Fitness Musings

sad but true

Just because you have "no limits" in your workout doesn't mean you should approach discussions the same way. You do in fact have intellectual and educational limits. We all do. Know what you're talking about before you argue emphatically for a certain side on an issue. You can't just "lift harder" in an argument and force your way into rightness.

It doesn't work that way, and trying to do so makes you look like a complete fool.

Furthermore, if you go around preaching about pacing yourself and knowing your limits in your training, but you follow up by overextending yourself intellectually, you're a hypocrite. Stop it.

Here is an example of oversimplification to the point that the video is probably more confusing than anything else.

This is a problematic clip, because it rolls a lot of assumptions into the statement. If one is doing a *maximal* isometric and sustaining it long enough for some motor unit "rotation" to occur and fibers to fatigue enough that it leads to recruitment of some of the motor units that are harder to get on board, then I think it is fair to say that isometrics can "recruit more fibers." But without those sorts of caveats, the video comes across as a broad "X is better than Y" statement that conveys very little useful knowledge or detail and is likely just to make people more opinionated as they form opinions based on limited information.

There are also relevant points to explore regarding velocity of the dynamic action you're comparing isometrics to, what the chosen isometric position might be, how many joints are involved, the current fatigue state, and more. There is also the issue of what "safer" means in this context, and that could be a whole conversation by itself.

Tl,dr: it depends on a lot, and these quick clips are not conducive to teaching people about the variables that these things depend on. Neuromuscular physiology is complicated.

They activate the most muscle fibers andthey're the safest because you're notmoving #mindpump

Chasing specific lift numbers in your weight training sessions is not entirely unlike chasing a belt in martial arts training; both are often the result of being enamored with something shiny, sexy, and *externally visible*.

And in both cases, with experience and understanding, we eventually learn that there is so much more to be gained from the process than the stuff that may have first enticed us to begin. You can get healthier and experience countless benefits even if you aren't moving more weight. You can become more skilled and deepen your knowledge every day, even if your formal rank in your doesn't change.

There's a lesson there.

There appear to be YouTube channels and pages/groups that are ostensibly about fitness, but they *actually* seem dedicated almost exclusively to discussing the industry's dirty laundry. Back-and-forth trolling, gossiping about relationships, trash talking businesses, and generally being the functional equivalents of social media ambulance chasers and tabloids.

I don't get it. This field is in a sorry state, and it's sad that people think it's more compelling to dedicate their time to rummaging around in the garbage to feed their rabid fan bases (and fan the flames of further trolling that can often ruin people's lives) than to try to elevate the field by actually teaching, embodying higher professional standards, and just generally *not* making the industry out to be the laughingstock that it is to so many other people and professions. There are sometimes people who really deserve negative attention -- particularly in cases of overt abuse, criminal actions, etc. -- but it's important to know how and when to address such people.

I know that my posts aren't the most intriguing to everyone, and I'm not some paragon of virtue. But come on... gossip? As a main focus of your page? You have to be a special kind of weak to cave to the demands of your following to contribute to the mess instead of helping to clean it up. Disappointing... if not entirely surprising.

A musing (which may or may not be amusing):

I've frequently been bothered in discussions of enzymes and basic biochemistry by the rather flippant way that many instructors choose to define a kinase as "something that puts a phosphate on" and a phosphatase as "something that takes a phosphate off." It's oversimplified and also presumes an agreed-upon perspective for which molecule(s) would be donating or receiving said phosphates.

This is problematic, because when a group is "put onto" a molecule in a chemical reaction, that group typically came from some other molecule that had it "taken off." One of the first things you learn about in basic chemistry is the principle that the involved matter is conserved and that *everything has to come from somewhere*. Thus, a kinase only "puts a phosphate on" from the perspective of one of the substrates, whereas is acts as a (colloquial) phosphatase from the perspective of the substrate that acts as the phosphate donor. In other words, both a kinase and a phosphatase will tend to ass a phosphate and remove one, with the distinction being a rather arbitrary one about which substrate(s) we choose to adopt as the protagonist of that particular chemical reaction.

Even if we can start off all agreeing that a particular substrate and its descendants will be the focus for what is adding or losing a group, the definition *still* can break down. Take glycolysis, for example:

The first phosphorylation reaction -- and the first overall in the pathway -- is the hexokinase reaction. It converts plain old glucose to glucose-6-phosphate (G-6-P, where a phosphate group is attached to the sixth carbon). It *added* a phosphate to glucose, so it's a *kinase*. Simple enough, right?

So in the glycolytic pathway, the kinases should be the enzymes that add a phosphate to a substrate as we move down that pathway. For each reaction, we are choosing to focus on the product that remains in the pathway (not the product that just floats away to do something else, such as ADP from that hexokinase reaction; we just don't care about it). So step one converts glucose to glucose-6-phosphate. Step two converts that to fructose-6-phosphate (an isomerase reaction). Step three adds another phosphate to the molecule to create fructose-1,6-diphosphate/bisphosphate (via the phosphofructoKINASE enzyme in a powerfully rate-limiting step), and so on.

Seems fine so far, yes? When the next downstream product of that original glucose -- whatever is staying in the pathway to move to the *next* reaction and continue glycolysis -- gets a phosphate, it's given that by a kinase enzyme.

Except it breaks down. The reaction that creates pyruvate at the end (what is often taught as the "final product" of glycolysis, though I don't entirely agree with this) does so by removing a phosphate from something called PEP, or phosphoenolpyruvate. That enzyme is: PYRUVATE KINASE. It removes that phosphate to replenish an ATP molecule (it actually does this twice, since it's operating on both legs of the pathway which split several steps before this).

So suddenly, we have a kinase that is *taking a phosphate off* instead. This is why simply defining kinases and phosphorylases by whether they add or remove a phosphate group is a mistaken approach. That kinase was still adding a phosphate to something; it was just doing it to the ATP instead of to the glycolysis intermediate we would expect.

Okay. There's my rant. I've attached an image of glycolysis so you can see what I'm talking about (hopefully it'll be readable for you). Just needed to get that out of my system. This isn't something that confuses me, but it definitely does confuse students who are first learning these concepts and being given mindless memorization approaches to the topics instead of more thorough explanations about what's going on. Simplicity is not always the friend of the beginner.

Here's one of about a million different sites that explain the process (with some mention of the fact that the pyruvate kinase enzyme is named for the reverse reaction in this case):

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-biology1/chapter/reading-glycolysis-2/

A funny observation:

Fit pro: constantly harps on "trusting the process" (and rightly so) when they want their clients to chill out and be patient about their results

Also fit pro: always wants learning to be instant so they can monetize or weaponize a new technique, insight, or process right away.

***

If you want to separate yourself from the rest of the industry, perhaps try to take a more mature approach to your learning and growth than most other people do. Physics is hard. The body is complex. Logic is often counterintuitive. Commit yourself to learning for the long haul, and try to avoid the urge to seek instant gratification. The implications of new concepts don't always reveal themselves right away, so stop expecting things to take a day, or a week, or a month.

If you're playing this right, it's a long game.

Whenever a person acts like they can know what specific exercises someone does just by looking at them, that tells me that they don't really understand exercise or the body very well.

Yes, that applies to seasoned trainers and everyone else who thinks their experience gives them absolute knowledge about things.

If someone pressed me on the subject, I'd have to say that one of the biggest mistakes that I see with working out, especially among professionals...

.. is constantly pumping out lists of "mistakes" that feed the misconception that there are such rigid ways that an exercise is "right" or "wrong."

Seriously. Stop giving in to the urge to rank everything and come up with countdowns. You're sharing strong (and often arbitrary) opinions and masking them as wisdom. Give people room to do things differently from how you like. Even if it conflicts with what usually *appears* to be best in your experience as a coach.

It is one thing to give suggestions or preemptive guidance. It's another thing altogether to give sets of hard rules or to categorize something as good or bad before even getting to know the person who might be listening to your rules and taking your word as gospel.

One of the positives about having so much chronic pain (some from injury, some without clear cause) is that it's easy to get people off my back about my training choices. I can just tell them "nah, that hurts too much to do, so I do this other thing."

There's actually a deeper conversation to be had about fit pros' obsession with "the right exercise" (which itself is indicative of rather backwards thinking, in my opinion), but I'm too lazy to write about it right now. I'm sure you're all crushed by that.