Defying Decline

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(Cont.) Defying Decline

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Welcome to There Is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell, and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's fitness programs, and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and most importantly why things work. Hence the name, There Is a Method to the Madness. Before I get to today's show, I want to thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. How's it going, everybody? Welcome to There Is a Method to the Madness. Rob here, and I am going to talk about some fitness today. Hopefully, uh some things you want to learn. I think they're important. I'm going to start out with a little uh some little tidbits of good news. All right. So I'm going to give you some statistics that I think we would call good news. So VO2 Max is the indicator of how aerobically fit you are. For years, it was called the gold standard of cardiorespiratory fitness. It's kind of like, well, what it actually is, is it's how fast your body can restore, replenish your ATP aerobically. That's what it all comes down to. So VO2max basically stands for volume of oxygen per minute per kilogram of body weight. So the more oxygen your body can utilize in a minute, the higher your VO2 max. All right. Just telling you what it is. Now the good news. After 21 days of not training, your VO2 max can almost return back to baseline levels. Isn't that good news? And after the age of 30, your strength values drastically decline. After the age of fifty, your strength values continue to decline, and we start to enter into the world of sarcopenia, which is age-related muscle mass loss. Here's another biggie. This one always excites people. That after ninety-six hours, if you're keeping score, that's four days. Your body's muscles, skeletal muscle begins to atrophy. Man, I mean, this is great news how fast we can lose our fitness, right? This is great news. Well, obviously it's not great news, and I am being kind of facetious here, because today I want to talk a little bit about entropy. I did an email on it this week, and I try to make the emails and the podcasts kind of go hand in hand, in sync with each other, because mostly it's things that I've been, you know, reading about, um, think are important. I think I've mentioned many times before that when I'm doing my own exercise, my own strength training or cardio, it's a good meditative time for me where I really focus on the moment, focus on what I'm doing, and with that I get a lot more thoughts. And then I write things down, and there are things that I want to explore and then talk about. So this is a biggie. So let's talk about entropy. Entropy basically is a natural law that states that just due to living, we're going to have a natural decline of things into disorder. So it's just kind of normal. In other words, we put paint on our new house, and our house looks beautiful, but over time, entropy, no matter what, is going to take care of that beautiful paint. Then eventually we need to repaint our house. So there's just a natural decline of things. And one of the key words there is part of the definition is into disorder. So there comes a point where whatever is declining will get to the point where it is hugely problematic. That's what disorder is, right? So this is a health and fitness podcast. That's my area of expertise. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about entropy and our health and our fitness. So those statistics I gave are true. We do naturally decline in strength, maximal strength, apples to apples. Meaning, if we were training, strength training physically as hard as we can or optimally in our 20s, and we continue to do that in our 30s, there will still be some natural decline, some natural entropy. Now, if you never strength train in your 20s and you start strength training in your 40s, most likely you're going to be stronger in your 40s than you were in your 20s. So I'm talking about just comparing apples to apples, not like starting late and then beating past numbers, but you at your peak versus you at your low. That's what we are looking at here. So, yes, we kind of rapidly decline in strength and power in our 30s, beginning our 30s. That's why you see a lot of professional athletes peak in their 20s and early 30s, depending on the sport. Sometimes you see freaks of nature like LeBron James still playing basketball at an elite level in his 40s. You saw Tom Brady play professional football up to his mid-40s, and people can say what they want, that he was never a big, strong, powerful guy. But look, he was a professional athlete. So I'm sure he was probably more athletic and stronger than any person that you and I come across unless we know some real elite people. So regardless, you're gonna see your freaks of nature like that. But ultimately, we do begin to lose some strength due to entropy. And if we aren't strength training at all, if we aren't doing anything to keep the skeletal muscle on our body, we are going to go through sarcopenia, which is age-related muscle mass loss. And if we aren't training doing our cardio or our aerobics, whatever we want to call it, on a regular basis, like we used to, we are going to see a decline in our VO2 max or cardiorespiratory endurance. Now, a lot of people don't necessarily like do their cardio through the years. I mean, look, only 20% of our population is doing a regular routine of strength training in cardio. But we have to remember that just because people maybe quote never unquote did cardio as kids, if you're a boomer or a Gen Xer, like you were playing a lot of sports. And kids today still play sports. So that cardiorespiratory exercise, and in a way, strength training too, was still getting actively exercised, even if it was informally, like just playing soccer, you're doing a lot of running. Playing ice hockey, you're doing a lot of aerobic, playing basketball up and down the court, there's a lot of aerobic in there. So we had a tendency to do more aerobic stuff when we were younger, even when we didn't necessarily call it that. So we are going to see a natural atrophy of our cardiorespiratory system. All right. So these things are gonna happen. But here's the good news, because it is good news. The decline does not have to be very much or very sharp. We don't have to see a rapid decline. Now, there is going to be entropy. I mean, that's one of the laws of physics. Like it's going to happen, but the rate of decline doesn't have to be very steep at all. Because we do have a principle of retroaggression that basically states use it or lose it, if we use it, we are going to see some decline comparing apples to apples. Like if you were super active, super well trained when you were in your 20s, and you carry that all the way through, you're going to see a decline from your peak. I mean, that's just natural. But your decline, if you've been doing it all those years, is going to be so much better than the person that stopped their high activity levels prematurely. You're not going to see that much of a decline at all. You'll see some, but I guarantee you, when I go to these, I go a lot to 5Ks, not because I take them very serious or anything. They're just local running events that get me out there and get me to push myself pretty hard because I like to do hard things in a week. Like I like to do something that I call really hard, you know, and to me, pushing myself into 5K is hard because, well, for me anyway, there's this like desire to quit once it gets really, really hard and I'm, you know, pushing myself harder than I would normally aerobically. But then you see people around you and just your natural desire to not want to do that kicks in. So it pushes me to do hard things. All right. But the point of me telling this story is when I look around, I mean, there are so many fit people in the upper age groups. I mean, anybody that will tell you that go to a lot of these local races, I mean, the majority, so you have a couple of elite kids typically. And when I mean kids, I mean like cross-country kids, either high school or college age. Most, mostly male, we'll see here in Valicia County. So there'll be some of them and they'll come out and they will be faster aerobically in the 5K than anybody there most of the time. But then you see this massive drop-off until you get to the master's runners, people over 40. And then you really see like the better runners of all, say, 500 runners, most of them are going to be over 40. So why is that if everything goes down? Because they never stopped. So the fitness levels, they may not be as fit as they were 30 years ago, but they're like 95% more fit than people their age because they kept doing it. And then that makes them more fit of people half their age because they keep doing it. So the decline does not need to be sharp. So now I'm going to give you like some really cool statistics. So studies have shown that if you continue to strength train or you start strength training, like I've had clients start in their 70s, start like they never really strength trained before. And they've shown so much progress over and over and over. So the studies have shown that if you don't stop strength training or you start, basically you're not going to really see the drop-offs anymore. You're going to see it at least stand still. And it's kind of funny. Sometimes I'll have clients say, Well, man, I don't like the fact that we peaked on this, I don't know, leg extension or chest press machine. I mean, I don't like the fact that every time now I still am getting around 10 to 12 reps at 150 pounds in this exercise. And for months I've been kind of stuck. And I get it, we always want to get better. And there's little tricks and stuff to do that keep us fresh mentally, of course, like change the exercise, maybe change the rep range, whatever. But ultimately, that person has close to peaked at their strength levels and muscle mass levels. But here's the thing: let's say you peak as an example. I'm just going to use that weight. 150 pounds on my chest press pre-core machine. That's good weight. Let's say you're 35 years of age, and you can do that thing for 12 reps, 150 pounds in good form. That's pretty good. Now you stay with it, you stay training, still kicking, still all that good stuff. 10 years later, you're still there. 12 reps, 150 pounds chest press. Like, oh man, so I'm 45 now. It's not bad, right? And I look at him and say, not bad at all. Now we go up, 55, still doing it. Now you're starting to turn heads. Because the 55-year-old is doing 150 pounds for 12 reps, taking another decade, 65, doing that. Now you're really turning heads. People are like, holy shit, that guy over there, he's 65 years old. Or take pull-ups. Same thing. Pull-ups are one of the things I love to do. I love pull-ups. To me, they're just, they just really demonstrate strength, probably better than anything. So I keep them in my routine at all times. So let's say, again, let's go back. Go back a decade. You're 25 years old. You can knock out 10 pull-ups. I mean, that's good, but probably not going to turn too many heads in a gym. I mean, you kind of expect it to. I mean, not pull-ups are hard. But now you're, you know, 35. You're like, oh, that's pretty good. Now you're 45. People are like, oh man, that guy's in shape. Now you're 55. You're turning heads. Now you're 65. Well, now you're that guy that I see often on Instagram and all these things, a 65-year-old guy in the park pumping out pull-ups for 10 reps or so. I mean, can you see how you really fought off that entropy? Sure, you peaked at a certain age, but you kept doing it. And you aged. Everything else aged. And everybody else around you aged. But you're still doing what you used to do. So is peak really that bad? I mean, we're going to see some decline, don't get me wrong. But if you keep at it, that decline is not going to get very steep. Let's say you're hearing this and you're going, man, okay, it's a great message, but man, I did quit. And I'm not in it. It's like, okay, you know, that old saying, you know, the best time to start was yesterday. You missed that one, maybe. Well, the next best time is today. Okay. Because in a year, you'll be glad you did. I mean, these rules, that's what's cool about rules and laws. Like, they don't change. I mean, it's always easier if you would have kept up with it. That's a fact. But there's no reason you can't jump right back in right now. And along the same lines here, while we're on this subject here, you know, the same thing is true. Unfortunately, I see a lot of injuries, especially with endurance athletes. You don't see the injuries in strength training nearly as much because you just don't have the overuse things that happen with cardiorespiratory or aerobic sports. Like, unless you're doing something wrong in the gym, strength training-wise, and you're training too heavy without a spotter, but all those things are very controllable. Unless you're doing that, you're probably not going to hurt yourself in the gym. But a lot of times, especially with running, when people do too much too soon, they get hurt. Or swimming with the shoulders. Again, it doesn't have to be inevitable. I know some people that never get hurt running, but you see it often. And what happens? So they push the envelope, they keep pushing it, they keep pushing it, then they eventually pull something or worse, and then they're sidelined from running for a few months. But that's why I always tell people look, man, don't rest completely. Do something. Find something else to do to maintain your fitness. Like depending on the severity of the injury, the location of the injury, or your means, like what you have around you, but find something else to do. As close as you can to the sport that you want to make sure you don't decline too rapidly. Because look, you're going to. I mean, one of the things us endurance coaches have told people forever is one of the fastest ways to continue to increase and get faster is don't get hurt. Because one of the biggest ways to decline is to get hurt. And I don't know what year it was. It was probably 2013, maybe something like that. So 13 years ago, I tore my posterior tibialis, which is the muscle on top of the uh ankle essentially. And I was uh I was doing a lot of things, but basically I finally really did it in when I did this silly relay thing, and um it was already kind of pulled. And it literally was one of those Ragnar-type races where you are running in the middle of the night and my leg happened to be after dark and whatever, and I wasn't well warmed up and it was a little chilly, and I started out too fast, probably trying to show off whatever. And it just got continually worse and worse and worse to the point where I couldn't finish my leg, or maybe I did, but I know I couldn't do the next one. But in any event, that started a series of a year or so of rehab and leg in a boot, back in a boot, you know, and I was really never able to regain the running speed that I had at that point. Now, I, you know, I mean, it doesn't bother me hugely because you you can't tell except in the running times. And it's like, okay, I'm not a professional runner. I mean, but I definitely notice that that injury took a toll. You know, it just takes a toll. So, you know, that's inevitable in a way, like if we get hurt, we're gonna lose some steam, so to say. But we want to stay as close to exercising as possible when these things, if these things happen. Again, it's best to not let them happen. But if they do, we want to make sure that we're doing something. You know, when people say rest it, they don't mean lay in bed. I mean, that used to be the advice they gave people with hurt backs, and that's one of the worst advice they can ever give them now. And now they know that. But a while back they did not. So you want to do as much as you can close to what you were doing so you don't lose too much. I mean, you have to just accept you're going to lose something and then control what you can. And if it's running, you know, you you try to water run, meaning in submerged in water, you know, and you try that because taking away the pounding and all that sometimes helps, depending on the injury. If that doesn't work, you have to go to cycling. If the cycling helps you or doesn't hurt you, that's good. But if that does, go to swimming. But the point is, you got to try to keep up your fitness so these things don't slide backwards. And that's going to be true for any injury you might experience. Now, let's talk a little bit about nutrition and entropy. So it's a natural decline for something basically to experience wear and tear just through the existence of it being around longer, eventually leading into disorder. So entropy says that. But there's things we can do to where we don't have to limit ourselves too fast too soon. And part of that is good nutrition. Like if we take in a lot of poisons and toxins, right? And I'm not talking arsenic. I think people know not to eat that, right? Although from what I hear, it's you know pretty heavily in the soil in some areas, but whatever. I'm talking alcohol. I'm talking about overly processed foods. I'm talking about eating too. Much of meat laden with a lot of hormones that shouldn't be in there. I'm just talking about eating too much good food, even and getting morbidly obese or slightly obese. Like this is also going to wear us out sooner than it had to, more than natural. Again, our bodies are meant to go through some form of entropy. But I think too often, especially in our country, in the United States, we accelerate it too quick with really, really bad habits. And putting poisons into our bodies so our bodies can't really restore and stay at the highest functioning level that they're kind of meant to, isn't helping us out any. It's kind of speeding up that entropy where it really doesn't need to happen. And I'm not saying we all have to go around and be perfectionists in how we eat. I'm far from it. But if we're having issues with that, if we're really not paying any attention to what we're putting into our body, we just have to be aware that we're probably causing problems down the road that maybe we don't need to do. That, you know, exercise and healthy diets is medicine. It's strong medicine. And, you know, I'm not saying, you know, be a complete Puritan and never drink. I mean, for me, I don't. It's not good for me. But I do think we all need to limit it. And I do think we need to limit the highly processed foods and the meats that are just loaded with hormones and pesticides and things like that. Like I do think it's important to allow our body to age kind of how it's designed to be, the best we can. And one of the best ways we can do that is to educate ourselves. So I started talking about all of the bad news and the statistical facts of how things go downhill. But as you see, it doesn't have to happen like that. We have control over this process. We have control by doing a little bit every day. It really is consistency that counts. Over time is what counts. A person who is doing their strength training two times per week, taking between 25 or 30 minutes of an effective strength training routine that works all the major muscle groups, that taxes the muscles to the point where they should be taxed, is going to do far better than the person who works out super, super hard for a few weeks and then drops off. I promise you it's the consistency. And that's really not that hard to get in. And if you maintain that, like if you've been doing two strength training sessions a week for years and years, I guarantee you you're not noticing much decline at all. And if you haven't and you're starting this now, you're going to see that in a few years. But what I'm saying is this doesn't take much. It just takes consistency and not having significant days off. Like I talked about a while back in one of the emails and podcasts. Try to have zero, zero days. Like don't have a day where you just haven't worked at it, where you haven't gotten up and gone for at least a walk, where you haven't done some stretching, where you haven't just looked yourself in the eyes in the mirror and say, today I'm going to do some physical things to make myself better. Just try to have zero, zero days. And I promise you, you'll be taking control and using all the power that you have, all at your resources, and using all of your free will to try to do the best you can to have a better tomorrow. All right. Thank you everybody for listening to today's show. I really appreciate it. I want to remind you to please hit automatic download. It really helps me and it helps the show. And now I'd like to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product and the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great. They're going to get you exactly what you need. So if you have any garage door needs, give them a shout at 386-222-3165. And now I'm very excited to add another sponsor. Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer has joined the team. And let me tell you, they are a great product. I pop one after a workout. Each container has 40 grams of protein, so that's two servings. I take 20 grams after I work out. What's really cool about them is it's portable. You can throw them in your suitcase. You don't have to worry about mixing powders and making a mess. 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