resistance is resistance, its all gravity folks

Resistance is resistance folks

Many of you may not have heard this or have thought of it but it really doesnt matter what you lift or how much. if a big 500lb man can struggle through and squat 1200lbs but you barely push through for a 1 rep max at 200lbs it doesn't matter, maximum effort, for you, that was all your output against the mass under gravity.

The whole reason why training and exercise works is because we're eliciting a growth response to handle abnormal loads under the weight of gravity, no gravity, no load, no muscle. this is why astronauts muscles and bone atrophy and waste away in space after long periods, we THRIVE on gravity and the "good stress" it provides.

Humans are naturally lazy, im not insulting the human race, its just that we're hard wired to take the path of least resistance (all you parkour people see what i did there?) the only reason why we're all so much fatter, sicker, and deconditioned while still taking the path of least resistance is..... drum roll please.... LIFE IS EASIER, you dont have to sprint to get away from a tiger, you dont have to lift a heavy rock out of a cave entrance to acquire shelter, climb trees for your food, or in most cases plant your own freakin crops. life is easier therefor the "stress" is lighter and the growth and strength response is less.

If you cant do a pushup on your toes, you probably dont have a high bench press, if you can do a lot of pushups you can probably bust out a lot of reps with the bench press at a certain weight, if you can do a few pushups with a heavy person laying on your back you probably have a decent 1 rep max on bench press. now, not all things correlate this easily but for the demonstrative purposes im using the bench press. The fact of the matter is, resistance is resistance, and causes a growth and strength response (if training methodologies are correct) which makes your body stronger and because of this gravity is your best friend, because thanks to gravity you can do progressive calisthenics, you can do weight lifting, kettlebells, gymnastics, parkour, what ever you want, and you can receive benefits from these activities because they provide a "good stress" response on your body because, repeat it after me, RESISTANCE IS RESISTANCE. so stop focusing on one discipline and cross train, quit sacrificing your form to put up more weight on say.... THE BENCH PRESS and try other modalities, try pushups, try ring pushups, try planche pushups, try weighted ring dips with a resistance band pulling you down too, get creative and quit focusing on weights and even exercises, if you receive a gain in strength, size, what ever your goal is, DO IT (as long as it doesn't harm you). The whole point is, do what serves your ends to make you reach your goals in a safe manner.

and dont forget to train hard.

A thought for the wild man

So i had some thoughts bouncing in my head

a pound of muscle is 100g of protein and mostly water.. a quote from Mark Rippetoe: "strength is expensive, and your body doesn't throw away expensive things lightly." and a combination of bush craft and survival videos leading me to an internal conversation about how much do we really need to eat to be and stay strong.

if you eat along the primal blueprint or paleo, fat becomes the main energy source and your body becomes adapted to burning fat easier i.e. from food or your storage, and protein is used for what protein is used for, natural processes and muscle synthesis. now if we're not trying to get super huge then you dont need to eat more, and as Mark Rippetoe says in an article of his: "conditioning is a scam" strength athletes trying to gain only strength need to eat only to meet their natural and exercise energy expenditures, but those also or primarily wanting to gain mass need to eat more to maintain and increase mass. so by this  and some other knowledge i've picked up, you can be super strong, not quite as large, and support your size on a very minimalist diet, i.e. (wild man survivalist, intermittent fasting, etc.) and still get stronger, because never in the history of our world (to our knowledge *insert x-files music here*) has any civilization had access to as much food as we've had so they had to make due with much less and many were uncommonly strong especially among the general populace of today in comparison and all on modest diets.

so enough beating around the bush, all of this was sort of a way to talk myself into reaching a conclusion, and mostly pertinent only to my own personal goals, some of which others may relate to:

• get strong
• get dense
• THRIVE with a LOT less food

and in my current experience, the results kept coming even when i ate VERY minimally, so a human surviving in the wilds on very little food (depending on the catch of the day) could do very well in the strength department even with a minimalist diet as long as they're eating animals and not being a picky vegetarian in the midst of an apocalypse or something.

if you missed a general point for this article dont stress it, this is just my brain puking out information and trying to write it down before i forget.

When and how to stretch

Stretching

Many people consider stretching an exercise in of itself, to those people i give this look: 

Stretching can be a form of muscle length/postural correction, more commonly among the populace as a way to increase flexibility or by some as a way to wind down for the night before bed or even yoga practitioners.

Types of stretching

There isnt just one type of stretching, there's:

• passive
• active
• dynamic
• and ballistic

first and foremost is the most common form of stretching, Passive. stand up straight, lock your knees back and try to touch your toes, and just reach, that's passive stretching, relaxing all your muscles and slowly working farther and farther through a stretch.

Active stretching is a much more useful form of stretching than passive in my opinion simply because it makes the stretch greater and essentially give you more benefit for the same amount of work as passive stretching. For active stretching you do the same as you would for passive but now flex your quads, because quads and hamstrings work in opposite ways contracting one relaxes the other, same as you major arm muscles, flex triceps = relaxed biceps, and visa vera, this phenomenon is called reciprocal inhibition and is quite useful in stretching for flexibility purposes.

Dynamic stretching is what you will commonly see athletes in sports perform, swinging there arms back and forth, bringing there knees up high and jogging in place and other similar activities, this makes the muscle warm while stretching it just a little to get it used to wider ranges of motion to come but not enough that it looses tension and performance suffers.

Last and certainly least is ballistic stretching which is considered very bad for you and your muscles and is just about as useless as it comes in stretching techniques, this is when you would be doing said toe reach stretch and instead of calmly reaching you'd bounce yourself trying to touch and grab your toes. whats dangerous about ballistic stretching is that not only does it make it harder to increase your flexibility but it can actually do the opposite and cause you to lock up because the part of your mucles called the golgi tendon which connects the muscles to bones through tendons is what releases muscle tension to allow for a safe stretch so to prevent a muscle tear, dynamic stretching doesnt allow this and makes it more and more likely for you to tear a muscle.

Dont be this guy, dont do ballistic stretching

So when the heck do i stretch?

So now that you know the different types of stretches, its time to learn WHEN to stretch. Stretching releases muscle tension because when you stretch a muscle you pull the actin and myosin filiments apart, those filiments pulling together is what causes you to be able to flex, your muscle, lift something, MOVE, all muscle action is controlled by those filaments pulling together to cause tension, tension = strength. so its not a smart idea to lessen your output of tension right BEFORE a workout. make sense? some people like stretching in the morning, but being "cold" i never got a good stretch in the morning and some articles i've read suggest that in the P.M. is when we're at our most flexible, and my own experience agrees with this, so post workout, pre-sleep i would reccomend as the best times to initiate a flexibility routine.

"But so and so told me to stretch pre-workout"

To tie this article up, the ONLY time you should stretch pre workout is if you're doing dynamic stretching to warm up (also include warm up sets for exercises being performed), and corrective passive stretching (only on orders from your personal trainer).

 Not included in this article is stuff like pnf stretching which is really cool and awesome.

Strength v.s. Endurance

someone get these boys a sandwich and a barbell

I've said before that strength is a physical change in the actin and myosin filaments in the individual muscle fibers where as endurance and conditioning are chemical changes in the efficient uses of energy present in muscles i.e. glycogen and then you could get into such sub topics as carboloading and sport performance and what not but what this is all leading to is a wonderful article i've found on T nation called Conditioning is a Scam by Mark Rippetoe  and its well worth the read by all personal trainers on why novices should be exposed to strength building exercises in the start of their training before conditioning because without a proper base the chemical change is useless if there's not much muscle to use to begin with. So check it out.