Aaron Rose Training

We're suddenly back—with a devastating gymgeist disruption as well—what an eventful day 💥

"99%" of us are all just in this for the having of a good time 🥳

It's not that deep 🌊

Citations:
[1] PMID: 33629972
[2] PMID: 35228201

Aaron Rose Training on Instagram: "We're suddenly back—with a devastating gymgeist disruption as well—what an eventful day 💥 "99%" of us are all just in this for the having of a good time 🥳 It's not that deep 🌊 Citations: [1] PMID: 33629 Aaron Rose Training shared a post on Instagram: "We're suddenly back—with a devastating gymgeist disruption as well—what an eventful day 💥 "99%" of us are all just in this for the having of a good time 🥳 It's not that deep 🌊 Citations: [1] PMID: 33629972 [2] PMID: 35228201 ▪︎ ▪︎...

𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙛𝙪𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙗𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪'𝙧𝙚 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙗𝙚𝙨𝙩 🦸🏼‍♂️

It's the best time for it—when you catch one of those rare moments wherein you actually feel on top of your day—to plan and prepare for the sort of barriers to self-efficacy that you know you'll encounter when a future day has brought you down low instead 😪

This kind of strategy will look a little different for everyone depending on what they eat and how manage their days etc 📅

A few things that I prepare are 📝
▪︎Bran Flakes weighed out into a sealed bowl (kept right next to my bed with a spoon, alongside the caffeine pills) 🌾
▪︎Single servings of whey isolate and creatine ready in small containers 🥤
▪︎Dry rice to weight, ready for one of my planned meals 🍚

These things aren't necessarily in place for the very next time I need them either; instead, they're in place for the next time I need them and I 𝙖𝙡𝙨𝙤 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡 𝙨𝙤 𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙩 that having to weigh and measure things or not will mean the difference between adhering to my intentions or not 😵

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"𝙐𝙥𝙜𝙧𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙨, 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚, 𝙪𝙥𝙜𝙧𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙨!" 🤖
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Just a little look at how the gym is progressing (it acquires new mass faster than I ever will now) 🦾
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Expanded sections of TGA rubber flooring, added front safety booms and giant dip horns to the rack, and a soft plyo box 📦
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𝙄 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪'𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 🤔💭

"Battle-themed virtual pets for adults are obviously very cool and completely normalised, but fitness wearables are nuts inaccurate—people are going to think you're a loser!" 🤣

Well, that's mostly true—fitness wearables absolutely suck ass at estimating energy expenditure and as such, it's important that you 𝙖𝙗𝙨𝙤𝙡𝙪𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙙𝙤 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙚𝙖𝙩 𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙬𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝 𝙨𝙪𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪'𝙫𝙚 𝙗𝙪𝙧𝙣𝙩 (if you're trying to lose body fat) 🚫

In their 2020 systematic review of 158 publications covering the commercially available wearable activity trackers from nine different brands in total: Daniel Fuller et al found that not one single brand accurately estimated energy expenditure [1] 🔥

They may relate accurate step counts, and heart rate states with an accuracy that is variable within a reasonable tolerance, however 📊

Their truest value, in my opinion, lies within their capacity to meaningfully increase individual exercise participation and reduce sedentary time—a capacity suggested by Katie Jane-Brickwood's 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis of 28 RCTs [2] 🏃🏻

I think that this effect is probably driven, predominantly, by a combination of the gameification of physical activity and the addition of more objective, measurable performative success metrics; I can scarcely imagine a more compelling game that you could play on a fitness watch and while initial physiological adaptions are always slower to arrive than performative outcomes—that Digimon is going to get stacked and shredded, nice and fast, while you focus on your performance 👾

Hilariously enough, I genuinely believe that the Vital Bracelet only returning step count and heart rate as output data—with no pretense of arbitrary energy expenditure delivered—makes it the most honest and scientifically competent fitness wearable on the market that I'm aware of 😂

I don't care about any of that when it comes to me though—I just wanted the Digimon that I feed my power ⚡

[1] DOI: 10.2196/18694

[2] DOI: 10.2196/11819

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𝙎𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙩𝙝 𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘼𝙜𝙚—𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙗𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙎𝙖𝙧𝙘𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙞𝙖 ⏳

Sarcopenia—the loss of muscle mass and strength during the latter stages of biological aging—is strongly correlated with physical disability, poor quality of life, and mortality [1] with an estimated loss of 5-10% of muscle mass per decade past the age of 50 being observed [2].

Muscle mass accounts for at least 60% of total body mass in healthy population subsets—this makes that loss of 5-10% per decade profoundly impactful on the physiology and lived experience of the elderly—it is literally pathological.

Unfortunately, far too many people think that lifting weights and being meaningfully active is something that you can only begin when you're younger and are best to discontinue as you really start getting older. This could be regarded as a reasonably intuitive belief to hold as it can be quite compelling to draw a straight line between aging and frailty based on what we observe in others as we go about our day, thereby concluding that this is an inevitability for all.

The problem is that this interpretation almost certainly has the causal relationship the wrong way around—we don't lose absolutely all of our muscle, strength and resilience simply because we age—we lose it because we stop using it, or perhaps we never even had it to begin with.

You just probably aren't seeing many older people that continue to resistance train when you take in those around you day-to-day, you probably aren't even seeing that many middle-aged people that do so either.

If we don't keep giving our bodies a reason to retain and repair muscles and joints—if we allow our bodies to wane—it's eventually going to mean that simple tasks like picking things up from the floor, rising from chairs, and climbing stairs become increasingly difficult [3].

It's going to mean falls and broken bones, loss of mobility and independence, and ultimately—increased likelihood of an earlier passing.

Non-pharmacological interventions have been shown to be the only way to prevent these adverse outcomes in sarcopenic patients [4]—there is simply no drug that can replicate what meaningful activity and loading will do for us and our bodies.

This a subject on which we can speak quite confidently as the literature is, at this point in time, unanimous—this inactivity and disuse of contractile tissue is a determinant cause of muscle and muscle strength loss, both in general [5] and in the elderly specifically [6].

I truly believe that not only should people not stop lifting weights as they get older, but that older people are in fact those that absolutely need to lift weights the most—it becomes imperative for our ongoing well-being.

What we do and how we live now is a steady investment from which our future selves will benefit—even if we're already feeling further along than we'd like to be, with a few pains and problems accompanying our movement—there is an entry point to improvement somewhere for everyone.

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[1] https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afy169

[2] https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00347.2003

[3] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118535

[4] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocd.2015.04.011

[5] https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hhosAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=info:_v2hs3vykNkJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=lkE46KYZOA&sig=pBp9ZUc0bAla5M8rDZZ-tV9HVyA&redir_esc=y =onepage&q&f=false

[6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23575207/

𝙎𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙩𝙝 𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙈𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙡 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙩𝙝 🧠

"The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance."

However, were the mind to command the body to meet resistance training—it may very well make some progress in the task of moving itself after all.

I truly believe that you'd be hard pressed to find someone that performs regular physical exercise that does not attribute significant improvements in their mental health and mental health consistency to it as well, I can also speak personally with regards to myself, my friends, and of course my trainees.

More importantly—the available evidence supports the idea that strength training in particular leads to these positive outcomes for mental health—this idea holds water.

In their research review of 53 randomised control trials O'Connor et al [1] found strength training to be associated with:

▪︎ Reductions in symptoms of depression in patients with clinically diagnosed depression

▪︎ Reductions in symptoms of anxiety in healthy adults

▪︎ Reductions in pain intensity in patients with low back pain, osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia

▪︎ Reductions in fatigue symptoms

▪︎ Improvements in cognition in older adults

▪︎ Improvements in sleep quality among older adults with depression

▪︎ Improvements in self-esteem

In addition to providing the satisfaction and enjoyment of mastering new skills, achieving new goals and developing a body that is both strong and resilient, it seems that strength training can go a long way toward helping calm our minds as well.

Strength training can be undertaken by almost anyone, of any age—it can be made fun and accessible and considering the scope of benefits available it would be a great shame not to seek them out.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1177/1559827610368771

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