Exercising one arm has twice the benefits:
New research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has revealed that training one arm can improve strength and decrease muscle loss in the other arm - without even moving it.
The findings could help to address the muscle wastage and loss of strength often experienced in an immobilised arm, such as after injury, by using eccentric exercise on the opposing arm.
In eccentric exercises, the contracting muscle is lengthening, such as when lowering a dumbbell in bicep curls, sitting on a chair slowly or walking downstairs. Previous research has shown these exercises are more effective at growing muscle than concentric exercises, in which muscle are shortening such as when lifting a dumbbell or walking up stairs.
[...] ECU's Professor Ken Nosaka in the School of Medical and Health Sciences was part of the international study and said that the findings challenge conventional rehabilitation methods and could improve outcomes for post-injury and stroke patients.
[...] The study involved 30 participants who had one arm immobilised for a minimum of eight hours a day for four weeks. The group was then split into three, with some performing no exercise, some performing a mix of eccentric and concentric exercise and the rest performing eccentric exercise only.
Professor Nosaka said the group who used a heavy dumbbell to perform only eccentric exercise on their active arm showed an increase in strength and a decrease in muscle atrophy, or wastage, in their immobilised arm.
Journal Reference:
Omar Valdes, Carlos Ramirez, Felipe Perez, et al. Contralateral effects of eccentric resistance training on immobilized arm, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports (DOI: 10.1111/sms.13821)
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday October 25 2020, @06:18AM (4 children)
Which is why they exercise their (usually) right arm regularly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @06:59AM (2 children)
Do you need to exclusively use your handedness side?
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Sunday October 25 2020, @07:07AM
Typically, yes, otherwise your dominant arm will get all hissy about you dating someone else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @07:59AM
I never have. Always my non-dominant hand.
And I'm old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @02:14PM
#MeToobin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @06:24AM
I have seriously thought about this one. I'm not sure if I want to risk it though.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday October 25 2020, @09:55AM (5 children)
Note it's a rehab study discussing muscle loss prevention in untrained individuals with the top performing group losing 2% muscle mass. That is, the strength gains are early neurological adaption and, while it does present some interesting options for hospital / geriatric physiotherapists, the study does little but add more evidence to the novice trap theory that suggests that early gains in strength training are mostly neurological rather than muscular adaptation.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @01:05PM (1 child)
Sounds like you know what you are talking about...but with all your home-made jargon it's hard to tell what you actually mean. Please define these:
early neurological adaption
novice trap theory
neurological rather than muscular adaptation
I'm interested because, at age 30, many years ago, I broke a bone in my ankle. No cast, 6 weeks on crutches (no load bearing) was the doc's order because the break would open with load on that leg. I followed orders and the bone has healed with no problems to date, that part is good. But if the advice had included non-weight bearing exercise (stationary bike, etc) I might have been spared part of the full year that it took to regain strength in that leg, all kinds of problems getting back to previous normal.
(Score: 5, Informative) by RamiK on Sunday October 25 2020, @06:05PM
I used to be something of a gym-rat though I haven't really kept up with the literature but it's actually sports medicine / strength training jargon. Here's some example:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2017.00331/full [frontiersin.org]
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Fulltext/2010/02000/Static_Stretching_Impairs_Sprint_Performance_in.30.aspx [lww.com]
"early neurological adaption": When you train / lift weights, the body adapts in various ways. Tendons gets "thicker"... Muscles gets "stronger"... The central nervous system "tunes" better... Under some training parameters, like when under caloric restriction, it's common to see near exclusive neural adaptation. That is, you're getting better at the movement and the neurons are adapting to fire in better timing and across more muscle tissue but muscle isn't "growing". It's desirable in sports that compete in body weight categories and such. But...
"novice trap theory": Some research papers examine silly stuff like dumbbell curls on untrained individuals and end up finding they improve their squats and deadlifts so they conclude dumbbell curls promote muscle growth... Similarly when people first go to the gym they'll often start doing senseless crap but still see some seemingly unrelated performance results... The "novice trap theory" suggests sub-maximal loads can still promote strength gains in untrained individuals even in low volume and - as this study confirmed - in unrelated muscle groups thanks to systematic adaptation of neural pathways. Other mechanism being looked at are gene activation, metabolic changes, increase in anabolism / hormone secretion... Here, however...
"neurological rather than muscular adaptation": Since the paper actually noted 2%-28% muscle mass while still seeing strength gains in untrained muscles, we have a confirmation of pure neural adaptation.
Anyhow, that's the gist of it. My jargon is a bit off and I'm avoiding issues like myofibrillar vs sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, muscle group / myofascial chains, diet and movements particularities... But that's about all you get when subscribing to 3min bro-science between sets.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @02:44PM (1 child)
See also:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-grow-stronger-without-lifting-weights/ [scientificamerican.com]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14998709/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @05:15PM
From your Scientific American link,
Next question, did the associated connective tissue (tendons, ligaments) also strengthen proportionately? That was my biggest problem in recovering from 6 weeks of no weight bearing. Muscles came back pretty quickly, but it took the rest of the year to be able to use them without tendon pain.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @05:16PM
I've seen, but unfortunately cannot find, research indicating that benefits of "eccentric" over "concentric" training might actually just be a function of total work volume. That is, if you can do 10 repetitions in an exercise with 100 pounds in a concentric motion and 120 pounds in an eccentric motion, doing the same numbers of sets per workout with only the eccentric exercise is more beneficial than doing that number of sets per workout with only the concentric exercise. But if you do an extra few sets of the concentric exercise, your neuromuscular and muscle mass strength gains will equal the benefit from eccentrics.
Coming from an Anonymous Coward, take that for what it's worth and do your own reading.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @05:56PM
all i need is a motorized pulley system to raise the dumbbell so i can lower it manually each time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday October 25 2020, @06:06PM (1 child)
Here I shill
"The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40" by Jonathon M Sullivan MD, PhD
Its one of those books where everyone bitches because the academics think the content being 1/4 endnotes means its not got enough citations and casual readers are frustrated that 1/4 of the book is references they don't care about that they'd search for using google if they cared. Still, probably the most important and impactful "popular science accessible" medical book published this decade.
Anyway the point is the book spends hundred or so pages explaining the enormous medical effects of weight lifting on the (aging) body. Massive hormonal changes, blood chemistry changes, interesting positive changes.
So in the context of the clockwork universe and man as a machine its shocking that exercising one arm would have any effect on the flesh of the other arm, but "real contemporary medical belief" would indicate the majority of affected flesh is NOT the muscle that contracted but the flesh connected to the same blood and endocrine system.
Also I was bored enough to click thru and the effect is very small. The rabble rousing is not that you can dumbbell bicep curl one arm and end up as huge and symmetric as 1980s Arnie, but a percent here and a percent there when uneducated people think the correlation should have been 0 percent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2020, @11:06AM
I haven't read the book you referenced, I'll have to look it up. One thing I'll mention: a huge amount of workout recommendations for the past fifty years focus on relatively short, very hard workouts. To be fair, that's the closest most people can manage to something that fits their work schedule. And if you've got a long commute or young kids, even that's hard to manage.
But a few years ago one of my kids was in gymnastics. The competition team for gymnastics had practice 16-20 hours per week. I got to watch bits and portions of their practice, and it was group calisthenics, then lining up and going across the sawhorse one at a time in a continuous loop for 15 minutes, then a ten minute rest, then calisthenics, then lining up and working on handstand walks in a continuous loop one at a time for 15 minutes, then a ten minute rest, then calisthenics, then lining up and rope climbing in a continuous loop one at a time for 15 minutes, then a rest, and so forth. There were 12 year old girls on that team who could bust out dozens of one-handed pushups and rope climb 30 feet in the air hand-over-hand without using their legs for support. They were just over four feet tall but if you scaled their physiques up to 6'2" they would have looked like Captain America.
These kids had the benefit of youth, but the whole team was girls so they didn't have the benefit of boys' testosterone production, let alone of post-puberty men's testosterone production. They built tremendous strength just through an incredibly high volume of medium effort work.
Now, applying this insight is hard. I don't have 16-20 hours a week for workouts. I don't even have 8-10. But I've been trying to do more medium effort work and less all out work for eight months now, and it seems to be working. My chest and shoulders are at their strongest. My legs were at their strongest until I hurt my right knee - the joys of aging. I'm still a long way from "jacked", though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2020, @03:48AM
I exercise my middle appendage all the time, so both my left and right appendage share the benefits. Kids, if you're reading make sure you cite this study next time your mom/dad walks in
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday October 26 2020, @08:20AM (1 child)
Note, muscle gain in humans is weird. Basically seem to be adapted so that we put on "just enough" muscle to catch whatever food is out there. For example, birds will put on muscle before migrating, irrespective of how much exercise they do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @06:00PM
A lot of it it's genetic. You'll see some scrawny guy lifting huge weights but not getting much bigger after months. He's bigger than when he started but he's a lot smaller than the big black guy who started weeks ago and his muscles grow whenever he sneezes.
A chihuahua that does weights will be a muscular chihuahua but still not bulk up much unless it's a mutant.