As a Personal Trainer Mission Valley, I first came across the thought that “muscle is definitely the ‘window’ to your body” in Ken Hutchins’ SuperSlow Technical Manual. He attributes the quote to the former employee of Nautilus, Ed Farnham. It’s a brilliant metaphor. The thought is the fact essentially all physical improvements that can be stimulated by exercise are fundamentally brought on by loading your muscles. Making your muscles work is actually how you “get at” and stimulate not just your physique, yet the rest of your body’s systems too. Your muscles are a pathway to enhancing your cardiovascular system, lungs, endocrine system, body’s immune system, general metabolism, and more.
For instance, suppose somebody is climbing stairs just for exercise. This person’s body will temporarily use up more calories during the stair climbing session. It’ll also make her heart beat faster, and by doing so potentially place positive force on her heart to get better. And if the stair climbing is challenging enough, her calves will fatigue somewhat as well. If her body isn’t already used to a more challenging stress than stair climbing (such as high-intensity strength training), her body will be stimulated to enhance the cardiovascular system, her muscles may get slightly stronger, along with other positive adaptations may happen in such places as the body’s immune system as well as the endocrine system.
Observe that each of those effects from stair climbing (burning calories, positively stressing the cardiovascular system, potential strength increases, and positive adjustments in the immune and endocrine systems) come from making the muscles work. Extra calories are burned only because the calves worked harder through the activity. Your heart starts beating faster to supply nutrients on the working muscles, at the same time to get rid of waste products from them. If an increase in strength is stimulated, it would be mainly because the muscles have already been loaded, fatigued, and stressed sufficiently. All of the physical benefits are usually fundamentally due to making the muscles work.
Demanding muscular loading is a fundamental cause for triggering a cascade of positive changes all over your body. Still for the cardiovascular system, the stimulus is making the muscles work, and also heart kicks into higher gear purely for a support system for the working muscles. (This basically means, your heart and lungs cannot jump out of your body and jump on the stair climber to exercise on their own. The best way to “get at” your cardiovascular system by exercising is by helping to make the muscles work.)
A huge advantage of effective strength training when compared with other exercise methods (like stair climbing) is the fact that strength training provides you the opportunity to make your muscles work much harder than stair climbing or other exercise choices. If you have ever trained your leg muscles to “momentary failure” on the leg press machine in slow-motion form, you know firsthand how strength training works your muscles hard! Since strength training could make the muscles work harder than other activities (like stair climbing), you may stimulate nearly as good or better benefits in any of your body’s systems (including the muscles, cardiovascular system, lungs, endocrine system, body’s immune system, and general metabolism) than you can with other activities.
Throughout my article in the December newsletter I mentioned that research shows that effective strength training produces positive benefits in the heart. That’s why in certain studies with very high-intensity strength training, the changes from the cardiovascular system by means of strength training can be better than even so-called “cardio” routines like stair climbing. This is because you may only address your cardiovascular system through your muscles work, and training for strength provides you the opportunity to really challenge the muscles, and for that reason a number of other systems in the body improve in addition to the muscles.
Making the muscles work hard during strength training triggers a “total body response”, including more strength, greater endurance, more calorie-burning lean muscle mass to your body, reversed age related muscle loss (sarcopenia), increased metabolism and how many calories you burn even while you’re resting, greater fat burning, stronger bones, reversed aging of muscle cells (expresses younger DNA in the nuclei), improved cardiovascular fitness, improved levels of cholesterol, lowered blood pressure, improved low back pain, better control of blood sugar, improved immune system and a volume of other benefits.
When done proper training for strength loads the muscles (your “window into your body”) much more effectively than other activities because training for strength may load the muscles more efficiently, more intensely, and in a safer manner than other activities can.
The slow-motion, high-intensity strength training that we teach along with a Personal Trainer in Mission Valley can be as good of a way as you will find at stimulating this “window” in your body, as a result your whole body improves, not only your muscles. And everything it will take is just 20 minutes, twice a week.