60 studies say exercising is not the key to weight loss

The opening lines from this article, Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight, explained with 60+ studies: "'I'm going to make you work hard', a blonde and perfectly muscled fitness instructor screamed at me in a recent spinning class, 'so you can have that second drink at happy hour!'

At the end of the 45-minute workout, my body was dripping with sweat. I felt like I had worked really, really hard. And according to my bike, I had burned more than 700 calories. Surely I had earned an extra margarita."  

She exercised “really, really hard”. It would be nice if all those calories burned on exercise translated into fat loss. That equation does not take into account that exercise can stimulate the appetite, or that strenuous exercise lends itself to less activity (compensatory behaviors) and fewer calories burned for the remainder of the day. It does not account for the body’s response to exercise. The body adapts to a daily dose of running or other aerobic activity by becoming more efficient. It is inefficient to lug around a lot of muscle on long runs; muscle is metabolically expensive to maintain. The body will catabolize calorie-consuming lean muscle tissue to conserve the body’s energy stores (metabolic compensation). One researcher called it part of the survival mechanism. A quote from the article: "A review of exercise intervention studies, published in 2001: It found that after 20 weeks, weight loss was less than expected, and that 'the amount of exercise energy expenditure had no correlation with weight loss in these longer studies." Other meta-studies reach similar conclusions. A quote: "Adding physical activity has a very modest effect on weight loss — 'a lesser effect than you'd mathematically predict'". Other quotes: “You cannot outrun a bad diet”, and “There are all kinds of reasons to exercise that are good for your health”.  

Good health is the reason. Our focus at New Orleans Personal Training and at Austin Personal Training is on the long list of health benefits provided by strength training. Additional calories burned are just an added bonus, and strength training produces the largest added bonus. Strength training burns calories four ways and burns calories long after exercise has been completed. For more on the subject of strength training and calorie burning go here.

Got Sarcopenia? If you are over forty you have it

The term sarcopenia has not been in common usage for very long (see graph), but the condition has been around forever.  Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle tissue that occurs as a natural part of the aging process. According to this article, Why You're Aging Ungracefully, there are two things we can do to help maintain our muscle as we age - lift weights and eat high-quality protein.

A quote from the article:

Sarcopenia begins naturally in the 4th and 5th decades of life, making your 40s and 50s an ideal time to increase dietary protein and weight training, but even those in their 60s and beyond can benefit."

Another quote: "The stronger you are, the more muscle you have, the less likely you are to become sick or die."  

It is a pretty simple equation: the more muscle you have the less likely you are to die. That is because muscle positively affects so many of the bio-markers of aging. There are bio-markers we cannot influence by exercise such as hearing loss or graying hair, but there is a long list of bio-markers we can change most effectively by strength training. People are not generally placed in nursing homes because they are out of breath; it is because they are too weak to carry out daily activities on their own.

At our Austin Fitness Training facility we use MedX equipment with its special medical rehab features. We can accommodate those with limiting conditions and can work with people of any age. One of our trainers has four clients in their 80s, and our oldest client was 95. Strength training can add years of vitality to your life. It is never too late to start.

More articles on aging here.

Your mother infected you with an alien

Your body is an amazing feat of construction.Ten trillion living cells all working together to make you. All the instructions required to build the You that You became are encoded in your DNA. Forty-Six chromosomes containing more than 25,000 genes have all the instructions required to build a human. Except…Nothing in your DNA explains how to make fuel for the engines that run inside you. Imagine if we had 1000 car manufacturers making millions of cars but no gasoline refineries. A car without fuel is just… art.

The fuel you need is call Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). For your cells to move, grow, repair, and reproduce they need ATP. To make your muscles move you need ATP, but your DNA doesn’t have any instructions for making ATP.

Luckily for you, your mother included a little extra in her reproductive package. A tiny cell-like structure, a tiny alien, called mitochondria. Mitochondria are inside you, but are not part of your genome. They do not have any instructions for making any part of you. They have their own DNA with genes and instructions needed to reproduce and thrive on their own. Like your cells, they also need ATP to function. Luckily, they make ATP. They know how. They just need a safe place to live while they do it. In fact, they make so much ATP that they give the extra to you for your body to use.

Over time these alien mitochonria get old and slow down. They produce less and less ATP. Strength training with sufficient intensity has been shown to revitalize mitochondria and increase ATP production.

At Austin Personal Trainers facility we have a strength training program that will give your mitochondria a boost and increase your energy to levels you have not experienced in years. It is like having a fountain of youth.

Thank you to John Shafer, personal trainer at Kelly Personal Training Austin, for writing this blog post. 

Strength training study shows seniors improving far more than younger set

Two groups of men and women strength trained for six months. One group was older and the other younger. At the start of the study the older group was 59% weaker than the younger group. After six months the older adults were only 38% weaker than younger adults. Both groups improved, but the older group improved much more. 

From this study Resistance Exercise Reverses Aging in Human Skeletal Muscle

“We conclude that healthy older adults show evidence of mitochondrial impairment and muscle weakness, but that this can be partially reversed at the phenotypic level, and substantially reversed at the transcriptome level, following six months of resistance exercise training”.

Mitochondria, found in most cells, is where respiration and energy production takes place. Six months of strength training partially reversed mitochondria impairments to a level consistent with a younger stage in life. It is like having a fountain of youth.

At Austin Personal Trainers and New Orleans Personal Trainers we use MedX equipment with its special medical rehab features.  We can accommodate those with limiting conditions and can work with people of any age.  Our oldest client was 95; one of our trainers has four clients in their 80s. It is never too late to start a strength training program. It can add years of vitality to your life.  

Pictured is Stella in a field of icy grass.  She was a fixture at the New Orlean Kelly Personal Training facility and now visits the Austin Kelly Personal Training facility. She is 12 and still fetches enthusiastically.

The Positive Side-effects of a Treatment for Osteopenia

Debra increased her bone density almost one full standard deviation - at age 60 no less. Carol suffered from back pain that prevented her from doing weight bearing exercise. Carol was able to use our MedX equipment with its special medical rehab features. After more that 20 years since she was first diagnosed with osteopenia her doctor informed her that she was osteopenia-free.  As she put it her 'bone tisssue was replaced,repaired and restored".

The exercise protocol used by the personal trainers at Austin Personal Training and at New Oreans Personal Training was derived from a study working with osteopenia sufferers at the University of Florida. Researchers found that joints hurt less, bone density increased, and muscles were stronger and more toned with minimal time exercising. It has been shown effective for men and women of all ages.

What we do for those with osteopenia is a treatment not a cure. With treatments there often are side-effects. The side-effects of a properly designed strength training program are:

• Increased metabolism
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• Lessen chances for injury

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• Increased strength
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• Slows the aging process
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• Feel better
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• Look better
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• Improved functioning of your immune system
• Enhanced joint flexibility
• Improved balance and coordination
• Alleviated symptoms of depression

The results of a study on the effectiveness of targeting fat loss

A woman did a quarter million leg raises in a year, and there was no change, not a scintilla.  There was no spot reduction of fat deposits from her amply marbled hips. Well, that is just one person, and a sample size of one has no statistical power.  Maybe a larger sample size and more accuracy (MRI assessments) would produce a result of statistically significant spot reduction of fat from the area targeted with exercise.

Maybe not, from this article, Targeted Fat Loss: Myth or Reality?, this quote from a study:

“Tennis players constitute a population whose right and left arms have been consistently subjected to very different amounts of exercise over several years. Consequently, if spot reduction were a valid concept, one would expect the players’ dominant arms to have thinner layers of subcutaneous fat compared to their non-dominant arms. When the researchers measured the thickness of subcutaneous fat at specific points along the players’ arms, however, they found no statistically significant difference between right and left arms.”

Fat burned as fuel during exercise or even resting can come from anywhere in your body, not just the part that is being worked the most.  You don’t have a say, your genetics do. It is best to choose a form of exercise that burns the most calories and will continue to burn calories long after the exercise session is completed.

Another quote:

“High-intensity interval training (alternating between brief periods of high-intensity and low-intensity exercise) can be particularly effective, due to the phenomenon of after-burn – that is, an increase in resting metabolic rate that occurs for up to 24 hours post-exercise. “

That after-burn is excessive post-exercise oxygen consumption, (EPOC), and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) results in more EPOC than any other form of exercise. HIIT is the type training we do at Austin Personal Training and New Orleans Personal Training. 

Bogus BMI Numbers

Take two numbers, height and weight, and come up with another number, Body Mass Index (BMI), and as an indicator of good health you have next to nothing.  The BMI fails to take into account physical features - as an example those with broad shoulders will have a higher BMI compared to those with narrow shoulders. There is no differentiation between fat, muscle, and bone, and it does not account for gender.

The BMI often changes as we age. For some it is lower, but that does not necessarily mean better health. Thirty years ago I was in peak physical condition and had more muscle mass than I do today; I regularly played rugby, two 40 minutes halves of pretty much non-stop strenuous exertion with no substitutions.  According to this BMI chart I would have been bordering on obesity and classified as unhealthy.

Today I have a lower BMI number, but I also have less muscle than I did 30 years ago. Losing muscle is part of the aging process; it happens to all of us.  I suppose I could sit back in comfort and point to my lower BMI number as an indicator of good health.

The BMI statistic is negatively biased against those who have more muscle, and the BMI statistic does not capture the positive health factor of strength. It is absolutely essential for good health to remain as strong as possible we age. Fortunately with a proper personal training program like the one we offer at Austin Personal Trainers and New Orleans Fitness Training those who are younger will increase strength and muscle mass, and those who are older can remain strong, slow down age-related muscle loss, and even reverse it.  When you add muscle your BMI number will rise, but you will be better for it.

More BMI posts here.

Leveraging workouts for more safely and productivity

Demanding exercise is what stimulates positive change. Well designed exercise equipment will often use changes in leverage to make exercise more demanding and, interestly at the same time, safer.  

Wedge a crowbar under a heavy object and apply pressure at the very end of the crow bar. Your leverage decreases and difficulty level rises as you place your hands closer and apply pressure to the heavy object. MedX exercise equipment (the kind we use at our Austin Fitness Training facility) utilizes the same principle; while the weight stays the same throughout the range of motion, the leverage and difficulty level change.

Throughout a muscle's range of motion there will be points where the muscle is weaker and other parts of the range where the muscle is stronger. A muscle is more effectively fatigued when it works against a resistance it can barely handle at every part of its range of motion.  MedX equipment is engineered so that the resistance increases when you are in the strongest part of your range of motion and decreases when you are in the weakest part (the sticking point).  As a result you can eliminate thedangerous acceleration needed to get past that sticking point and complete the movement. It's a safer way to exercise.

The elimination of explosive accelerating movements obviates the need for warm-up sets. Demanding work produces change not warm-up sets. With MedX equipment you can confine your workout to safe, efficient, productive, demanding work. If you exercise in such a manner with minimal time between exercises you will find that in 20 to 30 minutes your muscles will be totally exhausted and your heart will be pounding. It produces an endorphin-inducing natural high. You’ll feel better, and with rest and recovery, you will come back stronger with more endurance.

A year after hitting bottom

The persistent aches and pains from old injuries were my excuse for not exercising. Not exercising led to more aches and pains, less activity, weight gain, and weakness. In a weakened state illnesses are likely to be more frequent and protracted. I got pneumonia and bronchitis, and my asthma flared up. My blood oxygen absorption rate fell to the low 80s. My heart had to work harder to get the oxygen I needed. As a result my blood pressure rose, and my resting pulse was twenty beats per minute higher. I was listless and constantly tired. My cardiologist was concerned that I may have had a silent heart attack, so he conducted a series of tests.  I passed.

That was almost a year ago, the bottom of a negative cycle. They say you have got to hit rock bottom before you commit to making a change. Since that time I have changed my eating habits. I have not missed a strength training session regardless of the aches and pains. Funny thing is, the exercise made the aches and pains go away. Pain-free, I was able to add other activities. I began biking a couple times a week. Results: Thirty-seven pounds lighter, greatly reduced blood pressure, blood oxygen absorption level in the high 90s, pulse more than 20 beats per minute slower, and no aches or pains.

Recently I went riding bikes with my tireless daughter. We spent 3 1/2 hours riding bikes one day and an hour and 45 minutes the next day through the hills of Austin where deer abound. That would have been unthinkable a year ago. As reassuring at the positive numbers have been what is most gratifying is to be able to do things you have not done in years with greater ease and to be able to get out of bed the next day and do it again - a positive cycle. This positive cycle begins with increasing one's strength.

At Austin Fitness Training and New Orleans Fitness Training we use MedX medical rehab equipment that is better tolerated by those with pain and joint problems. Our personal trainers can set up a program that will increase your strength and endurance, eliminate pain, and dramaticallyincrease your quality of life.

The resistance increasing throughout the range of motion - a demonstration

With free weights and most exercise equipment resistance is constantthroughout the range of motion. You are limited to lifting whatever amount you can lift through the sticking point, that point where you are at a mechanical disadvantage. That will be the hardest part of the movement; the reminder of the repetition will be relatively easier.

With variable resistance the weight changes throughout the range. It should be lighter at the sticking point and heavier in the range where one has a mechanical advantage. Watch the numbers on the scale change in the video. This feature makes for safer more productive exercise. MedXstrength training equipment has variable resistance. We have extensive lines of MedX equipment both our Austin Fitness Trainers and New Orleans Personal Trainers locations.

Lasting Impressions: I will never get another dog

Lasting Impressions, number two in a series. In all my years working at various health clubs, several thousand people have walked through the doors. Some become members, some not. Some become casual acquaintances, while others become life-long friends. A few make a brief appearance and are gone. One such person, I think about to this day. He came into our health club to look around; he was in his mid-fifties. He gave my dog Stella a rueful look, and after a long pause, he said he would never get another dog. I asked him why. He told me he had had a wonderful dog that died for no explainable reason when the dog was five years old. He said it was such a painful experience that he could not bear to go through it again. Stella was two at the time. The guy’s words haunted me. I thought about what he said with the passing of each of Stella’s birthdays, especially on her fifth birthday. Stella turns 12 in a couple of days. For the first five years New Orleans Personal Trainers was located directly across the street from a vet’s office. Austin Personal Trainers is presently located in a northwest Austin strip mall along with a vet’s office. I have known clients and friends to go into both locations to have their pets put down. Fortunately Stella (red fur) along with her step-sister Bella have so far avoided that fate and still come to work. I am thankful for each day and all the joy the dogs have provided, and occasionally I still think about that guy. I think he made a mistake; he should have got another dog.

A Quarter Million Leg Lifts in a Year, the Results

In 1985 I was working at a health club, and aerobics classes were very popular. Leg lifts were a staple of the classes. Leg lifts can be done laterally, kicking backward, or forward. They can be done standing, on all fours, while doing a plank, leaning on an exercise ball, or lying on your side. There are other ways as well.

In the course of a class they are performed in high numbers. I did the math. I figured 60 to 70 leg lifts were performed a minute. There were 8 to 10 minutes of leg lifts per class. If you went to several classes in a week and showed up 50 weeks a year you would be doing close to a quarter million leg lifts. One woman did.

At the end of the year she still had substantial fat deposits on her outer thighs. In fact that was the only place she had noticeable fat on her body. Around this same time I occasionally worked out a man who liked to drink beer, and he occasionally exercised. His body fat was about 30%, much of it around his abdomen and much less around his lower body. When he did the leg extension exercise you could clearly see the four muscles of each of his quadriceps, and he had very little fat on his hips.

This woman did 250,000 leg lifts a year, and he drank beer. Why the different results? You cannot change your genetics, and you cannot spot reduce fat from your body with any type of exercise, and you cannot “tighten things up” either. You can make the underlying muscle more toned, not by lifting your legs, but by strength training. Tonus the constant low-level contraction of muscle comes with strength not repetitions. That toned muscle will not become evident until the fat comes off.

The fat will remain there until there is a caloric deficit achieved mostly through diet, but exercise has an important role. If you are dieting your body will try to compensate for those reduced calories by lowering its metabolism by catabolizing calorie-demanding lean body tissue. Exercise, particularly high intensity strength training, will counter the body’s tendency to lower metabolism.

High intensity strength training, the type of training we do at our Austin Personal Training facility effectively burns calories four ways and increases strength and tone. You will find you can spend less time exercising, have more fat loss, and not spend endless hours raising you legs.

Hitting for distance with the right exercises

A simple equation that has been proven to work for golfers: Increased strength and flexibility will result in increased club head speed, increased distance, and decreased likelihood of injury. We have all the MedX core exercise equipment used by golfers on the PGA tour at both our Austin Personal Training and New Orleans Personal Training locations.

Sleeping injuries

Yep, I hurt myself sleeping. It is a damn shame when you hurt yourself sleeping. In my defense it might be that I have lost a little padding around my hips. I am down five belt loops and thirty-five pounds.

I consulted my physical therapist, and he said it happens occasionally. From this web page, Part 6 Common Sleep Injuries: Hip Injuries, this quote:

“The trochanteric bursa is on the outside of the hip. If you sleep on one side for most of the night, you can compress it, causing swelling and inflammation, or Greater Trochanteric Pain Syndrome (GTPS.) You will wake up in the morning or in the night with pain and tenderness on the side of your hip, which may feel like a bad cramp. If the inflammation gets worse, any kind of walking or climbing motion will aggravate the bursa and cause more pain.”

I once had this injury twenty-five years ago and limped for days. This time there was just a bit of aggravation.  It helps if you have muscle protecting those joints. At New Orleans Personal Trainer and Austin Personal Trainer we can help you with that.

Study finds BMI to be deeply flawed measure of health

The government has proposed rules that would allow employers to penalize employees for up to 30% of their health insurance costs if they don’t meet 24 health criteria one of which is the BMI, Body Mass Index.   It turns out that the BMI is a very unreliable indicator of health.    

From this LA times article, BMI mislabels 54 million Americans as 'overweight' or 'obese,' study says:

“A team of UCLA researchers analyzed data from 40,420 individuals who participated in the 2005-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and they found that nearly half (47.4%) of overweight people and 29% of obese people were, from a metabolic standpoint, quite healthy. On the flip side, more than 30% of individuals with “normal” weights were metabolically unhealthy.

“The BMI is just a really crude and terrible indicator of someone’s health.”

This regulatory gambit would saddle employees with unfairly high health insurance costs based on a deeply flawed measure of actual health.

Another study confounding the worth of the BMI statistic found that those with more muscle live longer.  Those will more muscle will have higher BMIs, and if proposed regulations are put in place they would have the privilege of paying high premiums. Mike Tyson pictured here would be classified as obese. I don’t know; he looks healthy to me.

BMI be damned.  With proper strength training you can increase your muscle mass – even seniors,   At New Orleans Personal Training andAustin Personal Training we can help you with that.

My pain is gone

Imagine living with pain every day.  You are getting older and your life has become compromised. The prospect that the pain will always be there presents a bleak picture.  It does not have to be that way.  

At both our locations, Austin Personal Trainers and at New Orleans Personal Trainers, our trainers use MedX rehabilitative exercise equipment.  It is used by elite athletes as well as those recovering from injuries.  

Gretchen, one of our trainers, trains Larry. Larry is recovering from injuries sustained as a result of a motorcycle accident.  Prior to beginning exercise he lived in pain every day.

A quote from Larry:  

“Prior to starting at Kelly Personal Training  I was taking at between 4 and 8 ibuprofens a day just so my knees, back, and shoulder weren’t hurting. I was icing my back a couple times a week. Now I don't need anything for pain because the pain is gone. My work requires me to walk around in attics. I can tell my balance has improved as well. The slight discomfort during the workout is well worth the benefits. I have lost 32 pounds too.”

Our equipment is better tolerated by those who have physical limitations, and workout itself will alleviate pain.  Many live in a state of chronic pain.Years ago I was one of them for almost three years. With the right exercise that can change dramatically. 

Lasting impressions: In six months I'll be doing the butterfly across that pool

In 38 years working at nine different health clubs I've seen a lot of amazing, bizarre, interesting, and sometimes disturbing things. I have seen thousands of people come and go. Most do not leave a lasting impression, but sometimes, even a brief encounter will stay with me forever.

It was January 1980. The price of oil was $37 a barrel that year, more expensive than it is today. The George Foreman Grill and other astounding leaps in technology had yet to be invented. It was my third month working at my first health club. The club was awash with new members armed with their New Year’s resolutions.

There was a man there who weighed 290 pounds. He had the look of a former athlete. Under that marbling there was obvious potential to be a well-muscled fit man. He was there for hours each day for five straight days. He told me in six months he would be doing the butterfly across the pool. Given how long he was there with such regularity that was definitely a possibility. I didn't see him the next week or the week after. In fact I never saw him again. But he did continue to pay the mandatory membership bank draft.

I often think of him as a proxy for all those who come to the gym with high expectations but never follow through. Initially people are highly motivated, but working full-time along with raising a family and then coming to the gym for one or two hours is not sustainable for most people. The diminishing return for all that time in the gym is not very motivating.

At our Austin Personal Training facility we don't start from the premise of seeing how much exercise you can withstand but try to find what's the least amount of exercise that will produce the most positive change. That will give you the largest marginal return for your time spent exercising, and it will be more motivating. You will be more likely stick to it for the long-term.

Had that man committed to making modest changes in eating habits, strength trained for a half hour once or sometimes twice a week, and on the other days done something he enjoyed he would have been more likely to have stuck to it. The weight loss would be slower but more sustainable. At the end of the year he would've been 50 pounds lighter and maybe would have been able to do the butterfly. The beauty of it is he would have spent far less time in the gym than under his attempted commitment.

High intensity strength training lowers blood pressure

To lower your blood pressure do high intensity training HIT or start strength training. Better yet, do them both at the same time. High intensity training HIT consists of a series of short bouts of demanding exercise with rest or active recovery (less demanding exercise) in between each bout of exercise. HIT for strength can be done performing a series of strength training exercise with little rest in between. Evidence from two studies point to the positive effects both HIT and strength training have on lowering blood pressure. This study, High-intensity interval training and hypertension: maximizing the benefits of exercise? compared continuous moderate-intensity exercise training (CMT) and high-intensity interval training (HIT), to determine which was better for lowering blood pressure.  They presented evidence that: “HIT for several factors involved in the pathophysiology of hypertension raises the hypothesis that HIT may be more effective for preventing and controlling hypertension”. Another study, Weight Training Has Unique Heart Benefits, Study Suggests, examined the effect of strength training on blood pressure and found: When compared to aerobic training resistance training resulted in increased blood flow to the limbs and a longer-lasting drop in blood pressure after exercise. At Austin Personal Training and at New Orleans Fitness Trainers we do HIT training on aerobic equipment and HIT training for strength in our weight room.

The lady said, "We want decisive members"

Several years ago I walked into a health club; they were running a special offer. After the tour of the facility I told the lady that I wanted to think about it and that I would come back tomorrow. She told me I had to make my decision right then and there if I wanted to get the special rate. She said, “We want decisive members”. I made my decision right there and walked out. There is a reason yearly memberships are a bargain, and there is a reason they are always running specials. Many facilities bank on the fact that you won’t attend regularly. On average, only thirty percent of members attend regularly. So you take the bait and decide to join the health club. To get the discount you sign the monthly bank draft, and the automatic bank draft begins. If you are like most people your attendance is regular at first and then seldom. Cancelling your membership is expensive because there is a $200 processing fee, so you are stuck for a year. There is a reason the renewal rate at health clubs hovers around 30 percent. In many of the health clubs there are personal trainers who will offer you a free training session IF you sign up for a huge package to get the lower rate. If you are lucky you will get the personal trainer best suited for your needs, but often that is not the case. At the end of year the only thing lighter is your wallet. AtNew Orleans’s Personal Trainers and Austin’s Fitness Trainers there are no bank drafts or specials. We do offer the first two sessions free without obligations, so you can make an informed decision to see if this is something you want to pursue. It is a different business model that works for us.

Fourteen years of positive changes

I work out of our Austin Personal Training location, and I was talking to one of our New Orleans personal trainers a few years back. I asked her why there was an influx of business when we hadn’t been doing any promotions, really no marketing of any kind outside of our internet presence. I was heartened to hear her response. She said, “People are starting to know of us in the community. I think we now have an established reputation”. More than a decade ago we asked our clients if they would submit a short testimonial about their experience at our New Orleans location. The result was almost 40 testimonials, 30 of them from doctors.  We appreciate those votes of confidence and all the other testimonials made in subsequent years. One of those testimonials was from a client who works with Adam [pictured], one of our trainers. Her doctor told her, “Under no circumstances stop exercising because that is what is keeping you going” Doctors attributed her years of exercise to helping her prevail. We are fortunate to work with so many good people and to help them make positive changes in their lives.