ANTIAGING BODYBUILDING
KNOW YOUR BODY TYPE
How to Define Your Body
Understanding how to define your body is an important
element of planning your fitness goals. If you are attempting
to change your body into something that is just not
feasible, then only dissappointment will ensue.
We need to understand our own:
Body Type
We each fall into one of three main body types:
- Ectomorph – thin and wispy.
A lot harder to build muscle and needs protein &
supplement support. More about keeping a good fat
cover. More prone to back injuries due to often longer
spine not supported by muscle structure. If flexible,
joints can be put under pressure from too much flexibility.
Need to build muscle and cartilage to support frame.
- Mesomorph – athletic and
strong. Easy to develop toned muscle. Performance
physique.
- Endomorph – stout and shapely.
Often large embedded muscle structure, need to strip
away fat to see it. Added weight adds more stress
to joints. Just as easy to gain flexibility. Harder
to lose weight. Avoid high impact – elliptical
striders are good.
All types can gain flexibility.
To
read more on defining your body in terms of female and
male body shapes, skin type, skin color, hair type.
Body Composition
Your aim in the Antiaging Wellness program is NOT
to lose weight. It is to build the optimal fat burning
body composition AND build cardiac fitness. By building
muscle mass and cardiac fitness you will AUTOMATICALLY
lose body fat. The balance between your lean muscle
mass and body fat is known as your ‘body composition’.
There are two components that compose body mass: muscles
and organs. Assuming that organ mass does not change,
lean body mass is a good estimate for your lean muscle
mass.
What this means is, on a typical weight-loss diet,
you will lose about 65% fat and 35% lean mass. When
you go off the diet, you gain the weight back. But you
don't revert to your original body composition. You
gain back 80% fat but and only 20% lean mass. Eventually,
every diet makes you fatter because it worsens your
body composition. It increases your fat and decreases
your muscles.
Muscle loss and fat gain is one of the indicators of
aging. Diets speed up your muscle loss and hence speed
up your aging. To offset that aging we must reverse
this trend by gaining muscle and losing fat.
This does not mean bulky body building muscle –
it means lean toned muscles that continue to burn fat
for you 24x7x365.
Working your body composition is the ultimate body antiaging
technique
The “Weight Obsession”
I am perplexed as to how “weight” became
the overarching measure of the ideal body. No-one really
wants to lose weight – what they really want is
to lose fat, gain muscle strength and definition, gain
“body tone”, gain movement flexibility etc.
The only time “weight” is a useful measure
is as a component of calculating body mass index or
body fat percentage.
So forget about it! Instead, focus on the antiaging-wellness
measures we have incorporated here. If you think about
it – a pound of fat has a greater visual mass
than a pound of dense muscle – its crazy and demoralising
to intensely follow ‘weight’ as a measurement
when you are focusing on building muscle. You can be
the same weight and yet have a totally different body
profile.
Also, when you first start limiting your calories,
your body is going to start burning through its glycogen
stores. These sugars are stored together with water
in the tissues and organs of your body ready for use.
That water weighs a lot, so it appears you have lost
body fat when you have only lost water. This water needs
to be replaced – and you find out your scales
have fooled you. Not very encouraging.
In addition, once your glycogen store reaches zero,
you will get really hungry, and tend to overeat. You
glycogen stores fill back up, along with another extra
a pound of body fat or so. This is the calorie diet
see-saw so many experience.
Muscle Mass
It’s much easier to lose muscle than build it
back, so the sooner you start your antiaging body building
program, the better.
Muscle mass is a combination of lean [long fibre] muscle,
and dense [short fibre] muscle. Your antiaging bodybuilding
program can be structured depending upon the volume
and number of the different types of muscle.
Types of Muscles and Loss
with Age
Body Measurement
There are a number of body measurements used in body
building. Some help determine the program protocol;
others help with measuring results.
- Heart Rate - used to measure cardiac fitness
- Body Frame Size - to determine the size and expected
weight of the skeletal structure [bones]
- Body Mass Index - to measure the muscle mass
- Body Fat - uses calipers to measure surface body
fat
- Strength Tests - upper body and lower body strength
measures
- Flexibility Measures
Customising Your Workout Routine to Your Body Type
Now you understand the benefits of an antiaging body
building fitness program, and what you can expect based
upon your body type, you are ready to start
designing you custom workout routine.
Before you do so, you may like to determine
your fitness personality to see what type of exercise
best suits to start.
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