Activity/Exercise/Diet/Nutrition

(Windmill Tilter) #41

The great thing about Body by Science style workouts is that although it works at any age, it was actually designed to reverse muscle loss and/or osteoporosis in geriatric patients. The slower you move, the safer a movement is. The biggest criticism of BBS is that it is optimized for increasing strength, but it doesn’t maximize hypertrophy. For the average 20 year old “gym bro” that might be a problem, but I value safety/sustainability as my number one priority, strength second, and hypertrophy a distant 3rd. My odds of recovering from a torn rotator cuff were a lot higher at 18 then they are now that I’m over 40. Body by Science still builds plenty of muscle though!

This guy is Jay Vincent, the owner/trainer of two HIT facilities near me. I see him every now and then for form checks and programming. The facility he runs in my town is specifically targeted at strength training senior citizens. It’s filled with Nautilus MedX equipment and looks like a dentist office, but he’s got 70 year olds in there that could rip my arms off lol…

Jay trained in HIT and Super Slow working for Fred Hahn in New York City for several years (shoutout to @SlowBurnMary . He also spent time working with Dr. Doug McGuff in his facility. He’ll be the first to say that genetics is 50% of the game, but he gained most of that muscle with Body by Science style workouts. Yeah, you can get pretty damn strong doing high intensity resistance training once or twice for 20 minutes.

aBObeca.jpg768×768

Jay posted a vid of his weekly workout a while back that gives a good idea of what a HIT workout looks like. Dog not included, you’ve got to bring your own… :yum:

#42

All of my s&c work has been focused on athletes. I’ve worked with athletes from middle school through college, even a few pros and Olympians.

Each age group has their own needs, I wouldn’t train a middle school kid the same way I would a more experienced athlete.

Being middle aged, I think being able to balance well would prevent injuries, as would working on exercises targeting your posterior chain (back and back of leg exercises). You want to protect your spine through working your core, and not by doing crunches or sit-ups.

You don’t want to be the middle aged uncle that throws your back out throwing a ball around with the kids at a family gathering every year.

(charlie3) #43

I was a hobby lifter for 10 years 25 years ago. That experience teaches me it’s a mistake to have the goal be to gain as fast as possible, better to gain for as long as possible. Accepting slower progress makes it sensible to do fewer sets with longer recovery intervals. I also believe all the things that support more muscle need time to adapt and most of them are slower than the muscles.

P.S. Adding to the above, as I get deeper in to this, it seems there are credible running coaches who find low heart rate training can be the sufficient for aerobic fitness by itself and promote improvement for years even for elite athletes. That’s music to my ears. I want to save the high intensity energy pathways for resistance training for hypertrophy. I want high aerobic fitness AND some muscle. Two hours of slow running would be punishing. The same time on the airdyne at the same heart rate is not.

(charlie3) #44

There’s a running trainer named Phil Maffetone who advocates MAF (maximum aerobic fitness) or “low heart rate” training for the sake of improving fat adaption and cardio efficiency. That means using a heart rate monitor to stay at a heart rate of 180 - AGE, +/- 10 BPM, which for me is 110 BPM. He’s calling for exercising close to, but strictly below, your aerobic threshhold and let the body improve itself at it’s own pace. He advocates low carbs to encourage fat adaption. He predicts running performance will improve with no increase in heart rate. He believes these adaptions can happen over months or years, training this way exclusively. I’m going to train this way indefinitely on the airdyne and save the high intensity stuff for lifting. I hope this works because it’s so easy. I’ll go on with 2 x 1 hour sessions daily for now.

Now I’m wondering if there is a way to adapt this approach to lifting. I’ve favored higher reps and lower weights and minimal sets from the start to protect joints and connective tissues. Lately I’m doing 1 set of 10 exercises 3 days a week. I’ll try changing weight and reps less often and do more on feel.

(Windmill Tilter) #45

There is. It’s called BFR training. You use very light weights (20% 1 rep max). Hypertrophy is comparable to high intensity training. It’s typically used for injury rehab with a physiotherapist, but more and more folks do it as a regular workout because it’s so low impact.

Dr. Mercola has a few youtube vids and articles about it. I love it. It’s the exact opposite of the Body by Science workout. High reps with low weights at a fast pace.

(Edith) #46

We’ve had some discussions on this forum about using MAF for running.

It’s been suggested that as fat adapted people, we need to up our heart rate 10 points for our aerobic threshold. When I was using Maffetone’s
suggested values I couldn’t get any improvement. Ten beats higher helped a lot and made the “running” more pleasurable.

(charlie3) #47

The airdyne doesn’t have the too-slow problem, one of it’s virtues. I believe I can feel when the work is getting anarobic. Officially I’m 180 - 70 = 110 BPM. I’m usuallly holdinng myself at 105 BPM to keep things aerobiic. (I notice I’m more energetic on the second ride of the day compared to the first and don’t know why.) I don’t know if 2 one hour sessions is too much. It seems to have no effect on lifting.

I was nearly doing the things I’m describing already based on intuition. The Mattetone reasoning gives me confidence to carry on as I have been. Workouts are less wearing mentally and physically.