Description
There’s something eerily upside down about the fitness industry – the multi-billion dollar behemoth of magazines, supplements, apparel, etc. “You too” – supposedly – “with the right protocol and discipline can an elite marathoner, win Mr Olympia and can compete in the Tour de France.” No doubt, some individuals do scale these physiological pinnacles and we celebrate and reward those rare best-of-breed individuals that come out on top; but the status quo peddled by the Fitness-Industry-Complex that these anomalous achievements are remotely and realistically scalable by the majority is not only setting false expectations but doing serious harm to individuals.
What is fitness? Is it the ability to bend your feet over your head, is to complete an ultra marathon, is it to deadlift a small car or is it a VO2 max test? And how is fitness even correlated to health? It’s undeniable that small bouts of activity will no doubt bring some positive skew on both health and fitness relative to sitting at home binge watching TV. However, is there an indefinite positive correlation between fitness and health? What if you have a top 1% percentile VO2 max but your knees are pre-arthritic from the many years pounding the road – you’re arguably fit – but for sure not healthy. In the pursuit of my own health, I’ve spent the last 36 months exploring and redefine words like “fitness”, “health” and “exercise”. Below is a distillation my current position and what you need to do.
Health = “the physiological capacity of an organism to continue living”.
Fitness = “the physiological capacity of an organism to exert itself above a resting threshold”
Exercise = “the appropriate stimulus dose that enhances health via a positive physiological response.”
Exercise therefore cannot be:
1) a high skill activity where incorrect execution leads to injury
2) an activity that underdoses the stimulus resulting in a negligible physiological response
3) activity that overdoses the stimulus resulting in a negative physiological response
4) an activity that (for the sake of maximising fitness or skill for example) actually decreases health
An example of (1) could be deadlifting or squatting under load – get it wrong and kiss your spinal discs goodbye. (2) Anything too easy that doesn’t challenge you. And an example of (3) and (4) is for example ultra long distance running. The research is clear cut: long distance runners increase their risk profile for: cardio vascular disease, debilitating osteoarthritis, arterial fibrillation, tendonitis, recurrent upper respiratory infections, loss of bone density, liver and gall bladder disorders, depletion of lean muscle tissue, muscle damage, kidney dysfunction (renal abnormalities), brain damage, and spinal degeneration.
EEEEK – and this is to just name a few!
The point being made is simple: initially, fitness and health have a weak positive correlation up a point. Then they negatively correlate such that higher echelons of fitness are achieved only with an impairment of health.
Muscle Is The Key!
Muscle is incredibly important to health! When muscle is appropriately fatigued, a deep stimulus signal is sent. The stimulus signal is not only localised at the muscle level but spreads to multiple sites and systems across the physiology at multiple levels: adipose tissue, liver, pancreas, bones and brain. Deep dive into myokines if you’re really interested.
MEDW has been built to maximise this signal via calculated time under tension and therefore make the maximum contribution to your health.
The really good news is that with MEDW the signal is so deep that you'll need on average 7 days to recover – imagine all the free time you'll have to do what you want to.
