Warning: this blog post is longer than I expected. If you don't feel like reading it skip to the bullet points at the bottom .
When
step counters like the Fitbit came out, everyone was counting their
steps thinking it would lead to weight loss, more activity, and a
healthier lifestyle! And to be perfectly honest, in most cases, it did
just that! For the extremely sedentary, getting a certain number of
steps each day increased their physical activity enough that it created a
caloric deficit(weight loss benefits), a release of endorphins(mentally
pleasing), and in increase in heart rate due to exercise(heart
healthy).
However, just like any fitness gimmick (yes,
the Fitbit is a gimmick as well as every single new invention that comes
out promising to help you lose weight) the effects that it has on all
the systems of the body starts to diminish after of few weeks. Why
though? I am still getting in my 5000 steps per day! Shouldn't I still
be losing weight, feeling more mentally alert, and making my heart
healthier and stronger?? Actually NO. At some point in ANY exercise
routine, you stop reaping benefits (making gainz for all you meatheads)
and you actually start to increase risk of overuse injury.
In
order to understand this, I will start by giving you an example of how
over doing one form of exercise stops working after a while, then I will
attempt to explain basic anatomy and physiology adaptations, how they
can beneficial for a time and then detrimental at somepoint, and finally
how we can fix this issue that is inherent to EVERY SINGLE exercise
modality.
I would like to introduce you to "The
Mailman Paradox" also called "the Train Conductor Paradox". I need to
state that I did not make this up and I read it on another fitness blog
years ago but cannot remember exactly where. Therefore, I am not taking
credit for this as an original idea and if anyone knows where this is
from please message me and let me know so I can site it! The mailman
paradox specifically refers to mailmen & mailwomen that walk for
miles everyday around city streets delivering mail. Their Fitbits might
explode from the amount of steps they take! They must be the
healthiest group of people on the planet! Well not to take anything
away from anyone in the mail service industry as I am sure there are
plenty of healthy people that work for USPS but what about the mail
people who aren't super thin, don't feel the endorphins being released
after their walks, and are on the verge of having a heart attack?
Why
at some point do the benefits of doing the same thing over and over
again start to decrease and the risk for negative effects increase? The
body adapts specifically to the task it is required to do. In this
case, it is required to walk a certain number of steps every day, and
eventually the systems of the body that are required to do this task
will adapt to make this task less taxing on the body and able to be
performed more efficiently. It will continue to make it easier until
you become a master at walking that specific amount of steps. And then
what happens? There is no reason for the body to continue to drop
weight, increase heart rate, or release endorphins because walking is no
longer a difficult task, it's just part of the normal routine.
So
then what about all the people that continued to walk the same amount
of steps every day even after they have reached their peak performance?
They must surely still be doing something healthy for themselves and
maintaining a certain level of health! To the statement that they are
maintaining some level of health, I AGREE completely. However, if the
question is, "are they doing something healthy?" I argue that in most
instances, the answer is NO. If the person continues to do the same
exercise (in this example walking), without change or addition of
supplemental exercise, over and over again, it will actually become
detrimental to their health in the long run! Remember, the body is
composed of systems so although it may be keeping the cardiovascular
system at a good homeostatic level, think about what its doing to the
connective tissue system, or the muscular strength system, or the the
lateral movement system. Read on to find out!
In
order to understand this we must understand some basics of anatomy and
physiology. The body is composed of hundreds of "systems" all having
the possibilities of carrying out various tasks. In everyone, some
systems are highly trained and some are not. When one system gets
really strong due to focus of training another system naturally has to
be neglected and possibly even weaken. You cannot be the best at
everything people! This is why generally the best marathon runner
wouldn't be the best power lifter.
So what systems need to
be strong in order to walk? Well to put it simply, we need to be good
at moving in a forward in a straight line, without any external load,
presumably over a basically flat surface. Our foot, ankle, calf, and
spinal muscles (with the help or detriment of our shoes) need to
stabilize our body while our shoulder, hip and pelvic muscles move in a
repetitive pattern. This number of steps also requires the muscles to
be more endurance based (type 1) rather than power based (type 2), and
finally long walking requires our cardiovascular system to become very
good at moderate intensity long cardio which taxes the aerobic system(as
opposed to anaerobic). Without getting too deep into gait pattern and
theory, the repetitive movement associated with walking also makes the
motor control aspect of walking become very efficient. Therefore, your
brain becomes really good at sending and coordinating signals to certain
muscles to contract and relax in a certain order so that it becomes
second nature and requires less effort.
What systems
become weak if your exercise routine only consisted of walking? First,
any lateral or backward movement. Not only does your body become less
coordinated to do those movements but the stabilizing muscles mentioned
above become weak in those planes of motion. So think you have to side
step or back step out of the way of a moving car, you may be more likely
to roll an ankle since the joint hasn't been trained well to accept
load in the direction. In terms of individual muscles, typically in
walkers, we will see "tight" calves, hamstrings, and hip flexors. This
may limit range of motion or ability to walk up stairs, walk inclines,
sit and stand from a chair or the floor. Repetitive walking on hard
surfaces (concrete) also puts a lot of stress on the joints leading to
increase in osteoarthritis if proper deload weeks are not programed to
allow for regeneration of these tissues. Finally since there is
theoretically no resistance in walking on flat surfaces (physics would
argue this) your muscles learn that they can be produce a relatively
small amount of force and still be succesful at what is required of
them. They become weak and as soon as I ask you to walk with a 20 pound
backpack or with a 130lb dog on a leash, your spinal muscles crumble,
the intrinsic muscles of your foot collapse, and your shoulders and neck
have stressors on them never experienced before. Another life example
is this: as soon as I ask you to lift a 10 pound box from the floor and
put it on the top shelf of my closet, you cannot produce the force to
lift it, the movement pattern required to get something from floor to
overhead is foreign to you, and the stabilization required to maneuver
the box hasn't been trained.
Lets be clear, this is
an extreme example, and the negative effects of walking will take years
to manifest themselves as pain or dysfunction in the body. If you can,
take this walking example and connect it to sitting. The act of
sitting in itself isn't bad but rather its the amount of sitting that we
do that causes anatomical and physiological changes over the course of
years with the absence of physical movement. This is exactly why
sitting gets a bad reputation. We overdue it, it gets to be highly
detrimental to some systems of the body, and may lead to chronic pain.
However, the example of overuse with walking or sitting can be applied
to ANY AND ALL exercise routines performed continuously over the course
of years: yoga, powerlifting, bodybuilding, gymnastics, running,
Cycling, boxing, pilates, crossfit, swimming, circuit training, etc.
So
what is the fix to this problem of diminishing returns? Crossfit got it
partially correct in explaining that variance in programing is key,
however where they go wrong is to much variance day to day doesn't allow
for the body to learn or improve at anything. So you just stay
mediocre at everything and never get any better. However, if you were
to focus on something in particular for a certain amount of time, lets
say 4 weeks (the length of a standard mesocycle), or enough time to
grasp the concept and become somewhat proficient at the movement you
could theoretically learn a new skill and then progress it. The
following 4 weeks could be something relatively similar to build on the
original skill or something completely different that eventually could
be combined with the original skill to form a completely new and
advanced skill!
Example 1: Charles walks for 4 weeks
gradually increasing his speed but keeping his distance the same. Then
he deadlifts for four weeks with the goal of increasing strength and
force production of his legs. Finally, in his 3rd mesocycle (4 week
cycle), he is stronger and he knows he can walk a certain distance for x
time. So Charles decides to find out if with his new strength he can
run that distance in an even shorter time. Lo and behold he can because
running is dependent on force output from the legs and proper gait
patterning similar to walking. Combine walking and deadlifting, you
should theoretically get better at running (over simplification but
hopefully you get the point)
Example 2: Mary has been
sedentary for a year. She started beginners yoga and has done it every
day for 8 weeks. Her body feels great to move again, she has become
more mobile in her joints, and she has lost body fat. But now Mary has
plateaued in weight loss, she doesn't get the same mental stimulation
from yoga as she did before because she has become more proficient at
the movements, and she finds it difficult to move heavy boxes around her
basement. Mary should probably start a resistance training program and
try to put on some muscle on her frame. This will help her stabilize
her new found range of motion from practicing yoga, learn new and
exciting movement patterns that are different from the ones she has been
doing for 8 weeks, and increase her resting metabolic rate(a product of
more muscle mass) to push through the weight loss plateau. She also
becomes more independent since she is more mobile and stronger allowing
her to lift a heavy object from the ground safely!
Example
3: Joe has always been strong however he started seriously
powerlifting a year ago. His numbers in the 3 lifts increased quickly
but now he is always sore, stiff and achy. This is probably related to
the fact that the 3 main power lifts (squat, dead lift, bench) are
simple, linear movement patterns and since Joe has gotten really good at
them relatively quickly he neglected the thousands of other movement
patterns and hundred of other systems the body uses to operate. The
fact that Joe's numbers increased quickly it is likely that his
neurological and muscular system adapted but his connective tissue
(ligament, tendon, joint capsule, cartilage, fascia etc) system didn't
have adequate time to adapt (some estimate it takes 9x longer for these
tissues to adapt to a stimulus when compared to muscle tissue). First,
Joe should think about doing some calisthenics in order to lighten the
external load. Next, Joe should work on mobility since he is probably
immobile in all of his joints except in the required range of the three
movement patterns that he over trained for a year. He should not
neglect strength but just continue to train it in other ranges and
planes of motion that powerlifting typically neglects.
This
blog post has already become much longer than expected and taken me way
too much time to write. So here are the basics to take away from it:
1. No movement or exercise is inherently bad or good for you!
2.
Movement or exercises are like drugs, at a certain amount, they can be
very beneficial, however if you take too much, they can be highly
detrimental!
3. Your body operates using hundreds of systems coordinating functions together.
4. These systems can grow stronger or weaker depending on how they are used and trained.
5. Try different modalities of exercise as they all have benefits and they all have detriments.
6.
Find a trainer or movement specialist that "trains the body not the
exercise" (quote from an a beloved teacher of mine and a brilliant
trainer Mike Smaltz).
7. Finally, if you suck at or hate a certain
movement or exercise or modality it probably means you should work on
it for a while to bring your limiting factor up to par with all the
things you're good at.
Questions, comments, concerns?
-Steve Cornely
Triad Wellness Philly
triadwellnessphilly.com
steve@triadwellnessphilly.com
973-886-4034
