03 The Importance of Building Muscle

This episode Adam discusses the importance of building muscle beyond just looking good at the beach or in a cocktail dress.  You will learn about of the profound effects building muscles safely has on all the organs of your body. Some questions answered in this episode are: Will I become more “toned” working out with low weights and high reps? What is muscle failure and is it necessary to build muscles safely.  What is the dose-response relationship and how does it apply to building muscle? If you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to [email protected].  Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question.  The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3.  To purchase Adam's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Power-Once-Week-Revolution-Harperresource/dp/006000889X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485469022&sr=1-1&keywords=the+power+of+10+book Ilf you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at [email protected] The transcription to this episode is below: 03 The Importance of Muscle - Transcript Intro: You’re listening to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with New York Times, best-selling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. Brought to you by InForm Fitness, life-changing personal training with several locations across the US. Reboot your metabolism and experience the revolutionary Power of 10, the high intensity, slow motion, strength training system that’s so effective, you’d get a week’s worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session, which by no coincidence is about the length of this podcast. So, get ready InForm Nation, your 20 minutes of high-intensity strength training information begins in 3, 2, 1. Tim: Alright. Welcome back to the InForm Fitness podcast with Adam Zickerman. My name’s Tim and we are at episode three, The Importance of Muscle. We’ll get down to that in just a minute but listen to that music in the background. Just kind of get that -- it’s got a good groove to it. Don’t you think guys? Adam: Mhm [affirmative]. Tim: Yeah? Mike: I sure as hell think so. Tim: [laughter] And of course was Mike Rogers, GM of InForm Fitness in New York City, who wrote and performed our theme music. What’s the name of that song, Mike? Mike: That song is called, “Allergic To The Medication.” I actually co-wrote that with my partner, Brian Lord, who currently lives in Portland, Oregon and hence the demise of the Hypertonics, that was our band. Tim: [laughs] Mike: But, you know, every once in a while, we pop out and we have a show every once, you know, to bring back the love but yeah, that was one of our favorite songs. Tim: Well, we’re going to put you on stage at our one-year anniversary show perhaps, maybe and we’ll have a show in New York and LA because that’s where we’re broadcasting from or podcasting from. Alright. Let’s get into it, guys. Let’s dive in. So, we’ve had a couple of episodes under our belt now. And if you haven’t had a chance to listen to episodes one and two, we invite you to go back and do so. Episode one, we talked to Adam Zickerman in great detail about Adam’s history, what led him to building his empire at InForm Fitness and this slow motion high-intensity workout which is what this podcast is all about. This show is for those that are looking to supercharge their metabolism, increase cardiovascular endurance and build muscle. That’s what today’s episode is all about, building muscle or just, The Importance of Muscle, beyond the obvious, guys. The obvious is, you know, functionality. We want to look good and get as many right swipes for all of you single people out there [laughs] I suppose. Adam, walk us through the importance of muscle. Not just the obvious, the things that we’re all aware of. Well, actually I do want, you know -- yeah. First of all, the obvious is not so unimportant. I mean, there’s so many things but let’s start with the obvious. Mhm [affirmative]. I mean, I guess the one obvious thing about building muscle would be looking better. Right? You know, looking chiseled, looking defined, looking strong, looking fit and that’s an aesthetic thing and that’s probably the obvious one. To me though, especially for baby boomers, I’d have to say that’s probably fifth on the totem pole of importance, you know. To me, probably the most important thing about muscle is the strength aspect that it gives you. To me, that is the foundation of any fitness program. Do you find that that is more prevalent, the importance of strength to, say, baby boomers because that’s when the age group that starts to notice that they’re not nearly as strong as they once were, is that why that’s at the top of their list? That’s exactly when they start to realize what’s important in life. [laughs] They have the family. They got the girl or they got the guy. Right. You know? They sell the BMW. They get the minivan and now they don’t want to be in pain anymore. [laughs] Now they want to be able to go play sports with their kids and not be in pain and to enjoy life and to not exacerbate or have the injuries they’ve had of their youth start creeping up on them. What this does, what strength gives you, it buys you more time to be pain-free because those injuries they’re lurking and as soon as you start getting weaker, those injuries start becoming more pronounced. The main way I think to keep those things at bay is just to not lose any muscle strength as we get older.     You know what I’ve noticed from all the years I’ve been training and really, really thinking about this and living it as well is that around age 30, you know, people, both men and women are losing muscle just from the nature of aging. Maintaining that has become and should become the priority in our life. I mean, everything sort of slows down a little bit. We start to store a little bit more fat. Our joints get a little weaker. When we’re playing sports, the little injuries that used to go away in a day or two sometimes linger a little bit longer, those little aches and pains and I mean, I’m an active guy and so that happens. A lot of it, what women think is toning, “Oh, I want to tone up. I want to tone up. I want to tone up.” Well, girls, that’s muscle. That’s what it is. It’s muscle and you get, you know, and you’re not going to bulk up, you know, and get -- you’re going to be the best you can be. Right, Adam? Why don’t we talk a little bit about bulking up? Alright. The thing about muscle is this, we all think that if you work out one way, the muscle will respond one way and if you work out another way, the muscle will respond the other way. For example, if you do -- the old adage is if you do heavy weights low reps, you’ll bulk up. Your muscles will get big and bulky. And the other thought would be if you do high reps, then you get toned. You get cut. That’s like ridiculous. Alright. When a muscle gets stimulated, when a muscle is fatigued, it makes itself stronger and the way it makes itself stronger is by creating more, what they call, myofibrils which are the cells within a muscle fiber and the muscle fibers get thicker and thicker and stronger and either it’s stimulated enough for that to happen or it’s not stimulated enough for that to happen. Period. It’s not like it’s going to bulk up one way -- a myofibril is a myofibril. It’s the sam...