I'm enjoying my diminished returns

Not talking economics

One of my favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes goes like this. Someone in passing, who wasn’t a fan of bodybuilding, said to him, “I never want to look like you.” His response (think the accent in your head) was, “don’t worry, you never will.”

We all have different perceptions on what looks good, and what we should do, or not do about it.

The title of this blog refers to my acceptance of age. I have always had an addiction to weightlifting and exercise. But there have now been noticeable stages of decreased gains in strength or size. This is part of the normal progression, however not always accepted.

Maybe it’s the mid life “crisis” (1st world problems, please…), and there does seem to be stages, like other addictions; denial, frustration, acceptance…What i’m saying is that I feel better having accepted some truths.

Now that does not mean that we should do nothing. I am still lifting weights. I’m just not trying so hard to gain muscle mass at this stage. There are diminished returns with age, and too much weight on my joints isn’t good either. I am also unable to eat the amount of protein needed per day to make significant gains. See my other article about protein math. Someone my bodyweight would need to ingest 120g/day to see significant results.

It depends on what your goals are. If you want to increase muscle mass, you will make significant gains up to 3 sets of an exercise, after that, the curve starts to flatten (sorry for this saying, I didn’t corrupt it.) Meaning that gains after 5, 6, or 7 sets will have diminished returns. Body builders will need to complete 10-20 sets.

There is also what I call motor burnout. Our bodies’ really respond to new stimulus, or “threats and stress.” We often need a variety of exercises (stimuli) to make gains. Because of this “burnout”, body builders will come up with many strategies for new stimuli. Some of them are named drop sets, compound sets, negatives, etc.

Now other trainers are going to freak out on this narrative. “We need to push them into pain and make gains!”, because part of our job is as cheer leader, and personal coach.

And there’s nothing wrong with that either, if that is the client’s goal.

How strong do we need to be? There are many debated views. Strength can be relative and arbitrary between individuals. I like to define it this way. You need to be strong enough to overcome the forces in your environment, i.e., lift your body weight against gravity, easily, so as to not get injured. Ultimately we are injured when we are not strong enough to overcome the forces in our environment.