When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows
news.mit.edu
news.mit.edu
I think it was already known that working out muscles increases the innervation (the resolution of how many neurons are attached to a muscle) of the muscles, which is the mechanism for increased motor control that eg pianists have. I think this study is shedding more light on process, and providing stronger empirical evidence for that exact mechanism. Very exciting that this might be used to help people recover from nerve damage/spinal cord injury!
This could have something to do with motor neurons not firing or something I don't know. I went to a physical therapist who suggested some calf and toe stretches and it seemed ridiculous to me. Like why would I exercise a muscle or a bunch of bones that is not functioning as expected, wouldn't that exacerbate the problem ? He didn't give a convincing answer but this paper makes me think he was spot on.
Isolating and exercising the calf muscles could probably help fire those neurons I don't know.I should do some more study on this. It's not debilitating now but I don't know what will be the impact on my balance 20-30 years from now. I am 47.
Awareness is key and conscious work will activate it over time.
The side of many roads is graded slightly to drain, and if you have a habit of always walking on, say, the right in N. America to go with traffic, you're consistently training asymmetrically without realizing it.
HIIT exercise causes muscles to produce lactate, which crosses the blood–brain barrier and induces the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF is critical to grow and repair neurons, and we can upregulate it significantly by sprinting hard a few times a week. That's good news for those of us with only a few hours a week to work out!
Not sure if you get the same benefits from lifting? I haven't researched this in a while so my sources might be behind the cutting edge.
As I understand it, the kinetic chain goes nervous system -> muscles -> tendons -> bones. It would make sense for all of these to make each other stronger in some way.
And not drinking alcohol will improve good sleep and strength training
They all impact each other!
To a certain extent, most people need to sacrifice some amount of health and performance to live the fullest life they can. If you don't feel that you benefit from that, though, and its important for either of you that you share your lifestyle, then perhaps you just weren't that compatible.
I agree 100%. I did not post to complain about her, but more to note about incompatibilities in things like sleep schedule. I do believe though she should drink a bit less, but as long as it makes her enjoy life, why not.
For what it’s worth, I’ve found that if I try to go to bed too early — as my wife often insists — I wake up in the middle of the night. This happens constantly enough that I really try to avoid being in bed before 11pm.
Your body is different from mine so you need a different routine. My point was that it's important for me to maintain a certain schedule which was incompatible with my partner - which is fair enough.
Not only did I sleep better while doing Ashtanga, I felt better with less sleep. It was amazing. It's something I've struggled incorporating into my current lifestyle for a few reasons.
Also if you continue to read that meta-analysis beyond the sentence you linked to it seems that much larger studies did not find a correlation between reduced dementia risk and moderate alcohol consumption. In fact they found that high alcohol consumption was associated with significantly higher risk of dementia. The overall conclusion of the analysis was "Available epidemiological studies are not sufficient to verify a protective effect of alcohol on dementia development."
Rogue is actually doing a 5-items ship for $5 promo for the month, kettlebells included.
But yeah, get whatever works for you to start training!
I think if I had issues with either mental clarity or sleep I'd cut back more, I do practice dry January and have been surprised and how I don't really feel all that different. Maybe 30 days isn't long enough
Eat less, move more, drink in moderation.
The whole body is a thinking system with nerves and muscles that need feedback to work as well.
if they release a study showing hair growing I'll be 100% in.
It takes an hour at most and you can go twice a week, working different muscle groups. Your muscles need 3-4 days of rest especially as you increase intensity.
So you can only do bicep workouts once a week for example. Even then, any exercise is better than none.
You can even just start at home with adjustable dumbbells and go to the gym when you hit those limits..
Edit: A more direct response - I agree with you that it's not a big deal, especially if you have dumbbells etc at home. (I think it's worth it, and lift weights.) It's still a time commitment, and therefore opportunity cost. That is a downside, irt the parent comment. I think you'll find many weight lifters spend more than the amount of time you cited. (Especially if they don't have a home gym), and I suspect any benefits are proportional (not linearly) to time spent doing it.
1. It generally comes at non-zero financial expense.
2. I might not know what I'm doing.
3. I might get hurt.
4. I might cause someone else to get hurt.
Or, perhaps most-tortuously:
5. They're all going to laugh at me.
I keep getting hurt via various forms of exercise. My last injury was a herniated disc which has cost me so much time and money for surgery and PT and missed work time and such.
So a big #1 and #3 for me...
Maybe they were because of #2, but I tried to learn as best as I could.
I couldn't care less about #5.
A lot of time, money, and effort and I still have pretty much nothing to show for it. I am still quite thin and weak. I wont give up, but it's definitely not as simple as some people make it seem.
* Can't make any promises. You might get hurt. You might need to pay for some kind of pull up system. But generally speaking: the sooner you stop looking for the perfect time/situation and just start, the easier it all becomes.
I thought this, and nothing could be further from the truth. The gym (and gymbros) have been one of the most positive uplifting experiences of my life so far. I had a BMI of over 35 when I stepped into a gym for the first time ever at 41 years old.
The non-zero financial expense is really the only issue I can see as "real" on your list. You can avoid #3 by spending money on a personal trainer to learn. Gym memberships are also not cheap. The long-term costs of not doing so I would argue are far greater.
To be more specific: They're going to laugh at me because I have no idea WTF I'm doing. I have no idea what my own (or anyone else's) expectations are in a gym. I don't know what anything does, how to use it, or even what it may be called. I don't what cultural norms, unwritten rules, or written rules may exist in that environment.
I don't even know when to go, when not to go, what to wear, what not to wear, or et cetera. All I really know is that gyms are things that exist -- and that those who do go to gyms all seem to have the broad assumption that everyone was born with the specific knowledge needed to go to the gym, and that it is all implicitly obvious to anyone who is breathing.
But it is not implicitly obvious at all, to me, except for step 1: I am going to fuck this up.
And then: Yes, they're all going to laugh at me. (That's step 2.)
Step 3 is: Fuck it, I'm done. (I can get right to step 3 without even bothering with steps 1 or 2.)
AFAIK, absolutely zero of my friends "hit the gym" (or ever have) so it's not like I can ask for local guidance from someone who I know and trust.
It's daunting just to think about, much less consider actually doing.
This was my exact fear as well. I included BMI in my reply to illustrate I had never stepped foot in a gym before but perhaps that was a mistake to focus on.
In fact I could have written your entire post nearly verbatim 2 years ago. Even down to the "what do I wear" question. I was terrified for all the reasons you list, and am in general quite socially anxious from the get-go. Especially in totally alien environments to me. I spent months selecting gym wear and a bag prior to first stepping foot in one.
> and that those who do go to gyms all seem to have the broad assumption that everyone was born with the specific knowledge needed to go to the gym, and that it is all implicitly obvious to anyone who is breathing.
This is an assumption I held as well, but is simply outright wrong. The folks who are hardcore gymgoers love nothing more than helping newbies out, and they don't make these assumptions in my experience. They have a hard time not coming over and helping you out with proper form if they see you doing something that might injure you. They don't do so because they are afraid of making you uncomfortable. If anything, they get excited to see someone putting in the consistent work - they know how hard it is to do so, and love to see people attempting to improve their lives since they generally know how positive it is in theirs. There are assholes in all demographics, but they are rare in my experience.
My first trip to the gym with a personal trainer was highly specific: I want to be taught like a 5 year old on the easy machines so I can use them without feeling like an idiot on my own. This lasted a few sessions and definitely was a totally new experience for my trainer. She obviously felt a bit uncomfortable doing it since it was so far off-script for her.
Over time I graduated to feeling a lot more comfortable, but those first few months were really difficult for the reasons you describe. I felt like an outsider and a complete idiot since I barely had a clue. At some point I just surrendered to looking like a moron.
I am very lucky I have a wife who is very socially capable and was in the gym a lot beforehand. I was able to use her to setup that first training appointment and explain how out of the ordinary I wanted it to go. Otherwise though, I did it on my own with said professional help once a week.
I honestly wish you were close to me (maybe you are?) because I'd love to bring you to my gym and take you around - tell my trainer there is another one of me who needs the same treatment! It was life changing to me and I wish I had figured out a way to do it sooner in my life.
I still feel awkward as hell in the gym. I do half my routine "wrong" and still feel self conscious about it. But I'm slowly getting better, and I slowly realize literally no one cares.
If I can work up the courage, anyone I ask is quite happy to show me proper form/give advice vs. judgement. I'm sure a few do judge, but they thankfully keep it to themselves. I also continued to work with a trainer and developed a nice rapport where she can laugh at me in a good way while we correct my fuckups with a sense of humor about it all. She's basically become a family friend at this point.
Even with all that said, I now look forward to my training sessions. Less so my solo trips, but I feel amazing afterwards. Both physically, and the sense of accomplishment. So many of my "feeling like shit" days have been cleared up, and I now have a little bit of self confidence in my strength as well.
What I'm taking away from the discourse here are these things:
1. Yep. I'll fuck it up.
2. But that is usually fine, because people tend to be kind and helpful in a gym.
4. I can also hire someone to help, and perhaps I should.
5. Although none of this come without cost, the rewards of doing these things tend to be greater than the cost.
And that brings me a hell of a lot closer to being able to make informed decisions and set reasonable expectations (for all things gym) than I have been previously.
Thanks again.
I've done varying amount of exercise throughout life, but really dedicating myself to whole body weight-training/yoga/core-and-balance over a period of about a year has fundamentally changed my life in countless ways.
I wouldn't even say you understand it once you start. I think understanding requires going for a while without injury, passing your noob gains phase, hitting a plateau and seeing results again.
Especially for someone like me into "depth" in strategy games... you realize that the only limits are genetic & mental and the "skill curve" is infinite. Putting effort into training, eating or resting has largely supplanted my desire to play video games.
NB: I had previously done a Starting Strength program a decade ago with a not-so-great coach. Coach was a dickhead and didn't discourage me from some really bad training habits that led me to get injured. Injury led to depression, weight gain and not getting back to training for a decade. Maybe that's on me but it's a serious regret and the approach I took to training this time around made all of the difference.
If that doesn’t work for whatever reason, then cutting it very short (a few mm) is the second best alternative.
Trying to hide it is the worst.
Stressing about it is a waste.
I started shaving my head when I was about 25. I wish I had done it sooner. No haircuts, no hairstyling, no “bed hair”. I just shave my head when I shave my face, usually in the shower.
I encourage you to embrace it. Go skin bald. There's a lot of hidden benefits and really it's no big deal. All of the treatment options have huge downsides or look like shit.