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I first came to Fit4Life on January 10th of 2007 weighing about 130 lbs. at 5’ 3” and age 55. The Fit 4 Life trainers worked with me not just on the weight training but also on my diet. She reviewed my food diary twice a week for a couple of months and directed me toward eating more (believe it or not), eating more often, and eating more healthfully. Within a couple of months, I became noticeably stronger, more energetic, and slowly but steadily began to lose weight….with just a few changes in my food choices. After nine months, I had lost nine solid pounds, my clothes were two sizes smaller (I had to have my clothes altered!) and I was “cut” as they say. No upper arm flabbiness. My muscles were defined. I could do more physical activity longer. Perhaps best of all, I just got the results of my annual physical exam blood work and every single item was in the “ideal” range. My triglycerides went from 309 to 117! I went from numerous blood tests showing “high” to
every one of them in the perfect range.
- Rayna Lancaster
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Soft tissue injury results from failure of collagen fibers. Injuries fall into one of two categories: microtrauma resulting from overuse and macrotrauma resulting from the imposition of a force that exceeds the structural strength of the tissues. Following injury, healing occurs in threes stages; inflammation, repair and remodeling.
Soft tissues respond to recent use, are changing constantly, growing stronger or becoming weaker. Even two weeks of disuse will result in a meaningful loss of soft-tissue structural strength, together with metabolic changes. Full recovery from two weeks of immobilization may require as much as six months of rehabilitation exercise. Perkins (Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 35B:521-539, 1953) noted: If not immobilized, an injured shoulder will regain a full range of motion within 18 days; but if immobilized for 7 days, recovery requires 52 days; immobilized for 14 days, recovery requires 121 days; immobilized for 21 days, recovery requires 300 days.
Immobilization produces losses in bone mass, and even a few weeks of immobilization may produce losses in bone mass that require a period of several years for full recovery.
In 1859, in The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin noted: In the domestic duck the bones of the wing weigh less and the bones of the leg weigh more in proportion to the whole skeleton than do the same bones in the wild duck. He attributed these variations to the domestic duck's reduction in flying time and increased walking time compared to their wild duck ancestry.
What to Expect from Fit 4 Life Physical Therapy Exercise
The potential for muscular size, and the potential for both muscular strength and functional strength, and these are different factors, varies widely on an individual basis, on the basis of age, on a basis of sex and on a racial basis. The result being that some people have far more potential than others.
Potential for muscular size is determined by genetic factors; is largely determined by the relative length of the muscle-belly compared to the insertion on the other end. Long muscle-bellies and short tendons provide the potential for unusual degrees of muscular size; while short muscle-bellies and long tendons mean a lower than average potential for muscular mass. Some people can build very great muscular mass, and some people cannot; they lack the potential for great muscular size.
The functional strength of an individual is determined by several factors; the size of the muscles, the type of fibers the muscles have, the relative length of the limbs and thus the leverage advantages or disadvantages, short limbs being a great advantage for a weightlifter but a disadvantage for a basketball player.
But given an advantage of leverage, and with large muscles, some people are still not very strong; but not because there is something wrong with their muscles; this problem is usually a result of the fact that such an individual does not have the type of muscle fibers required for great strength, but has muscle fibers required for endurance. So the fact that somebody else reached a certain level of strength or size does not mean that you can, too, nor does it mean that the style or amount of training that they used will be right for you.
But there are things that you can expect; you can expect to increase your strength from its starting level if you have never performed exercise for this purpose; you can expect to increase your muscular size; you can expect to increase your flexibility to a marked degree in some movements; and if you continue with exercise for several years you can expect to increase the size of your bones; and you can expect to produce all of these very worthwhile results without hurting yourself in any way, if you exercise in accordance with proper instruction.
1. TYPE OF RESULTS
Expect your muscular size and strength to increase steadily and rather quickly; six months of regular exercise may increase the strength of your muscles to twice the starting level for a previously-untrained individual. Muscles that you have never used to a meaningful degree will respond faster, while those that you have used will respond slower, but they will all become stronger, some by as much as several hundred percent.
Of particular interest for the primary subject of this book, the lumbar spine, most people have the potential to increase the strength of their lumbar-extension muscles to an enormous degree; primarily because most exercises do not work these muscles in a meaningful way, and because normal activities do not provide much work for these muscles. Many people can expect to increase the strength of these muscles by two-hundred percent within a few months, making them three times as strong as they were at the start, and some people can expect twice that degree of results. The neck of the average person usually has the potential for large and rapid strength increases; an area of great importance for preventing injuries, and also of importance for the rehabilitation of neck injuries.
2. DURATION OF RESULTS
Some of the benefits of exercise last for years, while some are temporary and are lost if the exercise is stopped entirely; in general, the longer you maintain a high level of strength, the more you will retain after you quit the exercise that increased your strength in the first place.
If your starting level of strength is 100, and if you quickly increase it to 200, and then quit exercising entirely and return to your normal activities that were performed before starting the exercise, your strength will not remain at a level of 200, but it will not drop back to 100; part of your strength increase was permanent. Increasing the strength of your lumbar muscles to a high level will reduce the chance of a later back problem to at least some degree for the rest of your life, even if you stop the exercise after reaching a high level of strength.
But if you maintain that high level of strength for several years by continued exercise, then you will not lose as much when you quit the exercise; you may lose 80 percent of a strength increase that was maintained only briefly, while you would probably only lose 50 or 60 percent of a strength increase that was maintained for several years. Secondly…having increased the strength of a muscle to a significant degree, and having then quit exercising and having lost a large part of the increase, the next time you start exercising the previous level of peak strength will be produced more rapidly; the body seems to retain a memory of where it has been, and will reach a previously-existing level of strength much faster than it did the first time.
3. BI-LATERAL EFFFECTS AND INDIRECT EFFECTS
In spite of the fact that most people are Type S, meaning that the results of their exercise are largely confined to the part of a muscle that is exercised; it is still true that hard exercise for a normal right leg will help to reduce the atrophy of an injured left leg that is immobilized in a cast; without such bilateral effect, you might lose 70 percent of the strength of the injured leg, while with such effect you may lose only 50 percent of the strength of the injured leg. A useful bit of knowledge for people working with injuries of the limbs.
Also...heavy exercises for the large muscles of the body produce at least some degree of size and strength to increases in other, smaller muscles even when no exercise is performed for these smaller muscles. The value in rehabilitation should be obvious; work all the muscles of an injured individual that you can; this will not only increase the strength of the exercise muscles but will help to prevent some of the atrophy that would otherwise result in the injured body part.
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