Top Exercise Mistake for Middle-age Adults

The top fitness training mistake for middle-age adults is forgetting to develop fast-muscle fiber, which makes up 50% of the body's muscles, says author of a new health & fitness book.

TOP FITNESS TRAINING MISTAKE
Dont forget your fast-twitch muscle fiber!

By Phil Campbell, M.S., M.A., FACHE

If you are middle-aged or older, or planning on becoming a fit middle-aged adult in the future, its critical that you exercise all three muscle fiber types-slow, fast, and super fast.

New research shows that anaerobic fitness training, the short, quick-burst, sprinting types of exercise can increase the body fat-reducing, muscle-toning, anti-aging, fitness hormone (HGH growth hormone) by 530%. But it takes fast-twitch muscle to do this type of training.

MUSCLE FIBER TYPES

You have three types of muscle fiber that make up your "muscles," and this is sometimes called muscle composition. The average person has approximately 60 percent fast muscle fibers and 40 percent slow-twitch fiber (type I).

There are two types of fast-twitch muscle fiber. The fast muscle (what the researchers call IIa) moves 5 times faster than the slow. And the super-fast (IIx) moves 10 times faster. And there can be swings in fiber composition, (Muscle, Genes, and Athletic Performance, September 2000, Scientific American, Jesper).

The following chart shows that while there are differences in muscle fiber composition, muscle types can be developed based on the way they are trained.

MUSCLE FIBER COMPOSITION

Muscle     Average     Sprint     Aerobic
fiber         person    trained    trained
type       
       
Slow
(type I)        40%    40%        55%
Fast
(IIa)           50%    20%        40%
Super-fast
(IIx)           10%    40%        5%

Sprinters have more of all three fiber types than average, and a higher percentage of the super-fast IIx. And endurance trained individuals have more slow muscle (type I). While we are born with slightly different muscle composition, the point is; super-fast muscle can be developed if exercised properly.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT?

Researchers show that anaerobic exercise (short, quick-burst, gets you out-of-breath) is the type of fitness training that increases HGH. And HGH is, without question, the most powerful anti-aging, and anti-middle-aging, body fat-reducing, muscle-toning agent known.

Yet, when we finish high school (perhaps with the exception of a few that compete in college and the small number that make it to the pros), we become slow-twitch exercisers at age 20. And this is a mistake!

Many may continue developing slow-twitch muscle (less than half of your muscles) with weights and cardio at the gym, and with jogging. If you think about it, we are starting the muscle atrophy process (the wasting away of muscle) on half of our muscle fiber ... AT AGE 20!

No wonder we have an obesity epidemic and this year, 650,000 Americans will hear their physician say, You have diabetes."

The cure for the obesity crisis, the cure the middle-age somatopause (metabolism slow-down), the cure for insulin resistance and (in many cases) diabetes, and the cure for the high cost of healthcare--is so simple, we keep missing it.

The cure is natural. It's free. But it can't be done overnight because the muscle fiber needed to perform high-intensity anaerobic exercise has atrophied (wasted away) beginning for most at age 20.

THERE'S GREAT NEWS

You can build back your fast-twitch muscle fiber (slowly at first) by performing plyometrics to build the fast muscle (IIa) and performing sprinting types of training to build the super-fast (IIx) to the point where you can release HGH through fitness training.

THE TAKE HOME

You may need to be doing more than working your slow muscle fiber with typical weight training, cardio, and jogging. But don't neglect slow-muscle training because this is 40% of your muscle fiber, and to a degree, it serves as a base for the development of the fast and super-fast muscle fiber.

Add fast muscle training to your workouts.

For More Information:
National Library of Medicine http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9255234&dopt=Abstract    

Free Newsletter available at www.readysetgofitness.com

By Phil Campbell,
Author of Ready, Set, GO! Synergy Fitness for Time-Crunched Adults Pristine Publishers Inc. 368-pages, 300 photo-illustrations, $19.95 www.readysetgofitness.com