How to activate muscle fibres

I loved the headline of the front page of today’s Times of India: BJP winner, Cong Zero and AAP hero. People like Arvind Kejriwal bring home the point that honest efforts, put with complete focus and determination, have the power to move out of their way the biggest of hills/mountains (read Congress). I am inspired. Are you inspired too? Let us together bring about a fitness revolution. I know it’s a big dream.. but we can try, right?

This article is for those who think that it is only cardio that helps in fat burning. The thing is, cardio does help in fat burning to some extent but this type of fat burning reaches a plateau soon. And as soon as the plateau is reached, the normal cardio activity will only create a calorie deficit for the day. And as soon as that calorie deficit is compensated for, you stand a chance to gain all the lost weight. I will explain this calorie deficit thing with an example:

You do an aerobics class today and burn x number of calories. Along with it you decide to eat less number of calories, so for today your calorie input is less than your calorie output. You have created a calorie deficit for today. In simple words, this calorie deficit means that you have ‘burned’ more calories than you have consumed.

The question is: does this burning of calories or calorie deficit make us slim or make us lose weight? That depends on where the calories/energy came from. Did it come by burning the fat deposited in our body, or by burning the food that we ate earlier in the day or the day before?

I will tell you where these calories come from. For the obese, it comes by burning the fat deposited in their body. This is the reason obese people start losing weight even if they just start walking. But then there comes a stage where they will kill themselves on the treadmill or spinning bike or any other cardio activity but the fat will not budge. Welcome to the weight loss plateau.

The calorie deficit philosophy is very very old now. Honestly, just paying attention to calorie deficit does not make you slim, especially if you have reached the weight loss plateau. As I said, you might not be burning fat, but burning calories from the food/blood sugar that was there in your blood at that time.

When we exercise, we derive energy from different pathways. It is very very important to understand the energy pathways for different exercises. I will discuss this some other time.

I have been told many times by people that they have been doing this and have lost a lot of weight with it, but that is not working for them any more. They keep getting their weight back as soon as they are off the track.

On the other hand, I have also been told many times by people that they did this, then switched to that, and now they are in a condition where even if they take a workout break for 1 week at a stretch or if they cheat very frequently, they do not gain weight easily. Fat loss being long-term or short-term depends highly on the kind of training and eating you undertake.

So generally, what helps in long-term fat burning? The answer is simple – muscles, variety and maintaining a stable blood sugar level by eating small, simple meals every two hours.

I want to talk about muscle activation today. I hear this term quite often in my gym and yoga class. The coaches keep telling us to “activate your core muscles” and “activate your leg muscles”. Initially, I used to feel lost, but then one one day, I asked my coach to make this instruction more explicit. Here is what it means:

When we lift a very very light shopping bag, we do not feel any tension in our muscles. Neither do our arm muscles feel tired after lifting the bag for long. But if we lift a 10 kg shopping bag then suddenly our arm muscles get tensed. They become tighter. And soon they get tired too.

Now this is an example of activation of arm muscles. It is the tension in the muscles that activate them. And it is this tension in the muscles that is conducive for muscular growth.

One more example: you are often asked to activate your leg muscle. How to do that? Pull your knee caps up. Your quads muscles will take up a shape. They will acquire some tension. And that’s it – the leg muscles are activated!

To go deeper into muscle fibre activation, I want to introduce you to some important terms related to it:

1. Concentric Contraction

The simplest example of this is the bicep curl. There is a resistance, say a dumbbell, in our hand. There is already tension in our muscles. Now we curl our bicep muscles to make that resistance (dumbbell) travel some distance against gravity. By Newton’s law, force x distance = work. So basically we work out our bicep muscles by curling that weight.

The time in which we do it indicates the power we apply using our bicep muscles. How? Force x distance / time = power (remember?). Now this power comes from the curling or coming together of bicep muscles.

The more the power developed in our muscles, the finer/dense/stronger muscle fibres we develop. Think of power lifting and think of fast twitch fibres that I talked about here.

2. Isometric Contraction

Is it just curling of muscles that build muscles? Nope. Think of a plank. Our muscles are of the same length in a plank. They are not changing in length. They are not curling. And yet, after a few seconds into the plank, we start feeling dead. All the core muscles in our body get worked up. That means an exercise like the plank, in which muscle length does not change, can also create tension in the muscles.

Does that mean it also activate the muscles? Yes, such exercises are called isometric exercises. They activate the deepest of muscles – the stabilizer muscles. The sexiest, leanest and the strongest bodies are of those who have a well-trained stabilizer muscles. They have the best posture. Look around and check out the bodies of well-conditioned people – fighters, athletes, Deepika Padukone!

3. Eccentric Contraction

After holding a 10 kg weight in your arms for, say, 10 minutes, you feel an immense burn which means your muscles have exhausted the energy to hold the weight. So you will slowly bring you hands back to the starting position. At this time, your bicep muscle is doing an action opposite to that of curling action, i.e., this time the muscle is lengthening and is still under under tension. So that means that even while lengthening the muscle is activated.

Just two final points I want to make:

1. When we contract our muscles using these three forms of activation, we subject our muscles to wear and tear. So after we are done with the workout, our muscles go into repair mode. This is the reason it is advised to eat good quality, natural proteins as a post workout meal (proteins repair, you see). Also at this time, the muscles need energy to do the repair. Where does this energy come from? Muscles help in fat burning. Heard that before? Now you know how the reason!

Muscles also need rest after an intense session. We rest, we eat good food, our muscles repair, we build new muscles. All of this, at the expense of fat burning. How cool is that?

In your workout, have all three types of contraction. Do less reps but use heavy weights. Do slow weight lifting, power lifting, stabilization exercises, et al.

2. When you work any muscle then make sure you work all the muscles surrounding that joint. So if you do a crunch for abs then do a superman or a bridge pose for the back. A plank is a superb core workout. In a plank we engage all the core muscles, i.e., muscles surrounding the spine, like abs, back, traps, gluteus, etc. For a strong spine and for strong spinal muscles, plank it up!

Stabilization exercises are enough in themselves. No Superman after Plank. Do abs after superman! Start the plank, close your eyes and feel the muscles that are engaged. These muscles make up the core. One minute into the plank position, you will feel the core muscles better. Try it!

There is more to muscle fibre activation and fat burning. Do functional training, walk with weights in your hands (farmer walks), lift typres, climb ropes, sit by the wall without a chair, do yoga, pilates, sprinting, power skipping, plyometrics, power kicking, HIIT.

Challenge yourself with variety.