How Long Does it Take to Show Results?

 If they are doing it right, results are obvious with the very first workout; if they are doing everything wrong, they will never change — but simply reinforce their present condition. Unfortunately, that is what many newcomers do — and are even instructed to do by these people who are out of shape themselves. Obviously, they have no idea what they are talking about — despite having bought many certificates that mean nothing.

What most people don’t realize is that the top bodybuilders can actually double the size of their muscles with each workout. Many of them are just gifted genetically that way, but everyone has that ability to effect an instant transformation if they know how — and that is specifically what bodybuilding is. You very seldom see a top bodybuilder posing “cold,” which is to say, not pumped up. They invariably pump up first before posing — because that is when it feels good to do so, and they can see how impressively their muscles respond to that effect of exercise — which is obviously directing and gorging the blood to the areas they desire to achieve that effect.

So even the most out-of-shape person has that ability to specifically direct and enhance the circulation to the specific areas of the body by the understanding that it is the alternation of the muscular state from fullest contraction to fullest relaxation that produces a pumping effect — just as the heart works. However, the objective of proper (effective) exercise is not just to make the heart work unlimitedly harder, but to recruit the skeletal (voluntary) muscles to aid in the circulatory process — particularly by producing muscle contractions at the furthest extremities — because it is those contractions, that pump the blood back towards the heart. If no such contractions occur at those extremities, then the blood already in the capillaries, prevent new blood from entering — even as much as the heart is pumping harder and faster into that resistance.

The evacuation of that blood in the capillaries have to be pushed out by the skeletal (voluntary) contractions of the muscles at whatever point one wants to enhance that particular circulation — which as I’ve pointed out in especially older people, is from the head, hands and feet — so they don’t experience that deterioration from those sites as are the well-known in the elderly and sedentary. In pre-industrial times, most work commonly done, required the activation of the head, hands and feet — and not simply demanding the heart alone work harder, while there is no movement at the wrists, ankles and neck — characteristic of modern sedentary life. Thus the deterioration (lack) of those actual movements coincide with the loss of brain function (dementias), loss of grip strength and loss of balance in those living the modern sedentary life.

Even those who have formerly experience great success at effecting those transformations forget what made them possible — and think it is just the magical lifting of weights that made such instant results possible — and why they no longer obtain that pump in their less proficient (older) years. They’ve lost that insight into what made things work, and buy into what doesn’t work — because everybody says is the way to do things — despite the fact that it is not working. That is invariably more “cardio,” and as a result, many otherwise, healthy people die prematurely of heart failure — even if they are the World’s Strongest Man. The heart can only do so much, but in most modern sedentary lives, the rest of the muscles are doing very little — or nothing at all, and that is the problem.

When I first started giving presentations on exercise at the retirement homes and convalescent centers, I was struck by how most of the residents sat like statues — exhibiting very little movement at all, and so rather than asking them to do the conventional movements like all the physical therapists do — usually to qualify them for their further services, I focused on the areas of expression — which are the head, hands and feet to immediately effect a greater flow to those areas — and even those people were transformed instantly. Dull eyes would begin to clear and glow. Hands and feet would articulate as they hadn’t in years.

That is the impact of effective exercise — immediate, and not only after staying with the program for months and years, as the physical educators would have one believe. Of course, one learns to get better at making such drastic transformations (changes) — as the gauge of its effectiveness, and not expect that magically, the results will manifest only years down the road. That doesn’t work in any reality that I’m familiar with.

Remember, the first advocate for cardio exercise — actually died of cardio failure while out on his typical runs. That should have indicated something — but they doubled down, and kept on doing so — even as more robust people died of heart failures. It’s the obvious wrong understanding. The major failing of these times are the many whose hearts continue to beat unfailingly and automatically, but the functioning at the extremities of the head, hands and feet — have long stopped. The simplicity of the understanding that pumping blood to wherever destinations (organs) benefit from it the most, produces the most and immediate change — because that is what the body has to do to enhance its survival advantage.