Tag: latihan

Training for the Ages

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

Nobody Likes Aging! But just as surely as the time ticks, our bodies will start to slow down once we past a certain age.

In my younger days, I could cycle for hours on end but I had to stop over five years ago due to Sciatica where my L5/S1 spine disk was pinching my right foot nerve.  I only realized the relationship between cycling and sciatica through Dr. McGill whose research can be read on Back Mechanics.

For some of us, it might be one of the knees starting to act up after walking for a certain distance.  Others might be having problems with shoulder pain after a typical benchpress session.  The easiest solution seems to be to stop training all together.  If you do, your strength will surely recede, followed by your mobility and lifestyle.  Is this how you are supposed to spend your golden years?  Below are some training trips to ensure you can extend your strength and mobility further down the road.

1. Train Movement Patterns, Not Individual Muscles

When you train the muscles individually, you are training your body in separate parts, and this will create unequal loading on your joints especially the knees. Train in movement patterns instead where all the muscles in the joint can work in concert.   Think of a proper squat training that trains both your posterior and anterior chain of movement on the legs versus a knee extension exercise. Movement pattern training will allow you to train in a more joint conserving way.

2. Train With No Pain

In the old days, its fine for you to say “No Pain, No Gain!”  The fact is, once you reached a certain stage of your life, your joint collagen has been rubbed off from decades of moving improperly and your recovery rate has simply dropped.  No amount of miracle pills can change that.  Training with the same principles will only cause increased pain the next day.  A better way is to ensure the movement patterns are done correctly. You can learn more of movement pattern training in Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance. This means knees should not cave inward during squats, etc. As Dr. McGill said, “practice does not makes perfect, practice makes permanent!” There is a difference between muscle pain after training and joint pain during and after training.  The former is good, the latter is bad and if your personal trainer can’t tell the difference, then you should probably get a better one.

3. Cycle Your Training

This is something powerlifters and other strength athletes have known for decades.  Basically if you keep on training the exact same way day in and day out, you will get injured.  The best way to avoid it is to cycle between training methods.  Perhaps there are days where you train with kettlebells, other days when you train with TRX, and another with classic barbells.

4. More Frequency, Less Intensity

When we train, we are actually destroying muscle tissues. These tissues would then be rebuild stronger than before.  Hence we become stronger over time.  In our younger days, the further down we “dip”, the further we would “bounce back”.  Unfortunately, as we age, the less we are able to “bounce back” from a “dip”.  Hence a person might be able to do a two hour session three times a week in his twenties to maintain his strength.  Once this person hits his fifties, a one hour session, six times a week would be far more prudent.  Then in his eighties, half hour each morning and evening, six days a week.  This way, this person will experience less “dips” without straining the recovery too much.

Conclusion

Just because things are starting to slow down, it doesn’t mean that you should just give up and resign to a walking stick or wheel chair.  Instead, what you need to do is to adjust your training matching your current health to ensure that you maintain your strength and mobility without harming your joints.

Exercise, Osteophorosis and Why You Can’t Trust Media with Blind Faith

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

First and foremost, I enjoyed reading New York Times. I believe that most of the time, they provide in depth analysis on the news they are reporting unlike most media these days. However, as with everything man-made, sometimes some things fell through the crack. And this time, the article that fell through the quality control is “Exercise is not the Path to Strong Bones“. When I first read the title, I was like “Really? Could past hundreds of researchers be wrong?” and keeping a healthy skeptical mind, I decided to read on. This is my conclusion and I hope you can understand my logic and apply it the next time you read any controversial news.

What Does the Research Say?

Instead of quoting other research I have linked on my previous articles, we will only be looking at the researches qoted in the NYT article:

blausen_0686_osteoporosis_01

1. “Effect of exercise on bone mineral density and and lean mass in postmenopausal woman” done at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre and University of Washington. In this case, the study was done over 12 month period (1 year) on 173 sedentary, overweight/obese women at the age of 50 – 73. If you simply read the conclusion from the research abstract, you will find:

“Overall, the results from this randomized controlled study suggest that a yearlong moderate-intensity aerobic exercise intervention does not affect total body bone mineral density, bone mineral content, or lean mass in overweight/obese postmenopausal women.”

And if you read the full text you can read here, you will find on the research methodology

“Facility sessions consisted of treadmill walking and stationary bicycling. Strength training, consisting of two sets of 10 repetitions of leg extension, leg curls, leg press, chest press, and seated dumbbell row, was recommended, but not required, to decrease risk of injury and maintain joint stability. Performance of strength-training activities was minimal, with only 0.4% of all recorded facility-based activities falling into this category”

I.e., past research on 2001 on post-menopausal women doing weight bearing exercise does increase bone density. This time the researchers DELIBERATELY minimize strength training on the ALL test subjects, only telling them to do stationary bike or other non-weight bearing, non-impact training THEN concluding that “exercise does not help increase bone density”.

615_age_and_bone_mass

2. “Effectiveness of resistance training or jumping exercise to increase bone mineral density in men with low bone mass done” at University of Missouri. This study was also done over 12 months period, with 38 test subjects age 42 – 46 years old. Their conclusion is quite straight forward:

“RT (i.e. Resistance Training) or JUMP (i.e. jumping exercise), which appeared safe and feasible, increased BMD (bone mass density) of the whole body and lumbar spine, while RT also increased hip BMD, in moderately active, osteopenic men.”

Of course the New York Times reporter tried to downplay this by writing that the result was not very significant. But make no mistake. These are middle aged men with low bone density issues, actually increasing their bone density is already a very welcomed result. Bone formation due to strength training happens at slow rate anyway and keep in mind that qualified personal trainers and physiotherapists knows this, hence we would also train older individuals in one legged balance and core stability training to improve their ability to recover when they trip (i.e. arrest falling down).

3. “Peripheral QCT sector analysis reveals early exercise-induced increases in tibial bone mineral density” done by US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine. test subjects were 57 women in their 20’s. And I think the title already gave way on the research result.

Conclusion

Whenever you read anything that tries to make it “research shows”, make sure that they actually link the actual research being quoted and you better understand how the research is actually being done. Because the said NYT reporter managed to make it as if her reporting is very scientific when in fact, it has nothing to do with the known science.

Weight bearing exercise works to increase bone density folks, including on middle aged men with osteopenia and post-menopausal. The thing is, you need to have a a good strength and conditioning coach to build a proper program for your fitness level. If you simply spend the money on an expensive stationary bike or elipse machine, then sorry, it will not help you much, neither will a cheap PT at your average gym.

Exercise or Diet for 6-pack

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

[:en]Ah, the eternal question. Which is more important?

If Coca-cola, Nestle and PepsiCola has their way, then diet soda is actually helpful for weight loss and exercise is much more important than diet. Well, for the obvious reasons, we can’t simply take this at face value right?

Meanwhile at the end of the spectrum, mainstream media like New York Times and and CBS are all saying how dieting is more important than exercise.

Now here is where it gets interesting. According to University of North Carolina research, from 2003 to 2012, US per-capita consumption of soda and junk food has actually decreased. So if diet is more important, then the number of obese people living in US should be decreasing right? Except that according data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2007 to 2012, the number of obese people in USA during this period actually increased. So surely diet is not the most important thing.

Well, according to research done by Mayo clinic, apparently over the past decade, US population physical activity continues to decrease. And according to the latest research done by Loughborough University, exercise actually help decrease appetite, and works much better at lowering your body fat content than diet. So apparently in this case Coke and Pepsi might be more right than NYT. As Aleksey Torokhtiy, Russian weightlifting gold medalist said on reddit AMA, he doesn’t go on any diet, he just eat anything he likes to eat.

So have you hit the weight room this week ladies?

Click here and subscribe to my channel for simple exercises that will help you get loose fat and get strong![:zh]Ah, the eternal question. Which is more important?

If Coca-cola, Nestle and PepsiCola has their way, then diet soda is actually helpful for weight loss and exercise is much more important than diet. Well, for the obvious reasons, we can’t simply take this at face value right?

Meanwhile at the end of the spectrum, mainstream media like New York Times and and CBS are all saying how dieting is more important than exercise.

Now here is where it gets interesting. According to University of North Carolina research, from 2003 to 2012, US per-capita consumption of soda and junk food has actually decreased. So if diet is more important, then the number of obese people living in US should be decreasing right? Except that according data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2007 to 2012, the number of obese people in USA during this period actually increased. So surely diet is not the most important thing.

Well, according to research done by Mayo clinic, apparently over the past decade, US population physical activity continues to decrease. And according to the latest research done by Loughborough University, exercise actually help decrease appetite, and works much better at lowering your body fat content than diet. So apparently in this case Coke and Pepsi might be more right than NYT. As Aleksey Torokhtiy, Russian weightlifting gold medalist said on reddit AMA, he doesn’t go on any diet, he just eat anything he likes to eat.

So have you hit the weight room this week ladies?

Click here and subscribe to my channel for simple exercises that will help you get loose fat and get strong![:id]Ah, pertanyaan abadi. Mana yang lebih penting?

Kalau kita mau mengikuti pendapat Coca-cola, Nestle dan PepsiCola, minuman soda diet itu bisa membantu mengurangi berat badan dan olah-raga itu lebih penting dari diet. Namun untuk alasan yang kita semua tahu, kita jelas tidak bisa percaya begitu saja bukan.

Sementara itu ada pula pendapat yang bertolak belakang, dimana media massa terbesar seperti New York Times dan CBS semuanya mengatakan diet itu lebih penting dari olah raga.

Naah, mari kita teliti lebih dalam. Menurut penelitian dari Universitas Carolina Utara, konsumsi soda dan makanan cepat saji perkapita di Amerika dari 2003 ke 2012 telah menurun. Bila diet itu penting, maka jumlah penduduk gemuk di Amerika seharusnya berkurang bukan? Namun menurut data dari survei National Health and Nutrition tahun 2007 hingga 2012, jumlah penduduk gemuk di Amerika dalam jangka waktu ini justru meningkat. Tentunya diet bukanlah yang paling penting.

Menurut penelitian dari Mayo Clinic, nampaknya dalam satu dasawarsa ini penduduk Amerika semakin malas bergerak. Sedangkan menurut penelitian terakhir dari Universitas Loughborough, olah-raga membantu menurunkan nafsu makan, dan jauh lebih efektif dari diet untuk menurunkan kadar lemak badan. Jadi dalam hal ini kelihatannya Coca-cola dan Pepsi justru lebih benar dari New York Times. Seperti kata Aleksey Torokhtiy, peraih medali emas angkat besi dari Russia, “saya tidak pernah berdiet, saya makan apa yang saya kepingin makan.”

Jadi ibu-ibu sekalian sudah pergi ke gym bulan ini?

Klik disini dan berlanggananlah ke saluran YouTube saya untuk ide latihan sederhana yang bisa membantu anda mengurangi lemak tubuh dan menjadi kuat![:]