Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss
https://www.girlsgonestrong.com/
If you’ve been enticed by the promise of “long and lean” muscles, you’re not alone. Fitness companies pump millions of dollars into advertising exercise solutions that promise to help you look “long and lean,” while trusted and well-intentioned, but misinformed, fitness instructors across many disciplines further propagate these persistent claims.
Women occasionally contact me seeking advice on how to get strong for everyday life without getting “bulky” in the process—they want to look “long and lean” instead. Many times, these women are doing exercises such as Pilates, yoga, or light weight/high repetition resistance training because they’ve been told that in addition to building strength, these forms of exercise lengthen muscles and don’t make you “bulky.”
I love that more and more women want to learn how to get stronger so they can feel fit and independent, and get things done (carry a 40-pound bag of dog food into the house, lift strollers and car seats, or put a heavy suitcase in the overhead bin without assistance).
What strikes me about these inquiries, however, is how widespread the “long and lean muscles” misconception is. Worse yet, is how widely this notion that there are exercises that will produce those results has become accepted as fact.
Today I want to address both, getting stronger and whether or not it’s possible to create “long, lean muscles,” and hopefully clear up a lot of misinformation and confusion out there standing between so many women and their goals.
First, we need to separate some myths from the current best evidence. (This is something like critically examining information usually referred to as #broscience. Maybe we should call it #chickscience—let’s get that trending!)
Contrary to #chickscience—which we often hear as we climb onto our Pilates reformers, settle onto our yoga mats, or work through hundreds of leg lifts of biceps curls in a group fitness class—we cannot “lengthen” muscles through exercise. I mean that with no disrespect to Pilates, yoga, barre, or any other practice. If you love what you’re doing, and you feel energized, fit, and happy when you’re engaging in these practices, that’s time well spent. But if you’re doing something for the sole purpose of building a “long and lean” physique, this article is for you.
Personally, I love Pilates and yoga so much that I completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training years ago, spent over a year becoming a certified Thai yoga therapy practitioner, and completed 300 hours of Pilates teacher training. I use the principles of these disciplines with my clients every day, and I encourage everyone to find a form of exercise that they love. Yet, we have to be clear about why we’re doing that exercise and what benefit we are getting out of it. Yoga, Pilates and Barre classes do offer some benefits, like improved body weight strength, stretch tolerance (“flexibility”), deep breathing and relaxation, and improved balance, but they do not result in longer, leaner muscles.
Our current best evidence shows that despite how it may feel, muscle length actually doesn’t change very much from exercise or stretching.
Muscles have a point of origin (where they start) and a point of insertion (where they attach). At both of these points, tendons connect the muscles to bone. Without undergoing surgery for a limb-lengthening procedure, these are fixed points. (For the curious among you: in an Ilizarov limb lengthening procedure, a surgical fracture is made in the bone, and an external fixator is applied. As the bone begins to heal, the fracture sites are moved apart by one millimeter a day.)1 While I have worked with patients who have had bone-lengthening procedures to correct deformities, this is not the route the average woman is likely to take to achieve a “long and lean” physique! So, barring this type of surgery, muscles are largely the length they are, and you cannot change the origin and insertion any more than sleeping extra hours every night will ever make me taller than 5’2.” Sigh.
Given that muscle length changes very little as a result of stretching, how do we explain the fact that we can move deeper into a yoga pose after a few months of steady practice? Stretching does increase your range of motion, but as growing body of research shows, this has little to do with actual lengthening of the muscles. Instead, the change takes place in your nervous system.
According to studies from PT Journal, the Journal of the American Physical Therapy Association, the only thing that changes is our perception and tolerance of the stretch sensation.2,3 In other words, stretching decreases our brain and nervous system’s perception of threat by increasing our “stretch-tolerance.” This allows you to get a deeper stretch before triggering the “danger, you’re stretching too far!” message that engages the muscle’s protective mechanisms. In addition, a study from The Journal of Rheumatology concluded that muscle’s capability of being stretched (called extensibility) in subjects with Benign Joint Hypermobility Syndrome, or BJHS (a condition in which the joints are more flexible than what is considered normal, sometimes called ‘double-jointed) was also attributed to altered sensation, not longer muscles.4
Another reason we might think we feel a change in muscle length from exercise has to do with muscular imbalances. Oftentimes, what we perceive as “tightness” really isn’t tightness at all, but rather weaknesses in opposing muscle groups. (Learn more about muscle imbalances and resulting “tightness.”) When we continually overstretch an area that feels tight, we may be overlooking the opposing muscle group, which may actually need strengthening.
So, given the evidence cited above, while you can’t make your muscles longer, you can definitely make them stronger—and getting stronger can help you get leaner.
Should you still do yoga, barre, and Pilates? YES! They feel really good! They help you spend time focusing on your body, the way you move, as well as on your mind and breath, which may help to decrease your perception of stress! These practices can also build overall strength to a certain degree, and help you train muscles that you may not regularly train otherwise. (Have you ever taken a really challenging arm-balance class and not been able to wash your hair the next day? That feels so bad, but so good!)
However, I want to be clear about one thing:
The only way to increase your strength is to progressively overload the muscles. Simply put, progressive overload means that you increase the load as you get stronger.
Will lifting progressively heavier weights make you “bulky?” It depends on a number of factors such as your body type, your genetic make-up, how your body responds to strength training, how easily your body builds muscle mass, the amount and type of food you regularly eat, your hormonal profile, your recovery techniques, the type and amount of weight you are lifting, and many more factors. It also depends on what “bulky” means to you. What one person might consider “bulky” is sometimes considered “lean” or “athletic” or “just right” by someone else.
The Modern Woman’s Guide to Strength Training will help you achieve maximum results, whether you’re new to strength training, or a veteran in the weight room.
Contrary to what many women have been led to believe about strength training, performing endless repetitions of exercises using very light weight will not yield “long and lean muscles” or strength gains. For the woman who simply wants to be strong enough to move furniture without assistance and healthy enough to live a vibrant, active life—but doesn’t want to see large increases in muscle size—focusing on progressive overload of a few primary movement patterns (push, pull, rotation/anti-rotation, squat, deadlift, carry) will likely do the trick.
Resistance training starting with light/bodyweight to moderate weight, along with keeping your focus on good nutrition (eating nutrient-dense whole foods), using active recovery techniques, and doing intelligent amounts of cardio will likely help you reach those goals. When you master proper form with the basic movement patterns and increase the load progressively, in a pain-free manner, you are on your way to developing great functional strength.
Progressive resistance training can also help you achieve a leaner appearance. It increases your metabolic rate and can help you lose body fat, provided that you consistently eat nutrient-dense foods, achieve a caloric deficit, and get enough quality sleep.
While it is very difficult for most women to put on any significant amount of muscle without some serious effort and dedication toward that specific goal, it’s not entirely unheard of. It depends on the individual woman. If you feel that you are getting “too bulky” for your preference while following this type of training, take a look at whether the “bulk” is due to muscle growth, or increased body fat—or a bit of both. Lifting weights tends to increase your metabolism and make you hungrier, so you may need to tighten up your nutrition and see what happens. If you do that, and find that you’re still a bit more “muscle-y” than you want to be, then continue to decrease your resistance training (either the number of sessions or the load and/or volume in your sessions) and continue to focus on maintaining a caloric deficit through your nutrition.
If you are comfortable with your current weight but want to change your body composition to shed a little body fat or increase lean muscle mass, it’s important to pay closer attention to your nutrition, as well as add in some more resistance training, and do a few cardio sessions choosing activities you enjoy. The progressive overload from resistance training can build lean muscle mass, while paying closer attention to your nutrition can help you reduce your body fat, revealing a little more of your new muscles. Cardio is not only great for your overall health, depending on the type of cardio you do and when you do it, it can help with calorie balance, help you recover from the strength training workouts, and can help manage your blood sugar as well.
There are certain things that no type of exercise can deliver unless your body is built for them (“long, lean muscles” is one of these things based on the current evidence), butthe benefits of strength training and the joy of moving your body every day are guaranteed.
Remember, there’s no one ideal body type any more than there is one ideal goal for training. All bodies are good bodies, all goals are valid, and all methods of movement are valuable.
If you would like a little more guidance with your training program, we’re happy to help!
At Girls Gone Strong, we want you to feel confident knowing that what you’re doing to look good, feel good, and feel healthy and strong are not only based on tested, reliable, and safe information from trustworthy sources, but that it is also effective and efficient. That’s why we developed our flagship training system, The Modern Woman’s Guide To Strength Training.
With four different 16-week programs—that’s 64 weeks of training—you get over a year’s worth of workouts, including progressions to ensure that you continue making progress. You’ll also get a training manual, exercise glossary, progress tracker, a bonus conditioning manual, plus a video library with over 70 high-definition videos breaking down each exercise, step by step.
We believe fitness should enhance your life instead of become your life. If you exercise in a way that you actually enjoy, staying fit and strong won’t ever feel like a drag. You’ll look forward to it for years to come.
If you want an entire training system that will help you look and feel your best, The Modern Woman’s Guide to Strength Training is for you!
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References:
The post Why Building “Long and Lean Muscles” Is A Myth (And How You Can Get Strong and Lean!) appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering three questions. First, are the amino acid supplements sarcosine, D-serine, and D-cycloserine worth taking? What do they do and who can they help? Next, what should you do to prevent an infection? Besides the regular stuff like vitamin C and vitamin D, is there anything else to take to mitigate the damage and prevent pathogenic incursions? And finally, I field a question from a fencer and martial artist who’s feeling the beginning twinges of knee pain. He leads a lunge-heavy life—it’s an inescapable part of his training—and I offer a few suggestions for limiting the damage.
Let’s go:
Dear Mark,
You have talked about branched chain amino acids before.
I was wondering how safe you believe the other Amino Acid supplements are?
In particular, Sarcosine, D-Serine, and D-Cycloserine?Thank you
Alana
These aren’t the BCAAs you’re used to taking to enhance performance in the gym, fat loss, and body composition.
Sarcosine, D-serine, and D-cycloserine increase signaling at the NMDA receptor, a glutamate receptor that plays a huge role in depression, schizophrenia, addiction, anxiety and other mental disorders. Sarcosine is a glycine transporter-1 inhibitor; it reduces the amount of glycine taken up by cells, increases serum glycine levels, and makes more glycine available for binding with the NDMA receptor. D-serine is an NMDA co-agonist; it makes the NMDA receptor bind more effectively to other agonists. D-cycloserine is a partial NMDA co-agonist that also acts as an antibiotic against tuberculosis.
What are they good for?
They’ve all been studied in schizophrenia. In both long-term stable schizophrenia patients and patients suffering from acute episodes, sarcosine reduced the PANSS (positive and negative symptom score). D-serine improved symptoms, just not as effectively as sarcosine. Adding it to an antipsychotic regimen helped reduce symptoms, too. D-cycloserine is also effective against symptoms of schizophrenia when added to typical meds.
They may help against certain types of depression. Some types of depression are characterized by over-expression of NMDA receptors, while others are caused by low NMDA activity. As they enhance NMDA activity, sarcosine and D-serine may help with the latter type.
D-cycloserine shows promise in treating anxiety disorders, mostly as an enhancer of existing treatments. When you take it shortly before the exposure, cycloserine makes exposure therapy better at extinguishing anxiety and fear in a number of disorders including snake phobia, OCD, social anxiety, panic disorder, and acrophobia (no word on arachnophobia). It may also help older autistic kids and teens with their social skills.
As the NMDA receptor is a popular and viable target for cognitive enhancement, and enhancement of NMDA receptor function is a “core strategy” in combatting age-related cognitive decline, these amino acids may have potential as nootropics. Do they work?
It’s all very preliminary. In one study, D-serine improved working memory, sustained attention, verbal fluency, and reaction times. One group of researchers suggest D-serine may be “the key” to synaptic plasticity, which is required for learning something new or the formation of memories. Sarcosine should work pretty well for this, too, as it increases D-serine levels.
However, sarcosine is also elevated in patients with prostate cancer. It’s even found in the prostate tumor itself. Its relationship to prostate cancer isn’t strong enough to warrant using sarcosine as an early biomarker for detection of prostate cancer, but it may act as a co-carcinogen once the cancer has been established. This is extremely speculative, mind you.
So while these are probably “safe,” they’re mostly used for very specific treatments, often under medical supervision, and probably don’t have as much application to the general public. If you have any of the conditions listed above, mention these amino acids to your doctor and show some research.
Mark-
As our family’s go to health Guru I have a question for you that I wasn’t able to find an answer to on your site already. I have a feeling I already know at least part of the answer from reading daily but here it is….
My wife and I have three children. My girls are 10 and 5 and my son is 9 months. Just the other day, my younger daughter and my son came down with the dreaded 24hour-ish stomach bug. Now my wife, older daughter and I feel like the poor victims on The Walking Dead” who have been bitten but not killed and are just waiting for the sickness to ensue. So my question is, outside of doubling down on Probiotics, Vitamins D and C and increasing water consumption, on top of a quality primal 90/10-ish diet, are there any other measures you would recommend to try and avoid coming down with the stomach bug ourselves?
Thanks for all that you do! You have been an incredible resource for our family over the last 4+ years.
Ryan
There are a couple things you can try in addition to probiotics, vitamin D, and vitamin C, which are all good things to try:
Zinc: Taken at the onset of an infection, it can reduce the duration. Taken with vitamin C, it’s even more effective. Taken regularly, it can reduce the incidence of infections in people with zinc deficiency. Shoot for at least 45 mg of elemental zinc.
Garlic: Take an entire head of garlic, smash each clove, and let them sit for ten minutes. Drop into simmering broth for 3-4 minutes, until some but not all of the pungency has dissipated. Drink broth, eat garlic. This is a lot of garlic, but it seriously works wonders.
As far as probiotics go, make sure you’re taking one with L. plantarum. It’s the strain with the most efficacy against infections.
Bear in mind that most of the above research is on upper respiratory tract infections like cold and flu. The stomach flu, or gastroenteritis, can have a ton of different causes so it’s difficult to make specific recommendations. Hope it helps and good luck!
Hi Mark,
I’m a regular fencer and martial artist who’s passionate about the sports they love, I practice lunging and techniques almost every day but I’m hitting 30 in the next couple of years and I’m starting to get a few niggling pains in my knees I’m hoping to see a physiotherapist about soon.
All of this got me a bit scared because I’ve always hoped to keep primally healthy and practicing well into old age.
What advice do you have for diet exercise and lifestyle choices for keeping the knees healthy in the long term for those of us who regularly give them a pounding?
Cheers!
I don’t know enough about fencing or martial arts to offer specific modifications to your skill training, but I do have some general advice.
Check out MobilityWOD. Focus on the lower body MOBs (mobility workout of the day). Anything to do with hips, hip flexors, hamstrings, glutes, calves, ankles, feet, quads. Learn to love/hate the couch stretch.
Stretch your calves (often tight in lunging athletes, since lunges let you get away with tight calves whereas squats do not). These work well.
Switch to rear lunges when training. Obviously, when competing you’re going to be doing all sorts of forward lunges, but you don’t need to hammer that movement during training. Rear lunges will strengthen the same movement patterns in a controlled fashion.
Do some stability lunges. Get in a lunge position and hold it. Really stretch those hip flexors out. Get comfortable there.
Foam roll/lacrosse ball your legs. Get in there. Some say they don’t work, but I think they do.
Make the lunge a hip hinge, rather than forcing an upright posture. Hinging at the hip during a lunge with a little forward lean of the torso actually places more emphasis on the glutes and less on the knee, contrary to popular belief.
Get some collagen in your diet. Eat more gelatin-rich meats. Make/drink bone broth. Learn to cook oxtails, shanks, feet, hocks, and other collagenous animal parts. Try my collagen chocolate bars, which are delicious and get you most of the gelatin you need in a day. The human body requires at least 10 grams of glycine per day for basic metabolic processes, so we’re looking at an average daily deficit of 7 grams that we need to make up for through diet. With gelatin running about 33% glycine, aim for 21-25 grams of gelatin a day. Maybe even more, since you’re experiencing joint pain and glycine requirements go up in joint disorders.
Get your omega-3s. If you’re not eating fatty fish on a regular basis, that’s a no-brainer. Fish fat is anti-inflammatory, and although human evidence is mixed, the general consensus is that it improves joint pain. Besides, we know that omega-3s are important for other reasons, so why not try?
Eat turmeric or take curcumin. Curcuminoids from turmeric have shown efficacy against osteoarthritis (in addition to inflammatory disorders in general). A blend of turmeric extract, hydrolyzed collagen, and green tea extract looks like it might work pretty well.
Good luck!
Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care and be sure to help out with your input down below!
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