You Become What You Do. (Sort of)
By Tom Furman
S.A.I.D. means, “Specific Adaptation To Imposed Demands”. It means that when you train or adopt a regimen, you adapt to it specifically. This is often misunderstood. The most glaring example is the casual observation of a layperson when exposed to champion athletes or celebrities who are training for a specific role. Their belief is that if they adopt a similar regimen, they too will have the same outcome. This is not correct. It is a conclusion based on ignorance and perhaps a bit of arrogance.
There are three major ingredients to favorable outcomes:
- Proper Genetics
- Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs
- Consistent, Progressive, Hard, Training
Rarely athletes or individuals can neglect any of these three although exceptions exist and opinions vary.
Below are some examples of adaptation specific to genetics and activity. They are quite vivid.
Now some examples of upper body dominant activities and their physical outcomes.
When activity is distributed over four limbs and is more systemic, adaptation is more general in nature.
However realize, the above athletes are born that way. Gifted. No amount of will, grit or vibrational power will make you look like a gifted athlete, who is optimal for his sport, trains brutally hard for years and probably takes performance enhancing drugs.
As well, uninformed and ignorant fitness enthusiasts sometimes extrapolate images like this, to the age old, Sprinter vs Marathoner argument. They use a meme to avoid doing cardiovascular training rather than looking at the science. Rather than re-post the silly meme, I will direct you towards an article that properly and thoroughly de-bunks such nonsense.
“How do these examples and evidence influence our health and fitness goals?”
The first thing is to be aware of what activity, genetics and performance enhancing drugs can do. The second is to be aware of you gifts and limitations. An open, informed, mind, will examine reasonable outcomes and what is required to pursue and maintain them on the path to lifelong wellness and fitness.
The uniformed or incorrigible usually refer to athletes or fit celebrities in several ways. They are different depending on sex.
Women:
“I wouldn’t want to look like that.” (they probably can’t)
“She’s had a lot of work done.”
Men:
“Drugs?”
Or question their sexual orientation.
If you don’t fall into the groups who respond in such a manner, here are some guidelines-
1. Stay As Lean As Possible. While we live in an age where we avoid body shaming, health is affected by being over fat. There are two components to this. The cardiovascular risk and the stress on joints. The stress on joints is affected by bodyweight, even if it is muscular. Gravity wins.
2. Maintain Lean Body Mass. The longer you live, the weaker you get. As well, the smaller your muscles get. This is why someone who, “maintains their weight”, looks so drastically different in their senior years. Their fat has increased, their muscles are smaller and they move poorly.
The pathway to maintaining and building muscles, bones and connective tissue is through strength training. Not by stretching such as yoga. Strength training includes many variations. Other than the window in life where you compete in sport, find a methodology that you can do for the rest of your life. Realize there are no winning Lotto tickets for doing Snatch Cleans or Box Squats when you flirt with life altering injury. Your ego is not your amigo.
3. Improve Your Cardiovascular Ability. This involves cardiovascular exercise and not, “Lifting Weights Fast”, not doing, “Fran” or training like a Leopard. Physiologist Kenneth Jay explains it best —
“With an increased HR to VO2 relationship it will never be as good as typical cardio exercises. It is simple physiology really. Increased heart rate decreases the time available to fill the left ventricle of the heart, which means that the left ventricle will contain and eject less blood per contraction. This means that the “stretching” of the heart wall, which is necessary to increase your stroke volume and your VO2, does not happen. It’s the Frank-Starling mechanism in full effect and it’s basic cardiorespiratory physiology. Moral of the story: STOP thinking you can ‘get your cardio in’ by lifting weights — no matter how fast you lift them!”
If you insist that lifting weights is superior to aerobic exercise, (Which is a logical fallacy of, “avoiding middle ground”, since you can do both.) here is a rather detailed explanation of the different adaptations by Hybrid Athlete Alex Viada —
“Essentially this- heart rate itself is no indication whatsoever of “cardiovascular conditioning” or training- heart rate simply indicates either a neurological or endocrine stimulation of the SA node.
Weight training DOES strengthen the heart, in a way- when a heavy load is moved by the muscles, the vessels within the muscle temporarily occlude. The body releases catecholamines, and the heart rate increases to maintain blood flow not just to the working muscles (pushing against occluded blood vessels), but blood flow to the rest of the body (hindered by muscular occlusion). Note that NO additional blood is returning to the heart- the heart is simply pumping harder to maintain adequate perfusion. This strengthens the left ventricle (LVH)- this concentric hypertrophy of the heart DOES enable the heart to pump harder, but doesn’t carry with it ANY of the other benefits of cardiovascular training.
Low intensity steady state work is different. The momentary load from the muscles is not enough to occlude vessels- as work is done and metabolites created/fat broken down and oxygen needed (as a terminal acceptor in the ETC), the heart rate increases to provide MORE constant blood flow specifically to these regions. As there is no occlusion of these blood vessels, the rate of blood RETURNING to the heart increases as well. This means the heart is not just pumping out more blood, but filling with more as well. This eccentric hypertrophy not only increases whole-heart strength, the heart’s own support network (arteries), and vascular elasticity in the entire body, it also stimulates the benefits on a cellular level (mitochondrial density, etc.) that come with cardiovascular training.
LVH, combined with poor vascular elasticity, sudden heavy cardiac load, poor circulation, lousy cardiac perfusion, and stimulant usage is a GREAT recipe for afib, hypertension, and other health issues- which is essentially what a routine consisting of lifting and HIIT (only) can create.
So, to repeat, the work MUST be low intensity (low enough to NOT cause complete muscular contraction), the heart rate must be elevated but not so high that it is unsustainable, and consistent over the course of a given time period (steady state).”
So summing it up, you become what you do, sort of. If you want to go the distance, maintain or pursue leanness, get stronger and do your cardio. There is no point arguing genetics, which is unchangeable and often used to enhance anecdote.
For any further questions or for online fitness consultation, please contact me at physicalstrategies@gmail.com
