Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look up Emsculpt. It's a fascinating/creepy new device that artificially stimulates core muscular contractions, with visibly more exercised and defined muscles after a few sessions with no changes in lifestyle.
TENS units have been around for decades. Every once in a while someone tries to turn it into an exercise machine, but this is mostly marketing, not anything new.
Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma
41–50 of 137 posts
Re: Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma
#42This explains how Christian Bale is able to do what he does, gaining and losing weight for roles.
What I was turning up didn't seem particularly new, but the consensus seemed to be you could expect return to previous performance levels(in strength anyway) in about 12 weeks or so of proper training and diet.. Almost regardless of how long you have been off. Obviously there are exceptions and extremes that probably don't play out that way, but this has also been about my experience of on-and-off again body building and strength training for the past 15 years.
Often the nervous system recovers too fast in my experience. One can ramp up work effort way faster than the muscles and tendons are prepared for, particularly stabilizing components, resulting in strains and pains. Sticking to a ramp up plan is, IMHO, almost as hard as quitting smoking but crucial.
Re: Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma
#43This is a pretty disconcerting study. What's to stop athletes from using steroids if this is the case? Use steroids to train to a PR, take some time off to let the steroids leave the body, and then just recoup those gains. I think we will start to see this happening in competitive sports, especially in countries like the Dominican Republic, where recruitment into the MLB can pull an entire family out of poverty; I'm…
Re: Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma
#44Here's an interesting question. If it's proven that there are long term benefits to moderate steroid use, is it ethical to ban them for non competitive athletes?
Re: Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma
#45This is a pretty disconcerting study. What's to stop athletes from using steroids if this is the case? Use steroids to train to a PR, take some time off to let the steroids leave the body, and then just recoup those gains. I think we will start to see this happening in competitive sports, especially in countries like the Dominican Republic, where recruitment into the MLB can pull an entire family out of poverty; I'm…
I genuinely question why people are so concerned if people use science to achieve better results at sports. It often seems like some kind of puritanical moral outrage over drugs. Edit: I understand the reasoning behind why testing is done. I just question if it is really led by safety concerns, fairness and science or just our default knee-jerk "drugs are bad" culture. There are plenty of other safety concerns in spo…
That may be part of the answer, but it feels incomplete. Elite training itself is often unhealthy. And doping techniques vary wildly. There are risks to HGH, EPO, anabolic steroids, and blood doping, but they have radically different risk profiles.
I think it's more that people have an idealized notion of athletes accomplishing something through sheer force of will. So... a scientifically designed training regimen seems fine, chemical alterations to your blood chemistry do not. Training at high altitudes is fine, replacing your blood with blood from when you were at high altitudes is not. Overtraining, eating disorders, destroyed tendons, encephalopathy -- none are ideal, but we seem to tolerate them.
Questions about what to tolerate are fuzzy and pervasive. Testosterone levels are monitored in women's competitions and someone has to decide the cutoff. Progressively sleeker swimsuits were fine, until they weren't. Equipment manufacturers generally advertise increased performance, but if they deliver too much too soon, they get banned.
These are all versions of the question, "What is this sport?" It's deceptive. Seems simple, but after examining all the edge cases, it becomes impossible to deduce from pure reason. Ruling bodies just pile on conventions.
A Supreme Court dissent once argued:
"[S]ince it is the very nature of a game to have no object except amusement (that is what distinguishes games from productive activity), it is quite impossible to say that any of a game’s arbitrary rules is ‘essential.’ Eighteen-hole golf courses, 10-foot-high basketball hoops, 90-foot baselines, 100-yard football fields – all are arbitrary and none is essential. The only support for any of them is tradition and (in more modern times) insistence by what has come to be regarded as the ruling body of the sport[.]"
Banning some supplements but not others is perfectly reasonable, but the fine lines are going to be somewhat arbitrary.
Re: Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look up Emsculpt. It's a fascinating/creepy new device that artificially stimulates core muscular contractions, with visibly more exercised and defined muscles after a few sessions with no changes in lifestyle.
I use my motor neurons to electrically stimulate muscle contraction and it doesn't cost me anything. I mean come on... the wires are already hooked up right in to your brain...
Re: Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma
#47From Wikipedia's description of muscle memory: > When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed without conscious effort. But this article is about enhanced muscle recovery and volume, not about motor learning. I wonder if that's an abuse of the term "muscle memory" or just a different sense. I'm not finding that sense used in a quick…
Re: Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma
#48This is a pretty disconcerting study. What's to stop athletes from using steroids if this is the case? Use steroids to train to a PR, take some time off to let the steroids leave the body, and then just recoup those gains. I think we will start to see this happening in competitive sports, especially in countries like the Dominican Republic, where recruitment into the MLB can pull an entire family out of poverty; I'm…
Re: Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma
#49Here's an interesting question. If it's proven that there are long term benefits to moderate steroid use, is it ethical to ban them for non competitive athletes?
Unfortunately it's not proven; nor is it completely risk-free. But let's assume it was, I don't think ethics ever came into question when making substances illegal.
Re: Muscle memory discovery ends 'use it or lose it' dogma
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I genuinely question why people are so concerned if people use science to achieve better results at sports. It often seems like some kind of puritanical moral outrage over drugs. Edit: I understand the reasoning behind why testing is done. I just question if it is really led by safety concerns, fairness and science or just our default knee-jerk "drugs are bad" culture. There are plenty of other safety concerns in spo…
As a competitive athlete, I value a fair playing field. I don't want the winner to be the one with the best scientific team behind them. That just becomes a race to spend more than anyone else and also happens to leave a trail of damaged or dead athletes. It would be totally de-motivating if I thought everybody was doping and it was just the best doper who wins.
I'd struggle to believe that a person could succeed in, say, an Olympic athletics event without a top-quality nutritionist and team of trainers, probably including in-depth analysis of their biomechanical patterns and minute adjustments they need to make. Even with famous stories like Usain Bolt's McDonald's habits, he's probably had a nutritionist evaluate and design a custom diet based around his liking of McNuggets.
In some very real sense, the poor kid who doesn't have access to this team will never be able to compete, regardless of his 'natural' talent. The same is probably true across a large, large proportion of elite sports.
Now, obviously, we have a system where if you demonstrate enough talent you ideally get pulled into academies or teams or structures where you do start to get access to these teams and facilities - but then if that's the case, how does it matter if the teams are providing non-drug-enhanced meals designed for peak performance or drugged-enhanced meals designed for peak performance?