What glutues medius exercise am I doing?

[elfs]

Someone asked me which exercise I'm doing for the gluteus medius. This illustration in Men's Fitness shows exactly the exercise recommended to me by my physical therapist for my knees.

By the way, that's a great (and truthful) article, although most of what he says I'd already gleaned from other sources.

Comments

[urox.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much stabilizing muscle workout one gets from wii fit.

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

The article is good, but not completely truthful, or at least not completely accurate:

* Exercising "only" prime movers (e.g. on machines) can, in fact, increase strength in your stabilizer muscles, and generally does if you're seeing any improvement in your prime movers. In fact, it will increase the strength of every muscle in your body -- doing squats will add muscle to your biceps (though not as much as directly working your biceps will). What it doesn't do is give you the motor learning to use that strength effectively.
* Muscle mass, once gained, doesn't actually go away for about 30 days or non-use. It's expensive for your body to build, and your body won't give it up easily, until it's pretty convinced that it's really unnecessary. What *does* go away if unused for a week is metabolic adaptation and some motor learning.
* The chart about strength vs. power vs. muscle mass vs. endurance is pretty much just plain wrong, or at the very least misleading. For a given person, strength and muscle mass are directly correlated -- although different people will have different ratios of correlation, due mostly to their genetics. And the "endurance" is once again metabolic adaptation and motor learning, assuming you have enough type 1 muscle (the "slow twitch" fibers, that recover in 90 seconds) for the task to be endured. Power is a mixture of strength and metabolic adaptation -- you need the strength, and your body needs to know how to get enough fuel to your body to use it in short bursts.

Basically, the article does a great job of deconstructing the current fitness industry, which is great, because he's right: it's all marketing and moneymaking shams. It gives a decent way of actually training, that will actually work, which is also valuable. But, the reasons he gives for why it works, when he gives them, are pretty much wrong. There are three things in play: motor learning, metabolic adaptation, and muscle mass. These three things determine your strength and how you can use it.

For a sport, you need a threshold of muscle mass to get the job done, and you need the motor learning and the metabolic adaptation to use it efficiently for as long as necessary. In short, get strong and then just practice what you want to be good at, so you have the motor learning and the metabolism for it. Doing squats won't improve your rugby game if you already have enough muscle mass for the job. It certainly won't help you run longer, if you can already run for 20 minutes -- anything you can do for 20 minutes you can do for an hour, or 3 hours, or 8 hours, if your metabolism is up for it. The muscle makes no difference above that point.
All in all, I like the article. Its intent is clearly to help the reader "unlearn" the common pseudo-knowledge. I just wish he researched a bit more so that his positive assertions were also correct.

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

Basically, if you're doing something that's difficult for you, then it's doing some good. If you set the weights so small that you can do, say, 3 sets of 10 reps, that really isn't helping much unless you're drenched in sweat and panting heavily by the time you're done. If you set it so that you can do, say, 5 slow reps but not 6, that's going to help you a *lot*, and *fast*. That weight will change, of course, as you get stronger and/or more skilled at whatever you're doing. In general, as long as the time to "panting heavily and can't life anymore" is more than 45 seconds and less than 10 minutes, you're doing a lot of good. (Research shows that it's "more good" the closer you get down to that 45 seconds mark, but if you go below it, nothing really happens. However, it's *rough* to go from zero to hero in 45 seconds -- not a pleasant experience, often even dumping adrenaline into your body and triggering a fight-or-flight response.)

However...

If you want to change your shape, honestly, diet is at least 80% of it. Gaining muscle helps (muscle burns calories just by existing, and *building* muscle burns a *lot* calories specifically from fat), is great for health in a lot of areas, and I recommend it no matter your target shape. But, exercise alone won't really change your shape much. Sorry. :-/ Humans have a set-point for hunger (and metabolism) that keeps them generally where they are in terms of fat stores. So if you're skinny you generally need to feel stuffed to gain weight, and if you're round you generally need to feel hungry to lose weight. There are ways around the hunger, if you're willing to make drastic lifestyle changes, such as literally eating a very small amount every hour -- and by "small amount", I mean on the order of "a carrot".

If you want to understand a bit more about it, I recommend reading "the hacker's diet", particularly the bit about the "eat watch". (I don't endorse following the diet. It has a great explanation of bodyweight mechanics, though.) In short, 3500 calories equals one pound of flesh, so to lose one pound of flesh you eat 3500 calories less than you burn...which gets complicated by the fact that your body responds to higher burn rate by increasing hunger, and to lower consumption by lowering the burn rate. Also, note that "flesh" does not necessarily equal "fat" in that equation.

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

To clarify -- my first paragraph above is referring specifically to "gaining muscle and/or strength", the goals you stated. Not sure if that was clear, so I figured I'd just make it explicit.

In the middle paragraph, the "set point" I refer to is that of "stasis", not a particular weight or amount of fat. If a round person loses the weight and keeps it lost for a while (30 days-ish), the "set point" resets for that weight. Similarly, if a skinny person gains a bunch of weight and keeps it (for a week or so...it's skewed in the "gaining weight" direction), the "set point" resets to that weight. Basically, the set point aligns itself to whatever "normal" is for a given person's life, and it takes about a month to convince it of a new "normal". I realized that I could be interpreted as saying that people have a set point for a particular weight or size, and that's definitely not what I meant, so once again I figured I'd clarify. :-)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Humans have a set-point for hunger (and metabolism)...

Ah, but that mechanism has hackable bugs in it. You can put them at odds and optimize fat loss. The trick I've been using is to significantly increase the amounts of both protein and fiber in my diet.

The whole "a calorie is a calorie" statement doesn't have science behind it. A study of women on semi-starvation, rapid weight-loss diets showed that on a 1000-calorie-per-day diet of 90% protein, the women lost 0.9lbs/day. On a similar diet of 90% fat, the women lost 0.4lbs/day. On a similar diet of 90% carbohydrates, they gained 0.2lbs/day.

Hack the metabolism by giving your body plenty of protein, and hack the hunger with fiber. Pulses (lentils and legumes) are perfect for this.

Wake up, weigh yourself, and use a BIA scale to get your approximate fat percentages. Then, drink as much water as you can stomach and exercise for 45 minutes, drinking water constantly throughout. Have a massive Punjab breakfast of daal (a preparation of lentils) and eggs. Eat smaller meals of lunch and dinner, both from either an Indian subcontinent menu or a South American diet. Eliminate wheat, rice, potatoes, or sugar from your diet.

Do that six days a week (plan your "cheat" day and enjoy the heck out of it), and in three weeks you'll start to feel amazing. I've been doing it for six weeks, and where I used to have fucked-up knees, I can freakin' leap my stairs now.

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

You're not comparing calories to calories, there. Carbs take less energy to burn then fat or protein, so you're burning less. Your net calorie consumption, if you include the energy expenditure to metabolize it, is different with different nutrients. Also, depending on the carb (and various other stresses on your body), they go to fat instead of lean mass, which takes less burn as well. A Calorie is a unit of energy, and that's about it. A Calorie is a Calorie, period.

But, this is why I don't actually recommend following the hackers diet. It really doesn't differentiate between food types.

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

I should point out -- although I disagree with your stance on "no science behind" the "a calorie is a calorie" statement, I agree with all of your recommendations except exercising daily for 45 minutes. If you're exercising daily, you're doing it for reasons other than strength gain, or you're doing it wrong. If you want to boost your metabolism in the morning, 2 minutes of jumping jacks will do it. But the rest of it -- large breakfasts, smaller meals for lunch and dinner, eliminating simple-to-digest foods (e.g. starches, processed grain, and sugars) -- will give a large boost to your metabolism, and have a large effect.

I'd wager that your previously "fucked up knees" are also benefiting from generally lower inflammation levels in your body, which the diet you describe will do in spades. I've done the same thing to help my own knees. :-)