Building Better Health by Adapting Your Body
 
By Dr. Ben Lerner

Your body will adapt or un-adapt to whatever stresses you do or don't impose on it. Consider these opposing forces.

Law of Adaption

If you run long distances, your muscles, joints, lungs and heart will adapt in a way that allows you to go the distance. This is a good thing, and the reason a marathon runner actually looks like one. And, if you're a sprinter, your body adapts for short distances. That's why sprinters look like and or train like body builders.

So if you want to improve stamina and cardio functioning, you run for a long time and your body adapts in a way to support that. If you want to increase strength and power, you do short sprints and you adapt for that.

If you want big, strong round muscles, you lift really heavy weights over a short period of time -- like a power lifter. If you want a more athletic build -- like a gymnast -- you lift weights or perform activities that create more sustained pressure.

Law of Un-Adaption

So what about the opposite action?

Whatever you're training for, you also "un-train" for. So a marathon runner doesn't make a great sprinter. Their lungs, heart, muscles and tendons are adapted for a completely different type of event. And, sprinters can't typically run a marathon. It would be like trying to ride a bull across country.

Your heart, lungs, circulatory system immune system, muscles and joints adapt to exercise by increasing their efficiency. So your muscles firm up, your joints lube up, the bones get stronger and thicker, your immune system gets cranking, your heartbeat strengthens, and your lungs and circulatory system dramatically improve their ability to take in, store and circulate oxygen.

On the other hand, if you do not exercise, your body un-adapts. Muscles get flabby, bones get soft and brittle, joints get dry, the heartbeat weakens and speeds up and you become oxygen deprived.

Exercise and Reversed Aging

People as old as 100 can dramatically increase their strength, improve their balance, restore bone density, moderate diabetes and diminish joint pain in just a few weeks of weight training. The minute you start sweating and your heart begins pounding, your arteries get more flexible and your blood pressure drops. This lowers your risk of heart disease and stroke too.

For hours after exercise, your body is more sensitive to insulin, keeping your sugar levels in check and reducing your risk of diabetes too.

Being in shape causes your heart and blood vessels to work only a fraction as hard as they do if you are out of shape. A conditioned person will have a heart rate of approximately 60 beats/minute. Someone who is out of shape will have a heart rate of approximately 80 beats/minute. This means if you are out of shape, your heart will have to beat approximately 30,000 more times per day than if you were in shape.

Dying Lighter

The purpose of weight loss is not only to weigh less, but to be healthier. Weight-reduction plans that use unhealthy foods, diet products, weird devices, drugs, supplements or even herbal "speed" to help you lose weight may make you lighter, but not healthier. When people ask me what I think about these plans I always say the same thing: "Sure, you might lose weight. You will die 10 years earlier, but at least you will be lighter."

The reality is, about the only positive thing about losing weight the wrong way is that you will make it easier on your pallbearers.

The fact is, better health does not necessarily come by simply losing weight. To improve the function of the Body By God operating system, there must be less weight and fat. It is not only how much you weigh that causes you to develop disease: It is how much body fat you have compared to how much muscle you have.

The point of exercise is to increase the amount of real muscle and decrease the amount of loosely packed muscle, or what we call "fat." Having too little lean muscle mass compared to body fat contributes to all sorts of conditions and diseases. High body-fat/muscle ratios negatively affect organ function, hormone balances, immune control, brain activity, blood chemistry and generally make you more sensitive to potentially hazardous food elements like sugar and cholesterol.

Diet alone cannot increase muscle mass and decrease fat mass. Only diet combined with exercise will increase your muscle/body-fat ratios. Through the law of adaption, the way the body adapts to exercise is by increasing your muscle-to-fat ratio. This will not only cause you to weigh less, it will cause you to have better health. Again, this will still make it easier on your pallbearers, but they will also have to wait a while before being called into action!

While many people rely on cardio activities alone and some on weights alone, to really get healthy you need both. You need to get your heart and lungs adapting in a healthy way through a regular cardio program and your lean muscle mass up by working out with weights or some kind of resistance.

Dr. Ben Lerner, along with Dr. Greg Loman, owns Teach The World About Chiropractic, a Chiropractic training company. They have helped build the largest spinal correction clinics in the history of Chiropractic. His book, Body By God: The Owner's Manual for Maximized Living, is an excellent resource for anyone looking to improve his or her health.........

Making Exercise Safe, Fast, Effective For Any Age, Body or Schedule
 
By Dr. Ben Lerner

When helping to prepare Olympic athletes for battle, we have very few weeks and very little time each day. Time always seems to be against us. However, working with Olympians became great training for working with non-Olympians. Why? Most everyone feels they have little time for fitness in today's fast-paced world.

In preparation for life or the Olympics, you need a program you can quickly put into any schedule, yet is super-duper effective and totally safe. Injury is not an option for potential medalists or busy people.

This week's column illustrates how to get the greatest bang for your buck, meaning how to get more from your workouts while spending less time and optimizing injury prevention.

How to Stand: Perfect Posture = Perfect Technique

All exercise and stretching, as well as all movement in life, needs to be performed as close to Perfect Posture as possible. God designed the body using all of the vast, highly technical laws of science, mathematics and physics in order for your "Body By God" to best deal with gravity. When maintaining your posture, the muscles, joints and bones are at their strongest and most stable. This will allow them to be able to withstand large or repetitive forces without suffering injury.

Perfect Posture

The head is up and back so the ears line up over the shoulders, and the arc (lordosis or reversed "C" curve) in the neck is maintained
Shoulders are rolled back in the joints
Upper back flat and not arched or humped
Belly button is out and hips back so you have an arc (lordosis/reversed "C" curve like the neck) in your lower back called the "weight lifter's arch"
Knees are slightly bent to provide shock absorption
Remember to maintain this posture during all stretches and exercises. Any exercise or stretch that calls for a disruption of posture means it is unhealthy, or you are doing it wrong.

How to Stretch

Due to sitting, driving, working on the computer, getting out of shape and the effects of gravity, certain muscles get too short or too tight. This can create an injury during lifting or cause you to develop joint pain and degeneration over time.

To compensate for the natural muscle shortening that occurs due to our modern, unnatural lifestyles, stretching is critical to perform before, during and after every workout.

Short Muscles and Their Stretches

Hamstrings: While standing, put your foot up on a chair or bench. Keeping perfect posture (head up/shoulders back/weight lifter's arc in your back), bend down slightly toward your foot, making sure to keep your head and shoulders up. You should feel a stretch in the back of your leg and calf.

Calves: Stand 2-3 feet away from a wall and lean against it while keeping your back and legs straight so you are bending forward at the ankle only. You should feel a stretch at the Achilles tendon and calf muscles.

Chest Muscles/Front Shoulders: Stand by a wall or in a doorway and put your hand against it at eye level. Move or lean forward, away from your hand, until your arm is straight and being pulled back enough to cause a stretch in the chest and shoulder muscles. Change the level of your hand to below the waist and above your head in order to perform this stretch at three different angles.

Front of Neck: Roll your shoulders back, pull your chin in and then roll your head back so you are looking up at the ceiling behind you. This is done to stretch the front of the neck. The muscles and ligaments in the front of the neck get tight due to the forward head posture created by driving, watching TV or sitting at a desk or computer.

Hold all stretches for 10-15 seconds, back off slightly, take a deep breath in, and then let it out while you repeat the stretch for another 10-15 seconds. Each time you go back down while breathing out, you should be able to stretch farther. Do each stretch at least three separate times to achieve the maximum benefit.

How to Breathe and Count While Lifting

Breathing: Breathe in on the eccentric contraction (while you are lowering or releasing the weight) and breathe out on the concentric contraction (while you are lifting the weight).

Counting: Count "1, 2 ... " on the concentric contraction (when lifting). Count "1, 2, 3, 4 ... " on the eccentric contraction (when releasing or lowering the weight).

Resistance Training

Muscles placed under "resistance" become stronger, leaner, and better developed. Muscles adapt to whatever force you apply to them. Or don't. If you consistently put a strain on a certain muscle group, it will adapt by getting more physically powerful, have more tone and it will change its shape. If you consistently do not put strain on your muscles, they become weaker, flabbier and shapeless.

To be healthy, lean muscle mass must increase and fat must decrease. While aerobic exercise will cause some resistance to the set of muscles being used, it is not enough. Resistance needs to be applied throughout the entire body so you remove fat and increase leanness in all or most of the muscles.

Resistance exercise occurs when you apply sustained or repetitive strain (resistance) to muscle. The most effective way to create resistance against the muscles and thus produce predictable results is a properly applied weight-lifting program.

The Language of Resistance Movement Through Weight Training

The world of resistance weight training brings with it its own unique and special vocabulary. Such terms need to be defined before a proper understanding of the weight resistance program can occur. They include the following:

Repetitions (or Reps): In the vernacular of weight training, a repetition is defined as how many times you do the specified exercise. If you lift a weight 12 times, that is 12 repetitions, or "reps."

Set: A set is how many separate times you perform the repetitions of the exercise. For instance, three "sets" of 12 repetitions is performing 12 repetitions, three separate times.

Failure: Doing an exercise until "failure" means performing a "set" until you literally cannot perform even one more "rep."

Quick Set Programs: These allow you to get a workout in for an individual body part in as little as three minutes. This is the ultimate way to perform resistance training. These routines can be as simple and as short as you need them to be in order to fit them into your schedule or level of motivation on any given day or week. This program can also be performed more or fewer times per week, dependent on how quickly you desire to make changes to the muscles of your Body By God. This actually creates the possibility of knowing you will not only exercise consistently this week, or for the next 90 days, but forever.

Due to the type of adaptation the body must make while performing Quick Sets, you are able to create significant changes in the composition (body fat percentage and muscle tone) of a body part within three minutes.

Busy moms, overworked businessmen and businesswomen, or students on a tight time schedule can still be extremely effective in their lives and get in shape all at the same time. Using the Quick Set Programs for three-minute body parts, many patients, clients and friends -- including me -- have been able to maintain busy schedules, a high quality family life and find plenty of leisure time while still being in the best shape of our lives.

These routines can be used to increase the intensity of your workouts, shorten your workout times, and very safely speed up your results. They are designed so anyone can perform them and make great changes to their Body By God on any level. Whether you are a retired grandma or an aspiring Olympian, there is a plan for you.

Types of Quick Sets

Decline Set

Pick one exercise and do it for 8 -- 12 repetitions until failure
Rest 5-6 seconds
Lower the weight by 5 -- 20 pounds and do the exercise again for 6 -- 8 repetitions until failure.
Rest 5 -- 6 seconds
Lower the weight by 5 -- 20 pounds again and do another 6 -- 8 repetitions until failure
Pause Set

Pick one exercise and do it for 8-12 repetitions until failure
Rest 5-6 seconds
Using the same weight, do the exercise again until failure
Rest 5-6 seconds
Repeat this process until you cannot do the exercise for more than 1-2 repetitions
Even with exercising each body part 1-2 times a week, your total time investment can be as little as 4-8 hours of resistance exercise for an entire month. Not much to ask to keep the only body you will ever have well.

Dr. Ben Lerner, Dr. Greg Loman and Dr. Rob Schiffman have three of the largest chiropractic centers in the history of the chiropractic profession. Their organization, Teach The World About Chiropractic, teaches a high-tech, vitalistic chiropractic approach to wellness care. They also teach a God-centered lifestyle through Dr. Lerner's New York Times best selling book, Body by God: The Owner's Manual For Maximized Living.

 
http://www.mercola.com/2004/oct/9/exercise_safe_fast.htm

 
http://www.mercola.com/2005/mar/19/adapting_body.htm