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Story at-a-glance (read the full story here)

• A review of more than 100 studies revealed that both aerobic and resistance training are important for maintaining cognitive and brain health in old age
• Moderate exercise can reverse normal brain shrinkage by 2 percent, effectively reversing age-related hippocampus degeneration, which is associated with dementia and poor memory, by one to two years
• Exercise encourages your brain to work at optimum capacity by causing nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage
• Strive to keep your workout regimen dynamic with a variety of activities, including high-intensity, burst-type activities like Peak Fitness, strength training, stretching, core work and more

by Phillip Day

This is the idea of load­ing weight onto a mus­cle to force it to adapt. ‘Weight’ train­ing and resis­tance train­ing in gen­eral are regarded as anaer­o­bic (lit: in the absence of oxy­gen), as they are ‘short burst’ activ­i­ties in which oxy­gen is not the pri­mary cat­a­lyst for a muscle’s adap­tive change, over­com­ing resis­tance is.

Resistance/weight train­ing is ideal for peo­ple of all ages, espe­cially the elderly, as these exer­cises build strong bones, firm mus­cles, strength­ened ten­dons and cre­ate a butch immune sys­tem. As we age, resis­tance train­ing becomes more impor­tant in over­com­ing nat­ural somatopause, a term refer­ring to the low­er­ing of nat­ural human growth hor­mone (HGH) pro­duc­tion as we age, cou­pled with mus­cu­lar atro­phy and a build-up of fat in the adi­pose, or loose con­nec­tive tis­sues. Weight train­ing the way this chap­ter will show you will accom­plish a lot more than just toss­ing around a few bar­bells, then head­ing for the shower. We’ll learn ways of manip­u­lat­ing the process not only to burn out fast and super fast twitch fibres to acti­vate the pro­duc­tion of HGH, but also to pro­duce aer­o­bic activ­ity while train­ing with weights.

If you don’t want osteo­poro­sis, arthri­tis, heart prob­lems, can­cer, stroke, dia­betes, etc., resis­tance train­ing must play its part in your day. If you’ve already got these prob­lems, resis­tance train­ing should play A MAJOR PART in your day.

Pump up the jam — INTENSITY

US Per­sonal trainer Darin Steen writes:

“What I have wit­nessed from over 18,000 per­sonal train­ing ses­sions over the last 8 years is that most peo­ple are wast­ing their time when they work out. They’re sim­ply not exer­cis­ing effec­tively to reap opti­mal results. The four most com­mon mis­takes I see peo­ple make are: 1) using the least effec­tive type of exer­cise: reg­u­lar car­dio. 2) Too much car­dio and not enough resis­tance train­ing. 3) Doing too many sets per exer­cise. 4) Lift­ing a weight too fast.”1

In a word, not enough INTENSITY.

The major mes­sage you should be get­ting by now is that the body will only adapt to seri­ous phys­i­cal stress, and the more INTENSITY you bring to bear on your exer­cises, the more results you’ll see, the quicker you’ll get them and the more time and money you’ll save.

Let’s try a bar­bell exer­cise to illus­trate the tech­nique. This is a bar with weights on either end which you raise up to your chest line using your biceps. Many gyms have a rack of these already set up with dif­fer­ent weights so you can ‘run the rack’, as we’ll do in a minute. Through expe­ri­ence (and trial and error), choose a weight which will cause you to fail on the 8–10th rep­e­ti­tion (rep/lift). A series of rep­e­ti­tions is called a set. A set of reps is fin­ished when your mus­cles fail.

Make each lift delib­er­ate and slow, breath­ing out as you exert. Imag­ine your­self as a piston-driven machine if it helps (with noises to match!). The key here is to make the pos­i­tive motion (the concentric/exertion/lift/upward motion) as delib­er­ate as pos­si­ble, and the neg­a­tive (the downward/eccentric/motion/release) as delib­er­ate as pos­si­ble. It’s the com­bi­na­tion of the two move­ments – load and unload – not just the lift, which builds mus­cu­lar strength.2 Espe­cially do not rush the release move­ment. Stud­ies show that the eccentric/negative/release motionper­formed slowly helps pre­serve strength gains.3 Some top body­builders some­times do ‘neg­a­tive’ sets to achieve this effect. Do not arch your back, keep it straight. The work should all be done in the arms.

These are slow-twitch red mus­cle fibres you’re work­ing. By the eighth rep you should have a nice burn going (build-up of lac­tic acid) and things are get­ting harder. As you approach ten you feel that your mus­cles are about to fail. Go ahead and fail them and hold the fail posi­tion as long as you can.

Take a few deep breaths to dis­si­pate the lac­tic acid burn while you go back to the rack and select a 30% lighter bar. IMMEDIATELY com­mence the lifts again. It’ll seem easy to start with as there is less weight, but as you move towards the eighth rep, you’ll notice the burn becomes sharper. When you absolutely can’t do another one because your biceps feel like chew­ing gum, inhale and exhale a cou­ple of deep breaths, then pump out three quick ones, then care­fully lower the weight and relax. On these last three reps grit your teeth and feel the body become sud­denly warm. Again, it’s impor­tant to gear the weight so you absolutely fail by the tenth rep. This will pro­vide the req­ui­site stress on the fast twitch mus­cle fibres which are now in play.

Take a few deep breaths to dis­si­pate the lac­tic acid burn while select­ing a fur­ther 30% lighter bar on the rack. IMMEDIATELY com­mence the lifts again. It seems decep­tively easy to start with as there is even less weight than before, but as you move towards the eighth rep, you’ll notice the burn sharpen again. When you absolutely can’t do another one because your biceps feel like Bolog­nese, inhale and exhale a cou­ple of deep breaths, then pump out three quick ones, then care­fully lower the weight and relax. On these last three reps grit your teeth and feel the body sud­denly warm. Again, it’s impor­tant to gear the weight so you absolutely fail by the tenth rep. This will pro­vide the req­ui­site stress on the super-fast twitch ‘white’ fibres which are now in play.

This tech­nique is known as ‘strip­ping’, ‘super-setting’ or ‘run­ning the rack’. You’re not just doing one set of ten reps, then going to have a nat­ter with your friends, you’re com­pound­ing three or four strips in one set and pil­ing on theINTENSITY. When you get some prac­tice at this, you’ll end up lift­ing an absurdly light weight, scream­ing the house down as the last of your super-fast twitch­ers run up the sur­ren­der flag. Notice that the bog-standard lift would only work the com­fort­able red mus­cle so you wouldn’t get the faster twitch mus­cles acti­vat­ing the pro­duc­tion of HGH. Adap­tive change is the mir­a­cle con­tained inINTENSITY, and HEALING is the mir­a­cle con­tained in ADAPTIVE CHANGE. Ergo: you have to exer­cise with INTENSITY to stim­u­late the release of nat­ural human growth hor­mone and GALVANISE THE HEALING PROCESS.

The weight/cycling regimen:

3–4 times a week – no more!

An ideal start­ing exer­cise reg­i­men for 8/80-year-olds is laid out below – it’s the one I use if time is tight. You’ll need a gym for this lot so get seri­ous, they are plenty cheap deals these days. Start meek and ease into it – you don’t have to become a hard­core pro­fes­sional in one ses­sion – the body will thank you too. You’ll be doing ini­tial exer­cises designed to work the largest mus­cle groups in the body. Ensure no more than one minute’s rest between the sets4 of any par­tic­u­lar exer­cise to pre­vent the body cool­ing down and dis­rupt­ing mus­cle stress. It is a good idea to work with train­ers avail­able in gyms to max­imise the ben­e­fit of cor­rect tech­nique if you are unsure, but once you’ve got the action down, “The sky’s the limit, baby!” as Ted Turner would undoubt­edly say.

As you become more pro­fi­cient at train­ing with weights, you can move to the smaller mus­cle groups and work them directly, such as biceps, tri­ceps, shoul­der delts, spinal erec­tors, calves, etc. Notice that these smaller groups are hit any­way when you do the major lifts. For instance, when you are doing bench press, the tri­ceps and front shoul­der delts come into play on the pos­i­tive (lift), and biceps and rear delts are work­ing if the neg­a­tive (down-cycle) is done slowly. Some begin­ners make the mis­take of work­ing their tri­ceps before doing bench presses, which means their arms are shot and the chest won’t get worked. It’s dan­ger­ous too as the arms can sud­denly fail and the weight crash down onto your chest. Always use a spot­ter (a buddy/member of staff) when lift­ing heavy weight which might injure you.

Here we go:

WARM UP WITH PEAK PERFORMANCE

CYCLING OR STAIRMASTER

(see pre­vi­ous chap­ter on aer­o­bic exercise).

BARBELL LEG SQUATS (3 SETS X 10 REPETITIONS (REPS))

Place bar­bell across the back of the neck, raise your chin and squat down (the neg­a­tive) with your back kept straight, toes pointed slightly out, chest out, but­tocks out. (You can use dumb­bells instead and sim­ply hold them down by your sides if you pre­fer). Do not arch your back, the move­ment is all in the hips and leg. You should fold at the waist, every­thing above that being fixed. Stop when your thighs are almost par­al­lel to the ground. Then press the weight up slowly and delib­er­ately, tak­ing the strain into the thighs, breath­ing out on the positive/exertion/lift. Do not arch your back on this bit either.

Do the first set as a warm-up, fail­ing at the 8–10th rep. Then do the last two sets ‘run­ning the rack’, i.e. low­er­ing the weight each time you fail until you end up with no weight, blub­bing your eyes out as you press out those final three. You’ll need a mate for this one to relieve you of the weight or assist you when your legs fail. Sounds dra­matic and when you do it right, it is! Make sure there’s a bench close by so you can rest.

BENCH PRESS (3 SETS X 10 REPS)

Do the first set as a warm-up, fail­ing at the 8–10th rep. Then do the last two sets ‘run­ning the rack’, i.e. low­er­ing the weight each time you fail until you end up with a tid­dly bar, groan­ing like Michael Win­ner over his tax return. Once again, when you absolutely can’t do another one because your chest/arms are on fire, inhale and exhale a cou­ple of deep breaths, then pump out two quick ones, then care­fully lower the weight and relax. On these last reps, grit your teeth and feel the body sud­denly warm. Again, it’s impor­tant to gear the weight so you absolutely fail by the tenth rep. Low­er­ing the weight by 30–40% in each case works for me. This pro­vides the req­ui­site stress on the fast twitch fibres which are now com­ing into play.

You’ll need a staff member/mate for this one also to relieve you of the weight or assist if your arms fail.

LAT PULL-DOWNS (3 SETS X 10 REPS)

Be seated, choose a weight which will fail you at the 8–10th rep. anchor your rear-end on the seat and pull the bar down to your chest and back of the neck alter­nately. Do the first set as a warm-up, fail­ing at the 8–10th rep. Then do the last two sets ‘run­ning the rack’, i.e. low­er­ing the weight each time you fail until you end up with a minis­cule weight, back mus­cles crawl­ing like fleas as you press out those final three.

SEATED ROWING (3 SETS X 10 REPS)

Same goes for the seated row­ing machine — you’re get­ting the pat­tern now.

SIT-UPS (2 SETS UNTIL MUSCLE FAILURE)

We all know this one and avoid it like measles. Just get on with it, go for the burn, it’s over before you know it, then go and see Mother.

LIGHT CYCLING TO FINISH OFF,

RAISING THE SWEAT, SHEEN AND GLOW.

Hit the showers.

Do the weights in this reg­i­men no more than twice a week for now. Recov­ery time is everything.

Aer­o­bic supersets

Although weight-training is pri­mar­ily an anaer­o­bic activ­ity, you can ‘aer­o­bi­cise’ it by train­ing dif­fer­ent mus­cle groups together. For instance, you can do bench press sets inter­spersed with calves raises, which sends the blood rock­et­ing from your top end, down­stairs, then back up to your chest again, forc­ing the heart to work harder. Some train­ers work chest in with back, arms with legs, etc. to get this effect.

Sta­tic con­trac­tion training

Not for the faint-hearted or begin­ners. This is for seri­ous power-lifters and those seek­ing body­build­ing effects. Increase the weight of a par­tic­u­lar exer­cise so you fail on the sec­ond or third rep, then run the rack to burn out the fast and super-fast fibre by strip­ping weight off for sub­se­quent reps. This brings incred­i­ble inten­sity to bear on a par­tic­u­lar mus­cle group but you are using a lot more weight so you need to work safely. Very impor­tant: One sta­tic con­trac­tion work­out across the basic mus­cle groups (chest, back, arms and legs) will be it for the week. Rest and recu­per­a­tion are very impor­tant so don’t overdo and get sick.

Notes

* It doesn’t mat­ter whether you are 8 or 80, ease into weight train­ing if you’ve never done it before, you’ll be amazed at how great the body feels after­wards. This is the New Fron­tier within you which you’ve never explored. There’s heal­ing and peace here, along with a whole host of reme­dial and anti-ageing benefits.

* Learn the ropes and get your tech­nique right. If you don’t want to join a gym, there’s a fair bit you can do at home with a lit­tle imag­i­na­tion. For instance, you can do press-ups on the floor, then as you fail, drop your knees to the ground and pump out those last few before col­laps­ing and munch­ing the car­pet. Squats can be done eas­ily at home with or with­out weight (dumbbells).

* Bone den­sity is sharply enhanced by weight-training, espe­cially in the elderly. Nat­ural News writes:

“If you don’t want to spend your later years rest­ing in a nurs­ing home, los­ing your inde­pen­dence and drain­ing your or your family’s finan­cial resources, you need to do some­thing to remain inde­pen­dent. Accord­ing to numer­ous stud­ies and aging man­u­als, that “some­thing” is strength train­ing, an activ­ity known to increase bone mass and thus decrease the pos­si­bil­ity of osteo­poro­sis.”5

* As for chil­dren, Reuters Health writes:

“While strength train­ing was once doubted to ben­e­fit kids, a new research review con­firms that chil­dren and teenagers can boost their mus­cle strength with reg­u­lar workouts.

The find­ings, researchers say, sup­port recent rec­om­men­da­tions from the National Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (NSCA) that kids strength-train two to three times a week — though only under pro­fes­sional super­vi­sion.”6

* Females take note: Weight train­ing will not make you bulky unless you are tak­ing ana­bolic steroids. That unfem­i­nine mus­cu­la­ture on women in mag­a­zines can only be achieved phar­ma­ceu­ti­cally and with extreme diets. Females have only one hun­dredth of the andro­gen hor­mone lev­els of men, so all that’s likely to hap­pen if you work out hard is a lean and dan­ger­ous blody like Halle Berry or Jamie Lee Cur­tis (shame). By exer­cis­ing prop­erly and nat­u­rally you will tone your mus­cles, burn excess fat, nor­malise hor­mones and blood-sugar and approach your lean body­weight so long as your diet is right.

* Diet and hydra­tion are impor­tant to assist in repair and recov­ery. You do not need heavy ani­mal pro­tein pow­ders which can over­load the body and pro­duce pro­tein poi­son­ing. Your body makes pro­teins spe­cific to you accord­ing to yourDNA blue­print, not from dead cows. All you need to sup­ply is a mus­cle destruction/impact effect via your exer­cise and lots of pro­tein build­ing blocks (amino acids) to repair the mus­cle and acti­vate gen­eral heal­ing sys­tems andHGH in the body after­wards. The sin­gle great­est source of usable amino acids on Earth is the plant king­dom. Which means that raw plant foods should make up the bulk of your diet. More about this later.

* Ensure you rest a mus­cle group for at least three to four days. A good guide is to wait until any mus­cle sore­ness dis­si­pates before re-working. The more you exer­cise, the less sore your mus­cles will be as they adapt. Once they have adapted, though, you need to increase the weight and inten­sity to move to the next level, if you want to move to the next level. If you don’t, you can main­tain the weight and sim­ply increase the num­ber of reps until your fast and super-fast fibres fail, ensur­ing that you take advan­tage of this mech­a­nism to gen­er­ate nat­ural human growth hor­mone and gal­vanise the body’s cel­lu­lar repair systems.

Extracted with permission from The Essential Guide to Exercise by Phillip Day

1 www.mercola.com

2 Aure­lius A, Why Exer­cise? op. cit.

3 Col­lian­der EB, Tesch, PA “Effects of detrain­ing fol­low­ing short-term resis­tance train­ing on eccen­tric and con­cen­tric mus­cle strength”, Acta Phys­iol Scand. 1992;144:23

4 A set is a series of exer­cise rep­e­ti­tions (reps) com­pris­ing a unit of exer­cise, e.g. bench press­ing a weight 10 times com­prises 1 set of 10 reps.

5 www.naturalnews.com/010528.html

6 www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69P3M120101026.

See also Pedi­atrics Novem­ber 2010; 126(5):e1199-210

(Mercola) Story at-a-glance (read the full story here)

• New research shows that when healthy but inactive men and women exercise even briefly, it produces an immediate change in their DNA—early genetic events readying your body for creating muscle strength and increased fat burning
• When it comes to boosting metabolism, increasing muscle mass, and maximizing fat burning, high intensity interval training has been identified as being one of the most effective. Previous research has shown that just 20 minutes of high intensity training, two to three times a week, can yield greater results than slow and steady conventional aerobics done five times a week
• Exercise is like medicine, and should be “taken as prescribed” to optimize your health. Time, frequency and intensity are three important variables to keep in mind when creating your fitness program. And, while high intensity interval training is the most effective, you still need variety to reap maximum results. A well rounded fitness program would include all of the following: aerobic, anaerobic (interval training), strength training, core exercises, and stretching

(Mercola) Story at a glance (read the full story here)

• Both unfit volunteers and cardiac patients were able to significantly improve their health and fitness by engaging in a high-intensity interval cycling program without any other form of exercise. The cardiac patients showed "significant improvements" in both heart and blood vessel functioning, and no exercise-induced heart problems were observed, despite the intensity of the exercise.
• High intensity interval training is a key strategy for improving your health, boosting weight loss, promoting human growth hormone (HGH) production, and improving strength and stamina.
• Previous research has shown that, in young men and women, six weeks of thrice-weekly interval training can produce similar physiological changes in leg muscles as seen in those who perform hour-long sessions of steady cycling five days a week.
• Interval training has a beneficial impact on insulin sensitivity. In a 2011 study, unfit but otherwise healthy middle-aged adults were able to improve their insulin sensitivity and blood sugar regulation after just six sessions over two weeks. In a more recent experiment, people with full-blown type 2 diabetes improved blood sugar regulation over 24 hours after just ONE interval training session.