Month: October 2020

When Is The Best Time To Walk?


Walking is one of the simplest  way to increase your activity. This is because you don’t need to learn something new or buy special equipment. Most people can find time to walk but if you have all the time in the world you might ask  when is the best time to walk?  Compared to walking at other times during the day, walking in the evening seems to offer the most benefits. Here are a few.

5 Health Benefits of an Evening Walk

What do you do after dinner? Hopefully, you don’t spend most of the time after dinner in front of the television or a computer screen. One after-dinner activity that has positive benefits for your health is taking an evening walk, and there are substantial benefits to doing so. Let’s look at some of the health perks you get from walking after dinner.

Better Blood Glucose Control

Studies show that a walk as short as 10 minutes after meals can improve how cells handle glucose and help with blood sugar management. That’s important whether you’re diabetic or not. A study found that subjects who took a 10-minute walk reduced their average blood sugar level. In fact, 10 minutes after a meal was more effective than a 30-minute walk at other times of the day. Their blood sugar dropped, on average, 12% more during the after-meal walk than at other times. So, take a deep stretch after a meal, lace up your exercise shoes, and take a walk, even if it’s short.

Reduce Exposure to Blue Light and Improve Sleep Quality

Using a device that emits blue light, like a tablet or smartphone, at night can disrupt your circadian rhythms and your natural sleep cycle. In response to blue light exposure, a tiny gland called the pineal gland in the brain produces less of the sleep hormone melatonin. That’s bad for your sleep and your metabolic health. Avoid using devices that emit blue light within two hours of sleep time. Any kind of light in your room at night is detrimental to sleep, so make sure you’re sleeping in complete darkness.

Studies show that walking, even in the evening, improves sleep quality too. You get the most benefit from walking in the morning, but some research shows that evening walks are favorable for sleep too. Plus, being outdoors helps relax your sympathetic nervous system and this makes it easier to fall asleep.

Relieves Stress

Walking outdoors is the ultimate stress reliever. A 2015 study found that nature walks reduce activity in the pre-frontal cortex, a portion of the brain that’s overactive when you ruminate or worry. By dialing back the activity of the pre-frontal cortex, you reduce negative and obsessive thoughts that keep you awake at night. Plus, walking causes changes in levels of brain biochemicals, like serotonin, that affect mood. Depending on the length or intensity of your walk, walking can also boost the release of feel-good chemicals called endorphins that help ease pain and improve mood. Bonus: you can also use walking time to meditate. In fact, some people refer to walking as “meditation in motion.”

Helps Digest the Last Meal of the Day

Exercise can have both positive and negative effects on your digestive tract, depending on the intensity of your movements. Light exercise, such as an after-dinner walk, boosts blood flow throughout your body, including your digestive tract, to aid in digestion. Plus, walking helps push trapped gas through your digestive tract and out of your body. However, more intense exercise, especially exercise that causes your body to bounce, can cause or worsen digestive issues for some people. The key is to keep the intensity light. Don’t speed walk; keep it leisurely.

A Different View of Nature

Walking outdoors in the day exposes your eyes and ears to the sights, sounds, and aroma of nature – trees blowing in the wind, colorful flowers and foilage, and animal life. But there’s still beauty in nature after the sun goes down. You can enjoy looking at the stars and planets overhead and feel how small you are, yet a part of everything that exists. A change in perspective can also inspire new thoughts and stimulate creativity. How often do people stop to glimpse at the stars? Make sure you’re still doing it by stepping outdoors after dinner. It beats watching television!

References:

DiabetesSelfManagement.com. “How to Lower Blood Sugar? Take a 10-Minute Walk After Meals, Study Says”
PsychologyToday.com. “Want to Sleep Better? Go for a Walk”
BadGut.org. “Physical Activity and Digestive Health”
Villoria A et al. Physical Activity and Intestinal Gas Clearance in Patients with Bloating. American Journal of Gastroenterology. 2006;101:2552-7.
Harvard Health Publishing. “Sour mood getting you down? Get back to nature”

Can You Build Muscle by Lifting Light Weights?

If you’ve ever watched powerlifters training, you’ll see they lift heavy weights. In fact, the weights they train with are so heavy they can only do a few repetitions before their muscle fatigue and they have to stop. The method they’re using, heavy weight and low repetitions, works well for maximizing strength gains. That’s because lifting very heavy weights maximally recruits fast-twitch muscle fibers, the fibers best suited for generating force.

Bodybuilders, in contrast, use weights that are a bit lighter and do higher repetitions, usually in the 8 to 10 repetition range, before their muscles fatigue. Research suggests that moderate weight and higher volume is a better formula for muscle hypertrophy or building new muscle. When you build new muscle tissue, your muscles increase in size and look more defined.


Why the discrepancy?

Powerlifters and bodybuilders have different objectives. The former wants to maximize strength gains while bodybuilders focus more on aesthetics, like having good muscle definition. But what if you lift lighter weights, weights that are so light you can do 20 or more repetitions? Older research suggests that lighter weights increase muscle endurance, but can they build muscle size too?

What Study Shows about Muscle Hypertrophy and Lifting Lighter Weights

Researchers at McMaster University put lighter lifting to the test. They divided healthy, experienced weight trainers into two groups. The first group lifted heavy weights, equivalent to 90% of their one-rep max, the maximum amount of weight an individual can lift for one repetition.  One-rep max is a rough measure of a person’s strength. So, these guys were lifting heavy. The second group lifted weights that were 50% of their one-rep max. Because the first group worked with heavier weights, they were limited in the number of repetitions they could do and performed 8 to 12 repetitions. The second group was able to complete 20 to 25 repetitions before fatigue set in.

The exercises they did were compound exercises that worked multiple muscle groups and they did the exercises until their muscles reached failure, the point where they couldn’t complete another repetition using good form. After 12 weeks, researchers compared their muscle gains.

Were there differences in muscle development between the heavy and light lifters? To see, they checked markers of muscle protein synthesis in the blood and did a muscle biopsy to see how their muscles had changed. Despite the differences in the weight they used and the repetitions, both groups gained similar amounts of muscle.

Another study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology came to similar conclusions. In this study, two groups of men did leg exercises using a resistance equivalent to 80% of their one-rep max. Both did 3 sets of leg exercises but one trained to muscle fatigue while the second trained to muscle failure, where it was impossible to complete another repetition. A third group did 3 sets but used a resistance equivalent to 30% of their one-rep max, much lighter and trained to muscle fatigue. The results? All three groups enjoyed similar gains in muscle.

What This Means for Building Muscle?

You can build muscle size lifting weights as long as you lift until your muscles are thoroughly fatigued or close to muscle failure. It’s not a good idea to take every set to complete muscle failure, as this requires more recovery time and places too much stress on your muscles. So, if you don’t enjoy lifting heavy, you can still increase the size of your muscles using lighter weights. The key to success is working the muscles to fatigue. Your muscles should feel spent by the end of each set.

Although lighter lifting works for building muscle size, it’s not as effective for increasing muscle strength. Beyond the early stages of strength building, where you can make gains with lighter weights, you need heavy weights to maximize strength gains but the same isn’t true for muscle hypertrophy. In fact, higher volume and more repetitions, up to a point, is favorable for hypertrophy gains.

Regardless of how much you lift, you have to increase the challenge over time by increasing the resistance once a set becomes easy at the current weight. Another option is to increase the number of reps or do more sets. With this method, you increase total training volume, so your muscles have to work harder There are other ways to increase progressive overload too. Don’t let your training become stagnant.

The Bottom Line

You don’t have to lift heavy to increase muscle size but lifting lighter weights will limit your strength gains. The key to building muscle size with lighter weights is to fatigue your muscles. No cheating!

References:

Eurekalert.org. “Lighter Weight Just as Effective as Heavier Weights to Gain Muscle, Build Strength”

  1. Neurophysiol. 90, 2919-2927 (2003).

Brett Contreras. The Glute Guy. “March Research Round-Up: the Muscle Fiber Types Edition”