Why More Exercise Doesn’t Always Burn More Calories

from The Biggest Losers: Metabolic Damage or Constrained Energy?

We’ve been taught that the more you exercise, the more calories you burn—and the more fat you lose. But Herman Pontzer’s research tells a different story. His work on constrained energy expenditure shows that humans operate within a relatively fixed daily energy budget, no matter how much we move.

In other words, when you crank up your physical activity, total energy expenditure doesn’t increase linearly. Instead, the body reallocates resources to stay within its set limit. What gets sacrificed? Things like muscle repair, hormone production, immune function, and even NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis).

So while it feels like you're doing more, your body is quietly cutting corners to compensate. You burn calories during the workout—but recover less afterward. Hormones take a hit. Metabolism adapts. And the stress signals may even lead your body to shed muscle and hold onto fat.

The result? A system that’s overworked, under-recovered, and not nearly as efficient at changing your body as you hoped.

Your body isn’t trying to sabotage you—it’s trying to survive. But it can’t tell the difference between overtraining and famine. So it shifts into conservation mode, doing what it must to protect itself.

You thought you were being productive. Your body thought it was under threat. And it responded accordingly.

Sit-Ups wont give you a Sixpack

Hundreds of thousands of men and women are still doing crunches till they're blue in the face, with or without miracle machines from Tell Sell, in the hope of gaining a slimmer waist or a washboard stomach. Impossible, say trainers. And a study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research proves them right again.

Localized fat loss
No, say trainers, you can't lose fat in specific places by training. You can only lose fat. If you are burning more energy than you consume via food, your body breaks down fat everywhere it can, and sooner or later you'll see the benefits in the places you most want to see the fat melting away.

Researchers have done countless experiments in which subjects do sit-ups and crunches, and measured the amount of subcutaneous fat that disappeared around their waste - with no result.

American sports scientists repeated these studies briefly by getting 14 non-active people in their twenties with stable bodyweight to train their abdominal muscles for six weeks consecutively. The subjects had to do a workout for their middle section five times a week. The workout consisted of seven exercises, with two sets of ten reps for each.

A control group of ten people in their twenties did nothing in those six weeks.

Results
The table below shows that the ab training [Exercise] did not result in any statistically significant changes in the bodyweight, total fat mass or the android fat mass. Android fat is the fat in the torso: around the abdomen, chest, shoulders, neck and back. At the end of the six weeks the test subjects were capable of doing more crunches.

Conclusion
"Abdominal exercise training was effective to increase abdominal strength but was not effective to decrease various measures of abdominal fat", the researchers conclude.

"Some individuals attempt to reduce their waistline by solely performing abdominal exercises possibly because of claims made by various abdominal equipment advertisements. The information obtained from this study can help people to understand that abdominal exercise alone is not sufficient to reduce waistline or subcutaneous abdominal fat."

Source: J Strength Cond Res. 2011 Sep;25(9):2559-64.

Women and Men respond similarly to strength trianing

Women's upper body muscles respond to strength training just as well as men's

The extent to which women can strengthen the muscles in their upper body through strength training is the same as the extent to which men can do this. However, this does not imply that women can easily reach the strength level of men who work out.

Study
In 2016, Brazilian sports scientist Paulo Gentil published a study in which he got 44 male and 47 female students to do a full-body workout twice a week for 10 weeks.

The workout consisted of basic exercises such as leg press, leg curl, chest press and lat pulldown. The subjects did 3 sets of each exercise with a weight that allowed for 8-12 repetitions. The subjects rested for 2 minutes between sets.

Before and after the training period, the researchers determined the torque that the test subjects could develop during a biceps curl. 'Torque' is what athletes in the gym often refer to as 'force'.

Results
In absolute terms, the men gained more strength than the women [left in the figure below]. But in relative terms, in terms of progression over the strength already present before the training program began, the progression of the men was similar to that of the women [bottom right].

Conclusion
"Despite the physiological and hormonal differences between sexes, women demonstrated the same relative strength gains compared to men [...]", writes Gentil.

"It appears there is presently no evidence of a need to design different resistance training protocols to men and women. [...] One should not expect to find limitations in upper body strength development in women."

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Reference: PeerJ. 2016 Feb 11;4:e1627.

The Physical Power of Thought

What you think about is important, not only in life, but training as well, because it literally has the power to manifest physical change. As I’ve said before, bodybuilders are the original “biohackers” as they are always looking for ways to push the boundaries of what is possible and consistently improve their performance. It is from their tireless effort that we get the mind/muscle connection, or thinking about the muscle helps it grow exponentially more than just placing it under tension alone.

Why?

It comes down to the fact that the mind is the sum total of the central nervous system functioning, whereby its endocrine secretion is called a thought. That secretion can directly affect cellular activity and protein formation, which, very simply, means a thought has a tangible action. It may sound woo but there is research to back it up. 

A study reported in the New Scientist entitled Mental Gymnastics Increase Bicep Strength took ten volunteers and asked them to imagine flexing one of their biceps as hard as they could for five times a week. The researchers recorded electrical brain activity during the participants sessions and assessed their muscular strength every two weeks. Those who only imagined flexing, increased their biceps strength by 13.5% in just a few weeks, compared to the control group.1

The power of thought can go a long way. Take a look at another study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology that had subjects divided into three groups. The first was asked to exercise by contracting and relaxing one finger on their hand for five sixty-minute training sessions a week for four weeks. A second group, following the same training schedule, was instructed to only mentally rehearse the same exercises, without physically activating any muscle in their finger. The control group neither thought about, nor exercised their finger outside of their daily routines. At the end of the study, researchers found that the group who actually did the the physical exercises exhibited a 30% gain in strength over the control group. No shit, right?! Well, the crazy part is that the second group, who only mentally rehearsed the exercises, demonstrated a 22% increase in muscle strength over the control group!2 The mind produced a quantifiable affect on the body. 

None of this is meant to say that simply thinking about an outcome is going to be a substitute for doing the work, but that if you combine both intent and physical effort you can create the best outcome. 

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1. Cohen, Philip, “Mental gymnastics increase bicep strength.” New Scientist (21 November 2001)

2. Yue, G., and K. J. Cole, “Strength increases from the motor program: comparison of training with maximal voluntary and imagined muscle contractions.” Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 67(5): 1114–1123 (1992)

Improving Pressing Strength

Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

Few other exercises share the same level of popularity as the bench press, yet the majority of the time a proper diagnosis is necessary to keep improving the poundages.

The following is based on Charles Poliquin’s structural balance teachings .

Monday is international Bench Press day and thousands of meatheads pour into the gym to get their fix. Yet, despite its popularity, it continues to carry a reputation as being responsible for a number of pec tears and shoulder injuries.

However, whether you’re a bodybuilder, an athlete, or a weekend warrior who just wants to look better naked, the bench press can part in your routine. The focus of this article is to help you find your best assistance exercise to boost your performance in the bench press.

First, You Must Find the Weak Muscles

Louie Simmons, of Westside Barbell, along with Charles share an idea that sticking points in large compound lifts are due to one or more weak muscles in the chain that makes up that lift. If you want to get better at any give exercise and lift more? You must find the weak muscle first, then strengthen it using a few choice assistance exercises that recruit the most motor units.

To be fair, this knowledge is more applicable to the advanced lifter/athlete. For instance, if you only bench press at least 1½ times their body weight. You aren’t going to find a lot of value in the following information.

Let’s look at the most common pressing styles and their sticking points…

Pressing Style	Sticking Point	Target Muscle
Close Grip/Wide Grip	Start/Mid-Range	Serratus Anterior
Both	Start	Anterior Deltoid
Wide Grip	Start	Pectoralis Major, Clavicular portion; Subcapularis
Close Grip	Start	Pectoralis Major, Sternal portion
Wide Grip	Mid Range	Biceps Brachii, Long Head Coracobrachialis
Both	Lockout	Triceps

Target the Weak Link With the Right Exercises

The next step is to choose what exercises will be right for your unique issue. Don’t be a Chihuahua who does an exercise just for the fun or the change of pace. Real gains come from purposeful application of exercise selection. Now is the time for serious lifting with exercises that will recruit the largest motor unit pools possible to increase strength in the right muscles.

Have a look at table 2 to determine which exercises are right for you.

Target Muscle	Assistance Exercises
Serratus Anterior	Incline Front Cable Raises Front Cable Raises
Anterior Deltoid	Seated Press Behind the Neck Seated DB Press, Semi-Supinated Grip Seated Military Press
Pectoralis Major, Clavicular portion; Subscapularis	Wide-Grip Bench Press to Collarbone Bent-Arm Flys Flat Crossovers Partial Bench Press (Bottom Range) Functional Isometrics Incline Press Flat DB Press, Pronated Grip
Pectoralis Major, Sternal portion	Parallel Bar Dips Decline Press Decline Flys (Cables or DBs) Functional Isometrics Flat DB Press, Semi-Supinated Grip
Biceps Brachii, Long Head	Barbell Curls Incline Curls Standing Cable Curls w/ Elbows behind the body. Any type of curlswhere the upper arms are in line with the torso or behind it.
Triceps	Triceps Extensions to Neck Parallel Bar Dips Skull Crushers Lockouts in the Rack Close-Grip Bench Press Reverse Grip Bench Press Board Presses

Putting it Together

One thing that makes a major different in gaining strength or overcoming plateaus is knowing how to prioritize the exercises in a workout to make it more efficient at reaching a given goal. In this case, always start with the pressing exercise, and then do serratus/anterior delt work, followed by triceps and finally biceps. This will ensure that your nervous system is able to recruit the most motor units in each muscle group so you will get the most bang for your training buck.

You can still make gainz with light weights at home

We are all out of sorts right now due to our limited access to gyms and heavy weights, but do not let that deter you from continuing to get after it with lighter weights.

One study on the effects of high reps and low reps on muscle growth compared sets performed with weights at 80 percent of one-rep maximum (1RM) to complete muscular fatigue with sets performed with weights at 30 percent of 1RM to complete muscular fatigue. Turns out that the weight of the load is not as important. Instead, what matters is whether a muscle is worked to complete fatigue. This study demonstrated that high reps and light weights can stimulate just as much muscle growth as low reps and heavy weights.

For example, you can build your chest by doing a few sets of high-rep push-ups to complete failure. This is a potent tactic you can apply right now in your living room.

In another study, super-slow lifting at 55 percent to 60 percent of the participant’s 1RM increased both muscle thickness and maximal strength just as much as standard-speed lifts performed at 80 to 90 percent of the participant’s 1RM.

In yet another study, both heavy lifts of eight to ten reps and light lifts of eighteen to twenty reps activated the genes involved in muscle growth. Research has also demonstrated that 25 to 35 reps with lighter weights leads to the same gains in muscle size as 8 to 12 reps with heavier weights. Even in seasoned weight lifters, 20 to 25 reps with a light weight leads to the same muscle growth as 8 to 12 reps with a heavy weight.

Ultimately, if you want to add muscle mass during this time, you should incorporating one of these modalities because you can still build muscle with light weights and high reps—and, incidentally, research suggests this approach is particularly effective when training legs.

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1. Cameron J. Mitchell et al., “Resistance Exercise Load Does Not Determine Training-Mediated Hypertrophic Gains in Young Men,” Journal of Applied Physiology 113, no. 1 (July 2012): 71–77, https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00307.2012.

2. Michiya Tanimoto et al., “Effects of Whole-Body Low-Intensity Resistance Training With Slow Movement and Tonic Force Generation on Muscular Size and Strength in Young Men,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 22, no. 6 (November 2008): 1926–1938, https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0b013e318185f2b0.

3. Brad Schoenfeld et al., “Effects of Low- vs. High-Load Resistance Training on Muscle Strength and Hypertrophy in Well-Trained Men,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 29, no. 10 (October 2015): 2954–2963, https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000000958; Bent R. Rønnestad et al., “Dissimilar Effects Of One- And Three-Set Strength Training On Strength And Muscle Mass Gains In Upper And Lower Body In Untrained Subjects,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 21, no. 1 (February 2007): 157–163, https://doi.org/10.1519/00124278-200702000-00028; Hanssen et al., “The Effect of Strength Training,” 728–739, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2012.01452.x.