Non-Negotiable Exercise Stimuli
Written By Kyle Ligon - MovementLink.FIT Head Coach
This is Part 2 of an article series, The Non-Negotiables of Exercise. If you haven’t yet, before reading this article, you should watch or read Part 1, Non-Negotiable Fitness Goals, for the full context.
Non-Negotiable Exercise Stimuli
This article is available both as a YouTube video you can watch/listen to and is also transcribed below.
Are you becoming detrained in vital areas of fitness without even knowing it? In this article I am going to dive into what types of exercise not only give you the best bang for your buck, but produce the most meaningful results.
In my last article I covered what I consider to be non-negotiable fitness goals. By always prioritizing our non-negotiables: functional performance, body composition, tissue and joint health, and overall health and wellness, we can ensure that as we live our life and dive in and out of new hobbies and interests, that we are never doing things at the expense or detriment to things that are vital for our life.
To balance results across the non-negotiable goals, along with healthy lifestyle choices and habits, you must have adequate and consistent exposure to a broad range of exercise stimuli. The amazing thing is that if you focus just on this core set of non-negotiable goals and exercise stimuli, not only would your workouts likely produce the full specific results your after, but would come with added benefits that compound across your entire life, reduce risk of injury, and lay a foundation for you to jump in and out of anything you may become interested in.
Exposing ourselves to these types of exercise stimuli is critical at any age, but before I do, I want to note that in the descriptions of each category of exercise stimuli below, because I feel like the immediate benefits to everyday life, sports, and activities are more obvious, I am only going to mention why exposure to these fitness areas are beneficial as we age.
Speed, Agility, & Power - The ability to recruit, coordinate, and fire muscle fibers quickly.
Functionality: If our fast-twitch muscle fibers deteriorate into slow twitch muscle fibers, which happens from not performing speed, power, and agility work, we lose the ability to move fast enough to catch ourselves when we get off balance, which comes with heightened fall and injury risks.
To train: at least once a week, use very short time intervals (Typically 3 to 20 seconds) and/or very few reps per set (typically 1-5 reps) while moving just your body weight, or light to medium weight, as fast as possible. 100% effort to move as fast as possible is not the only requirement here. There should be sufficient rest between efforts to allow for a performance on each rep that is at 90% or more of your best possible performance.
Examples: Sprinting, jumping, kettlebell swings, cleans, etc…think exercises that are athletic and explosive.
Muscle & Strength - the amount of muscle mass we have and how usable that muscle is for our lives.
Functionality: Muscle mass and strength are not only keys for functionality, but are two of the best predictors of how long someone will live. Additionally, muscle and strength training maintains and increases bone density, so if we do happen to fall or be in an accident, we are much more resilient to injury.
To Train: at least once a week for our upper body and once for our lower body, we should perform sets of exercises, typically less than 30 reps per set, close to muscle failure or at technique failure. At heavier weights, around 75% of a 1 rep max or more, is about where the tipping point is for when the training effect becomes more strength building vs muscle building, but anything in the 1-30 rep range will have benefits to both. There should be sufficient rest between sets so the limiting factor is the muscle and not another factor like being out of breath.
Examples: if you chose a weight and or an exercise in which you are only capable of performing 10 reps in a max effort set, you may perform 3-4 sets with 6-9 reps per set which would be leaving 1-4 reps in reserve in each set. This would likely be a weight that would be about 65-75% of your 1 rep max and these efforts would be challenging enough to have a muscle-building (“hypertrophy”) and a strength effect. There is a gold standard in the fitness industry called Prilepin’s Table that can provide a framework for choosing reps and sets at different weights for your workouts.
VO2 Max & Anaerobic Capacity - These encompass an ability to do and sustain intense, challenging work for medium durations.
Functionality: VO2 Max is another one of the biggest indicators of how long someone will live and a high anaerobic capacity dramatically boosts options we have to do things in our life like play games, carry heavy things, and walk up stairs.
To Train: at least once a week, use short to medium durations at very high-intensities. Workout intensity should be at a level that would be unsustainable for much longer than the workout interval. I would describe the general feelings I feel at high-intensity as “it burns”, maybe I’m a little dizzy, and I’m usually very out of breath, possibly having to lay on the floor when the workout is over. One longer interval or multiple shorter intervals with rest can all work as long as the intervals are approached with that unsustainable-much-beyond-the-interval intensity.
Examples: Maybe it’s something like 4, 4-minute intervals with 4-8 minutes of rest in between. Maybe you could do 32, 20-second intervals with 10 seconds of rest or just one 5-40 minute interval. Ideally, the program would use a variety of functional exercises and be designed in a way, and performed in a way, that allows someone to keep moving and pushing through each interval without needing long breaks.
Endurance & Stamina - The ability to sustain movement for long durations.
Functionality: These correlate to a healthy heart and keeps the door open for spending long periods of time on our feet for vacations, hikes, doing yard work, and for being generally active throughout the day.
To Train: at least once a week, perform 30 minutes or more of moving at a pace that is challenging, but would be sustainable beyond the interval. Although exposure to a variety of paces at these longer durations is important, at MovementLink, we feel the majority of our exposure should be in the form of Lactate Zone 2 training. It’s common, but not necessary for endurance and stamina workouts to be combined with a high-intensity workout at the end where an endurance workout is performed mostly at an intensity that is sustainable beyond the prescribed duration, but then ends with higher intensity at the end. This is an example of how we can combine multiple fitness categories into the same workout for time-efficiency.
Examples: run, bike, swim, ruck, hike uphill, etc. for 30 or more minutes at a challenging pace that would be sustainable for much longer than the workouts’ duration.
Mobility & Stability - the ability to control, be strong, and move through full ranges of motion.
Functionality: When we are capable of quality movement, we use bigger muscles and get better leverage with our joints, so everything we do is more efficient. Additionally, we have a lower injury risk, our nagging pains go away, and the options we have in how we move expand. Mobility issues, especially when they involve getting on and off the floor or rotating to wipe ourselves after going to the bathroom, are the main determinant of when most of us will get moved into a nursing home.
To Train: we should have at least 5-10 minutes of daily exposure to positions that challenge end ranges of every part of our body. This looks similar to 5-10 minutes of full body yoga. Additionally, we should perform 5-10 minutes of area-specific work to target personal deficiencies or soreness (which looks like using foam rollers, massage balls, etc in ways that you can find in MovementLink’s mobility guides).
Example: I have a 5-10 minute habit each morning of yoga-ish movement followed by 5-10 minutes of foam rolling. Additionally, I perform 5-10 minutes of yoga-ish movement as part of warming-up for my workouts and 5-10 minutes of area-specific work as part of my cool-downs. These little chucks add up to a lot of work each week and have been very effective for me.
Using these exercise stimuli, we can create an exercise checklist that will ensure we tick all the boxes required to address our non-negotiable fitness goals. When we go to the deepest levels and figure out why exercise is important, it inevitably leads us to a holistic cross-training program. Here’s a link to my article series - Understanding the Value of Cross-Training.
Additionally, the time spent training each of these non-negotiable exercise stimuli has spillover benefits to the other areas and can be combined within exercise sessions and programs allowing holistic cross-training programs to be incredibly time efficient.
It’s easy to recognize that someone who sits all day and does not exercise will inevitably become detrained in the above fitness areas as they age. But, detraining in these areas can also happen even to those who exercise 5 days a week! Oftentimes, people tend to over-inflate the benefits of their physical activity, hobby, or exercise program, narrowing their focus on the positives of what their habits produce when compared to not exercising instead of reflecting on whether or not all those positives check the boxes that would lead to the non-negotiable goals.
Here’s a simple, but very common example:
Let’s say someone starts exercising by going for runs and progressively gets more and more into running. Maybe they end up joining a run club, sign up for running events, and boom, they are a runner, running 5 days a week and loving it. This scenario has obvious benefits…especially when compared to someone who does not exercise. But, I think comparing something against the benchmark of not exercising, or against only a specific, negotiable goal like running performance is a terribly low bar. Instead, we should be judging a programs’ effectiveness against both our specific negotiable goals, like running performance, and our non-negotiable goals of functional performance, body composition, tissue and joint health, and overall health and wellness .
In putting 100% of focus onto running, someone who only runs will benefit from significantly improved running performance, stamina & endurance and, depending on how much intensity is included in their running program, can also improve their V02 max & anaerobic capacities to an extent. But, just like someone sitting on the couch, the person who is only running, is actually becoming detrained in crucial aspects of fitness - Speed, Power, Agility, Muscle Mass, Strength, Mobility, and Stability which has real world consequences that compound as we age. Just because a style of exercise has positive benefits vs not exercising, does not mean that it holistically covers everything we need to thrive.
This example is about runners, but could be about yogis, weightlifters, bodybuilders, cyclists, soccer players, etc.
I think being involved in hobbies and sports that interest you add so much enjoyment to life, but it’s key to keep the big picture in mind and make sure that the sum of your activities and workouts include adequate exposure to all of the non-negotiable exercise stimuli discussed in this video. Again, the time and effort required to gain adequate exposure is extremely minimal and the payoffs now, and across our lifetime, are enormous.
Next time you're setting goals or reviewing how effective your exercise habits really are, make sure the non-negotiable goals and exercise stimuli are top of mind.
Want to continue diving into your goals? Check out my article series: Goal Setting
Additional Exercise Considerations to Explore
The types of exercise and how you perform the exercises matter…a lot. How do we ensure that our fitness is usable and transfers from interest to interest? Functional Movement Patterns.
In the gym, there are is a ton of workout gear available - special shoes, weight belts, knee wraps, elbow sleeves, etc. But, in the real world, you likely won’t be wearing those things, so training without them may hurt your gym numbers, but may actually transfer to the actual life you’re living better. Why We Don’t Wear Supportive Gear When We Workout
Speaking of workout scores, we don’t want to accidentally get motivated in the wrong direction. When we take and compare scores every day, the motivation is how to get the best score each day as opposed to how do I get the best training in today that will maximize my results over time. This is why we Workout For Intent, Intensity, & Technique (FIIT) instead of taking scores every day.
Additionally, because performance progress can continue even when other of our non-negotiable goals plateau short of our goals, you can actually be Fooled By Your Increasing Exercise Performance into thinking your efforts are effective.
There are more traps, but the key to avoiding all of these and therefore fast-tracking your journey is to simply to build a perspective that prioritizes the non-negotiable goals.