How The Modern World Makes You Weak
Muscles are the organ of longevity and being strong is increasingly being shown to be predictive of people living longer, healthier and happier lives.
The problem is we as a society are becoming less and less active and weaker not stronger, with worryingly, children getting weaker too.
Getting stronger is hard work and it takes time but once you understand just how valuable strength is to your health I hope it will be a higher priority in your life because priorities are what you do rather than say you will.
"Strength is the biggest predictor of longevity"
The facts...
1. Muscles are expensive
Your body gets rid of muscle bulk as quickly as it builds it, why would it do this if it’s so important for our health?
Muscles need lots of energy and stimulus to remain healthy, we are creatures shaped by evolution which means survival of the most efficient.
Being strong was once a by-product of a life spent doing things that kept us lean and strong but the modern world mentally stimulates us far more than physically.
Strong muscles are so good for us because they are sucking glucose out of our bloodstream rather than becoming resistant to the chemical messenger insulin. Muscles become insulin-resistant long before a diagnosis of diabetes is made.
Having strong, healthy muscles helps our body lose fat. We don’t have a problem with people having too much fat, it’s not enough muscle as Dr Lyon describes in her excellent book Forever Strong
Getting stronger puts loads through our bones and our bones respond by getting stronger so resistance training helps prevent osteoporosis.
There isn’t a credible argument from a health standpoint anyway to avoid resistance training.
2. Strong mind needed
It’s hard work getting stronger and many people have other things they’d rather do in the short term as the modern world encourages us to strive for comfort at every opportunity.
The issue with this is hard work is a relative term and what I may consider a savage workout is easy for someone fitter than me.
This means chasing comfort is a losing game because it becomes harder and harder to find comfort and hard becomes easier and easier to find.
The principle at work here is that what you do regularly becomes normal so easy or hard are relative terms to your baseline, shifting your baseline of what hard looks like is always a challenge but it’s this fight that helps you live longer so well worth the effort.
Mental strength is the ability to do actions that align with your values or goals for a long time without seeing results. The most important things in life take time to develop, there are no shortcuts to strength it needs committed time invested to gain and maintain.
The modern world gets quicker and quicker at giving us what we want with shortcuts offered everywhere. We are getting worse at delayed gratification and constantly strive to be the hare rather than the tortoise but who wins in the fable?
Fitness is an infinite game so think of it as building the habit of a lifetime rather than a 6-week transformation.
3. Time, the only finite resource
The modern world fills our lives with engaging distractions, social media’s whole business model is to keep us on it so they can sell our attention to advertisers. Netflix CEO once said one of its competitors is sleep. That’s evil, as we know not getting enough sleep is terrible for health. The distractions modern life offers are often there to make money from us not make us healthier.
Humans have a strong conformity bias, which means we want to fit in and will change behaviour to do so. It’s essential for survival in a troop because if you are ostracised from your pack you aren’t likely to survive.
Companies play on this for their gain and FOMO is what we call it. “Everyone’s watching Traitors so I better too”. This behaviour sucks up so much of our time and we never get it back.
If this resonates check out how damaging it is to children, girls more than boys, to have their conformity bias hijacked by social media before they have the brain development to resist in Jonathan Haidt’s excellent book The Anxious Generation.
What can you do?
This is mostly about habit formation as what you do regularly you become.
A well ingrained habit is resistant to many things, I often hear how much someone’s back hurts them whilst brushing their teeth but no one comes in and says they haven’t brushed their teeth for 2 weeks because of their sore back.
1. Measure and do
We are all different and how we get stronger can look very different but the key is to know if you are going in the right direction so you need a very clear way to measure strength.
Grip strength is this measure and lots of research has gone into it as an indicator of strength.
Grip strength ranges
- Weak
- Male 36kg
- Female 20kg
- Strong
- Male 55kg
- Female 35kg
- Weak
- Male 35kg
- Female 19kg
- Strong
- Male 54kg
- Female 34kg
- Weak
- Male 33kg
- Female 18kg
- Strong
- Male 51kg
- Female 33kg
- Weak
- Male 30kg
- Female 16kg
- Strong
- Male 48kg
- Female 31kg
- Weak
- Male 27kg
- Female 15kg
- Strong
- Male 45kg
- Female 30kg
- Weak
- Male 24kg
- Female 13kg
- Strong
- Male 42kg
- Female 28kg
- Weak
- Male 20kg
- Female 10kg
- Strong
- Male 37kg
- Female 25kg
There are massive health benefits if you keep your grip strength above 20kg as a woman and 35kg as a man for as long as possible.
Grip strength is measured reliably using a handheld dynamometer which is something we have in the clinic but they are expensive. You could squeeze the bathroom scales one hand at a time and use the highest figure as a baseline and as long as you compare using the same scales it should be able to help track change.
As everyone prefers different activities, the best ones are something you either love or think you’ll learn to love. I usually say “go and do what you think is making you stronger and we’ll measure after a month or so and use the number to see if it’s working and then optimise.
2. The plan is easy compared to doing
Telling someone who is overweight that you’ve come up with a full proof way for them to lose weight and it’s eating less and exercising more is more likely to get you a slap than a handshake.
Doing consistently is by far the hardest part of making lasting change. A week’s strength training can take about a week to lose in what’s called reversibility. So boom and bust is a terrible strategy.
Building a consistent habit of resistance training that lasts is the only thing I’m interested in as it’s a habit of a lifetime as far as I’m concerned.
This is hard for the modern human who is fed a diet of next-day delivery and Uber Eats to get what you want now. Along with 6-week transformations by gyms to get that beach bod.
Change your mindset to consider it’s far more important where you are in 6 months rather than 6 weeks and that fitness is an infinite game that you can never win only lose and you’re forcing yourself to be the tortoise not the hare and who wins again?
3. Time budget and cut expenses first
Too many people make unrealistic plans with time they don’t have and then are annoyed at themselves or others for not achieving it, stop it!
We are used to living in financial debt, the average household debt 2024 Q2 being 121% of disposable income, time doesn’t work that way.
I know few people staring at the wall for hours a day with time to kill, it’s hard finding hours a week to do resistance training, we are all busy.
Make a robust plan of what you are going to cut out of your life to fit in your new habit of a lifetime and be realistic. Willpower is limited and if exercising isn’t something you love you don’t want to get rid of needed treats in your life, rather use them as rewards.
I always think it’s easier to cut something 100% than reduce because an absolute no is a simpler, not always easier, thing to remember than a reduction. The heaviest weight at a gym is its door.
Now once you’ve made your robust plan embody the tortoise and just plod along knowing that you’re winning if you just keep it consistently, slow and steady!
