THE REAL REASON YOU'RE GETTING WEAKER AND HOW TO FIX IT FAST

The viiiv-C is now available.

With this incredibly affordable small footprint, you too can literally help cure the growing epidemic of weakness for millions of people by focusing on what matters most.

We've been taught that as we get older we're supposed to get weaker. And if you're like most, you probably believe it's because we lose muscle mass, right?

Wrong.

Recently I watched a video by Dr. Seth Capehart titled THE REAL REASON YOU'RE GETTING WEAKER. 

I like his perspective and explanation. 

Unlike so many other content creators his concept makes sense to me:

You feel you're getting weaker not because the load of life (all your normal daily physical demands) has increased, but because your capacity to handle those demands has gone down.

Increase your capacity and all of a sudden you don't feel so weak anymore.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Where Dr. Capehart and I differ is in our understanding of the truth about where increased capacity really comes from and the most effective way to do it.

In my last article, ENDURANCE TRAINING THE SMART WAY, I outlined the crux of why isometrics increases physical capacity like nothing else can. 

And it has nothing to do with a loss or gain of muscle mass.

However, since most people either cannot, or refuse, to see anything further upstream from muscle, my words will be dismissed as a hot take.

So I'd like to revisit an article I wrote in July 2020 titled AGE-RELATED WEAKNESS: NERVE OR MUSCLE?

In 2019, a paper by Clark et. al. titled Voluntary vs Electrically Stimulated Activation in Age-Related Muscle Weakness studied the role of the nervous system in clinically meaningful age-related weakness in a cross-sectional group of 66 older adults ranging from 67 to 85 years.

Participants were categorized as weak (the oldest group with an average age 78.4 years), modestly weak (average age of 74.9 years), or strong (average age of 72 years).

Basically, the researchers wanted to determine if weak older adults exhibit reduced ability to activate their lower extremity muscles compared to their stronger counterparts. 

They calculated the degree of VOLUNTARY INACTIVATION (VI) by comparing maximum voluntary and electrically stimulated muscle forces. 

The results found that the weak older adults exhibited significantly higher levels of voluntary inactivation compared to the strong older adults (14.2% vs 7.1%).

Interestingly, all three groups showed nearly identical lean thigh muscle mass.

Hmmm.

Same muscle mass. Dramatically different ability to activate that muscle mass.

I'd say it's strong evidence that age-related weakness is not necessarily a disorder of the skeletal muscles. 

In fact, Dr. Clark stated,

"It's confirmatory evidence that the nervous system is a key culprit in weakness."

But let's pile on a little more science.

In a 2009, study by Delmonico et. al. titled Longitudinal Study of  Muscle Strength, Quality, and Adipose Tissue Infiltration, 1,678 participants were followed for 5 years and revealed that the loss of muscle torque was 2-5 times greater than the loss of muscle cross sectional area.

In other words, loss of muscle strength was WEAKLY associated with loss of muscle mass.

And what could account for that?

The nervous system.

As I have said a million times, there is nothing wrong with your muscles. They are just fine. They haven't left. They just aren't being told what to do as much anymore.

"The nervous system gets lazy,"

says Dr. Capehart.

Now back to the crux of why just a few seconds of maximum isometric effort is a far superior treatment for the real cause of age-related weakness:

When 80 year-old Sally gives her best effort for 5 seconds, she begins to erase the VOLUNTARY INACTIVATION (VI) mentioned in the study above.

As she repeats these bouts over the next few weeks, she kicks off a rapid improvement in the strength and efficiency of her nervous system.

It is this high-level isometric effort that delivers the largest increases in VOLUNTARY ACTIVATION (VA) - far greater than anything achieved with lifting or lowering weights. 

Her ceiling rises.

But it's even better than that for Sally.

The effort it takes just to get out of her car just went down because VA at any sub-maximal level of effort decreases.

Her floor lowers.

Now the gap between effort for what's easy and effort for what's hard has widened. Her physical capacity is greater, and she feels younger and more capable.

All she did was "treat" the real cause of her perceived age-related weakness - her nervous system.

And she did it quickly.

I have watched this play out for decades in men and women of all ages who spend 20 seconds a week pushing and pulling as hard as they wish.

And it will continue for many more decades because it is the truth.

The age-related weakness in our aging population is abnormal. It is not a muscle problem. It is an activation problem that viiiv Fitness can solve easily.