Evolution and Muscle

Our bodies and how they work and adapt to our environment was determined tens of thousands of years ago. Basic life was a series of feasts, famines, and physical exertion. Little stayed the same. We became very adaptive to maximize survival. Muscle was energy expensive, fat was money in the bank. Our bodies provide only enough muscle to meet our activity levels (use it or loose it) and stored excess caloric energy as fat. What was good survival adaptation then is a guarantee to a less than optimum body in today’s food abundant and leisure environment. Only if your work, hobby, or specific fitness plan includes proper diet and significant strong muscle activity can a person hope to have and keep the strong fit body we all admire and desire.

If you eat more than you expend you get fat. If you diet, your body reacts as if a famine exists. It lowers your metabolism, conserves fat stores to allow longer survival, and burns off expensive to maintain muscle tissue. Net, you loose weight by burning muscle and fat. When you reach your objective or fall off your diet the famine is over, metabolism increases and excess calories will be stored as fat. Muscle will only be restored if your physical demands require it. Over time we become more fat and less muscular. Metabolism drops, making the process worse. What to do?

There are two basic choices to regain/obtain the lean muscular body we all desire.

Not So Smart - Conventional diet and exercise - Limited caloric intake and aerobic exercise (run, walk, tennis, etc.) to burn off fat, along with conventional weight training with free weights or ROM (range of motion) machines to stimulate muscle growth. Basically this method tries to recreate the environment of our evolutionary past, and it works, but it requires large expenditure of energy and our personal time, often causing us to abandon the project.
Smart - Measured Intensity Training - Muscle science based, clinical trial proven method of stimulating maximum muscle, bone, & sinew growth with a few seconds of exercise a week. Along with a controlled caloric diet that assures the body that there is no famine occurring, it thus prevents the fat conserving, muscle burning, and lowered metabolism condition. After a short time (weeks/months)(after all it took us years to get out of shape) you have replaced lost muscle and perhaps gained new muscle that consumes ~60 calories/day for every pound of muscle. The stimulus that causes muscle growth raises human growth hormone, testosterone, and other rejuvenating hormones that improve most all body functions.

Select # 2 and TrainSmart (Pete Cisco's label for Static Contraction Training he refined from clinical trials from the 50's).