The New Rules of Lifting for Life: An All-New Muscle-Building, Fat-Blasting Plan for Men and Women Who Want to Ace Their Midlife Exams

Year of my birth: 1957 is generally acknowledged as the height of the post–World War II baby boom. The 4.3 million recorded births in 1957 were a U.S. record until 2007, when 4.317 million were born.

Decline with age: I got this from countless sources—individual studies as well as textbooks. I probably referred to these two more than any others: Melov et al., “Resistance exercise reverses aging in human skeletal muscle,” PLoS ONE 2007; 2 (5): e465; and “Strategies for Aging Well,” by Christina Geithner and Diane McKenney, in the October 2010 issue of Strength and Conditioning Journal.

Pet peeves: In order of annoyance, my personal list would go something like this:

1. Blocking the dumbbell rack to do shrugs, curls, or worst of all, lateral raises. I have no idea why people do this when they could just as easily step back a few feet and not block the rack. I also have no idea why the worst offenders are advanced male lifters who should know better.

2. Squeezing me out of my implied exercise space. I absolutely hate it when I’m warming up or doing core exercises on the floor and someone comes along and drops their foam mat right in front of me. In my gym they do it so they can see the clock or the nearby TV on the wall. It prevents me from doing any exercise that involves taking a step forward, which usually means I have to go somewhere else to finish that part of my routine, even though I was using the space first.

3. Turning iPod music up so high I can hear it ten feet away. I’m one of the last holdouts against plugging your ears in the gym. I hit on the reasons why it could be dangerous for newbies in Chapter 1. For people who aren’t a danger to themselves or others, my only issue with personal music is that it should stay personal. I shouldn’t have to listen to it. I know I sound like a cranky old fart when I complain about this. So I’ll also note that when I’ve asked people to turn down their music, they’re always surprised to learn that I can hear it, and no one has ever taken my request the wrong way.

I could list one more annoyance—talking on cell phones in the weight room—but it’s everyone’s pet peeve, and I’m sure I don’t need to explain why.

Strength decline in elite weightlifters: “Aging Alibis,” by James Krieger and Dan Wagman, Pure Power, March 2003.

Looking older: Gunn et al., “Why some women look young for their age,” PLoS ONE 2009; 4 (12): e8021. (This study included a brief overview of aging and appearance for both genders, which is where I got the data about balding and graying.) Guyuron et al., “Factors contributing to the aging of identical twins,” Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 2009; 123 (4): 1321–1331.

Rural Okinawans: You can find a good overview of what we know from longevity research at bluezones.com, which is based on The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived Longest, by Dan Buettner (National Geographic Books, 2008).

Jack LaLanne: I wrote at length about LaLanne on my blog: louschuler.com/blog/jack-lalanne-and-the-limits-of-human-mortality. If you go there, you’ll find links to several articles and posts I wrote over the years. In a follow-up post (louschuler.com/blog/sports-spelling-and-genes), I have links to news reports about Jack and his brother.

Muscle Beach: I’ve read so much about Muscle Beach over the years that it’s hard to remember what I know from which source. Here are a couple of books that I keep on my shelves: Remembering Muscle Beach, by Harold Zinkin with Bonnie Hearn (Angel City Press, 1999); and Muscle Beach: Where the Best Bodies in the World Started a Fitness Revolution, by Marla Matzer Rose (L.A. Weekly Books, 2001).

Health-club chains: The company now known as Bally Total Fitness bought up both Vic Tanny’s and Jack LaLanne’s health-club chains, as well as the old Nautilus chain and others. Interestingly, Bally started as a company that made pinball and slot machines and then branched out into the casino business. From there it began buying up health clubs in the 1980s. The first gym I belonged to, in 1980, was still called Vic Tanny, although by then Tanny himself was long gone from the business.

There’s a direct line from Tanny—who expanded his clubs on a pyramid-scheme model that depended on the fees from members of existing clubs to fund construction of new ones—to Bally, which has gotten into trouble multiple times for its rough and deceptive business practices. If you belong to a gym that’s part of a chain, and you’re frustrated with the way it does business, it’s probably not reassuring to know that aggressive marketing and poor customer service aren’t an aberration. They’re pretty much the traditional business model.

Jeanne Louise Calment: I admit I got this from Wikipedia.

Aging and human performance: This information comes from too many sources to record, including the aforementioned studies cited for Chapter 1. So let me throw a plug in here for a book that was tremendously helpful and that I thoroughly enjoyed reading: The Athlete’s Clock, by Thomas Rowland, M.D. (Human Kinetics, 2011). I also interviewed Dr. Rowland for a feature in Men’s Health magazine (September 2011), although I don’t think I used any information from the interview in this book.

Mitochondria and telomeres: I mostly used this study: Lanza and Nair, “Mitochondrial function as a determinant of life span,” European Journal of Physiology 2010; 459: 277–289.

Lifters rarely use appropriate weights: Although this section refers to a bunch of studies published between 2004 and 2008, these three were the most noteworthy: Ratamess et al., “Self-selected resistance training intensity in healthy women: the influence of a personal trainer,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 2008; 22 (1): 103–111; Glass and Stanton, “Self-selected resistance training intensity in novice weightlifters,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 2004; 18 (2): 324–327; Glass, “Effect of a learning trial on self-selected resistance training load,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 2008; 22 (3): 1025–1029.

The first study showed that even women who worked out with a personal trainer tended to choose weights that were too light to elicit strength gains. The third study, a follow-up to the second, showed that when entry-level lifters were given detailed instructions on how to lift, they still chose weights that were too light. They also stopped their sets well short of the point of muscular fatigue.

Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky: I specifically refer to the study previously cited as Melov et al. I also refer to two terrific articles from The New York Times Magazine: “The Incredible Flying Nonagenarian,” by Bruce Grierson, published in the November 28, 2010, issue, and “Can Exercise Keep You Young?” by Gretchen Reynolds, from March 2, 2011. Dr. Tarnopolsky is quoted in both.

Senior lifters compared with young non-lifters: Candow et al., “Short-term heavy resistance training eliminates age-related deficits in muscle mass and strength in healthy older males,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 2011; 25 (2): 326–333. I’ve quoted similar studies in previous NROL books, which arrived at similar conclusions: If you take seniors who are healthy and active but not currently lifting, a strenuous program will give them strength equal to healthy young people who aren’t currently lifting. Old lifters can become good lifters, but they can’t become young lifters. The best they can do is match young non-lifters.

Controversies: In early drafts of this chapter, I included more information about the Squat Wars of 2009 and 2010, which began with an article by Mike Boyle called “Build Bigger Legs, One at a Time.” It was first posted at T-nation.com on August 3, 2009 (I edited the article), and advocates the exercise we call the Bulgarian split squat instead of the traditional barbell back squat. Mike later released a series of DVDs called Functional Strength Coach 3.0, which, despite its innocuous title, was marketed aggressively with a focus on Mike’s aversion to back squats.

NSCA v. Boyle: For details on the battle, go to strengthcoachblog.com and search for posts tagged “NSCA.” As far as I know, the NSCA hasn’t offered its side of the story, so it remains unclear if the revoked speaking invitation was entirely, partly, or not at all a result of the Squat Wars.

Back injury without back pain: Jensen et al., “Magnetic resonance imaging of the lumbar spine in people without back pain,” New England Journal of Medicine 1994; 331: 69–73. I chose this one, to be honest, because it was the first I found that offered the full text free online. This is a continual dilemma for journalists. Not every important study is available without a subscription to the journal in which it’s published. Some journals charge more than $30 to access a single study. The abstract is always free, but I hate to reference studies I haven’t read. The most telling details are often in the graphs and charts. I end up paying for some; others come to me from friends, colleagues, and occasionally the researchers themselves. But most of the studies I use are either from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, to which I subscribe, or free online.

Small spinal fractures: Soler and Calderon, “The prevalence of spondylolysis in the Spanish elite athlete,” American Journal of Sports Medicine 2000; 28 (1): 57–62. I heard about this study in a lecture by Eric Cressey at the 2011 Perform Better Functional Training Summit in Providence, Rhode Island.

Injuries that become problems years later: I found a specific case-study description on page 53 of Low Back Disorders (Human Kinetics, 2002), by Stuart McGill, Ph.D., professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. I also refer often to Dr. McGill’s other book, Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance (Wabuno Publishers, 2004). You can find both at backfitpro.com.

Jonathan Fass, DPT: Jon is currently the private physical therapist and sports manager for His Royal Highness Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. He’s based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. You can find more info at jonathanfass.com and hear him on thefitcast.com.

Back pain statistics: I got these from the second edition of Rehabilitation of the Spine: A Practitioner’s Manual (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007), edited by Craig Liebenson, D.C. Most of the stats are on pages 52 and 53. Others are on pages 4 and 34. The information about the risk of sitting is on page 300.

But I’d be selling the textbook short if I pretended this is the only information I used. Along with Dr. McGill’s books, Rehabilitation of the Spine was on my desk throughout the writing process, thoroughly highlighted and bookmarked.

Twins: Nyman et al., “High heritability for concurrent low back and neck-shoulder pain: a study of twins,” Spine 2010 (epub ahead of print).

Muscle imbalance and knee injury: The New Rules of Lifting for Women (Avery, 2007), p. 121.

“Break the Work Out/Pig Out Cycle”: This is from prevention.com. I found it by Googling “work out pig out,” and was surprised to see it was written by my friend Martica Heaner, Ph.D. (for the record, one of the smartest and most compassionate people I know in the industry). By pure coincidence, Martica supplied me with some of the weight-loss studies I used in this book. If you decide to find and read the article, make sure you check out the comments at the end. Last time I looked all the comments were from spammers who claimed to have lost weight by (1) wearing magic shoes; (2) taking magic supplements; (3) watching a magic TV show (The Biggest Loser); and (4) driving a Cadillac without brakes. If we ever get to a point when spambots write better comedy than actual comedy writers, civilization will officially have ended.

Twelve-week exercise program: King et al., “Dual-process action of exercise on appetite control: increase in orexigenic drive but improvement in meal-induced satiety,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2009; 90: 921–927.

Problems using fat for energy: Hopkins et al., “The relationship between substrate metabolism, exercise, and appetite control: does glycogen availability influence the motivation to eat, energy intake, or food choice?” Sports Medicine 2011; 41 (6): 507–521. I referred to this review study for the entire section.

Metabolic effects of strength training: Although a lot of the information in the second half of Chapter 4 falls under the category of “stuff everyone in the fitness industry acknowledges to be true,” I used information from this research review: Strasser and Schobersberger, “Evidence for resistance training as a treatment therapy for obesity,” Journal of Obesity 2011, Article ID 482564.

Increased efficiency and slower metabolism following weight loss: Rosenbaum et al., “Energy intake in weight-reduced humans,” Brain Research 2010; 1350: 95–102.

Skepticism about value of core training: There’s certainly an opposing view to our approach to core training. In an earlier draft of NROL for Life, I described some of the pushback, using these sources: “To Crunch or Not to Crunch: An Evidence-Based Examination of Spinal Flexion Exercises, Their Potential Risks, and Their Applicability to Program Design,” by Bret Contreras and Brad Schoenfeld, Strength and Conditioning Journal, August 2011. Okada et al., “Relationship between core stability, functional movement, and performance,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 2011; 25 (1): 252–261. See also “Are Crunches Worth the Effort?” by Gretchen Reynolds, New York Times, August 17, 2011.

Importance of squatting: This comes from Athletic Body in Balance, by Gray Cook (Human Kinetics, 2003), p. 46.

Self-limiting exercises: This is another Gray Cook concept, found in Movement (On Target, 2010), pp. 231–233.

Vulnerable shoulder position: Kolber et al., “Shoulder injuries attributed to resistance training: a brief review,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 2010; 24 (6): 1696–1704. This paper, which rounded up all the available research on the subject, found a handful of exercises consistently linked to shoulder pain and injury: barbell bench press, behind-the-neck lat pulldown and shoulder press, parallel-bar dip, barbell back squat, and chest flies. I discuss the study at length in Chapter 12, which covers pushing exercises. I mention it here because the back squat forces your shoulders into a vulnerable position, where your arms support a load that often exceeds your body weight.

Bad back/strong back: This is from Advances in Functional Training, by Mike Boyle (On Target, 2010), p. 115.

Cook hip lift: Also from Advances in Functional Training, pp. 106–107. The exercise is called the Cook hip lift, after physical therapist Gray Cook, whose work is cited for Chapter 8.

Alan Aragon/The Fitness Summit: Alan writes the outrageously informative Alan Aragon Research Review each month; check it out at alanaragon.com. I met Alan in 2008, when he presented at The Fitness Summit for the first time. He’s been back every year since, where he joins an annual lineup of speakers that includes some of the most interesting and forward-thinking fitness and nutrition professionals in the United States (including Alwyn in 2007). It’s held in May each year; find out more at thefitnesssummit.com.

Leucine importance: Kim et al., “Dietary implications on mechanisms of sarcopenia: roles of protein, amino acids, and antioxidants,” Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry 2010; 21 (1): 1–13.

Weight of average Americans: “Poor Choices, Not Aging, Pack on Pounds,” by Nancy Helmich, USA Today, June 23, 2011. The data in the article came from the National Center for Health Statistics. I clipped the article when I was in Las Vegas to speak at the International Society of Sports Nutrition annual conference, and was so intrigued by the data that I went to the NCHS website to find the rest of the data that I put in the chart.

We move less: The New Rules of Lifting for Abs (Avery, 2011), pp. 193–194.

Wired to store fat: Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss and the Myths and Realities of Dieting, by Gina Kolata (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007).

Capitalism: The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, by David A. Kessler, M.D. (Rodale, 2009).

Corn: Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, by Greg Critser (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan (Penguin, 2006).

Your friends make you fat: A good explanation can be found in “Beating Obesity,” by Mark Ambider, in the May 2010 issue of The Atlantic. A good refutation can be found in “Catching Obesity from Friends May Not Be So Easy,” by Gina Kolata, in the New York Times, August 8, 2011.

Bad choices/messy lifestyles: Mozaffarian et al., “Changes in diet and lifestyle and long-term weight gain in women and men,” New England Journal of Medicine 2011; 364 (25): 2392–2404.

Nineteenth-century gluttony: At Home: A Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson (Doubleday, 2010), pp. 81–82.

Size of U.S. presidents: I’m a sucker for anything that combines health and fitness with history. I got the presidential proportions from a variety of sources; my favorite is “Medical History of U.S. Presidents” at doctorzebra.com.

Volume of food needed to gain weight: Katan and Ludwig, “Extra calories cause weight gain, but how much?” Journal of the American Medical Association 2010; 303 (1): 65–66; Barry Levin, “Why some of us get fat, and what we can do about it,” Journal of Physiology 2007; 583.2: 425–430; Hall et al., “Quantification of the effect of energy imbalance on body weight,” The Lancet 2011; 378: 826–837. At the time I wrote the manuscript, the groundbreaking research by Dr. Kevin Hall’s team hadn’t gotten any mainstream media coverage that I knew of. But right around the deadline, Jane Brody wrote a series of articles in the New York Times focused on the obesity epidemic. “Why Even Resolute Dieters Often Fail,” published September 19, 2011, focused on Dr. Hall’s studies.

Food alone explains weight surge: Swinburn et al., “Increased food energy supply is more than sufficient to explain the U.S. epidemic of obesity,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2009; 90 (6): 1453–1456.

Movement to counteract weight gain: Lee et al., “Physical activity and weight gain prevention,” Journal of the American Medical Association 2010; 303 (12): 1173–1179.

Food palatability and weight gain: This is from the Barry Levin study cited immediately above.

Denis Leary quote: It’s from No Cure for Cancer, his 1993 comedy album. I edited the quote, leaving out an obscenity that doesn’t change the basic idea.

Don’t gain weight in the first place: Also from the Levin study.

“Know your Kryptonite”: This advice comes from Nate Miyaki, a personal trainer and bodybuilder, whom I interviewed for a feature called “Smash Your Records” in the September 2011 issue of Men’s Health.

Brian Wansink: Dr. Wansink’s research is catnip for journalists. There’s always something interesting and counterintuitive. The Cohen and Farley study cited below for Chapter 20 mentions several of his studies. Three others that I looked at but didn’t use in Chapter 19: Wansink and van Ittersum, “Shape of glass and amount of alcohol poured: Comparative study of effect of practice and concentration,” British Medical Journal 2005; 331: 1512–1514; Werle et al., “Just thinking about exercise makes me serve more food: physical activity and calorie compensation,” Appetite 2011; 56 (2): 332–335; Wansink et al., “The sweet tooth hypothesis: how fruit consumption relates to snack consumption,” Appetite 2006; 47 (1): 107–110.

Automatic behavior: Cohen and Farley, “Eating as an automatic behavior,” Preventing Chronic Disease 2008; 5 (1): A23.

Self-control: de Ridder et al., “Taking stock of self-control: a meta-analysis of how trait self-control relates to a wide range of behaviors,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 2011: epub ahead of print. I also referred to “The Sugary Secret of Self-Control,” by Steven Pinker, in the September 4, 2011, issue of The New York Times Book Review. Dr. Pinker reviewed Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (Penguin, 2011), by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney. Dr. Baumeister is one of the coauthors of the de Ridder et al. study.

Adaptive thermogenesis: Tremblay et al., “Role of adaptive thermogenesis in unsuccessful weight loss intervention: a historical perspective and definition,” Future Lipidology 2007; 2 (6): 651–658.

Metabolism decline: Goldsmith et al., “Effects of experimental weight perturbation on skeletal muscle work efficiency, fuel utilization, and biochemistry in human subjects,” American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative, and Comparative Physiology 2010: 298 (1): R79–88.

Six-month rule: The tips come from our friend Mike Roussell, Ph.D. Mike wrote the sidebar to “Stay Lean for Life,” an article I wrote for the May 2011 issue of Men’s Health. He also alerted me to the research on weight maintenance, cited below. You can read more of his thoughts and tips at mikeroussell.com.

Easier for some to cut calories and increase exercise simultaneously: Annesi and Marti, “Path analysis of exercise treatment-induced changes in psychological factors leading to weight loss,” Psychology and Health 2011; 26 (8): 1081–1098; Annesi, “Behaviorally supported exercise predicts weight loss in obese adults through improvements in mood, self-efficacy, and self-regulation, rather than by caloric expenditure,” The Permanente Journal 2011; 15 (1): 23–27.

Weight maintenance: Stuckey et al., “Using positive deviance for determining successful weight-control practices,” Qualitative Health Research 2010; 21 (4): 563–579. This study came from a research team at Penn State Hershey Medical Center led by Chris Sciamanna, M.D., whom I interviewed for the Men’s Health article mentioned above.

Becoming Human: I TiVo’d this from PBS during a rebroadcast in 2011. At the time it was also available for free viewing at pbs.org. If it’s no longer available, you can rent the DVD from Netflix or buy it at any online retailer.

Lessons from cave-dwelling forebears: Some readers will notice that I describe the currently trending “paleo diet” without using that term. I have two reasons. First, I don’t think the advice to eat foods close to their natural state is any different from what we advocated in the original NROL, when we talked about “clean eating” in Chapter 22. Second, I’m uncomfortable with the term “paleo” because it implies there was a single diet all early humans followed. The archaeological record suggests they ate anything and everything, including the brains and bone marrow of animals they hunted or scavenged. Some in warmer climates may have subsisted on near-vegetarian diets at different times, while those farther north may have eaten more like their carnivorous cousins, the Neanderthals. Furthermore, with industrial-scale food production I’m not sure it’s possible to replicate any version of a true paleo diet. The air, soil, and water would’ve been so different from ours that the plants and animals that fed on them would’ve had different nutritional profiles.

John Berardi, Ph.D.: Alwyn and I have known John for many years. John first got attention as a prolific writer for T-nation.com, and then coauthored Scrawny to Brawny (Rodale, 2005) with another mutual friend, Mike Mejia. Since then he’s done terrific work on- and offline. You can check out his articles and programs at precisionnutrition.com.

Billy Beck III: I heard Billy speak at the 2011 ISSN conference in Las Vegas, where I was impressed by both his energy and the creative ways he approaches all-too-common problems with training and nutrition. Although I used his basic idea of fire, fuel, and free meals, I scaled back the application for this book’s readers. For Billy’s take on his own system, check out http://www.billybeck.com/blog/effective-eating/nutrition-cycling-the-ultimate-body-transformation-diet/.

Galina Ivanova Denzel: Galya was a successful author and health-club owner in her native Bulgaria who now counsels clients in the United States. We know each other through the JP Fitness forums (forums.jpfitness.com), where she also met my friend Roland Denzel; they got married in 2011. Her website is eatloveandtrain.com.

Notes