Fit After Fifty: 5 Fitness Myths Debunked

Like you, I'm a baby boomer. We want to thrive in the coming decades, and that means committing to the most effective and efficient physical fitness program. But how can we know what is best for us?

Here I debunk 5 common fitness myths and provide critical answers.

Myth #1: Aerobic Exercise is the Best Way to Become Fit

Have you ever engaged in “aerobic” or what I prefer to call steady state exercise?

If so, ask yourself the following:

1. How much time did you spend doing these exercises per week?
2. How long have you been working on transforming your body through “cardio” classes, running, jogging or sports related activities?
3. Are you pleased with the results?
4. If not, what motivates you to continue engaging in these steady state exercises?
   
5. What would you say, dear reader, if I told you that steady state exercise is not the best way to physically transform yourself?

Is Aerobic Exercise the Best Way to Lose Weight?

Most people who exercise do so to lose fat, i.e., to look better. They may believe that exercise helps them burn a great number of calories but they are mistaken.

Aerobic exercise will not radically transform your body and health.

Exercise, especially moderate to low intensity endurance activities like jogging, walking, or riding a bike burns few calories.

Given that there are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, most of you would have to run for 14 hours at a moderate pace to lose one pound of fat.

Even if you divide that commitment over six days, that would be over two hours of running each day. How many of us have that much free time to waste?

Aside from the time investment required, how many of us would be willing to bear the risk of repetitive stress injuries to your knees, shins, feet and hips?

Safety Risks of Jogging

Jogging can also put both men and women at risk of being mugged or assaulted.

Sadly, a search of Google News for “jogger” usually returns multiple crime incidents.

Aerobic vs. Anaerobic: Debunking Misconceptions

The aerobic pathway of energy production, which uses oxygen to produce energy, is not separate from the anaerobic pathway of energy production.

You can refer to any standard physiology textbook to verify the truth of this. This is why I prefer to place the word “aerobic” or “cardio” in scare quotes.

Therefore, the maxim offered in the old Susan Powter infomercials to the effect that we need to “move in oxygen” is vacuous. We always use oxygen for energy, no matter how intensely we are exerting ourselves.

Recreation and Social Benefits

The foregoing should not be taken as a disparagement of steady state exercise or sports related activity.

These activities, which we can collectively label as “recreational,” can be fun to engage in and some, like sports and exercise classes, have a social element to them that can serve as an important value

Running and other forms of aerobic exercise can provide social, recreational, and emotional rewards.

---

The Limits of Aerobic Workouts

Some sorts of recreation can have a greater exercise effect then others because of the demands those activities impose on the body’s musculature.

Wrestling is more demanding than golf. Sprinting is more demanding than a casual jog.

But although recreational activities like these may be fun and have varying levels of exercise effect, they are not an effective form of exercise for fundamentally transforming one’s body and physical health for the better.

The Importance of Strength and Resistance Training

The most fundamental physiological adaptation one can derive from exercise is strength — the capacity to express force against an external resistance.

The reason for this is that, evolutionarily speaking, our capacity for locomotion (movement) is second only to our capacity to reason in importance in terms of insuring our survival and flourishing.

Only intelligently planned resistance training of the major muscles can bring about that adaptation.

Why is Resistance Training So Important?

When you engage in resistance training, the muscles you are exercising, along with the connective tissue and bones that affect movement, are challenged.

Resistance training has the power to force most of a person’s weight loss to come from fat, not muscle.

When this happens, the muscles send a message to the brain, letting it know that continued locomotion is threatened.

The brain interprets this data as a threat to survival and it responds by issuing commands that would make it possible for the whole of you—your musculoskeletal and cardiovascular system together—to surmount the current challenge should it ever present itself again.

The brain might order an improvement in the neural communication between it and your muscles.

This is normally what happens during the early stages of your strength training, or when you perform an exercise or movement your body is unaccustomed to.

The sum effect of these neurological adaptations is that the muscles become stronger without becoming larger.

But these neurological improvements can only drive strength adaptations so far. After a certain point, the brain may order that new muscle be made and that is a process call hypertrophy.

Just as the tensile strength of a rope or cable increases in proportion to increases in its cross sectional area so to does the strength of a muscle increase as it grows larger, through an increase in the cross sectional area of its fibers.

Resistance training provides a remarkable array of health benefits.

---

How Does Resistance Training Work?

The foregoing adaptations caused by resistance exercise follow what is called the S.A.I.D. principle, short for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands.

Only certain demands on the body will elicit certain responses. Moderate exposure to the sun will create a tan, but too much sun will create sunburn.

The Role of Your Brain

The stress of exercise must be challenging enough to get the body to adapt, either neurologically or by making the muscles larger.

This can be achieved only if the brain perceives the demands of the exercise to be such that they threaten the individual’s capacity to move and hence his survival.

Why Strength Training is Superior to Aerobic Exercise

What does all this have to do with so called “aerobic” exercise?

Well, because it involves muscular contraction which, by its nature, the body can endure over long periods of time, aerobic exercise does not impose the required demands to elicit strength increases in the muscles and muscular growth, unless we are dealing with a severely untrained individual.

Aerobic exercise doesn’t distinguish between burning fat or muscle.

Without the signal elicited by such demands, the brain does not perceive the need to invest the metabolic resources necessary to synthesize and maintain muscle tissue, a pound of muscle tissue burning an average of 35-75 calories per hour (as opposed to the 2 calories per hour used by a pound of fat cells).

The adaptation that aerobic exercise creates, causes your body to become more efficient at burning calories.

But, this form of exercise doesn’t distinguish between burning fat or muscle.

That is why those who lose weight through aerobic exercise or through a combination of aerobic exercise and diet end up becoming merely thinner versions of their formerly fatter selves.

An Aerobic Shortfall: Muscle-to-Fat Ratio

These individuals don’t become leaner. Why? Because they have lost muscle along with fat.

Their body’s muscle to fat ratio remains largely unchanged. That’s a pyrrhic victory indeed.

Only properly planned resistance training has the power to force most of a person’s weight loss to come from fat and not from precious muscle.

My last point regarding the myth of “aerobic” exercise is that to the extent that it works to create adaptations in the body, whether they be in how you look or in your cardiovascular system, it is because most forms of “aerobic” exercise have some exercise effect.

They impose some demand on your body’s musculature, especially in those individuals who are extremely sedentary, and whose muscles are severely untrained.

This last point is crucial, for the only way to force a healthful adaptation in your cardiovascular system is through muscular exertion.

After all, the cardiovascular system exists to support the functioning of the musculoskeletal system, not the other way around.

Locomotion is our fundamental physical means of survival and it is essential that we preserve our capacity to move throughout our lives.

I’ve read scores of case histories of individuals who have suffered a major injury to their hip, severely delimiting their capacity to move. More often than not, they waste away within a year or two.

The Comprehensive Health Benefits of Resistance Training

The good news is there is no need to do both “aerobic” exercise and resistance training.

Making your muscles stronger will make you comprehensively fitter.

It will:

• Make your cardiovascular system work better
• Lower your cholesterol
• Regulate your blood sugar
• Lower your blood pressure
• Improve your brain.

Recognized by Medical Doctors

For those who want to examine the science underlying these claims, I refer you to The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40 by Dr. Andrew Sullivan and Andy Baker.

In the first half of that excellent resource, Dr. Sullivan meticulously lays out the science regarding the comprehensive health benefits of resistance training.

I also recommend this video, in which Jonathon Sullivan, MD, PhD, explains the various health benefits of resistance training.

Is There a Case for Aerobic Exercise?

However, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I think aerobic activities should be unconditionally avoided.

You can do aerobic activities such as a dance class, cardio-kickboxing, step aerobics, running, bicycling, etc. if you derive some fun from these activities.

Just don’t deceive yourself into thinking that these activities will radically transform your body.

A friend and recent resistance training convert who had formerly devoted herself exclusively to steady state exercise related the following story to me:

“So many of the women I take class with say ‘I take step, kickboxing, dance class, run, etc. and I still look the same.’ They may lose a few pounds but they don’t look lean. I get approached all the time and they ask me for my secret and I tell them the classes are for fun. The key to transforming your body is strength training, a well-balanced diet and the dedication to making these part of your lifestyle.”

Myth #2: Strength training will require you to spend hours in the gym

The number one excuse most give for not committing to an exercise regimen is lack of time.

But being strong is foundational to your health and overall quality of life.

A 30-Minute Commitment

Properly done, the average strength training session should take no longer than thirty minutes per session.

Over time, as you become significantly stronger, you will need to devote more time to training in order to continue driving progress.

But at the outset of your resistance training journey if you train three times per week that is ninety minutes invested in training out of the 168 hours that makes up the week.

Not a significant time investment considering all the benefits.

Strength training can enable you to enjoy an active lifestyle.

Myth #3: Your muscles will turn into fat if you stop working out or take an extended break

The truth is that muscle is muscle and fat is fat. Their composition is radically different.

• Muscle is 71% water, 22% proteins, and 7% lipids.
• Fat is 22% water, 6% proteins, and 72% lipids.

A person can lose strength and possibly muscle mass after a layoff of 4 weeks or more.

It takes some time for the body to let go of tissue that has resulted from such a large metabolic investment.

Still, it is equally true that it is a lot easier for someone coming back from a long layoff to rebuild muscle than it is for an individual who has never worked out before.

Myth #4: Strength training will make me look like a huge muscle-bound bodybuilder.

For reasons concerning the genetics most of us are dealt, this is not a concern for 99% of the population.

The Arnold Schwarzeneggers of this world are literally one in a million, genetically speaking.

Calorically, muscle is an expensive tissue to build and maintain.

The body will not build muscle unless we force it, kicking and screaming, to do so.

So for anyone who has a concern about becoming too muscular, the solution would be to refrain from getting any stronger then you already are.

The vast majority of us will never encounter this problem.

Answering the Concerns of Women

This myth is particularly destructive regarding women.

It’s not uncommon for women to wonder: “Will strength training make me bulky?” or “Will strength training make me bigger?”

Only resistance training will measurably increase the mineral density of your bones and help prevent osteoporosis.

Many women I’ve encountered through my fitness consulting business have expressed a fear of developing larger muscles because they fear becoming unfeminine in appearance.

It’s true that a woman’s proportions can get bigger if she adds muscle without losing body fat at the same time through a calorically restricted diet.

But what worries me is that in response to this fear, they may refrain from working out with weights, at least weights of any appreciable magnitude.

They plow away countless hours in boot camp classes or on the treadmill. Perhaps, worst of all, they starve themselves.

They may end up becoming thinner versions of their formerly fatter selves, but they will never become truly fit and strong.

One needs to focus on working against an appreciable amount of resistance in order to make one’s muscles stronger and the rest of our body fitter.

Unique Benefits for Women in Their 50s and 60s

Women need to have strong muscles just as much as men and perhaps more so.

Combating Osteoporosis

I say perhaps more so because of the increased risk that women have of suffering from osteoporosis.

Only resistance training will measurably increase the mineral density of your bones and help prevent osteoporosis.

Strength training is a critical part of building bone mineral density.

---

Addressing Hormonal-Related Weight Fluctuation

Many women also suffer from a level of weight fluctuation due to hormonal factors and slow metabolism due to a poor muscle to fat ratio.

This can only be ameliorated by making your muscles stronger and larger.

Myth #5: Health Supplements Are a Necessity

The last myth I want to dispose of is that you won’t get anywhere with your training efforts without the benefit of supplements.

This myth reminds me of a fellow who approached me about supplement-related advice.

When I asked him about his training, he couldn’t really give me definite answers because he hadn’t bothered to keep a record of what he had done in the gym.

Sidetracked From Results

From what he told me and from what little I saw regarding his performance of certain exercises, it became clear to me that his lack of progress was due to factors far more fundamental than that having to do with whether he was taking the right supplements.

This young man was exercising six days a week, twice a day, ninety minutes each session.

He was running his body into the ground by training too much and not allowing his body sufficient time with which to recuperate from the stress of exercise. And his concern was which supplements to take. His sense of priority was entirely misplaced.

Food: Your Source for Nutrients

All of my experience with exercise and nutrition has not altered my fundamental conviction that all that your body requires to grow stronger and become fitter can be found in your local supermarket.

It’s called food.

Baby Boomers Can Leave Creatine on the Shelf

Most of my clients don’t know anything about creatine, exotic protein powders enriched with glutamine, HMB, HGH, etc. More importantly, they don’t care.

They see results because they work hard and eat moderate portions of healthy foods.

Have questions about strength training? Book a free phone appointment with me, Francisco Villalobos, owner of Inner Strength Fitness in east midtown Manhattan.

Let’s discuss your health and fitness goals and get you on a path to optimal fitness.