OnFitness Magazine - July/August 2015 - 11

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A RECENT REPORT in the Journal of the
American Geriatrics Society says that an
increase in diet soda is directly associated
with a bigger stomach in people over age
65. The report did not offer an explanation
for this, however.
Perhaps the more diet soda that
someone drinks, the more they believe they
can get away with filling up on donuts,
gravy-drenched mashed potatoes, sausage
and candy.

To build the
hamstrings, you
can include the
curls, but also do
deadlifts, squats
and leg presses.
Sprinting workouts
will also help.

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Diet soda linked to bigger
bellies in older people

Plus, when people
are seen lying on
the hamstring curl
machine, curling
the entire stack of
weights, the backs
of their legs are
usually well-built.
However, these
trainees almost
always also do
heavy squats,
deadlifts and leg
presses.

inclines to build the calves. Incline
walking is a great cardiovascular
workout that will yield
conditioning to the calves and will
help stretch them out (tight calves
are never a good thing).
However, incline walking
will do nothing to build up the
calves, because this is a cardiobased exercise that recruits
slow-twitch muscle fiber. Slowtwitch muscle fiber does not
grow in size, as these fibers are
designed for endurance or longduration activity.
Sprinting and jumping have
limited capacity in stimulating a
lot of hypertrophy in the calf.
Note the calves of competitive

Many people
believe that the
premier, and
maybe even the
only, exercise for
hamstrings is curls
(either lying down
or seated), since
these involve knee
flexion, not to
mention can
produce a
maddening burn in
the hamstrings.

FORGET ABOUT WALKING

sprinters and jumpers; they
aren't particularly big. Big calves
come with getting dealt a fine
genetic hand and making
training this muscle group a
priority.
If a person has a long Achilles
tendon (the calf muscle attaches
to this), the calf tends to be nonprominent in appearance. Those
with short Achilles tendons tend
to have more noticeable calves.
The length of the Achilles tendon
cannot be altered any more than
the length of one's bones can be
altered.
To have a good routine for
building calf muscles, you must
do direct calf work with heavy
weights in addition to giant leg
exercises like the deadlift and
weighted lunges.
Be patient, as calves grow
very slowly since they already do
so much work during walking;
they must be intensely
stimulated in order to respond
with an increase in size.

because bodybuilders want to get
as big as possible - in terms of
muscle belly size, a sculpted
appearance and a "bulging"
appearance for some competitive
bodybuilders.
This kind of hypertrophy is
also the goal of people wanting
to gain mass and have
impressive musculature, though
not necessarily as big as possible
(e.g., the look of today's action
movie stars).
In a muscle cell, sarcoplasm
is the fluid-like substance that
surrounds the filaments that
contain the proteins responsible
for muscle contraction. When
this fluid becomes more filled
up with its components, it
causes the entire muscle fiber
unit to increase in size.
The components of sarcoplasm
are what enables a person to train
hard to fatigue. Those components
include microscopic blood vessels
and glycosomes; glycosomes store

The way to grow
hamstrings is to
target fast twitch
muscle fiber, and
this is done
through heavy
strength training
that targets the
hamstrings.

N O

What doesn't
work for
building calf
size

THIS IS THE GOAL of bodybuilders,

sugar that the muscle cell needs for
fuel.
For maximal hypertrophy
gains, one should train in the 812 rep range, to muscle failure for
most sets. This means that if they
can perform a 13th repetition,
the weight load needs to be
increased to reset them back into
the 8-12 rep max range.
Training like this forces
muscle cells into a very fatigued
state. As a response, the number of
blood vessels (capillaries) and
glycosomes, plus other "metabolic
machinery" inside the sarcoplasm,
increases in number. This fills out
the sarcoplasm, making it expand,
and hence makes the muscle get
bigger.
The muscle fiber also
becomes more capable of training
with heavier weights as the
athlete keeps pushing and gritting
through the uncomfortable fatigue
or "burn."
The 8-12 rep max, or
bodybuilding protocol, involves
sets that last at least 8-10
seconds. This is about how long
it takes for a muscle cell to use
up energy before hitting fatigue.
The athlete becomes stronger,
but not maximally strong;
however, the athlete experiences
a lot of mass gain.

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The leg press calf raise is an excellent calf builder.

Sarcoplasmic
hypertrophy:
just what is
this?

V O L

THEN START EXERCISING if you want to be in their lives for a very
long time. Do you want to be carrying useless excess weight and flab
when you're 65, legs painful from circulation problems, knees hurting
all the time, back frequently aching? This doesn't happen when
someone regularly does strength training and cardio.
A recent study in the journal Circulation points out that middleaged women who exercise even a few times a week have a lower risk of
blood clots, heart disease and stroke than do non-exercising women.
The report says that women who did activity strenuous enough to
induce a sweat or faster heart rate two to three times a week had a 20
percent lower likelihood of getting the aforementioned afflictions.

Looking forward to having
grandchildren one day?

Walking hills
outdoors or
walking treadmill
inclines will not
build size in the
hamstrings,
because walking is
a slow twitch
muscle fiber
activity. Slow
twitch fibers are
built for endurance
and do not grow in
size.

W W W. O N F I T N E S S M A G . C O M

WHAT WON'T
BUILD
HAMSTRING
SIZE

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OnFitness Magazine - July/August 2015

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