The DEBUNKING thread.........myths that need to be trashed

Thanks! I'll try that.

One more question (and, if you don't feel like getting used as a free trainer-consultant, I understand): Most of what I do right now is cardio and all-lower-body (cycling and the elliptical). This is because I've been troubled lately with some aching in the muscle on the outside of the upper arm (not the biceps, which is in front, and not the triceps, which is in back, but on the outside of the arm. It's the right arm only. I pretty much suspended my arm-related exercise, thinking that I need to rest it. But, after several weeks of resting it, it still aches. If this was you, would you go back to working it, do you think? (I'm 57 years old, and my whole musculo-skeletal is increasingly becoming a collection of minor aches and pains, which I mostly ignore unless they start feeling dangerous.)

Thanks again.

If it's the outside of your upper arm it's either the biceps or triceps. Does it hurt more when curl up or push down?

So you are saying that since I am in a calorie deficit I am not going to build muscles or get stronger even if I lift weights?

So you are saying that since I am in a calorie deficit I am not going to build muscles or get stronger even if I lift weights?

You can't get stronger but you won't gain appreciable mass. For muscles to get stronger they have to grow a little but we're not talking mass like bodybuilders or even female bodybuilders at that.

Heres one I liked...
"I don't want to bulk up, I just want to tone up!"

Uh, flex.
Say hello to your muscle.
Now, you can either leave it as it is and simply burn fat via cardio. Or you can do strength training, build the muscle up a bit, and burn off less fat to get it to show through.

There is so such thing as toning. You either build muscle and burn fat, or you simply burn fat. Be happy with what you have under there or go build more.

So you are saying that since I am in a calorie deficit I am not going to build muscles or get stronger even if I lift weights?

Yes, you will get stronger and yes you will gain lean tissue. It just won't be actual muscle fiber growth (either in size of the existing fibers or in adding additional fibers) until you are providing adequate nutrition and have been training for a long period of time. The first strength gains you will experience are actually neural adaptations in the muscles. They are strong enough now to lift more then they think they can but the nervous system doesn't allow it because of lack of use. Think of it as your muscles are currently the Little Engine That Could. They haven't climbed the mountain yet, so they don't think they can make it. After attempting little hills first, they realize that yes, they can climb that mountain. Each lift with a small weight is an "I think I can" toward that bigger weight. The first one, you only use a few of the available muscle fibers, and on the second effort, you'll use a few more muscle fibers and so on and so on, until you are using all the muscle fibers that are available. So, when you first start a weight training program, you will notice strength gains rather rapidly, because the nervous systems start to engage and allow for more muscle fiber recruitment and therefore more weight and reps with your lifts. During this time your body will also adapt to needing more glycogen in the muscle to fuel the lifts because weight lifting is anaerobic, which is primarily using carbs as fuel for the movements. That first time you lift, there's not much glycogen stored in the muscles. The second time you lift, though, they will be ready and have a little extra glycogen in there for when you lift so that they don't fatigue as fast. If you keep it up, they will keep storing more glycogen (in 3 times as much water) so that they are ready for you to do your toughest workout. This is what confuses a lot of people, because they feel the glycogen and water in their muscles as firmer muscles and when they do a body composition analysis, it comes up as lean body mass since it isn't fat being stored. Since it appears as lean tissue on the body comp and the muscles feel firmer, it was believed for years to be muscle growth. Some trainers, due to lack of knowledge, will still tell their clients they are building muscle. Others will tell their clients that so that they don't confuse them with the science or scare them into thinking they need to avoid water retention. We actually want this type of water retention as it is best for performance. The storage of glycogen and water will plateau after 3-6 months usually, when the muscles get to their set point of maximum glycogen storage. At this point in time, then the neuromuscular system goes to work again and tells the brain that we can't get any stronger (via recruiting more fibers or storing more fuel) without the current muscle fibers growing or adding more muscle fibers. At this point, then the protein in the foods we eat is not only needed for the repair of any damage in the muscles caused by exercise, but also for the added muscle. Unfortunately, too many people are scared by the added weight of the glycogen and water and think they have to cut weight and may opt not to eat adequate carbohydrates to get to this point. If there aren't enough carbs in the diet, then this stage doesn't get reached. Then instead of having adequate glycogen in the muscles, the body has to break down protein to convert to glucose to use to fuel the lifts, so that protein isn't available to build more muscle. It's kind of a double whammy to muscle building because the neuromuscular stimulus isn't there and neither is the extra protein to build the muscle fibers. But if you eat enough carbs to replenish your glycogen stores, train heavy with your weights, and eat adequate protein to have it available, you can build muscle even on a calorie deficit. But the deficit has to be small and the training has to be targeted to use what is being consumed properly to pull from fat stores in the body for any weight loss.

"Stretching prevents injuries."

... Warming up prior to exercise and increasing blood flow to the muscles is actually more conducive to injury prevention. I'm not suggesting that you eliminate stretching. ...

That's interesting, and it's something I've read from time to time. I guess my question is: what does a "warmup" look like? Is it basically a slower or easier version of the activity we're warming up for, or what?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

So you are saying that since I am in a calorie deficit I am not going to build muscles or get stronger even if I lift weights?

Yes, you will get stronger and yes you will gain lean tissue. It just won't be actual muscle fiber growth (either in size of the existing fibers or in adding additional fibers) until you are providing adequate nutrition and have been training for a long period of time. The first strength gains you will experience are actually neural adaptations in the muscles. They are strong enough now to lift more then they think they can but the nervous system doesn't allow it because of lack of use. Think of it as your muscles are currently the Little Engine That Could. They haven't climbed the mountain yet, so they don't think they can make it. After attempting little hills first, they realize that yes, they can climb that mountain. Each lift with a small weight is an "I think I can" toward that bigger weight. The first one, you only use a few of the available muscle fibers, and on the second effort, you'll use a few more muscle fibers and so on and so on, until you are using all the muscle fibers that are available. So, when you first start a weight training program, you will notice strength gains rather rapidly, because the nervous systems start to engage and allow for more muscle fiber recruitment and therefore more weight and reps with your lifts. During this time your body will also adapt to needing more glycogen in the muscle to fuel the lifts because weight lifting is anaerobic, which is primarily using carbs as fuel for the movements. That first time you lift, there's not much glycogen stored in the muscles. The second time you lift, though, they will be ready and have a little extra glycogen in there for when you lift so that they don't fatigue as fast. If you keep it up, they will keep storing more glycogen (in 3 times as much water) so that they are ready for you to do your toughest workout. This is what confuses a lot of people, because they feel the glycogen and water in their muscles as firmer muscles and when they do a body composition analysis, it comes up as lean body mass since it isn't fat being stored. Since it appears as lean tissue on the body comp and the muscles feel firmer, it was believed for years to be muscle growth. Some trainers, due to lack of knowledge, will still tell their clients they are building muscle. Others will tell their clients that so that they don't confuse them with the science or scare them into thinking they need to avoid water retention. We actually want this type of water retention as it is best for performance. The storage of glycogen and water will plateau after 3-6 months usually, when the muscles get to their set point of maximum glycogen storage. At this point in time, then the neuromuscular system goes to work again and tells the brain that we can't get any stronger (via recruiting more fibers or storing more fuel) without the current muscle fibers growing or adding more muscle fibers. At this point, then the protein in the foods we eat is not only needed for the repair of any damage in the muscles caused by exercise, but also for the added muscle. Unfortunately, too many people are scared by the added weight of the glycogen and water and think they have to cut weight and may opt not to eat adequate carbohydrates to get to this point. If there aren't enough carbs in the diet, then this stage doesn't get reached. Then instead of having adequate glycogen in the muscles, the body has to break down protein to convert to glucose to use to fuel the lifts, so that protein isn't available to build more muscle. It's kind of a double whammy to muscle building because the neuromuscular stimulus isn't there and neither is the extra protein to build the muscle fibers. But if you eat enough carbs to replenish your glycogen stores, train heavy with your weights, and eat adequate protein to have it available, you can build muscle even on a calorie deficit. But the deficit has to be small and the training has to be targeted to use what is being consumed properly to pull from fat stores in the body for any weight loss.

Ok i think all this is making sense, it is kind of like muscle memory? So for 3-6 months continue what I am doing with half cardio like swimming and half my work outs being circuit training with weights and by then I will be at my goal weight and "feeling stronger and be more toned. Then if I want to add on a little muscle I can by going out of a calorie deficit? Should I be making sure I have enough carbs for my work outs? or continue to make sure I am getting enough protein?

"Stretching prevents injuries."

... Warming up prior to exercise and increasing blood flow to the muscles is actually more conducive to injury prevention. I'm not suggesting that you eliminate stretching. ...

That's interesting, and it's something I've read from time to time. I guess my question is: what does a "warmup" look like? Is it basically a slower or easier version of the activity we're warming up for, or what?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

A warm up is designed to get the blood pumping stronger to all the areas of the body. Primarily warm up and cool down are for your heart so it can handle the changes in rate, stroke volume, total peripheral resistance, blood pressure, etc. Before you go into super intense activities with certain muscles, they need to be primed kind of like you prime your lawn mower before starting it. Get the blood pumping there to provide all the necessary components to the individual cells for producing the ATP needed to fuel the movements. Personally, I like a dynamic warm-up, where you get all the areas of the body moving through a full range of motion. It looks kind of silly and will get you stared at in some gyms, but here is my favorite sequence of dynamic warm up exercises. If the whole picture doesn't show up here, just right click and save as (it's a jpg picture file) so you can open it in your photo program to see the whole thing.

As for the Calorie thing, I have to comment because this has been such a fun conversation so far. Exercise Physiologists don't use Physics equations. First of all, the calories that physicists use do not equal the Calories exercise physiologists use. Ours are Kilocalories and actually 1000 times larger then the physics calories. Second, physicists keep saying we aren't doing any work when we lift a weight and put it back down because the weight is in the same position at the end of the movement as at the beginning of the movement.

Tonya, I love you to death and am not trying to be a pain -- really! But we physicists -- modern ones, at least -- don't use "calories" at all if we can avoid it. We work in the SI ("Le Systeme International d'Unites"), where energy is measured in joules (J). And, of course, you're correct: the calorie is the energy required to increase the temperature of one gram of water by one Celsius degree, while in the nutritional world, what's commonly referred to as the "calorie" is actually a thousand times as much, and will warm up a kilogram of water by 1 C°.

Also, I would never tell you that you don't do work when you raise a weight and then lower it to its starting position. On the contrary -- if you lift a mass m through a height h, you do m·g·h of work in raising it, and another m·g·h of work in lowering it, assuming constant velocity. It is true that the first work has a positive sign and the second is negative, but that doesn't matter to your muscles -- they neither know nor care whether you're doing negative or positive work. That matters only to the weight -- it's had zero total work done on it, and its final state is the same as its initial one. Your muscles still did the work, however.

As a physicist, if I want to really tick you off, here's how I'll do it: please stand with your arms stretched straight out to both sides, level, holding a 15-pound dumbbell in each hand. Don't move. Just stand there, perfectly still ... with your arms starting to tremble ... and then shake ... you're gritting your teeth ... sweat's starting to run down your forehead ... hold it ... hold it ... until you finally throw the weights at me and say, "What do you mean, I didn't do any work???!!?" Well, in the physical definition of work, sorry: no displacement, no work. But that just shows that physical work and muscle effort aren't the same thing.

Anyway, thanks for your patience. Just look at your picture, and then at mine. One thing's clear: exercise physiologists may not use physics equations, but they're a hell of a lot better-looking than physicists are! And the physicists appreciate it, too. I mean, we're not blind. :-)