Ep. 92 - The Real Secret of Why Exercise Works

Welcome healthy friends to the reality of health podcast. Well today, we're going to talk about why exercise actually works. This I feel is a very interesting episode. So for all of you who like to work out and wonder why you don't make any progress or those of you who want more muscle. Or those of you who don't understand even why you need to work out.

This is for 📍 you.

At the end, I'm going to tell you how to maximize your results. But first. For those of you who like information and knowledge. Let's get right into it.

It's all about the parasympathetic nervous system. Oh boy. Erik's going to get all excited now that's his favorite subject? Well, it's one of mine. That's for sure.

If you don't know, your autonomic nervous system is what's running in the background. You have sympathetic and parasympathetic.

Sympathetic is where you get epinephrine and adrenaline. Parasympathetic. Utilizes Acetylcholine. Here's the secret. I'll tell you right off the bat. And if you care to know more, keep listening. When you stimulate the sympathetic nervous system during exercise. Then all the results show up afterwards because the parasympathetic side. Is what tells the body to heal or overcome stresses?

So when you lift heavy weights, You're utilizing the sympathetic. Then when you're resting the parasympathetic kicks in and makes your bones or your ligaments or your tendons stronger. The most important part of exercise is not the actual activity. It's the rest. I can't stress that enough. It is the secret. To all exercise. Matter of fact. You don't even lose weight while you're exercising.

You lose weight for the next two days after exercise. When the body has to reset itself. From what you did. With whatever exercise you utilized. So here's how this works. When you're exercising, you're in fight or flight. So your heart rate increases. Your respiratory rate increases,

sweat gland start. Blood flow to muscles increases blood flow to your GI tract will slow down. You'll increase your epinephrine. And adrenaline. And all whole lot more than that. Then after exercising for the next two days or so you enter a parasympathetic state. You'll have increased blood flow to your stomach. Small and large and intestine your liver, your pancreas, basically all your glands and organs start to kick in. Which by the way, make you healthier. Then.

You have decreased blood flow to your muscle and your heart and your respiratory rate will start to slow down and even out. Quick note on food intake and working out. You don't want to consume big meals, like many hours before you work out or

like a small meal, at least one or two hours before you work out and like a snack, you know, about an hour before, that's it, the best way to work out is without food in your stomach.

Food tells your body to rest and digest and puts you into a parasympathetic mode.

You want to be in the sympathetic mode as much as possible when you're working out. Trust me. You'll have plenty of energy. Your body will kick in and secrete glycogen. If it needs it. Otherwise, depending on the type of workout you do. You either going to burn fat or sugar. You don't need food in order to work out, you don't need a protein shake or an energy drink or any of that other stuff to work out. 90% of sports nutrition is brought to you by sports, nutrition companies, selling sports supplements. I am not. I spent my entire life learning, studying, and knowing how to use supplements. And the truth is different than almost 90%. Of what you've ever been taught or sold to believe. The only circumstance is if you are compromised in your health and in some way you need help with the supplementation.

Let me ask you a question. Who is stronger. A powerlifter or a bodybuilder. Do you think that muscle makes you strong? Do you think that your bones make you strong? How do you connect muscles and bones? That would be with connective tissue. Things like your ligaments and your tendons.

You see you connect.

Bones to bones. With ligaments and tendons connect muscles to bones, both of those need to be strong. And in good health In order for you to lift well, anything. My left. Bicep tendon. Is not good right now. So I have pain in my left shoulder.

How much do you think I can live with my left arm right now? Not very much. Till I correct that. That left arm is weak.

So what fires your muscles? That would be your nervous system. What fires electricity in your body? That would be minerals. How does electricity travel in your body? That would be from water first. How does that electricity run through the water? That would be through your nerves. Your nerves are protein. That have minerals in them. Your brain says to contract a muscle, where does it get the electricity from? In order to do that. That would be from the store of electricity in your body. Remember your body is a battery. You're an electrical being. Once you fire that electricity that's stored in your body that your brain said to fire.

That muscle. It sends that electricity through that nerve

using water and minerals all the way to that muscle. How many times is it going to do that before the body says, wait a minute. That's a whole lot of firing and I can't do this anymore. Then it says to itself in the parasympathetic. I need to make myself stronger. Than what I'm trying to do. How's it going to do that? Well, does that with making the connections that utilize muscle and structure, which is your skeletal system, your bones and your muscles combined.

I want you to think about how you can lift a seriously heavy object? With a rope. And pulleys. The rope is your muscle. It's not that strong on its own. But when you wrap that muscle through a pulley, You increase its ability to lift a heavy object.

When you wrap that rope through a pulley and another pulley. Now you have strength. Because you're going back and forth. So now let's say. You do that three or four times. You have increased exponentially, the power of lifting, a heavy object with just a simple rope, not even a thick rope. And if you haven't noticed in this analogy, a thick rope would be a big muscle. You know, like one from a bodybuilder. You don't need big muscles to lift heavy objects.

You need strong pulleys. Your strength has nothing to do with the size of your muscle. Your strength has to do with how strong your bones are, how strong the connective tissue, holding your muscle to your bone is. Strong ligaments. Strong tendons, equal strength. How does your body turn lifting a weight or any other form of exercise from just a movement to strengthening your body's structure and its overall system. Does that from stimulus through the autonomic nervous system?

Yes. Yes. Erik, we know you love the autonomic nervous system. Boy do I? It's so cool. Isn't it. I want you to picture a tree that's never seen wind. Okay, now he's getting existential. Yeah. Yeah. It grows to be a big and tall tree. And then all of a sudden, one day a heavy wind comes by. Do you think that that tree is going to withstand that wind? Or is it going to fall over or break or branches breaking off? Now picture a tree. That grew up. Let's say from a seedling. In the wind, its entire life.

Do you think that any wind is going to knock that tree over or break branches? No way. That tree is accommodated for those stresses. Your muscles are the tree branches. Not the structure of the trunk. And the roots. In this analogy.

So do you want bigger muscles? You have to build. Stronger bones and stronger connective tissue. Then you have to learn how to activate your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.

Now. Are you ready? This is how you maximize your results.

Everything. You've done in exercise. Is still good for you. But if you want the most out of it, then you need to learn this one technique.

Since the most advantageous part of exercise is utilizing the parasympathetic side. Then you want to get into the state of para. As quickly as possible.

Let me preface this. It depends on your workout, like yoga or running or something where there's not a lot of fast, powerful movement. You can still use this principle in whatever type of exercise you're doing. The key is to apply it during exercise.

So let's say you're playing tennis. Well, you're not really going to utilize this technique or racketball or anything that is constantly utilized in the sympathetic state and you never get a break. Everyone has different reasons of why they're exercising. If you're just exercising to have fun. Don't worry about it.

I'm going to tell you, just enjoy yourself. If you're exercising in order to lose weight or build muscle or live longer or be healthier. Then this is the technique. You ready? You want to do whatever output you are doing and then come down to the lowest baseline you can. So, let me illustrate this.

You want to bring yourself from zero to 10 and then back to zero as quickly as possible. Whatever you're doing. Do it to its full potential. And then as quickly as you can bring your heart rate down, Relax. Calm down to the lowest state you can get to. So you go from the lowest state to the highest state, to the lowest state. And the faster you do that, the better outcome you will get. It's like a drag race. You're at the start line. Just sitting there not doing all that much. Your car is an idle and then the Greenlight hits and you go and you're going full throttle all the way. Then as soon as you cross that finish line, you let off and you hit the brake and you come down to zero as quickly as possible. The benefits of this. are extreme. They are three to four times greater than any other way of utilizing any kind of exercise whatsoever. The best idea of this. Is like a sprint.

You go from rest to as fast as you possibly can to immediately rest. Let's say you lay on the ground on your back, put your knees up. Hands on your chest and then concentrate on getting your heart rate down as fast as possible.

Anything like that. will work. Let's say you're playing soccer, you're sprinting, and then you aren't sprinting and you're calm and then you're sprinting and then you're calm. You see? In football. You're not doing all that much. And then the play starts and you're all out. And then you're calm again. That calm state to high output state to calm state in a quick short format. And if you can go from as lowest as you possibly can, to the highest state you can to the lowest state.

And back up. To the highest state that you possibly can, the better.

Let's say you're doing. Hit training. H I I T training High intensity interval training. You want short high-intensity you go from doing zero. Heart rate low. To as fast as you can for a short duration of time down to zero and bring your heart rate down. That's awesome.

Basically you want to go from zero to a hundred to zero, again, as quickly as possible.

So think about it. And whatever way you're working out or exercising or playing a sport. Any time you can do that. You're getting the most benefit. You increase muscle, you decrease body fat, you decrease inflammation, you increase bone strength, you increase connective strength, your tissue strength and your central nervous system is in super good condition. It increases the length of your life.

It increases your metabolism. It creates the proper charge input into your body and the proper discharge output of your body. I remember your electrical being charge in charge out. The better you do that, the healthier you are. The worst exercise or movement is things like jogging. You're in a constant sympathetic state and you never get into parasympathetic. If you look at a marathon runner, they're skinny, they're boney. They also have a high visceral fat content in their abdomen. When you look at a sprinter. sprinters have really good muscle tone.

Great strength. And extremely low, if at all. Visceral body fat. I did a visceral body fat episode. It's totally interesting highly recommend it. I hope you're getting the gist of what I'm trying to say. The basic principle is go from lower. To high, back to low as quickly as possible. Then what Erik. Well, time to rest. If you did one day, a week of five or 10 minutes of low to high to low super-intense. That's better than five or six days working out a week, doing something that doesn't actually stimulate your nervous system. And that goes for all exercise.

Oh,

wow.

Now I'm exhausted. Just trying to bring this topic to you.

This is just a primer. We'll talk more about this subject in the future. Don't worry. I just want to help you think about the basics of why you actually need to exercise. What are the results come from? They come from your central nervous system first, then your body responds and has to overcome from the input you have given it. Like tennis or football or Pilates, weightlifting, sprinting, or any number of.

Exercises. Sports.

I'm curious, Erik. Are you going to give us the best forms of exercise in an episode? Oh, You would like that? Absolutely. I will do that for you. Well, since you're asking my opinion, I would love to give you what I find are the best exercises for all kinds of 📍 benefits.

Well, I think that's it for today.

Thank you for listening. I appreciate all of you. Please subscribe. If you haven't and take care of yourselves. I'm out.