Taiji and sarcopenia

[Flying Crane]

The principles can be applied to body weight exercise effectively but there are limits to how effective they'll be for developing strength. I think bodyweight exercises are great, but if you're going for efficiency they're only useful until they no longer represent sufficient resistance. You should be able to do a lot with kettlebells, especially if you've got a good range of weights. It's easiest if you have a simple method to gradually increase the resistance on a near session by session basis, so to the degree you can do that with your kettlebell setup the better. Free weights with a bench, maybe a squat rack, and an olympic bar would probably be easier, but a good set of machines like you'd get in a gym would be better still. That being said, most people get a lot of benefit from just the basics of this kind of high intensity training even when applied to body weight exercises alone.

How often does one need to do these sessions?

Ive also got scuba weight belts that I can strap around my waist or across my shoulders to increase resistance on things like push-ups, chair dips, pull-ups, etc. I can pile up to maybe 40 pounds on those.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

How often does one need to do these sessions?

There are 3 different cases:

1. You are young and you want to add muscle.
2. You already have muscle. You want to maintain and you don't want to lose it.
3. You are old and you are losing muscle.

Case 3 is what I'm talking about. If your body weight start from 180 lb, your body weight start to drop to 160 lb, are you going to do something about it? I don't think by adding protein in your meal only can solve this problem.

The statement that "even money cannot buy a skinny body during old age" reflects a common belief that being thin is a sign of health, but this is not entirely accurate.

• Muscle Retention: It's important for seniors to maintain muscle mass, as losing it can lead to decreased mobility and health risks.
  

 

[MetalBoar]

How often does one need to do these sessions?

Ive also got scuba weight belts that I can strap around my waist or across my shoulders to increase resistance on things like push-ups, chair dips, pull-ups, etc. I can pile up to maybe 40 pounds on those.

Back when I owned a gym, I'd recommend that people come in and work out pretty frequently until we got them through the learning phase and had all their numbers dialed in (and I used to offer a very cheap starter package for this purpose), but that's only important if you're looking to make the fastest progress possible. Once you have solid form and have the weights dialed in so that you're hitting momentary muscular failure in the appropriate time window most peoples' workouts can be very infrequent and still see progress. This is especially true if you're doing any kind of martial arts conditioning or other activities that provide some significant stimulus to the muscles. There are other factors like your health, how hard you're able to push yourself in your workouts, and how well you retain motor skills when you don't practice.

To give some general guidelines, I try to do a high intensity workout about once a week and I find that to be pretty optimal for most people. Almost everyone can push their workouts out to every other week and still see regular, really good, progress - often only slightly worse than once a week. I've had clients who were slower to recover than the average who actually saw faster progress working out at this frequency. I've also had clients see noticeably slower progress (but still progress) with a 2 week break. They were often, but not always, clients who had either a hard time maintaining good motor skills or who were unable to push themselves to a deep level of muscular inroad. I've also had clients who traveled a lot for work or were otherwise unable to train for extended periods, like 2-3+ months in some instances, and most of them still progressed - just more slowly. If you train regularly every other week, have good form and retain those skills, are in good health, and then take a 4-6 month break you really aren't likely to see any really big losses and might even see slight gains. Even if you do see some small losses you will get back to where you were and then exceed your previous strength levels pretty quickly if you get back to regular training again.

It's also generally true that the more advanced the client the longer they can wait between sessions. More experienced clients have more ingrained motor skills and can usually push themselves a lot harder than newer clients. This means that they'd get a much deeper muscular inroad, which benefits from a longer recovery and they weren't going to be hampered by forgetting how to do the exercises.

One of the big down sides to longer breaks (more than about 2 weeks) is that you'll start to lose the metabolic adaptations you've made to this kind of training and you can end up winded and feeling nauseated because you haven't lost any strength or skill, and can push yourself really hard, but your body has forgotten what to do to manage the metabolic impact of the work. And again, it also depends on what you're doing in between. For most people, the more they're doing other forms of training, and the higher intensity that training, the longer they can go between workouts.

There's a lot of variables here so feel free to ask for clarification!

 

[Flying Crane]

Back when I owned a gym, I'd recommend that people come in and work out pretty frequently until we got them through the learning phase and had all their numbers dialed in (and I used to offer a very cheap starter package for this purpose), but that's only important if you're looking to make the fastest progress possible. Once you have solid form and have the weights dialed in so that you're hitting momentary muscular failure in the appropriate time window most peoples' workouts can be very infrequent and still see progress. This is especially true if you're doing any kind of martial arts conditioning or other activities that provide some significant stimulus to the muscles. There are other factors like your health, how hard you're able to push yourself in your workouts, and how well you retain motor skills when you don't practice.

To give some general guidelines, I try to do a high intensity workout about once a week and I find that to be pretty optimal for most people. Almost everyone can push their workouts out to every other week and still see regular, really good, progress - often only slightly worse than once a week. I've had clients who were slower to recover than the average who actually saw faster progress working out at this frequency. I've also had clients see noticeably slower progress (but still progress) with a 2 week break. They were often, but not always, clients who had either a hard time maintaining good motor skills or who were unable to push themselves to a deep level of muscular inroad. I've also had clients who traveled a lot for work or were otherwise unable to train for extended periods, like 2-3+ months in some instances, and most of them still progressed - just more slowly. If you train regularly every other week, have good form and retain those skills, are in good health, and then take a 4-6 month break you really aren't likely to see any really big losses and might even see slight gains. Even if you do see some small losses you will get back to where you were and then exceed your previous strength levels pretty quickly if you get back to regular training again.

It's also generally true that the more advanced the client the longer they can wait between sessions. More experienced clients have more ingrained motor skills and can usually push themselves a lot harder than newer clients. This means that they'd get a much deeper muscular inroad, which benefits from a longer recovery and they weren't going to be hampered by forgetting how to do the exercises.

One of the big down sides to longer breaks (more than about 2 weeks) is that you'll start to lose the metabolic adaptations you've made to this kind of training and you can end up winded and feeling nauseated because you haven't lost any strength or skill, and can push yourself really hard, but your body has forgotten what to do to manage the metabolic impact of the work. And again, it also depends on what you're doing in between. For most people, the more they're doing other forms of training, and the higher intensity that training, the longer they can go between workouts.

There's a lot of variables here so feel free to ask for clarification!

What is the recovery like, especially when someone begins a program like this? For a high-intensity session, it seems like it could leave you feeling sore and tired for more than a couple days afterward, which would hinder other things like martial training. How prevalent is that, and if sessions are once a week or once every two weeks, are you able to condition beyond that, so soreness dissipates more quickly?

How long does a session typically take?

 

[MetalBoar]

What is the recovery like, especially when someone begins a program like this? For a high-intensity session, it seems like it could leave you feeling sore and tired for more than a couple days afterward, which would hinder other things like martial training. How prevalent is that, and if sessions are once a week or once every two weeks, are you able to condition beyond that, so soreness dissipates more quickly?

How long does a session typically take?

My experience has been that most people don't get particularly sore from this kind of workout. A little sore maybe, but nothing like I used to sometimes get when I was doing conventional weight lifting. I can't promise that you won't end up with a significant case of DOMS, especially since you won't be working with me directly nor will you be using the same kind of equipment, but I doubt soreness will be a big obstacle to MA training. I could speculate about why that is but I don't have a perfect answer, I'm just glad that it seems to be true for most people.

Fatigue can be an issue for some people, though this tends to be a bigger problem for more advanced practitioners who've learned how to really achieve a deep inroad. It also doesn't seem to impact everyone to the same degree. I find that I need more sleep the night after one of my workouts and that if I don't go to bed early I don't want to get out of bed in the morning. As long as I don't both go to bed late and then get up early this largely passes after I've been up for a while and eaten breakfast, but I might still feel just a little fatigued and be ready for bed a bit earlier than usual. Again, as long as I got reasonable sleep this isn't anything that would keep me from wanting to do MA training and even if I didn't get reasonable sleep it probably wouldn't be enough that I couldn't have a good MA training session - it might just not sound like fun.

Muscular weakness post workout can also be an issue, again, especially for more advanced practitioners. It doesn't seem to impact everyone, and I could speculate about this too. It does impact me and I wouldn't want to do one of the conditioning focused sessions from my old Hapkido school (with its old school training) without a couple of days of recovery first. It isn't terrible though, and I could get through most any MA training session from any of the less hard core schools I've been to without it being more than a little extra uncomfortable, but I think it would still be sub-optimal, both in terms of recovering from the strength training workout and getting the most out of the MA training. I can get a lot of benefit out of a skill development focused MA training session the day after a workout. The movement is good for blood flow and I find it helps recovery, and the muscular weakness isn't so intense as to prevent me from doing technical work. That might not be true with something like BJJ, but I could definitely do FMA, Tai Chi, Muay Thai, and boxing classes with a focus on skills without an issue.

You can also modify your workout to largely avoid both the fatigue and, to a lesser extent, the muscular weakness, by reducing the number of exercises that you do in you strength training session. A pretty standard workout for me is something like chest press, seated row, hip extension, and leg press. I used to include 2 more big movements, but between being older and being able to acheive a much deeper level of inroad, I just can't do that and recover in a reasonable amount of time anymore. If I have something physical scheduled and I still wanto get some kind of strength training in, I've found that I can reduce volume, still get a great workout, and have much less fatigue and recover from the muscular weakness faster. I can also focus on the body parts that aren't going to be taxed by the other activity.

So, for example, if I was going to be hiking in steep terrain I might skip the hip extension and leg press so that my lower body was fresh. Or if I just didn't want to be fatigued, I might just do leg press and hip extension. I have fewer options now that I'm already down to only 4 exercises. When I was still able to do 6 I had a lot more choice about what I could drop and still get a full body workout in, still while reducing overall volume.

So, session length... This is the thing that gets me called a liar. New-ish clients would usually take about 20-30 minutes to get through 6-7 exercises once they'd achieved basic profiency and we had their weights dialed in. But time varies a lot depending on the practitioner's skill and ability to maintain good form with a heavy weight and the sessions get much shorter for advanced practitioners. I'm only doing 4 exercises for my primary routine, and I can maintain good form with very heavy weights, which means that I achieve momentary muscular failure in a very short time. The system I use only does one set to absolute failure per exercise, with no rest between exercises, so this means I'm done very quickly. Not counting the brief period of time it takes me to set up the machines, my workouts average right around 6 minutes and I'm wrecked afterwards for maybe 20 minutes. After about 5 minutes I can function and do things like cook dinner, but I'm mentally and physically pretty shot. Almost all of my advanced clients were under 15 minutes, many under 10, some in the same 6-7 minute range.

 

[Same Trick]

During old age, if you don't want to lose muscle, weight work out is a must. Most Taiji people don't like to work on the weight. I just don't know how they can deal with the "sarcopenia" issue.

What's your opinion on this?

Sarcopenia is the age-related progressive loss of muscle mass and strength. The main symptom of the condition is muscle weakness. Sarcopenia is a type of muscle atrophy primarily caused by the natural aging process. Scientists believe being physically inactive and eating an unhealthy diet can contribute to the disease.

Is getting old a disease?

Taiji practice doesn’t by far equal “being physically inactive”
The traditional exercise(the form) takes about 20 min to go through, a session of this should be three forms complete in a row that equals about one hour of “walking” in lower leg postures holding arms extended away from body while torso twist and turn.
Not only is it a good one hour of practice it also stimulate appetite making one hungry for nutritious and tasty food to support muscles with required nutritions