The premise of all strength training is the concept of overload and recovery. Muscle fibers are made up of long strands of protein, and overloading the muscles to the point of failure during weight training causes microtears in myofibrils, the tiny proteins that force the muscle cells to contract. This activates satellite cells located on the outside of the muscle fibers to accumulate at the point where the damage occurs (much in the way that white blood cells gather at the site of skin lacerations). In effect, resistance training triggers an alarm that the muscle is falling apart, and the substance the body uses to fix it—the glue, as it were—is protein.
That’s why scientists such as Maddalozzo also emphasize a muscle-friendly diet that will complement—and, to a certain degree, compensate for—the bare-bones, let’s-get-through-this strength-training programs that most people are likely to follow. “Unless you eat the right diet, you won’t get the best benefit from strength training,” says Fred Hahn, a trainer in New York City. “You absolutely must have an adequate intake of protein for your body to adapt to the stress.” In Wolfe’s 2006 study in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, “The Underappreciated Role of Muscle in Health and Disease,” he argues that the present recommended daily allowance of protein, 0.36 grams per pound of body weight, was established using obsolete data and is woefully inadequate for an individual doing resistance training. He, along with many others, recommends an amount between 0.8 and 1 gram per pound of body weight.
Strength training conforms to all the puritanical dictates that I, along with countless other men my age, spent our youths repudiating: You have to keep track, you have to keep improving, and it hurts. The weight room occupies the basement of a nearby classroom building. The room is clean and airy, with neat rows of machines and free weights, just a few small mirrors, and at this hour, to my relief, no students. Still, my heart sinks. I have never liked gyms of any description. They all seem like places of confinement, regimentation, and pain. Despite the dawning of a new age of muscle awareness, this still seems true.
To steel myself, I recall some of strength training’s well-documented, no-nonsense health benefits: bone density…resting energy expenditure…protein metabolism...blood lipids. The promises we heard about running in the 1970s and ’80s we now hear about weight training. In fact, some experts, such as Greg Anderson, an elite trainer in Seattle, maintain that weights and diet are all you need; you don’t have to do traditional cardio at all.
Of course, I’m not the only former countercultural desperado who has to be dragged off the running trail and into the weight room. Recognizing that resistance training is less convenient and, by and large, requires more concentration than aerobic training (you can’t linger over erotic fantasies as you do while laying down the miles at lunchtime under a canopy of Douglas fir), various researchers are trying to determine rock-bottom minimum workouts for muscle-mass maintenance.
Maddalozzo’s strength-training program, which he teaches others and practices himself, is one of these new programs: It’s two 30-minute sessions a week, comprising one set of eight full-body, multijoint exercises (see “The Busy Man’s Workout,” below). Each exercise consists of eight to 15 reps, at 60 to 80 percent of “maximum perceived effort,” with the final rep performed to the point of voluntary failure. “I work 60 hours a week, and I have two kids at home,” says Maddalozzo. “I don’t have the time or interest to spend hours in a gym.”
“We’ll start with the squat,” he says, leading me across the floor to a bare barbell. “That’s the fundamental lower-body exercise. You need basic leg strength for your running and also for general functioning, for movements such as getting in and out of a chair.”
Getting in and out of a chair? “How much weight?” I ask coolly.
Maddalozzo hesitates. “Before we talk about weight,” he says, “let’s see a squat with no resistance.” I reach for the barbell, but he stops me. “We don’t even need that for now. Let’s just see you do a squat.”
I squat, or at least I give my version of a squat. I begin by pushing out my knees, and then I bend from the waist with my shoulders curled forward. “Not like that,” says Maddalozzo. “You need to keep your back flat and your shoulders square, and drop your buttocks.” He demonstrates the proper form with striking ease and fluidity.
