There are many people, particularly women, which say that they have no interest in muscle development whatsoever.  But this may be due to these people associating muscle development and muscle building with the typical bodybuilding physique.

I was talking to a professional dancer the other day about how we could improve her performance ability and help her lose some fat that she was starting to put on.  When we got onto the topic of strength training, she started to tell me that her former trainer had told her that she needed focus on developing strength.  He prescribed her a gym weights program, and within weeks she started to notice that her shoulders were getting bulky and her arms were increasing in size.  When reporting these physical changes to her trainer, he told her that was good a good thing and that she was getting stronger.  As most women would feel, she hated her newly stacked on muscles and ceased her weights training program.

If you have read my previous blogs on isolated gym training vs full body functional training, you’d know that training this way was never going to give her more functional strength to increase her performance ability, but rather the contrary.

To learn more about this, see my post Bodybuilding vs. Strength Building.

Muscle Atrophy

When we pass through the age of around 25, our body starts undergoing a degenerative process of losing muscle mass and strength.  This process of muscle decrease associated with ageing causes the average individual to lose between 0.5 – 1% of muscle mass per year.

What does my muscle mass have to do with me getting fat?

As people get older, they tend to find it more and more difficult to keep slim and to keep their bodies from accumulating fat.  Even as they double their efforts by running further, swimming more laps or going for longer walks, the metabolic system seems to continue to slow down and the fat stores continue to increase.

The muscles are the central energy burning system of the body.  Their need to pump blood through them, enable neuromuscular responsiveness, endocrine functionality, vasocapillary access, tendon, joint, ligament and bone restructuring and reinforcement requires the body to use energy and keep the metabolism working fast.

We can think of the muscles much like a car engine.  A smaller 1.5L engine is never going to burn as much fuel as a 5L engine, even if it revs twice as hard.  But the biggest difference is while the engines are in idle.  Imagine the difference in fuel consumption of leaving a 5L engine in idle for 12 hours versus a 1.5L engine.

Now if we take this analogy to your body, imagine how much more energy your body burns throughout all hours of the day when it has more muscle to fuel, along with all of the other physical responses required to regulate its functional use.  Running, walking, swimming, and other aerobic activities are great for making keeping the cardiovascular system healthy, but these activities are not going to keep your muscles from wasting away.  Also, you’ll burn far more calories while performing these activities with an increased muscle mass.

Weights Training – Recommended by Doctors and Health Professionals

Muscle atrophy associated with aging sometimes described by doctors and health professionals as sarcopenia is directly associated with the absence of the body undergoing resistance exertion or resistance training.  A secondary detriment caused by muscle loss is the decrease of bone density and eventual development of osteoporosis.  To help reduce these signs of frailty, many doctors and health professionals recommend older adults commence weights training.

Functional Core Training vs. Isolated Extremity Training

Many people are recommended by health professionals to take up resistance training in the form of a weights training at a gym.  Most fitness professionals at gyms prescribe exercise programs that consist entirely of isolated resistance exercises, particularly when composing programs for novice gym users, women and older adults.  These types of exercises are typically machine weight exercises that involve sitting or lying on a sturdy comfortable bench, and pushing or pulling an affixed set of levers or a platform.

Trainers will more often than not prescribe isolated muscle exercises because they are easy to perform from a user perspective.  They don’t require any prior training ability or practice, as they simply require for the user to push or pull the weight in the general intended direction.  The job of keeping the weight stable is taken care of by the machine as it is affixed.  The problem with this is that the only muscles required to perform these movements are the extremity prime mover muscles, whereby the core muscles and stabilizing muscles remain inactive throughout performing these exercises.  Furthermore, the movement requires no neuromuscular responsiveness, as there is no new physical adaptation that the body needs to learn.

Core Muscles Burn Fat

The core muscles are responsible for virtually all functional movements.  They make up the largest portion of muscle mass in the body, and so purely from a muscle atrophy perspective, any training program that neglects to incorporate their use is neglecting the largest portion of muscles required to remain active in order to prevent muscle atrophy.  Secondly, the primary skeletal structures that need to maintain bone density are the spine and the pelvis.  These bones are all surrounded by the core muscles, and so require core muscle activity to maintain their density and prevent injury and immobility, particularly at old age.  Furthermore, the core muscles are responsible for the majority of neuromuscular responsiveness and endocrine function, which are processes involved in maintaining of a fast metabolism.

Finally, to end where we first started with the story of the professional dancer, core strength training unlike machine weights training, will not cause you to start looking like an Arnold or a She-man, as core strength exercises are not targeted toward building the extremity muscles but incorporate them as extensions of core strength development.  Core fitness and core strength training involve full body exercises that target the entire musculoskeletal, neuromuscular, and endocrine system.  They require relatively little equipment or even no equipment, and performed at relatively high intensity, core strength and core fitness exercises are the greatest way to burn fat and maintain a fast metabolism.

Happy Core Strength Training,

Karl

Stumble! for WP

Other Atricles You Might Like:

• The Top 5 Full Body Core Strength Exercises That Will Give You He-Man Strength! (1)
• Is Your Personal Trainer Putting Your Health at Risk? (0)
• What is Core Strength and Why is it Important? (2)
• Stretching – Critical for Optimal Athleticism and Strength (0)
• Run for Fun… What the Hell kind of Fun is That? (1)