Friday, February 24, 2012

Muscle Confusion: Keep your Body Guessing

As many fitness advisors and health professionals have noted for a while now, the best fitness programs are definitely the ones that provide different types of exercise for someone trying to get in shape. The term “muscle confusion” is often used, and it means simply that you do not do the same thing over and over. You continue to surprise the muscle or muscle group with all kinds of tricks so that it will continue to respond to the stimulation.


In some ways, muscle confusion is also meant to confuse the brain as well. The phenomenon known as “plateauing,” which many weightlifters and athletes experience, is just as much mental as it is physical. When someone plateaus, it means that they experience no gain in performance for the same amount of work done in the gym. This happens because exercises become mentally easier before they become physically easier. In actuality, you are repeating the exercise over and over again so that your brain will get out of the way and let the muscle actually do the work. Your brain does not become comfortable with exercises for about two weeks.

After this, the ease that you experience is simply the brain being comfortable enough to let your body handle the exercises. You have not actually improved your physical performance. However, if you keep your body guessing, your muscle must respond and will continue to grow, and your mind has no time to become familiar with the exercises.

The same type of effect occurs with inner health and nutrition. If you eat the same foods over and over again, your body will eventually develop a sort of defense against the vitamins and minerals becoming incorporated into your system, kind of like headache medicine (your tolerance increases the more you take it). However, the true advantage of exotic fruits like those contained in drinks like Monavie is that they surprise your body into accepting the nutrition in the drink. Monavie contains many fruits, such as the acai, which are very good for you.

If you incorporate the philosophy of keeping your body guessing in both your outer exercises and your inner health, you will experience the phenomenon of continually increased health over a long period of time. This is the philosophy of many cultures with people who live much more productive lives into longer ages, such as South American cultures and subcultures in the richer parts of Africa.

No comments:

Post a Comment