The Gym and My Observations…

For the past few weeks I have finally gotten back to going to the gym and working out my body.  I go Monday through Friday early in the morning.  I go pretty early to try to miss the crowds that can be there.

That said, there are a good number of people there, especially on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  One thing I have noticed pretty much across the board, with a few rare exceptions, each person is only working on one muscle group at a time, and with again, few exceptions, with high weights.  They do less than 10 “movements” with the weight, typically the free standing weights or dumbbells (nothing wrong here) and MAYBE do one or two more sets of 10 or so and then move on to the next “movement”, on the same muscle group.  And most of them spend a majority of their time on their phone between movement sets.

There are VERY few that add cardio, such as walking stair steps, peddling, etc.  There is one guy that ONLY does cardio, but at a VERY low speed, and with walking backwards, and sideways on the treadmill.  His stair steps are set to very stress as well.

I have seen ONE person work on his legs or lower body, and again, at a high weight on three or four pumps of his legs, rest on their phone for about 10 minutes, then go back at it, MAYBE repeating the cycle three times before heading out.  Total time in the gym being about 45 minutes, most of which is on the phone.

I have studied the body for most of my life, both as a kid through martial arts and in learning Shiatsu and over all pressure point manipulation , and as an adult through EMT/P training, Army Cardio Vascular and Combat Medic training, Army Special Forces Medical Training, and through Continued Medical Education as a Physician’s Assistant.  Granted, I have specialized in pain points (martial arts) and healing points (Shiatsu/Pressure Point Manipulation), Trauma Care, and Cardiac Care.  I have a pretty strong understanding on the bone structures, the muscle system (minus the brain), the nervous system, and the cardiac system, and specialize in that area. I do not have a strong background in other areas such as GYN, Geriatrics, neonatal (don’t want the responsibility in this area, very difficult to care for), cancer, and such.

One thing I have learned over the years, from my Sensie (Martial Arts instructor), from my medical trainings, and believe it or not from the Bible, about the human body.  The body is ONE entity made up of several parts, all of which rely on each other, and are intended to be used as a whole unit, not one piece at a time.

In my observation, and through practice and training, I have found that if you train your WHOLE body every session, you do better over all.  My Sensie required of ALL of his students, as do I, that if they went to the gym, they couldn’t use more than 15 pounds for upper body exercises, and no more than 25 pounds for the lower body.  Now, he never required that you do the whole body each time, he didn’t care if you did just upper body today and legs tomorrow, etc., at least at first.  (That changed after I gave my findings to him about three years before he passed away (of old age) though.)

What he had us doing is to start out at 5 or 10 pounds upper body and do three sets of 15 for each exercise, with 30 seconds between set per exercise, and 1 to 1.5 seconds between exercises.  After a week of that it would go up 5 pounds until you reached 15.  From there, each week, if you were able to, you would add a set of 15 to the exercise.  The goal is to get to 1000 sets of 15 per exercise.

For the legs, we started out at 10 pounds, then followed the 5 pound increase each week till we hit 25 pounds, at which point each week you added a set of 15 to the exercise.

This does a couple of things for your body.  It slowly grows your muscle, strength and stamina over time.  It allows your body to heal up the muscle tear down between workouts a bit better than if you bulk up.  It stops you from becoming inflexible and muscle restricted.  Your muscles get a bit bigger, but mainly adds power and strength for you.

My studies and workouts showed me that if you do your whole body (all muscle groups, legs, arms, hands, core body) EVERY day, at least 5 days a week, using this process, you feel better, your body gets a workout as a whole unit (which you are), and grows in stamina and strength.

You should also add cardio to that workout list.  I have found that if you start your workout with a, initially 10 minutes working your way up to at least 30 minutes (increase in 5 minute spurts each week), walk on the treadmill.  If your life has a lot of steps, split that time with the treadmill (first) and the stationary bike if you want.  Run instead of walk if you want, either works, as long as the walk is at least a fast walk.

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