'Soleus pushup' fuels metabolism for hours while sitting
stories.uh.edu
stories.uh.edu
Look at it from a different perspective. I would HIGHLY prefer this to a short press release blurb that allows pop-science clickbait aggregators (or even worse, the "science" sections of CBS/CNN and the like) to have first crack at it.
This was produced by the university themselves, and provides a concise yet accurate and detailed overview of the biochemistry involved, as well as a nice short embedded youtube video demonstrating the movement in question and going over the main points of the research.
Yes, improvements could be made, and yes, follow up studies will need to be performed. But this is head and shoulders above the "ONE SMALL TRICK, DIETICIANS HATE HIM" alternative we would have gotten otherwise.
There are a lot of surprising skills that we could learn if we just knew how and put in the effort. See e.g. the blind mountainbikers using echolocation to 'see' the path, or method of loci/other memory techniques.
I don't know, some gifs from different angles would sure have helped more given our lack of devices (though yes, the video does show one important angle).
At any rate the complaints aren't so much in the description but in it being yet another simple trick, of which we see thousands and few if any pan out especially to the level claimed here.
The device was a galvanic skin response device that looked like a mouse.
You put your fingers on it and it would make a tone that would decrease in pitch with less muscle tension. I laid down and tried to decrease the tone and I gradually learned where I was holding tension and how to relax. As the tone got deeper I would get closer and closer to falling asleep.
search for GSR biofeedback on amazon (not affiliated in any way)
It's funny how they call it a soleus pushup but this is the basic movement called seated calf raise.
Sit in that same position, and then do a lift part way. At some point, you'll find a "spring" balance, where you can autonomously drum your leg. The muscle that is doing that triggered flex is the only muscle you are focusing on with the Soleus Pushup. Except for the SP, you are triggering it with a pause instead of letting your leg hammer. That rest will allow you to do the move indefinitely without muscle fatigue in that muscle only. It's a bit like your heart beat. Other than the pause, the distance you aim upward for, and the catch (the small bounce right before your heal falls to the ground), the move is way more like this leg drumming than any calf raise, but slower and with rest strokes.
Incidentally, you can google the paper, which includes graphs of the muscle use. The two main muscles engaged for calf raises are only nominally activated (because it's pretty hard not to flex with this move) but the Soleus is doing way more of the work.
So visibly it is pretty much identical to a calf raise. But what is driving the motion is totally different. Plus you limit to only 1% of your body weight. That muscle specifically has that spring action the surrounding muscles don't have, and uses nutrients entirely differently in order to be that way.
After a half-hour of doing this, just like cycling, your body enters a metabolic state, which means that muscle is eating up fats and sugars from your blood at a much higher rate than normally. Then you keep going from there because your Soleus is the one demanding the nutrients.
Perhaps the ROM is different or it is a quasi-isometric contraction, the paper is not very clear.
If you don't read much exercise science, it's worth noting the paper says "It is important to note that volunteers in Experiment I (Table S1) were typically sedentary (verified with an objective tracking device), and none of them had a high aerobic cardiorespiratory fitness (determined by treadmill VO2max or the maximal oxygen consumption test)." A common pitfall of exercise science is that almost anything works wonderfully on untrained sedentary subjects. Wait for replication.
Athletes worry about having enough energy during their exercise.
When many people in developed countries are obese or overweight, every technique helps, especially something for those who don't like to sweat...
It’s a bit complicated to get the equipment and training to learn how to do this; maybe that effort is better allocated to just encouraging people to get up and go for a walk every once in a while.
This method has been used for decades and the results on the obesity rates do not seem to be very good so far. Maybe it's time to try other approaches.
I'm much more optimistic about pharmaceutical approaches to combating the obesity epidemic at this point. The current cultural direction on this may shift at some point however.
Fair point, and I do agree that pharmaceutical approaches seem more likely to reach more people affected by this problem. My broader point was that the simplistic "just be more active" seem ineffective... and in my experience in some cases even counterproductive, so providing more alternative routes to healthier lifestyles makes sense to me, as complicated as they may seem, maybe they will be more convincing/enticing than what we currently do.
Ironically, I'm a sedentary person who doesn't have enough energy to do 10 stations at the gym. If I do back & legs I'm pretty much done for the day.
While I was reading the article, I realized that my need for optimizing for efficient blood sugar use is different than the many who would rather waste it.
You start minimally and slow, far below exertion capacity, rest a few days, and do similar stuff with slightly more intensity (resistance) or volume (number of reps). There's an art/science to it, and barring health handicaps it's essentially a universal system the body evolved to do.
(If your goal for exercises is physical therapy or bodybuilding, ignore the rest of this)
If a given "station" is what I picture it to be, it is likely a station for training a muscle in isolation. example: a station called "preacher's bench" for "bicep curls",l.
Consider that isolation exercise is, broadly, really useful for two circumstances: bodybuilding, and physical therapy.
For functional fitness, it is exceedingly rare that the an individual muscle would be the only muscle group engaged.
So, instead, I would strongly argue that free weights (dumbells, barbells) and the compound (multi-muscle) movements are a better use of time and energy at the gym. https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/startin... and https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/practic... are a good starting point.
Also Strength Training Anatomy - 3rd Edition by Frederic Delavier - helpful as a reference which stations engage what muscles.
It's why there is so much benefit to riding a cycle for 20-30 minutes before working out. Soleus Pushups done properly won't cause fatigue like the cycle does, yet triggers a long-lasting metabolic state (hours, versus minutes you can expect from short bursts of exercise) in the same amount of time.
Athletes already have strong metabolic responses, except when they plateau, but that's surely not going to happen to a couch potato or desk jockey.
> When the SPU was tested, the whole-body effects on blood chemistry included a 52% improvement in the excursion of blood glucose (sugar) and 60% less insulin requirement over three hours after ingesting a glucose drink.
That's amazing if it is true.
The Soleus muscle (Soleal pump) is partially responsible for helping to return blood from your legs back up to your heart while upright. [1] This is a fairly critical process so it would make sense that it would be able to metabolize multiple energy sources.
Also, pumping the blood back is a purely mechanical process, the same is true for your arm muscles, I don’t think it has a relevance here — its a very important process that circulates lymph and helps circulate blood.
Sedentary overweight people tend to become very inefficient at metabolizing fat. At anything higher than a slow walking pace, for example, they will begin the cutover to glycogen and turn down fat metabolism.
I believe the press release is saying that the soleus muscle is unique in that it does not have a readily accessible store of glycogen. So even in sedentary people that are normally extremely inefficient at metabolizing fat, exercising the soleus will force their body to metabolize blood glucose and fat. Normally it takes months or even years of slow and steady exercise to make a sedentary overweight person effectively metabolize fat while exercising at an intensity high enough to trigger serious metabolic improvements. So if true, the soleus muscle would be a magic shortcut to this process.
Sedentary people lose the ability to rapidly deliver fat into muscle cell mitochondria.
This is a good summary of the current state of the research.
Hm...very interesting. So is there an ideal protocol for fat mobilization in sedentary people? Asking for a friend.
If someone ever tried to train for their biceps they will know how even at the end of the training, the first few repetitions of a set will be “easy”, while afterwards it feels like you can’t move it anymore. It’s because biceps typically operates on its local energy storage, and it is not good at endurance.
The way that I can flex it:
Lie on your back on the floor with your heels on a couch, knees approx 90 degrees
Tip/rotate your foot forward and you'll feel a large muscle engage
Try and flex that muscle like you would your bicep or pectorals. You'll find that you can hold it for quite some time.
Edit: I managed to hold it for a few minutes and it's a very odd feeling afterwards. Almost like I had done a bunch of stairs with no cardio.
Edit 2: Standing afterwards wasn't fun - I had to stretch my calves out to walk normally.
Not sure what you mean. We can have charlie horses in any skeletal muscle.
1: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21662-calf-muscle
I had to look this up. It means leg cramp?
(From the linked page[1])
Some exercises to strengthen your soleus may include:
* Bent knee plantar flexion with a resistance band
* Bent knee heel raises (as per the Alfredson protocol[2])
* Seated calf raises
Again, the bent knee position keeps your calf on slack and focus the workload on the soleus muscles of your lower legs.
[1] https://www.verywellhealth.com/soleus-muscle-anatomy-4684082....
[2] Alfredson Protocol: https://www.verywellhealth.com/the-alfredson-protocol-for-ac...
They specifically perform a concentric contraction of the soleus _and_ "passive drop" of the heel.
So without more detail of the paper it's difficult to tell but it seem that the benefit is in performing concentric contractions _without_ eccentric contractions of the soleus.
Since everyone’s harping on the previous paragraph and saying “they’re just trying to sell us stuff!!” I figured I should put this quote in a top-level comment as an anti-inflammatory aid.
They set off mine, as well.
But you have to remember that this is not a news article. It is not written by someone with any degree of expertise in the subject matter. Rather, it's written by a member of the media-relations department at the university. The only source for the piece appears to be Marc Hamilton, a professor at the university.
So what you're likely perceiving is the author trying to hype up something that is inherently pretty boring and technical, and it comes off as B.S.
"The action of the calf muscles, including the soleus, is plantarflexion of the foot (that is, they increase the angle between the foot and the leg). They are powerful muscles and are vital in walking, running, and keeping balance. The soleus specifically plays an important role in maintaining standing posture; if not for its constant pull, the body would fall forward.
Also, in upright posture, the soleus is responsible for pumping venous blood back into the heart from the periphery, and is often called the skeletal-muscle pump, peripheral heart or the sural (tricipital) pump.
Soleus muscles have a higher proportion of slow muscle fibers than many other muscles. In some animals, such as the guinea pig and cat, soleus consists of 100% slow muscle fibers. Human soleus fiber composition is quite variable, containing between 60 and 100% slow fibers.
The soleus is the most effective muscle for plantarflexion in a bent knee position (Hence called the first gear muscle). This is because the gastrocnemius originates on the femur, so bending the leg limits its effective tension. During regular movement (i.e., walking) the soleus is the primary muscle utilized for plantarflexion due to the slowtwitch fibers resisting fatigue."
“We never dreamed that this muscle has this type of capacity. It's been inside our bodies all along, but no one ever investigated how to use it to optimize our health, until now,” said Hamilton. “When activated correctly, the soleus muscle can raise local oxidative metabolism to high levels for hours, not just minutes, and does so by using a different fuel mixture.”
The research here just seems to suggest that the soleus muscle itself has a lower "barrier to entry" before utilizing different energy sources (blood glucose and fat oxidation) which allows it to sustain activity for a longer time duration. This makes sense, as the soleus is highly involved in walking, and humans basically evolved to walk more than we've evolved to do anything else.
I want to believe in this idea, but all I can say is that's quite a claim.
I could believe that it's more effective at glucose regulation than exercise, but to say that it's more effective than weight loss seems peculiar because loss of fat mass (which I'm assuming is what is meant by weight loss) is a result of downregulating how much glucose and fat (insuling being present in response to glucose) can enter cells. Maybe there's a logic to that statement, but it seems to be comparing a cause to an effect. Presumably, if the soleus pushup lives up to its name, it would have a negative effect on fat mass. If blood glucose was poorly regulated, absent a failure to produce enough insulin, fat loss would be a sign of better blood glucose regulation.
> The new approach of keeping the soleus muscle metabolism humming is also effective at doubling the normal rate of fat metabolism in the fasting period between meals, reducing the levels of fat in the blood (VLDL triglyceride).
̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶u̶l̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶i̶g̶n̶o̶r̶a̶n̶c̶e̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶f̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶t̶a̶b̶o̶l̶i̶s̶m̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶x̶i̶m̶a̶l̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶e̶c̶t̶ ̶V̶L̶D̶L̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶d̶u̶c̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶p̶p̶o̶s̶i̶t̶e̶.̶ ̶ ̶A̶l̶s̶o̶,̶ ̶f̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶p̶o̶r̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶V̶L̶D̶L̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶c̶h̶y̶l̶o̶m̶i̶c̶r̶o̶n̶s̶.̶ ̶ ̶I̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶a̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶e̶t̶a̶b̶o̶l̶i̶z̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶p̶o̶s̶t̶p̶r̶a̶n̶d̶i̶a̶l̶,̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶p̶o̶r̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶?̶ ̶ ̶I̶'̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶u̶n̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶n̶.̶
EDIT: Nevermind, I think I had it backwards. Chylomicrons transport dietary fat from the intestine.
And too bad my DIY calorimeter has a broken sensor, because I would love to test myself and see if such an exercise has a measurable effect on RQ.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422... (pdf)
What is this diy calorimeter?
A calorimeter in a general sense measures heat transference, calories being a measure of heat.
More specifically, what I build is an indirect calorimeter which uses respiratory gas analysis to not only measure human energy expenditure in calories but make an approximation of the ratio of glucose to fat being utilized. The reason I might fix my calorimeter sooner rather than later is to see whether I can witness greater glucose utilization with the soleus pushup than with other exercises of the similar energy expenditure.
EDIT: In the paper it states that they used an indirect calorimeter. It's a very cool device to have access to, but I don't recommend anyone build their own like I did. As the paper describes, it's really hard to get right with even the best equipment. Calibration is very difficult and subtle body movements can totally mess with a reading.
> VO2 and VCO2 production were determined using a TrueOne 2400 metabolic system from Parvo Medics. The gas analyzers and pneumotach were calibrated according to standard manufacturer procedures using certified calibration gases. Sufficient time to flush out the gas lines and average steady state measurements was always confirmed. The measurement period was extended when it was deemed helpful (such as if there was a fluctuation in VO2 caused by a cough or when taking additional time to confirm the precision of the result). We were careful to ensure participants were positioned when sitting completely relaxed to avoid extraneous movement beyond the intended SPU plantarflexion movement. This included positioning the chair back rest and height for each individual to optimize a restful position.
Why is the indirect method so sensitive to extraneous movement? More so than just reflecting the additional energy expenditure?
I don't, unfortunately. I did plan on publishing something about it, but life got in the way. Maybe you'll see me post something about it on HN one day.
In summary, there's nothing really groundbreaking about what I did other than I made it smaller and more portable than most existing indirect calorimeters. I made a circuit board with some sensors and an Arduino Nano mounted on it. The outer shell was designed with OpenSCAD and 3D printed. It was designed so it could be worn on a facepiece (in my case, a modified 3M respirator).
> Why is the indirect method so sensitive to extraneous movement?
Anything movement made is a result of metabolic activity. I was surprised to see drastic changes in RQ (respiratory quotient) just by getting up out of my chair and walking to the bathroom. It can take time for reading to stabilize. One reason is that even the best CO2 sensors have a slow response time in contrast to O2 sensors. There's enough lag that a change in activity can ruin a large section of a test, in particular if you're anticipating delayed metabolic activity. Also, it takes the body some time to eliminate CO2 after any amount of exercise. After movement, especially something like steady state cardio, this causes the RQ to jump up for ~3 to 5 minutes before it drops down.
One thing that research grade ICs do to mitigate this is to use a mixing chamber with a sampling pump to try and smooth out and normalize readings over a window of time. My approach was to literally just have my breath blow over the sensors with valves only allowing air to move in one direction, which is simpler and allows for readings to be a bit closer to real-time. It's also considered more problematic than other approaches like the mixing chamber.
Oh yeah, there's also this thing with lactic acid buffering that can cause some extra CO2 production but isn't necessarily considered metabolic activity.
Then there's the problem of leaks in the system, which are more likely to occur when the subject is moving. Even a little air leak can create anomalies, and you don't always know when they occur.
There's a lot of confounding factors, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Unless an indirect calorimeter has been designed by a company specifically for variable movement, you can assume that the only way to get reliably results is to make sure that the metabolic activity remains consistent for the duration of a test. That means either the subject lies still and doesn't move at all or they're performing something like cardio at a steady pace. If you look up protocols for conducting IC, you'll notice they're very strict.
> More so than just reflecting the additional energy expenditure?
Energy expenditure is thrown off but actually much less so because it is more closely tied to oxygen consumption than RQ, which is more closely related to the volume of CO2 produced. Since oxygen sensors respond fast and the body doesn't do weird things with oxygen like buffer it, EE isn't affected as badly. But if you want to measure how much carbohydrate to fat is being utilized, then any disruption can cause confusing results.
Indirect Calorimetry is very difficult to get right, but it's used because the alternative, direct calorimetry, is usually impractical. Direct calorimetry of a human being involves placing the subject in a room with a water jacket and measuring the difference in temperature after the subject has radiated heat away from their body. It avoids the confounding factors of IC, but you can't measure RQ that way and it's not really practical as I've said outside of financed research.
Is that a typo or are you a very lucky individual?
Conversely if your weight is stable you might be able to add 500 calories with no ill effects, just more energy, faster recovery etc. It would be great if it was just formulaic like your post implies but it isn’t.
It makes sense that a part of a calf muscle could have exceptional endurance, given the importance of walking in humans, but the article seems to say walking doesn't use it enough to activate the same effect. Maybe running?
The article makes some big claims and it would be interesting to see an independent review.
As for people who bounce their calves? Absolutely - this is called NEAT (Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) in scientific research. Its lumped in with general movement - walking, climbing stairs, etc. This can account for a few hundred calories per day. Here's an overview study that claims up to 350 calories per day: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6058072/
Unlikely as untrained person would have a very hard time doing 50 calf raises
I don't think I ever felt anything special after using it.
They then get an investor to give them $300,000 and make a custom order with a factory in China to add another piece of plastic and some branding to an existing device.
They wait 3 months and then receive 30,000 "magic" gizmos in the mail.
Then, they sell people a $250 electric muscle stimulator that you wear while sitting.
Then they buy a really big new house. They live in a city in the United States though so after taxes and paying a few other people off, it barely even qualifies as a mansion.
Probably aiming for something like this one https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6503-Edloe-St-Houston-TX-... which is very nice, but his country club friends who are really rich will compare it to their guest houses.
Fortunately they are almost done with the $59.99 app that tracks how much fat you are supposedly burning while you sit there for hours and your calfs twitch.
I think this will sell very, very well. People are incredibly lazy and want to believe that not only do they not need to get off their fat ass, they don't need to move anything other than their feet and legs a few inches. Not only that, they don't even need the willpower to move on their own, and in fact it only works if they plug in to a device that does everything for them. Lol.
> "...It’s a very specific movement that right now requires wearable technology and experience to optimize the health benefits.”
So it sounds like the performer may have to look at a graph to see that the right motion has been achieved? This video reinforces the notion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaK6TThRMdE
> In brief, while seated with feet flat on the floor and muscles relaxed, the heel rises while the front of the foot stays put. When the heel gets to the top of its range of motion, the foot is passively released to come back down.
Seems pretty simple... I guess what is special is (1) you can do it while sitting, and (2) the muscle doesn't seem to get tired so you can do it all day.
A bit of googling says plantar flexion is the same muscle movement needed for pushing the accelerator pedal while driving or ballet dancers standing on their toes.
My guess (not my field of expertise) is the muscle is activated strongly in isolation (the toe pushing down motion) and inducing a large range of motion. So it's not raising the heel so much as pushing the toe down.
Place your hand on the back of the upper portion of the calf, right under the knee. Keeping the foot on the floor and the leg in the same Z position, try to "slide" it backwards with as much force as possible but so it doesn't actually slip. You will feel muscle tension with your hand. That's the gastrocnemius muscle. You can probably contract it at will as well, so much that it cramps, that's the one. You don't want to flex it on either side of the calf.
Now lean your body onto your leg (same position) with your elbow on top of the knee. Try to lift your heel up with your weight on top of the knee, while not tensing the gastroc (feeling it using the opposite hand), i.e. avoid trying to move the foot backwards, only lift the heel up. I am pretty sure this loads up the soleus muscle instead, that sits underneath the gastroc. You can feel it tense up if you place the opposite hand around the lower part of the calf, above the ankle, to the sides of where the curve of the gastroc transitions into the achilles tendon.
Now this is pretty difficult to do without putting your weight on top of your leg, but I think after you identify the correct muscle it becomes much easier to do without tools. I had some success by trying to push the floor away with the balls of the feet while raising the heel and monitoring the gastroc with the opposite hand. After you do some of those loaded seated calf raises, the soleus muscle tends to become tense and stays tense for a while, you can feel it especially in the lower calf. This is probably how it eats up so much energy.
Another way to load these muscles is to sit, bend your knees and spread them out while raising the heels, lean forward and place your elbows on your spread knees, shifting some of your weight on top of them. Then try rocking forwards and backwards while moving your heels up and down. Your lower calves will quickly start to burn, but they take a while to truly tire out. Which I guess is the point. :)
In Japanese there is a saying "ふくらはぎは第二の心臓" (fukurahagi wa, dai-ni no shinzou: the calves are a second heart).
Calf-io-vascular workout? Haha.
Not nothing.
But something that you may integrate into your desk sitting for the day (I'd assume some benefit to even less activity, e.g. 1/2 hour sessions).
Just tell us what sort of activation is needed - how long should you do the exercise - we can manage to figure out if we're working our soleus.
So there could definitely be come advantage gained by regular rock/pop drummers in comparison with sedentary folks for sure. This assumes of course, that other factors are kept the same (diet, pre-existing health conditions, stress exposure etc) which are incredibly hard to compare in real life settings.
No magic, no cost, no special anything.
It's not easy, and most people can't do it, but it works. And even if some magic product helps you lose weight, you will still need to follow the above rules anyways.
It's like many smokers, they can't quit until they almost die, but then they just magically can quit, cause it's life and death. No magic product/idea, just time to make a change.
Seems like a trailer for something that needs to be unlocked with money.
Thank you, gotta say with that description of the move now it doesn't sound that hard.
It seems like you could put your hand on the back of your calf, close to the knee, and ensure that the gastrocnemius doesn't flex/stays loose during the motion.
This looks to be an example of NEAT movements, which engage muscles and therefore of course increases energy requirement. The effect of NEAT on energy requirements of a body is fairly well studies and fairly well known. It would have been far more interesting if it lasted for over 4 hours as that would at least in theory pass the 2nd level signaling.
If you are interested in this, I highly recommend Huberman's podcasts such as https://hubermanlab.com/how-to-lose-fat-with-science-based-t...
and
https://hubermanlab.com/dr-andy-galpin-how-to-build-strength...
This kind of makes sense as . It agrees with the theory that humans used persistence hunting to run down game and evolved to be excellent long distance runners. IIRC humans usually have about 2000 to 3000 calories of glycogen in their muscles so being able to rely on fat stores becomes critical for longer distances.
edit: yes it is. it's shown in the first ten seconds of the video.
Cause I could break records if I'm in meetings all week.
But it also is just leg bouncing in that there's no more complicated motion than a certain sort of slow, controlled leg-bounce.
[1] https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(22)01141-5...
This has a bit of a 'smell' that I can't quite put my finger on.
1. Push down with the ball if you foot
2. Lift up with your hip/quad
They look the same, but are completely different. Do either of them activate the Soleus? Do neither of them?
Its not snake oil, its a statement from a scientist who attaches musculoskeletal monitoring equipment to people on a regular basis and knows exactly how capable the average person is at activating specific muscles on command.
"Basically terrible".
It took me a really long time to work out what exactly the fuck "activate your core" meant.
Never mind "activate this muscle you have never thought about before".
This is a statement around how to activate the soleus itself, and its an accurate statement for the majority of the population. It's an odd muscle to target, as we're generally more used to using our gastrocnemius muscles when plantar-flexing our ankle joint. Sitting helps target the soleus (which is why you might find a seated calf-raise machine next to a standing calf-raise machine at the gym) but it still requires a strong mind-muscle connection to activate without having the gastrocnemius take over.
Having some electrodes to measure and display specifically targeted muscle output would help, and this is likely what he's referring to in the article.
But I’m pretty sure you can just touch the lower, outer part of your ankle (where it’s documented in the picture) to find out if you’re flexing the right one. Thinking about pointing my toes helped.
I think people are right the difficulty is oversold.
I'm not saying they couldn't have done a better job explaining how to do this at home, but its a surprisingly difficult thing to explain to someone face-to-face when you're a personal trainer. Let alone when as a scientist when you only get a short blurb to convey information about your latest research study.
Great, sounds patent-able!
"So, how do you perform a soleus pushup?
In brief, while seated with feet flat on the floor and muscles relaxed, the heel rises while the front of the foot stays put. When the heel gets to the top of its range of motion, the foot is passively released to come back down. The aim is to simultaneously shorten the calf muscle while the soleus is naturally activated by its motor neurons."
Looking up "heel lift", the Soleus Pushup reads/sounds a lot like a seated heel lift. see https://www.livestrong.com/article/137423-heel-lift-exercise...
So maybe not so BS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaK6TThRMdE&t=6s
Of course, my friend's Chinese grandmother would admonish my friend for doing this movement at the table - evidently she considered the movement to be an indicator for something that shouldn't be mentioned at the dining table.
Soleus? More like swoleus!
Body will always switch to burning mostly fat after a prolonged period of physical activity which studies suggest for moderate level of constant physical activity happens somewhere around 90 minute mark. There are no magic bullets.
How would you know this?
"There were in total 25 human volunteers in 2 sequential experiments..."
"Here we have focused on a method of raising slow oxidative muscle metabolism to complement (not replace) existing approaches."
Maybe less snake oil and more a reasoned hypothesis?
So, how do you perform a soleus pushup?
In brief, while seated with feet flat on the floor and muscles relaxed, the heel rises while the front of the foot stays put. When the heel gets to the top of its range of motion, the foot is passively released to come back down. The aim is to simultaneously shorten the calf muscle while the soleus is naturally activated by its motor neurons.
Appreciate your reply.
The point here is that it’s non-trivial to activate it on command while sitting. The special equipment is likely meant to activate the muscle for all users on command, making their research far more reliable.
"Sedentary people who do calf raises while sitting for 2 to 4 hours show 50% less blood glucose than those who just sit. "
That's terrible science, a waste of brainpower and clickbait.
Any chance they found that it's the same activation you get from walking but just kind of left that part out?
Edit: Never mind, watched the video. Apparently it's the exact reverse of that internally? Did they test a moonwalk?
A key seems to be that the muscle normally is setup to resist a load and so not change length while activated, and also has an unusually high percentage of cells recruited in each activation vs other muscles (most strong contractions in human muscles recruit like 20% of cells, iirc), so this is to get the full contraction effect and not just a resistance effect. (But I'm just reading into it...)
- what movements was this evolved to support? (sprinting? walking a different way than was studied? running?)
- Are our shoes causing us to underuse this muscle?
Just from the video and the cadence shown I suspect if you did a slightly quick jog running on your forefoot you might hit that muscle on the rebound.
Do you post this under every journal article? Reminding everyone that things have been false before in places?
1. Are people supposed to do this contraction indefinitely while sitting? Good luck with that.
2. Is this only supposed to be done with an e-stim machine to generate the contraction? Again, if so, it may be an interesting curiosity, but it's not practical.
FWIW I wouldn't have such a negative reaction if the whole site and presentation wasn't in "slick bullshit" form, but instead conservatively, and clearly, presented their for findings.
Better than exercise? LOL.
Better than IF in that IF is a crock of wank.
Better than weight loss in that most people who lose weight gain it back rather quick.
Basically they are saying this is low effort and efficient enough to be better than those options in the realistic scenario of many people being bad at the alternatives