Resistance is NOT Futile

I don’t know about you, but I used to have a particular image of the sort of person who would lift weights. Essentially, indeed, a “weight lifter” or “body builder”. Of course it turns out that it’s one of the most useful things ANY of us can do and all the more important for women in particular and all of us as we get older. It’s also the case that there is absolutely zero chance that we will accidentally bulk up like the woman in this picture. It takes a LOT of very specific work and a very high protein diet and perhaps some other assistance (no aspersions cast) to become like this. Indeed, it takes a consistent amount of dedicated work to produce even quite moderate muscle gains.

More accurately, really, we are looking at resistance training. Resisting the pull of gravity on the weight you are lifting, or the resistance of the strong stretchy band you are pulling on, or indeed the resistance of your own body against gravity. Make no mistake, you can get very strong indeed with just “bodyweight” exercises. They do, however, require a considerable amount of skill and balance in a way that other forms of strength training don’t.

In Thorny Rose we have been doing various bodyweight exercises which definitely “count” as resistance training - such as the Squat, the Wall Press Up, and the Plank Walk Out - and the fact that we do them slowly adds to the time under load and makes them more effective. You might recall that “eccentric” exercise is more efficient than “concentric” exercise, and extending (rather than contracting) the muscle under load builds muscle more quickly. I’m not saying that these are the only exercises you need to be strong and healthy, but if you were to choose three alone, these would be them.

If you have been doing these with the regularity that I’ve been suggesting, you will have prepared your muscles really well for upping the load. This conditioning stage is really important, to prevent injury and to embody correct movement patterns.

So why is resistance training so important?

Or another way of putting it, which makes the answer rather more obvious, is “why do we need muscle?”

The fact is that both men and women naturally lose muscle from the age of 30. If you did nothing to counteract that, you could easily lose 8% of your strength each decade, with the decline accelerating after the age of 60. Yikes! It doesn’t take much thought to realise that such a loss of strength will have real implications for our health - and safety - as we age. That whilst we don’t need to be hoiking scaffolding poles, we could easily get to the stage where we are unable to carry shopping or to get out of a low chair unassisted.

It’s also the case that the muscles, tendons and ligaments are the structures that support the joints, and having strong support around the joints is really important for our stability. If you are the sort of person who “goes over” on your ankles (I have been), you will know how unpleasant that can be, and how easy it is to cause injury that way. Our ability to “right” ourselves, to get our centre of mass back over our base of support, depends on a strong core and will determine to a very large extent whether that stumble turns into a fall.

But it isn’t just about future-proofing. Even if you have several decades still ahead of you, having a good strength to weight ratio now is really important for your health, and apart from anything else, will make you feel good.

There's an interesting article here about Joan MacDonald, pictured, and her route to health at an age when many would consider it too late:

So, aside from the benefits of being strong, what else does having decent muscle mass do for us?

Blood sugar regulation, including improved insulin sensitivity, bone health, joint stability, better blood pressure control, and hormonal and metabolic regulation. It also provides stress relief and mental health benefits. In truth, it’s also the case that having some mighty fine arm muscles does no harm at all to the ol’ self esteem!

Let’s look at this in a bit more detail:

If weight loss (or preventing gain) is an aim of yours, consider this:

Weight Management:

- Increased Caloric Burn: Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat, even at rest. For women, this means that maintaining or building muscle can help with managing weight and preventing obesity, which is linked to numerous health conditions.

In addition, muscle helps with Metabolic Health, via

- Improved Insulin Sensitivity: Women are at a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, especially after menopause. Increased muscle mass improves insulin sensitivity, helping to regulate blood sugar levels and reducing the risk of diabetes.

Bone Health:

- Prevention of Osteoporosis: Women are more susceptible to osteoporosis due to hormonal changes that affect bone density, particularly after menopause. Weight-bearing and resistance exercises that build muscle also help strengthen bones, reducing the risk of osteoporosis and fractures. This is because the muscle pulls on the bone during resistance training, and this pressure promotes an increase in density and also bone growth as an adaptation process.

Hormonal and Metabolic Regulation:

- Muscle mass helps counterbalance the decline in oestrogen during perimenopause and post menopause, which affects muscle and bone health.

- Improved Mood and Energy: Regular muscle-building activities can stabilise hormones and enhance endorphin release.

Mental and Emotional Well-being:

- Stress Relief and Mental Health: Exercise, particularly strength training, releases endorphins that can improve mood and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.

- Enhanced Cognitive Function: Physical activity that builds muscle is associated with improved cognitive function and memory. Remember this? I still find it one of the more surprising benefits. It used to be “brain or brawn” and now it appears brawn enhances brain! Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor is increased by resistance training. There’s a link here for a meta-analysis of data on this.

In summary, muscle mass is crucial for women not only for physical health but also for mental well-being, cognitive function, confidence, and quality of life across all ages. Additionally, it’s essential for those facing a reduction in oestrogen, since our ability to regenerate muscle stem cells plummets when we lose it. Resistance training - done in specific ways - can go a long way to counteract this loss.

As I mentioned before, we are already doing a form of resistance training when we do Squats, Wall Press Ups and various other exercises. But to really gain the benefit, we need to increase the load. The difficulty is that the more we ask of our bodies, the more we need to prepare them first, and this means warming up.

When we do body weight squats, we can ease into it over a few reps. We start off carefully, checking our hips, knees and ankles are aligned and happy with the movement, and we don’t have to go down very far. As the muscles start firing in the correct movement patterns, we can go a little deeper and, if we wanted to, faster. But once we start adding weights to the equation, it all changes, especially if we start adding weights that are heavy enough to do what we need them to do - ie, actually create strength. This means that proper strength training doesn’t fit into our lives nearly so conveniently as OTHEH does.

Of course, all we are talking about is a decent warm up, and that doesn’t have to be very complicated. My little “stomp up the hill, run down it” that I’ve mentioned a few times (I’ve probably mentioned it more often than I’ve actually done it now!) is perfect. But in any case, 10-15 minutes will do it, and of course the warm up itself is beneficial, and “counts” in its own right. The other thing is that, like HIIT, 2-3 sessions a week is plenty. And once you are lifting heavy enough, you need some good recovery time afterwards. There is also no reason not to do HIIT and strength training on the same day (other than the obvious fact that that is quite a lot of effort), and to do so would make it easy to fit in adequate “active recovery” days.

So a good warm up could be a walk-jog for 5-10 minutes, followed by some bodyweight squats, then full body extensions, thread the needle and some shoulder mobility. Generally, although not always, I favour full body exercises over isolation exercises (which work on a specific muscle group), but there is definitely a place for the latter. Some like to work the lower body one day and the upper body another, and core separately as well, and this does have the advantage of giving the worked area more time to recover. If you are having a “legs day” you can tailor your warm up to that area specifically.

We’ll go into specific warm ups for specific areas soon, but the important thing is to remember that you must do the warmup. Tempting though it is, it is not a good idea to have a 10kg weight by your desk and do bicep curls OTHEH. And if you used a weight that was light enough to not risk injury on cold muscles, it wouldn’t do anything to build strength.

So let’s look a bit at HOW resistance training works, because understanding the process can help you work out your best approach.

There are several mechanisms, but principally, muscle growth comes about because of ADAPTATION.

Adaptation can seem to be a disadvantage - as in when we adapt to eating less food by lowering our metabolism, or the exercise we regularly do has a less beneficial effect, meaning we have to change things up, but if adaptation were not a thing, we could never get stronger. Essentially what resistance training of any kind does is to challenge the muscle, and it responds, through various mechanisms, with growth.

Muscle tension, muscle damage and metabolic stress - none of these sound good, but they are actually the chief drivers of strength gain.

Muscle Tension: When a load is applied to a muscle, via resistance of some kind, the muscle is under tension. Muscles adapt to sustained tension by increasing in size and strength to handle future loads better. This is very much like the way HIIT causes glucose to be stored in the muscles rather than as fat, in case it is needed.

Resistance training causes microtrauma to the muscles - small tears in the muscle fibres. It is the repair process that creates increased strength. Many repetitions at very light weights will not do this - hence why we have to create the right amount of resistance.

Resistance training creates metabolic stress by causing the buildup of metabolic byproducts such as lactate, hydrogen ions, and phosphate. This stress induces a hormonal environment favourable for muscle growth.

Resistance training also stimulates muscle protein synthesis, the process by which cells build new proteins. This is essential for repairing and growing muscle tissue, and particularly important for women lacking the anabolic stimulation of oestrogen and testosterone.

Hormonal Response

Additionally, however, resistance training increases the production of anabolic hormones like testosterone, which are critical for muscle growth, and also Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), which, stimulated by resistance exercise, plays a significant role in muscle hypertrophy by promoting cellular growth and repair.

Neurological Adaptations

Initial strength gains from resistance training often result from improved efficiency in how the nervous system recruits muscle fibres. Better coordination and recruitment mean more effective muscle activation. This is essentially the process by which a movement, initially awkward and difficult, becomes smooth and easy.

Enhanced Muscle Fibre Activation: Over time, consistent training improves the body’s ability to activate and utilise more muscle fibres during exercise, contributing to greater force production and growth.

Muscle Fiber Hypertrophy

Resistance training can lead to hypertrophy in both type I (slow-twitch) and type II (fast-twitch) muscle fibres. Type II fibres, in particular, respond well to heavy, high-intensity loads and grow larger compared to type I fibres. Fast twitch muscle fibres are particularly important for explosive power and speed

Fibre Cross-Sectional Area: The increase in the cross-sectional area of muscle fibres contributes directly to muscle size and strength.

Adaptation Over Time

Progressive Overload: Continually increasing the resistance or intensity of the training ensures that muscles are consistently challenged, leading to ongoing adaptations and growth.

Rest and Recovery: Adequate recovery between training sessions is essential for muscle growth. During rest, the body repairs damaged fibres and builds new muscle tissue.

On a cellular level, it's the repair of the micro-trauma that causes the strength gain.

So, what is progressive overload?

Essentially, it’s repeatedly fatiguing the muscles (overloading) and as they become adapted, upping the resistance so that the overload continues. Overloading sounds dangerous, and of course it could be if you aren’t properly prepared, or try to up the weights too quickly.

Let’s clarify.

Doing high numbers of reps with low weights is not the way to gain strength. The best it does is promote a certain amount of muscle endurance.

If you can do 20 + reps of a “resistance” exercise, in a row, then the exercise isn’t really providing resistance.

So a good rule of thumb is:

12-20 reps is the preparation phase. Either as a warm up or as a “pre-hab”. That is to say, if you are unaccustomed to any kind of resistance training, doing a number of sessions of low weights and high repetitions would be a good way to align the muscle fibres and activate the recruitment patterns that you will later need. It would also probably indicate if there are any issues with particular joints. Doing these exercises in front of a mirror would be a good way to check form as well, and to notice any asymmetries.

8-12 repetitions is the “hypertrophy” range. You will tone and strengthen muscles and make noticeable strength gains.

It’s important to note that the rep range indicates the number of repetitions you can just about do. It isn’t that you select a level of resistance and do between 8 and 12 repetitions, it’s that when you get to a number somewhere between 8 and 12, that should really be the last that you can manage before losing form/recruiting some other body part for assistance. The last one should be really quite challenging, and you should feel that you definitely need a bit of a rest before going again. And 5 sets would be the absolute maximum you would do, but 3 is more common.

3-5 repetitions is where the real strength happens, and is only appropriate once you are properly conditioned via the 8-12 rep range, and thoroughly warmed up. Again, it’s the case that the fifth (or third, or fourth) rep should feel really challenging, so that you couldn’t do another one (“to failure”) and the rests between sets would be absolutely essential to allow the muscles to refuel.

Many women won’t end up here, because we don’t have the confidence that we won’t hurt ourselves, but if we follow sensible guidelines and progress carefully, we can minimise the risk of any injury or damage. Of course, examples of bodyweight exercises that readily fit into the “can only do a very small number (if at all) would be pull ups or push ups. Managing just one pull up is beyond most women, mostly due to our strength distribution, but the benefits of training to get there are enormous.

Many women fear that they might “bulk up” by lifting heavy weights, but that only happens for women (and most men) as the result of a sustained campaign of focussed effort, including changes to diet and lifestyle, and it certainly won’t happen accidentally.

This video of already really quite fit and strong women training to do a single pull up indicates clearly how challenging this exercise is for women.

On the other hand, we can do this. Not much of a compensation, if you ask me, and not nearly so useful if you are hanging off the edge of a cliff (you’ll need to watch the pull up video to get the reference), but hey ho.

If you are still a bit unsure about how to go about all of this, here’s a summary of the basic principles.

First of all, prepare your body well over a sustained period of time by doing bodyweight only exercises and the easiest variations, progressing gradually to more challenging versions (hold the plank in the plank walkout for longer, do the press ups off a worktop rather than against the wall, that sort of thing). If you’ve been following along on the daily suggestions regularly, you are well prepped.

Warm up adequately before adding any weight, which means that rather than 10 squats OTHEH, you might want to do longer sessions, but a bit less often. So you could warm up with a little jogging on the spot, do horse riding stance, do ten bodyweight squats, do another ten, and then add in some weights for another two sets of ten.

Add weights/resistance progressively, and carefully. Initially go for higher repetitions with lighter weights, in the 12-20 range, then work towards the 8-12 rep range.

If you want to build meaningful strength, you are looking to lift heavy (3-5 rep range) but don’t try to get there too quickly and make sure you properly understand the form of the exercises. A mirror or filming yourself can be a good idea here.

Do the exercises slooooowly. This means your muscles are under load for longer, you are fully engaging in the eccentric phase, and you are far less likely to injure yourself than you would be if you used momentum to hoik up the weights.

Rest properly afterwards. The strength gains happen in the time after the session, and rest is vital to that process.

Eat enough protein. You really do need protein to build muscle. There really aren’t any alternatives, it’s a necessary component and it’s easy to not get enough of it. There are many other good reasons to make sure it is a priority (see Protein Power).

Remember, “lift heavy” could mean lifting actual heavy weights, or it could mean pulling heavily on or pushing heavily against, a resistance band, or it could mean doing a variation of a body weight exercise where between 3-5 reps is the maximum you can do.

The next article on this topic will look more specifically at the exercises and the different options for doing them.

In the meantime, have a think about how you could fit some resistance training into your week. In particular, identify times when you are already relatively warmed up, when adding a few sets of a few exercises could be easily fitted in. Or indeed, how do you feel about setting aside a good chunk of time a couple of times a week and doing a more thorough work out? I’ve followed a programme like this a few times and it’s actually quite empowering to set that time aside (if you possibly can, small children and other commitments aside) just for you. Better self care than a hot bath, if you ask me, although the hot bath can be very soothing for tight muscles!