For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
washingtonpost.com
For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
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Re: For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
#2My anecdotal experience is that whenever old people fall and break something, then it all start going downhill, health wise, very quickly.
I’ve always thought it’s because they don’t have very much muscle to begin with, that braking a leg or something, forces you to be still so much that you loose whatever muscle you do have left. That in turn has other negative effects; socially from not going out of your house, maybe even cardiovascularly, mentally, etc.
That’s how it’s been for my grandmother, and for my wife’s grandparents. Purely anecdotal.
Re: For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
#3> Running, swimming, playing soccer and other aerobic exercise do a lot for the cardiovascular system — our heart and blood vessels — but they don’t do much for overall muscle mass or strength.
Preface: like most people here, I'm not a doctor or physiological specialist.
I am decently active, and what I've found from the papers and science that gets brought up, and from my own self experimentation, is that the majority of our aerobic exercise isn't aerobic. In order for your body to use the aerobic energy system, we need a much higher base to raise our lactic thresholds to levels where we can use that system for things like running, swimming, or playing soccer. Instead, our bodies use the glycemic anaerobic systems by default because we don't have that aerobic base.
In order to change this over the winter, I've been doing workouts at much, much lower intensities to try to build up my aerobic ability. For example, this morning I did an hour long walk on a treadmill with slight incline while keeping my heart rate at a consistent 100 bpm. This is a much, much lower level than might even be considered a heart rate for the workout. But I could feel my body doing work the whole time. Other workout is on an indoor bike where I also find a pace where I'm giving effort, but super low intensity to build up my base.
Again, n=1 and I'm not an expert, but my true guess, which is one that I'm working on myself, is that very few people have a good aerobic base to where very little of our exercise is truly aerobic.
Re: For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
#4My anecdotal experience is that whenever old people fall and break something, then it all start going downhill, health wise, very quickly. I’ve always thought it’s because they don’t have very much muscle to begin with, that braking a leg or something, forces you to be still so much that you loose whatever muscle you do have left. That in turn has other negative effects; socially from not going out of your house, may…
Exercising strengthens the bones in addition to building muscle. DEXA scans will show this... when a person starts squatting for example, bone density goes up as well
Re: For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
#5My anecdotal experience is that whenever old people fall and break something, then it all start going downhill, health wise, very quickly. I’ve always thought it’s because they don’t have very much muscle to begin with, that braking a leg or something, forces you to be still so much that you loose whatever muscle you do have left. That in turn has other negative effects; socially from not going out of your house, may…
Exercising strengthens the bones in addition to building muscle. DEXA scans will show this... when a person starts squatting for example, bone density goes up as well
it's not just bones - it's also the tendons, ligaments, heck even the skin
Re: For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
#6> Running, swimming, playing soccer and other aerobic exercise do a lot for the cardiovascular system — our heart and blood vessels — but they don’t do much for overall muscle mass or strength. Preface: like most people here, I'm not a doctor or physiological specialist. I am decently active, and what I've found from the papers and science that gets brought up, and from my own self experimentation, is that the majori…
Yeah, the science around endurance sports (cycling, nordic skiing, rowing, running etc) has got this covered in quite the detail and does recommend that majority (80%) of your training should be aerobic - i.e. below first lactate threshold.
That said, especially as you're unfit early on, doing above aerobic exercices is absolutely fine to increase toe aerobic capacity.
Re: For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
#7> Running, swimming, playing soccer and other aerobic exercise do a lot for the cardiovascular system — our heart and blood vessels — but they don’t do much for overall muscle mass or strength. Preface: like most people here, I'm not a doctor or physiological specialist. I am decently active, and what I've found from the papers and science that gets brought up, and from my own self experimentation, is that the majori…
I guess my question here is: what exercise/s are you referring to with "majority of our aerobic exercise"?
Re: For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
#8This is music to my ears, as I've started re-emphasizing gym workouts over my cycling workouts.
It's already widely known that aging and inactivity tend to reduce muscle mass (muscle atrophy) and longer aerobic/endurace exercices such as cycling or running will improve your stamina and will lower your body fat, but will not increase your muscle mass by much.
I've gone this rabbit hole of doing bicycle training and very long bike rides and lost a lot of weight/fat without even needing to change my diet much, but I have not gained muscle.
This year I am improving on that by mixing in some gym session early on in the season (and hopefully keeping some gym work later in the season too)
Re: For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
#9Re: For longevity, muscle strength may be as important as aerobic exercise
#10> Running, swimming, playing soccer and other aerobic exercise do a lot for the cardiovascular system — our heart and blood vessels — but they don’t do much for overall muscle mass or strength. Preface: like most people here, I'm not a doctor or physiological specialist. I am decently active, and what I've found from the papers and science that gets brought up, and from my own self experimentation, is that the majori…
I guess my question here is: what exercise/s are you referring to with "majority of our aerobic exercise"?
what the article mentioned - Running, swimming, playing soccer and other similar ones such as cycling, kayaking, you name it