Be Your Own Personal Trainer

Course link

Fitness is about energy processing

Wood can be construction material and/or fuel Fitness (nutrition and training) is similar

Consider the body as a machine for food (energy & construction materials) processing. Activity directs how food is utilised.

Nutrition can:

1. build, i.e., grow, maintain and repair tissue or store any excess primarily as fat, OR
2. fuel, i.e., power movement.

Food can be burned:

• aerobically
• anaerobically

Higher fitness -> greater capacity to burn fuel aerobically, anaerobically & regulate energy intake

Fitness vs Health

Health is a function of fitness and other factors. Fitness is beneficial but insufficient for health. Do not neglect the other factors, feeling fitness is a sufficient measure of health.

Fitness is context sensitive

Physical fitness = fitness for what? What you need to, want to and must do. Consider in relation to energy. Eg losing weight means having less energy available for general health.

Health

The likelihood of developing certain bad illnesses.

Fitness can relate to health by reducing the likelihood of developing certain bad illnesses.

Components of a Fitness Program

• Flexibility
• Balance
• Endurance Training
• Strength Training
• Nutrition

Flexibility

Full range of motion (vs functional). Life is functional. Will be covered sufficiently in anaerobic strength training warmups. You can do a bit of flexibility specific stuff if you want.

Balance

Also covered sufficiently for life by focusing on endurance and strength training, though it might be worth doing things that specifically train balance. That could be sport, or anything really, depending on how much you need balance.

General Fitness Training

Will focus on:

• Endurance Training
• Strength Training
• Nutrition

Training vs Exercise

EXERCISE is any physical activity that places demands on the pathways supplying energy to your muscles, either aerobic or anaerobic.

TRAINING is exercising with sufficient intensity to improve your level of fitness. Unlike exercise, training has a floor or bottom or minimum. That least amount is the amount necessary to improve. Key is intentionality.

Exercise, compared with training, is neutral to harmful. Only potential benefit is the use of some energy that might have gone to fat storage, but training would have been better. (Or, compared with nothing and an overly sedentary alternative … then for health, though not fitness.)

Stress

Stress must be experienced to be working with enough intensity to improve. -> Stress leads to strain. -> Handled strain achieves improvement.

Intentional stress for the purpose of improvement is good.

Managing Energy

Food, when consumed, will be used either to power activity, for repair and maintenance of body, for muscle growth, or stored as fat.

Food intake, nutrition, is step one.

Controlling how the food is used, is step two. Using some of the food for training according to aerobic and anaerobic conditioning programs, will achieve improvement in fitness.

(I expect I will learn that fitness helps you use the energy in some way)

A “Pure” Approach

Nutrition

Strictly fuel for burning, building blocks for growth and repair

Aerobic Conditioning

Endurance Training or Cardiovascular Fitness For burning fat (what about cardio for health?)

Anaerobic Conditioning

Resistance Training or Weight Training For muscle gain

Storage

Fat - to be avoided

Weight Management is achieved by balancing these factors.

It is preferable to either:

• do endurance training & improve cardiovascular fitness to lose fat OR
• do resistance training & increase strength to build muscle AND
• select your nutrition program to support whichever activity you are undertaking

How Exercise Is Accessing Energy

For the first 2 seconds, from all of it down to none of it, your body is using stored ATP.

Increasingly, and then primarily, and then decreasingly to 10 seconds, your body uses ATP-PC, which is your body making more ATP and you’re using that.

Between 10 seconds and 1 minute, you’re using the lactic acid system, which provides another source of ATP.

After that, you use your aerobic system.

The first 3 pathways are anaerobic.

The last one is aerobic.

Note performance declines to 1 minute and flattens.

Slightly different numbers in this 1971 source:

Mike says it’s much more efficient to do one or the other. You can achieve overloads training anaerobically that will prevent you from reaching the point of aerobic training. If you do this, you can’t do aerobic training. If you don’t, you aren’t stressing your anaerobic system sufficiently.

Energy Pathways

Aerobic

Requires oxygen, provided by blood, for long term energy production. Burns fat.

Improving cardiovascular fitness leads to stress adaptations like increasing the number of mitochondria in your cells. These use glucose (1/3) and fatty acids (2/3).

Anaerobic

Does not require oxygen. Uses available stores of energy and sugar.

Working to fatigue is essential. This maximises stress for subsequent strain (growth). The goal should simply be to achieve maximum strain (via maximum stress) safely.

Aerobic Fitness Training

Goal Enhance our capacity to burn fat and our cardiovascular fitness

How Aerobic training is achieved by performing endurance exercises at a sufficient level of intensity to exceed your aerobic training threshold and stress your aerobic fitness (while you stay in your aerobic training zone).

VO2 max is a good measure for aerobic fitness.

Principle Train at moderate intensity for a continuous 20-30 minute workout.

Notes:

• Only kicks in after 1 minute
• Longer = harder to judge intensity is sufficient, risk being below the aerobic training zone
• Longer = potentially more duration in the aerobic training zone
• Minimum of 20 minutes is evidence based for sufficient stress to stimulate change.
• Longer training evidence shows has greater risk of injury.

Why

• Greater capacity to burn fat
• Fat burning
• Lifespan increase and health improvement
• Improves energy, mood, sleep, mental acuity

Target Heart Rate

Convention is unscientific trash. However, measuring heart rate can tell us, eg. is your heart rate decreasing at the same workload over time. Can start with THR just to have any number to start with, but aim for just 20-30 mins of good moderate intensity exercise, measure and track over time and see what you get

If you can do more in the same amount of time that is good, but you’re also getting more efficient in your technique, which can throw off the numbers. So measuring heart rate at workloads (and resting) is essential to understand real progress.

You can measure heart rate at the end of your workout before cool down or at specified intervals

What type of exercise?

It doesn’t matter that much, focus on your result

Safety should be a consideration - stationary bikes are good

Generally, increase speed not resistance; increasing resistance leads to anaerobic pathway

How long

20 minutes minimum generally, literature says this is more effective for strain longer -> more injury risk more than 60 in particular increases injury 20-30 mins

How often

Every other day, Aerobic training (3-4 times per week). Sometimes a day off. If doing it on the same day or in the same session, do it after anaerobic training.

Aerobic warm up and cool down

Not much point stretching prior, probably has as high risk as the exercise In general warming up is unnecessary for aerobic exercise specifically

A mild brief cool down could be worth it after lower extremity focused exercise to avoid venous pooling of blood. A little walk rather than just sitting down immediately might be fine or worth it. Strictly it’s not really necessary.

More important is measuring your heart rate post-exercise If your heart rate drops less than 12 beats per minute in the first minute after stopping, talk to a doc because it’s a bad sign (don’t have to do this forever)

Aerobic exercise summary

moderate intensity proper form for 20-30 minutes, not including cool down, which is a reasonable thing to do a bit of 3-4 times per week keeping your heart rate at the right level-ish consistently & safely

Anaerobic Fitness Training

Goal Gain muscle for strength (and prevent muscle loss).

How To effect muscle growth, you must exceed your muscles current workload capabilities. Exercises must be performed intensely. Intensity has an inverse relationship with duration.

Principle Train at high intensity so you can complete an exercise within 20-60 seconds, achieving exhaustion.

Why

• Add lean tissue
• Prevent muscle loss
• Muscle burns fat to some extent
• Improves flexibility, posture and stability
• Especially important as you age (prevent muscle loss, mitigate osteoporosis
• Better mental health
• Improves strength of muscles, tendons, ligaments and joint captures, reducing injury

Notes:

• Not effective for burning fat because energy is recruited from stored glycogen.
• Rapidly increasing amount lifted -> probably just discovering your current limits.
• Cheating increases risk of injury - don’t do this until you are experienced and practiced at it
• Intensity is a function of rate and resistance
• Rest:
  1. Between each set for each body part
  2. Between body parts
  3. Between workouts
     • at least 48 hours
• Progressive Resistance is the core
• Must lead to weight gain; do not try to do this while on a weight loss diet

How Hard

Work in the intense exercise range. Basically, as hard as you can, but don’t injure yourself. Intensity is, unfortunately, subjective. Up to you.

How long

??? looks like roughly 50 min to 1 hour from his routines “for as long as it takes to complete your routine”

How often

• 3 times per week
• Alternating two seperate routines
  • Upper Body (and Abs/core)
  • Lower Body (and Traps)
• Resting (at least) 48 hours between exercise sessions

Muscle Groups

Upper Body

• Chest/pecs
• Shoulders/delts
• Upper back/lats
• Triceps
• Biceps
• Abs

Lower Body (and traps)

• Front thigh/quads
• Back thigh/hamstrings
• Calves
• Traps
• Lower Back

Exercises

No such thing as good exercises really, an exercise just does things - makes a muscle contract and relax. Cannot significantly control the shape of a muscle, though you can target particular muscles.

Light weights will recruit muscle fibres that are not primed for growth, generally speaking. Heavier muscle fibres will recruit more muscle fibres, so this is more effective for resistance training. The most difficult muscle fibres to recruit are the ones that are most able to grow.

Upper Body - Mike’s exercises

::Bodypart Exercise .:: Chest/pecs Bench press Shoulders/delts Behind the neck press Upper back/lats Lat pull-down Triceps Tricep pushdown Biceps Bicep curl Abs Crunches

Lower Body - Mike’s exercises

::Bodypart Exercise .:: Front thigh/quads Leg press or squats Back thigh/hamstrings Leg curls Calves Calf raises Traps Shrugs Lower Back Dead lifts

Setting Weight

• 55-80% of 1RM
• Determine 1RM by
  • Trial and Error
  • Fancy equations
  • Give it time to figure out - don’t get injured!

Routine

With the greatest intensity possible, using proper form, move the weight you’re using, through the entire range of motion of the exercise, for the required number of repetitions (or failure) until you have completed your set.

Can do the same things over and over. It’s fine. In fact, possibly more effective and definitely better for measuring progress. NO NEED TO CHURN.

Plateau: play with weight, rate, reps, nutrition (eat more cals), sleep, …

Mike believes meeting goals and achieving success is more important than momentary fun. Being a slave to fun will damage progress.

6-12 reps per set (general fitness) more strength = lower reps, higher weights

Training weight: figure it out for 12-15 reps for upper body, add 5 lb weight total for set 1

Upper body (lower body might be greater increments): Set 1 - TW + 2.5kg - 12 reps - rest one minute Set 2 - TW + 5kg - 10 reps - rest one minute Set 3 - TW + 7.5kg - 8 reps - rest one minute Set 4 - TW + 10kg - 6 reps - rest one minute Set 5 - TW + 7.5kg - 12 reps - rest two minutes

Adapt as needed. Follow the principle.

Record intensity

Repetition

Performance:

• explosive / intense positive
• 1-2 seconds, not too crazy slow negative
• breathe reasonably (ideally, out on the positive), do not hold your breath
• feel the weight in the body part you are exercising
• do an even number of repetitions to set
• consistency, form, safety

Sets

• consider a warmup set at lighter weight, 25% of training weight through full range of motion at 12 reps
• five sets per body part using that weight variation strategy

Failure

If you cannot complete a set, decrease the weight. Do not cut back on the number of reps

Progression

• When you complete all 5 sets on one exercise, increase the weight at your next training session.
• Never give back a gain.
• Never miss taking a gain.
• Keep an exercise journal religiously.
  • documenting improvements
  • learning and tracking how much weight to use
  • learning and tracking performance level for aerobic exercises
• Never miss an exercise session
  • unless this might compromise health or safety

Anaerobic Summary

work out intensely for as long as it takes to finish the routine 3 times per week exercises 20-60 duration alternating upper/lower (/other) routines progressive resistance if you ever need to double up with aerobic, do this first

Nutrition

The most important thing in your fitness program. For fuelling your body, not other purposes.

A calorie is a calorie, the concept of an empty calorie is a misnomer. Calorie = 1000 x calorie. Sometimes kCal.

Minerals - inorganic Nutrients - organic Proteins - macro compounds

• contain amino acids
• essential - cannot be produced by body
• nonessential - can Carbohydrate
• sugar/starch organic compounds
• fiber
• insoluble - good for you and helps your digestion

• soluble - also good for you Fat

• saturated
• unsaturated
• essential fatty acids are required from food

Supplements are expensive food.

Water.

Goal Provide the energy to:

• power anaerobic
• and aerobic energy needs
• tissue growth
• tissue repair
• tissue replacement
• develop and maintain health

Principle Calories in, calories out.

Nutrition should be focused on facilitating:

1. lean muscle fain from anaerobic exercise
2. fat loss from aerobic exercise
3. tissue growth, repair and replacement

Without training, diet alone will achieve weight loss or weight gain, but with poor compositional results.

Rules

Rule One Always eat the appropriate number of calories daily.

• number of meals is not so important
• timing of meals is not so important

That is the only rule. Match your fitness goals with calories.

Macros:

• something like 17% fat 33% protein 50% carbs
• 40/40/20 is probably fine

Hydration

• Thirst reflex diminishes with age. Drink a little more than your thirst reflex

Food

“Healthy Food”… doesn’t really exist.

Food won’t really influence your likelihood of getting specific illnesses significantly.

Being in the right BMI range (18.5 - 24.9) is the healthiest eating goal.

It’s too complicated to develop general rules for diverse individuals.

Supplements

• not really needed or useful
• maybe vit D
• vegetarians or people who don’t eat fish maybe need something
• protein only useful if you’re really not getting enough
• general multivitamin probably a bad idea

How much?

BMR + cal burned

+/- for goals

BMR: 1 * 24 * kg 1 * 24 * 87 = 2088

Multiplier % bf 1.0 10 -14% .95 15-20% .90 21-28% .85 > 27%

.90

Activity Level 1.30 - very light 1.55 - light 1.65 - moderate walking jogging weight training 1.80 - heavy heavy labour for work plus 2-4 hours of training 2.05 - very heavy labour for 8 hours plus blah blah

currently 1.55 get up to 1.65

Current: 2088 * .90 * 1.55 = 2,912.76

Summary

Calculate starting point Follow CICO Monitor rationally, track and adjust