Whether you exercise at the gym, at home, attend some fitness classes or just run outdoors – you need to know that any type of physical activity involves not only calorie burning and muscle strengthening, but also specific hormonal response. The intensity, duration, type and correct technique of the exercises are important here.
Each of us is different and requires
an individual approach
The statement that I keep repeating is that each of us is different and requires an individual approach does not only apply to diet and supplementation but also to the type of workout.
The training plan not well adjusted can:
- lead to many injuries (sometimes irreversible),
- induce or aggravate hormonal problems,
- cause or aggravate the asymmetry in the body (both in terms of the shape and strength of the individual muscle parts)
- dramatically reduce the effectiveness of your workout and its positive effect on your shape, fitness, health and wellbeing.
A good example of incorrectly adjusted training plan is, for instance, doing too long workouts by obese people who have problems with their adrenal glands or who suffer from insulin resistance (here I would like to add that many obese people struggle with these problems, often even not being aware of that). In their belief, doing 1.5h or 2h of cardio at the gym will help them to burn fat because they are convinced, the longer they run, the more calories they burn. Unfortunately, the amount of calories burned is one of the least important things that should be paid attention to while trying to reduce weight. In case of these problems, long training sessions will cause, among other things, a high release of adrenaline and cortisol. The main task of these hormones is to mobilize the body to act (Fight or Flight Response, etc.) by releasing an additional amount of energy. To provide a large dose of energy necessary for the body to take action, our body releases, among other things, glycogen – sugar stored in the liver. In turn, an elevated level of blood sugar (caused by the release of glycogen) causes the pancreas to release insulin (which allows this sugar to go into the muscle cell, providing it with the energy). If this condition is kept for too long, it may cause the adrenal glands overstimulation and worsening the insulin sensitivity of cells – paradoxically, it will deteriorate health and appearance.
Optimal training
Most trainers are unaware of what training is really for our body. Well, training is nothing more than an artificial signal to “show” to your body that in the environment in which you live, to survive you need strength, fitness or good condition.
When you run carelessly on the treadmill, your brain thinks that you’re running away from danger or chasing potential food.
Weight lifting or any other form of physical activity is interpreted by your brain as something essential for you to survive.
The organism is always determined to survive and will do everything to use as little energy as possible during physical activity and to make repetitive activities easier. When you lift some weight, your body wants to distribute it to as many muscle groups as possible to make this movement easier. Your mind will always be subconsciously trying to relieve the muscle doing heavy job in every possible way – often at the expense of joints.
This mechanism can be easily explained
on the example of escaping from the predator.
If in natural environment you were chased, for example, by a wolf, then while running fast and avoiding various obstacles, your body would make such movements that would allow you to escape as quickly as possible (not paying attention to the “technique” of the run) and would try to save muscle at the expense of joints. Why? Because with torn or broken muscles, your further escape would be impossible, which would mean that you would be eaten by a wolf. However, the inflammation connected with overusing your knee by escaping would occur much later and would not let you escape.
In other words, if you don’t want to hurt yourself during training, then, very often you have to act contrary to the movement patterns that your mind strives for and replace them with new ones – such movements that strain the specific muscles as much as possible, while relieving your joints.
Another example, illustrating the “survival” approach of our body to live is the speed with which we lose strength and muscle mass after a short break in training and the easy to accumulate fat.
In the natural environment, there is plenty of movement and very little food, so the body is eager to get rid of excess muscle mass as soon as it is no longer needed (for example, during two weeks holidays) because the muscles are heavy and consume a lot of energy, which makes it more difficult to survive. When we stop using them actively, they are nothing else but unnecessary load. Fat tissue, on the other hand, is lightweight and practically does not require any extra energy needed to sustain it, but it significantly facilitates survival as it is a kind of “the energy” investment for the future.
