Exercise

 I started exercising at the age of eight after seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger win Mr Universe, or some such like. At age fifty I had tried it all and got nowhere.

You could say that I am a hard gainer, why is that?

I wrote a book about food and exercise and after reading it, I read the other books that I wrote.

I changed my diet by eliminating processed carbohydrates for three months and then intentionally keeping them quite low. I made a better effort to sleep well. I attempted to ‘listen’ more to my body.

None of this is easy. I found listening to my body to be impossible. I tried some new training philosophy that was centuries old, light dumbbell exercises. For two years my joints hurt from the light dumbbell exercises.

Physical changes were slight to none and I was getting increasingly unhappy with continuous joint pain. I thought the unthinkable. I continued with the light dumbbell exercises (Eugene Sandow) but didn’t use the light dumbbells.

So, after 44 years I listened to my body. After two intense years of attempting to listen to my body, I actually listened. Via pain my body informed me to stop using the 3kg dumbbells. I used 2kg dumbbells. The pain continued. I listened. I used 1kg dumbbells. The pain continued. I listened. I have not used dumbbells. for six months. My gains have been slight but better than the previous 44 years.

This is a critical thought blog, what I describe above is a true and accurate record of events but how can weight training without weights work when nothing I have tried in 44 years did anything?

Food and sleep are likely good foundations but exercise is needed to stimulate the body to make physical changes to adapt to the exercise. Is weight training without weights sufficient stimulus? It must be because my body has adapted, a little.

I am going to explain my modest success as a combination of three things-

1) Conscious thought

I don’t just wave my arms about ‘curling’ fresh air. I move my limbs in traditional weight lifting patterns with great focus of thought. This is known as the ‘mind-muscle’ link. I contract my muscles with as great a force as they can muster and move them throughout their full range of motion. I also ‘listen’ to my body in real-time. I don’t contract my muscles hard enough to cause pain. I don’t push my limbs beyond their pain free range of motion.

This develops a two way communication between my conscious will and my body. I deliberately contract a muscle whilst noting how that contraction feels.

2) Unconscious thought

My body has it’s own mechanisms for monitoring itself, as does yours. Medical science is beginning to realise how little it actually knows but the general population is beginning to notice. That said, these focussed movements reveal to the body / unconscious thought which parts of the body are working correctly and where resources are needed the most.

This is the adaptation to exercise that I am after. Do my nerves need to be ‘upgraded’, are my energy systems impaired in some way, do I need more brain neurons involved in movement, are my muscle cells arranged in the right plain, the right direction, are they tangled and knotted? Are my tendons springy and properly fed with nutrients and oxygen?

These focussed movements allow the bodies systems to recognise that various systems are lacking and which are most in need of resources. Then respond accordingly.

3) There must be a third thing. There always is.

Proprioception, YouTube search ‘The Bioneer’, this is where the body takes feedback from its environment and from within itself. The body will always seek to protect itself as best it can. Take my poor joints. Perhaps I am a hard gainer because my joints were never supple, springy and strong. Perhaps Arnold Schwarzenegger always had really good joints, a really good central nervous system, lots of brain neurons involved with movement and a whole host of really good mental and physical systems. Arnold would move a heavy weight and his body would green light everything but determine that larger muscles were required and so he would get them. I would lift a heavy weight and my body would have sirens sounding, klaxons blaring, red lights across the board and have my energy systems crashing and my body going into an emergency shut down. How would larger muscles be the answer to that ‘stimulus’?

If you are a successful weight lifter, body builder, ballerinist or just happy with your physical condition then my ‘focussed movements’ should not be traded for whatever it is that you are doing. You could use focussed movements as a pre-workout to really activate the ‘mind-muscle’ connection. Or perhaps post-work out to really stress the muscles to the max. Or use the focussed movements when you are away from suitable equipment or in solitary confinement for a misdemeanour of some sort.

If you are a hard gainer then perhaps one or more of your bodies systems is compromised and these focussed movements, without weights, will allow your body address these issues.

If you are old, infirm or not as good as you would like to be, try these weightless focussed movements for three to six months. Remembering that any pain or discomfort is a signal to amend what you are doing to not be in pain or discomfort.

After six months, what next?

This is my reason for writing this blog post, as I am at the six month marker and wish to read about what to do next.

I do three reps of about 20 exercise movements daily I do a mixture of one exercise when convenient and another later, when convenient. Or the entire workout in one go, if that is convenient to me. What next? Should I do six reps or more? Do the movements twice a day? Both?

No, this would make my muscles larger as they would need to store more energy to do more reps. I would like larger muscles but not as a ‘pack animal’ to do more work. I want to be physically stronger and effortlessly exert a large force ‘on demand’.

Critical thought has allowed me to fully understand my goal(s) and the solution is obvious to me. Well the solution for me is obvious to me. You will be considering how all this may or may not be true and if you can use and modify any of it to benefit yourself.

Moving forward, I shall be contracting my muscles harder throughout the full range of pain free movement that each of my limbs is capable of. I will be purposefully generating as large a force as possible. I will monitor how this feels. I can do this because I have six months experience of doing this. I thought I was contracting my muscles powerfully. I will make a greater conscious effort to contract them harder. For those who know their stuff, I expect this will mean, over time, doing each movement slower, thus increasing time under tension.

I will consider making a YouTube video demonstrating the twenty or so movements and I will put the link here when that happens. I have no equipment, dislike being photographed or filmed and have no desire to be seen shirtless – so it may not happen.

Do or do not, there is no try—Yoda