One of my clients this morning was particularly interested in his bodyfat percentage. While taking it I reminded him that the percentages are misleading and that a much more useful number is the absolute value of lean body mass (read: muscle) and fat mass, and that it’s much more useful to look at 2.4 pounds more of fat mass than a 1.5% increase in bodyfat.
I deal in absolutes, mostly because they’re more useful and informative than percentages. Percentages can be useful, but misleading.
For example, if you gain 5 pounds of muscle but lose no fat, you will show a lower bodyfat percentage. But if your goal is losing fat, then you haven’t been successful and need to tweak your diet accordingly. In this case, just going by percentage can lead you away from the actual useful information. More importantly, it can lead you to believe you’re doing the right thing when you’re not.
This can be applied to diet as well. We’ve heard how a skewed Omega 6:Omega 3 fatty acid intake is correlated with diseases of civilization; well, what if it’s not the ratio per se, but the absolute amounts of fatty acids we eat that matter? Then, it becomes easy to reduce your ratio of Omega 6:Omega 3 fatty acids; simply eliminate vegetable oils (which are rife with Omega 6 fatty acids) and include fish oil in your diet. No complex charts or lists to memorize, no interstate ordering of grass-fed beef required (although grass-fed is healthier for you).
There’s nothing wrong with quick-look measures like percentage increase/decrease, but for the whole story, deal with the absolute numbers. Likely, the things you’re measuring (such as body fat) aren’t pinpoint accurate anyway.
Why does stupid stuff (like the “cleans” in the video linked above) happen on a routine basis? Because you (or your coach) has chosen to emphasize intensity over quality.
Intensity (read: level of effort) is vitally important. In fact, the main reason most people get absolutely nothing out of their workouts is due to lack of intensity - they simply aren’t working hard enough to stimulate change in their body.
The flip side, of course, is what’s typically true of guys in the gym (and the freshmen in the video) - too much intensity improperly applied. It’s a poor strategy to work with a high level of effort before you develop proper form and technique.
Develop good technique first. There’s plenty of empirical evidence that shows that people who work out hard without first perfecting form have atrocious form, and even when they are taught proper form, quickly revert to atrocious form if not monitored and corrected.
By ensuring you have your form down first, you can:
Avoid injury.
Ensure proper exercise of working muscles.
Maximize exercise efficiency.
Case in point - If you learn how to jump rope with proper technique, one day you’ll be able to work up to doing this:
This is probably one of the most common questions I get from clients. Or, more likely, it’ll come in the form of a statement, as in: “I know I should probably stretch after our sessions. Right?”
Not surprisingly, the answer is: It depends on the context (betcha weren’t expecting that one).
If this were the 1970s, extortations of stretching, warming up, before and after exercise might have ensued. However, it’s 2008, and we know better now. We know that stretching prior to exercise does little to nothing, since cold tissues don’t stretch, and you’re likely to overstretch and compromise joint integrity in doing so. We also know that stretching after exercise is pretty useless as well, at least for the benefits often stated: injury prevention and decreased soreness.
Well, if you’re like this person, probably nothing.
However, if you’re one of these guys, then yes; you should stretch.
Confused? Don’t be. Here’s why:
In the sports depicted above, greater-than-normal ranges of motion (ROM) are required. If you didn’t have the excessive joint mobility required to succeed at these sports, you can’t play the game well. Is it beneficial for long-term joint health? Probably not (definitely not if sufficient strength isn’t developed in the muscles that surround those joints).
How else may stretching be beneficial? Injured individuals may benefit from stretching as they experience a “true” shortening of muscle and connective tissue, as a result of the injury. This is an adaptive response, meant to protect you from greater harm (e.g., you blow out one of your lumbar discs; your lower back muscles instantly seize, effectively ”locking up” your back, preventing further movement, and further injury). Or, in cases of trauma, the scar tissue that replaces healthy tissue is more fibrous and much less elastic, so stretching is necessary just to maintain normal ROM.
Note that this adaptive shortening is different from the “tightness” most people feel as a result of inactivity (i.e., weakness). What seems like “tight hamstrings” isn’t tightness as a result of shortening, but results from something else.
Summary:
If your goal is fat loss, general health, or muscle gain, then you don’t need to stretch.
You should stretch if a) your sport demands high (read: greater than normal) levels of flexibility, or b) you’ve sustained an injury and are trying to return to “normal” ROM.
According to the neurological Law of Irradiation, a contracting muscle spills its excitation over into its neighbors. Due to an abnormally high number of nerves in your paws, anything that happens with your gripping muscles deeply affects your whole body.
Translated from Russian: By gripping the bar hard, you create a more powerful contraction in the other muscles.
The Law of Irradiation: As hokey as that sounds, it’s a real effect. Here’s another way to think about it:
Your nerves innervate your muscles in much the same way as a phone company has network wires that reach from a central point into your house (and everyone else’s houses). In this vast network of copper wire, electrical signals travel from one end to the other. Being highly conductive, occasionally there’s some spillover between wires.
The Law of Irradiation illustrates this effect in the human body. The greater the impulse, the greater the spillover into other motor units. Consequently, if you want to amplify this effect, send a greater signal to the surrounding areas. In other words, to assist your grip, overgrip.
I finally got around to watching the entirety of this video. If you don’t know who Gary Taubes is, he’s a science journalist who wrote my favorite book of the last 10 years, Good Calories, Bad Calories. In my opinion, this book is required reading for any health or medical professional (regardless of whether or not you agree with his points) and for the interested layperson.
Full disclosure: I liked this book so much that I bought a copy for each one of my clients and promply wrote, “This is the book I wish I’d had 10 years ago as an undergrad. It would’ve saved me so much time locating, reading, and evaluating the research and studies!” in each copy.
If you’re too cheap or disinterested to go out and buy the book, you can get a pretty good feel for the material by watching this video.
And if you’re too disinterested to even watch the video, then let me summarize Taubes’ theses in a few sentences:
1) Diseases of civilization (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) are caused by overconsumption of refined carbohydrate foodstuffs.
2) Obesity is a disease of hormonal disorder. This hormonal disorder is caused by elevated insulin, which is caused by overconsumption of refined carbohydrate foodstuffs.
3) Cholesterol and fat are not killers; bad science and politics made it seem so.
One of my clients this morning was particularly interested in his bodyfat percentage. While taking it I reminded him that the percentages are misleading and that a much more useful number is the absolute value of lean body mass (read: muscle) and fat mass, and that it’s much more useful to look at 2.4 pounds more of fat mass than a 1.5% increase in bodyfat.
Having trouble with exercises that involve grip? Specifically, exercises where your grip gives out first, such as chinups or deadlifting?
