good health is that it requires lifting heavy weights for hours per day in the gym.
Many times I hear things like Arnold Schwarzenegger exercises more than 14 hours per day, Sylvester Stallone also does the same. A simple question arises, if they are doing exercises for 14 hours a day then how they are doing other tasks, when they are shooting their super hit films? Do they live in the other planet where day consists of 48 or 96 hours? Or on the pole may be, where day is for 6 months..๐
There are many more misconceptions, for example the classic one, ' the more you sweat the more you lose fats'. I don't believe it, how people pay attention to such crap!!
You must have heard and believed the first misconception, But the reality is far from it. You will get it when you keep reading this post and do some of your own research. For now don't think over this misconceptions and try to understand what I am saying.
The exercises can be divided as I) Strength building exercises II) Stamina building exercises.
Strength building exercises will develop your body in to a nice muscular one, while stamina building exercise will develop your body in to a lean one. Strength building exercises will make you able to lift the heavy furniture if any need arises, or even one side of your car or bike for a while if the need arises while stamina building exercises will make you able to go on trekking whole day long or run a marathon.
My take is to achieve both. What's the use of the bulky muscles if you can't run or jog for a while or do some emergency tasks like riding a bicycle for a while or trekking. Or what's the use if you can't move your furniture but can jog whole day long?
The mid point of both results in to a lean, chiselled body. And combine it with the third part of exercise. III) Flexibility improving exercises (YOGA).
Do you know that what will result if we combine all three? In the jungle we see such combination resembling to such body as Monkey...๐
If we keep the fun part aside, these 3 ingredients results in to a body of a Super Elite Commando, ready to take on anything. (well such commandos have more than just the body, like combat skills, weapons training etc.). If you want such kind of body then you will have to do both or rather three kind of exercises. Don't panic, you don't need to spend more than six or seven hours per week, all exercises combined, trust me. Or you may do other combinations of exercises as per your wish. But if you are not doing it for body building competition or something like that then I suggest you to combine all three. It will make you much younger biologically.
I have told you in the previous posts on ageing and anti ageing that exercise is a form of induced catabolism. That is exercise brings about breakdown of the muscle fibres. But this breakdown encourages repair and growth, that is Anabolism, provided your body have enough supply of nutrients. The nutrients part is equally or rather more important than the exercise part. We will come to that later. If we first understand that the use and importance of nutrients then I think we will give the deserved importance to that part.
To grow our strength or stamina we must understand the three phases we pass in between two workout sessions.
Phase 1) Induced catabolism-
When we do the exercise, our body or body part bears stress, somewhat more stress than it is capable of, so the body or body part get somewhat damaged depending on the intensity of exercise. Even in the case of aerobic exercises, our body retains some strain, fatigue. Some of the muscle fibres break down. We feel pain, but at the same time some pleasure inducing chemicals are also released in the brain. Therefore we feel good and fresh after doing our workout. Sometimes this chemicals which is called Dopamine gives a high like that of some drug, known as Runners high. This is a form of the mechanism of the body to adapt with the increased stress and strain. Then as our workout is over comes the next phase.
Phase 2) Anabolism -
As we finish our workout our body assesses the situation, i.e. the damage to the muscles, bones, available quantity of proteins, minerals, vitamins, fats, carbohydrates in our body, their intake through food we take etc. And then does it's calculations to strike the best balance between the available raw material, required repair of the damage and building the biggest strength or stamina required to avoid future damage when same exercise is done again. It releases the required quantity of different hormones (Growth hormones) which brings about this process and also some of these hormones prompt us to take rest. Our body can perform these operations very well when we are asleep, therefore we feel sleepy, we sleep more time than usual. We never consciously realise this but its body does it regularly and is expert in doing it. It is like a best engineer when it comes to repairing and building our body.
This process of repair and building requires time. The amount of time required depends on the availability of raw materials, that is proteins, vitamins, minerals, fats, rest etc. The more the availability of of raw materials the faster the process. Therefore diet has a huge role to play when health and exercises are concerned.
This process of Anabolism requires a lot of energy. When different energy sources are compared, fats have the highest energy density (that is they provide the highest amount of energy per gram weight when burnt with oxygen) compared with sugars, carbohydrates, proteins etc. Therefore fats are used as a energy source for this Anabolism. This is one of the advantage of Anabolism or rather advantage of doing the exercises. And we have already learnt that reduction in fats means reduction in biological age of our body. In other language you look younger. (You can get a simple evidence of this process when you are doing your workout regularly. In the morning when you wake up just touch the muscle you worked out yesterday and you will find it warmer than rest of your body. Check it out, and feel it yourself.)
This Anabolism phase lasts for up to 48 hours or sometimes more if the damage done is more or less availability of nutrients or both. After this phase is complete, comes-
Phase 3) Sustain
As our body finishes the Anabolism phase, if again it is not subjected to exercise or induced catabolism, then it enters in to a relaxed sustain phase. That is nothing is done, no more Anabolism or catabolism. It just stays as it is. This phase may range from 1 day to 7 days, children or the beginners have less sustenance time than the trained.
During this sustain phase, body needs nutrients to maintain the extra muscles and supporting systems.(supporting systems are respiratory system, blood circulation system, temperature control system etc.) As we grow our strength out body's maintenance requirement also increases proportionately.
If your aim is professional body building or you are a professional athlete then you may skip this stage and return to Phase 1 and cycle it between phase 1 & 2. But for those who just want to maintain a good health efficiently can cycle through these three phases. This is the reason that most trainers formulate a workout program which involves training one set of muscles only once a week.
But what happens if the cycle of these phases is not repeated?
Phase 4) Catabolism -
As this sustain phase is passed without any use of the increased strength our body's adaptive nature kicks in.
Remember I told you, our body is a "COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM".
As our body grows extra strength or stamina to adapt to increased demand, in the same way our body loses any extra strength or stamina which is not used for a particular amount of time. Our body does it to reduce the maintenance requirement. So after the sustain phase or body starts the catabolism process to reduce any excess capacity. Soon or muscle mass gets reduced to normal, bones lose calcium, blood vessels reduce their diameter, the size and strength of our heart decreases, fats start depositing under our skin, we start looking fat, wrinkles develop on our face etc. In short we start ageing.
Conclusion-
The myth of need of hours of exercise per day for good health is busted.
You only need to train your one group of muscles only once per week. That means only 5-10 min of exercise per muscle group per week. Good, isn't it? (But don't forget to alot time for stretching and warm up exercises before you start your main workout, otherwise you may get injured.)
Otherwise how come great actors with great physique like Daniel Craig, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham, Matte Damon, Sylvester Stallone of Hollywood and Sunil Shetty, John Abraham, Akshay Kumar from India can manage to spend hours on movie sets out travel around the world for movie shootings and movie promotions, screenings etc. Many of the actors mentioned above have their businesses and investments to manage too.
There is much more to know. But lets stop and digest what we just read for now. I also have other things to do.
See you soon.
Till then have a nice day.
Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.
So we learnt some basic things about how our body works and our body is a COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM.
The #1 Misconception about good health is that it requires lifting heavy weights for hours per day in the gym.
Many times I hear things like Arnold Schwarzenegger exercises more than 14 hours per day, Sylvester Stallone also does the same. A simple question arises, if they are doing exercises for 14 hours a day then how they are doing other tasks, when they are shooting their super hit films? Do they live in the other planet where day consists of 48 or 96 hours? Or on the pole may be, where day is for 6 months..๐
There are many more misconceptions, for example the classic one, ' the more you sweat the more you lose fats'. I don't believe it, how people pay attention to such crap!!
You must have heard and believed the first misconception, But the reality is far from it. You will get it when you keep reading this post and do some of your own research. For now don't think over this misconceptions and try to understand what I am saying.
The exercises can be divided as I) Strength building exercises II) Stamina building exercises.
Strength building exercises will develop your body in to a nice muscular one, while stamina building exercise will develop your body in to a lean one. Strength building exercises will make you able to lift the heavy furniture if any need arises, or even one side of your car or bike for a while if the need arises while stamina building exercises will make you able to go on trekking whole day long or run a marathon.
My take is to achieve both. What's the use of the bulky muscles if you can't run or jog for a while or do some emergency tasks like riding a bicycle for a while or trekking. Or what's the use if you can't move your furniture but can jog whole day long?
The mid point of both results in to a lean, chiselled body. And combine it with the third part of exercise. III) Flexibility improving exercises (YOGA).
Do you know that what will result if we combine all three? In the jungle we see such combination resembling to such body as Monkey...๐
If we keep the fun part aside, these 3 ingredients results in to a body of a Super Elite Commando, ready to take on anything. (well such commandos have more than just the body, like combat skills, weapons training etc.). If you want such kind of body then you will have to do both or rather three kind of exercises. Don't panic, you don't need to spend more than six or seven hours per week, all exercises combined, trust me. Or you may do other combinations of exercises as per your wish. But if you are not doing it for body building competition or something like that then I suggest you to combine all three. It will make you much younger biologically.
I have told you in the previous posts on ageing and anti ageing that exercise is a form of induced catabolism. That is exercise brings about breakdown of the muscle fibres. But this breakdown encourages repair and growth, that is Anabolism, provided your body have enough supply of nutrients. The nutrients part is equally or rather more important than the exercise part. We will come to that later. If we first understand that the use and importance of nutrients then I think we will give the deserved importance to that part.
To grow our strength or stamina we must understand the three phases we pass in between two workout sessions.
Phase 1) Induced catabolism-
When we do the exercise, our body or body part bears stress, somewhat more stress than it is capable of, so the body or body part get somewhat damaged depending on the intensity of exercise. Even in the case of aerobic exercises, our body retains some strain, fatigue. Some of the muscle fibres break down. We feel pain, but at the same time some pleasure inducing chemicals are also released in the brain. Therefore we feel good and fresh after doing our workout. Sometimes this chemicals which is called Dopamine gives a high like that of some drug, known as Runners high. This is a form of the mechanism of the body to adapt with the increased stress and strain. Then as our workout is over comes the next phase.
Phase 2) Anabolism -
As we finish our workout our body assesses the situation, i.e. the damage to the muscles, bones, available quantity of proteins, minerals, vitamins, fats, carbohydrates in our body, their intake through food we take etc. And then does it's calculations to strike the best balance between the available raw material, required repair of the damage and building the biggest strength or stamina required to avoid future damage when same exercise is done again. It releases the required quantity of different hormones (Growth hormones) which brings about this process and also some of these hormones prompt us to take rest. Our body can perform these operations very well when we are asleep, therefore we feel sleepy, we sleep more time than usual. We never consciously realise this but its body does it regularly and is expert in doing it. It is like a best engineer when it comes to repairing and building our body.
This process of repair and building requires time. The amount of time required depends on the availability of raw materials, that is proteins, vitamins, minerals, fats, rest etc. The more the availability of of raw materials the faster the process. Therefore diet has a huge role to play when health and exercises are concerned.
This process of Anabolism requires a lot of energy. When different energy sources are compared, fats have the highest energy density (that is they provide the highest amount of energy per gram weight when burnt with oxygen) compared with sugars, carbohydrates, proteins etc. Therefore fats are used as a energy source for this Anabolism. This is one of the advantage of Anabolism or rather advantage of doing the exercises. And we have already learnt that reduction in fats means reduction in biological age of our body. In other language you look younger. (You can get a simple evidence of this process when you are doing your workout regularly. In the morning when you wake up just touch the muscle you worked out yesterday and you will find it warmer than rest of your body. Check it out, and feel it yourself.)
This Anabolism phase lasts for up to 48 hours or sometimes more if the damage done is more or less availability of nutrients or both. After this phase is complete, comes-
Phase 3) Sustain
As our body finishes the Anabolism phase, if again it is not subjected to exercise or induced catabolism, then it enters in to a relaxed sustain phase. That is nothing is done, no more Anabolism or catabolism. It just stays as it is. This phase may range from 1 day to 7 days, children or the beginners have less sustenance time than the trained.
During this sustain phase, body needs nutrients to maintain the extra muscles and supporting systems.(supporting systems are respiratory system, blood circulation system, temperature control system etc.) As we grow our strength out body's maintenance requirement also increases proportionately.
If your aim is professional body building or you are a professional athlete then you may skip this stage and return to Phase 1 and cycle it between phase 1 & 2. But for those who just want to maintain a good health efficiently can cycle through these three phases. This is the reason that most trainers formulate a workout program which involves training one set of muscles only once a week.
But what happens if the cycle of these phases is not repeated?
Phase 4) Catabolism -
As this sustain phase is passed without any use of the increased strength our body's adaptive nature kicks in.
Remember I told you, our body is a "COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM".
As our body grows extra strength or stamina to adapt to increased demand, in the same way our body loses any extra strength or stamina which is not used for a particular amount of time. Our body does it to reduce the maintenance requirement. So after the sustain phase or body starts the catabolism process to reduce any excess capacity. Soon or muscle mass gets reduced to normal, bones lose calcium, blood vessels reduce their diameter, the size and strength of our heart decreases, fats start depositing under our skin, we start looking fat, wrinkles develop on our face etc. In short we start ageing.
Conclusion-
The myth of need of hours of exercise per day for good health is busted.
You only need to train your one group of muscles only once per week. That means only 5-10 min of exercise per muscle group per week. Good, isn't it? (But don't forget to alot time for stretching and warm up exercises before you start your main workout, otherwise you may get injured.)
Otherwise how come great actors with great physique like Daniel Craig, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham, Matte Damon, Sylvester Stallone of Hollywood and Sunil Shetty, John Abraham, Akshay Kumar from India can manage to spend hours on movie sets out travel around the world for movie shootings and movie promotions, screenings etc. Many of the actors mentioned above have their businesses and investments to manage too.
There is much more to know. But lets stop and digest what we just read for now. I also have other things to do.
See you soon.
Till then have a nice day.
Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.
