Resistance Beyond Weights

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Resistance, Your Way

We’ve talked before about the importance of resistance training:

Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

And we’ve even talked about how to make resistance training more effective:

HIIT, But Make It HIRT

(High Intensity Interval Training, but make it High Intensity Resistance Training)

Which resistance training exercises are best?

There are two reasonable correct answers here:

  1. The resistance training exercises that you will actually do (because it’s no good knowing the best exercise ever if you’re not going to do it because it is in some way offputting to you)
  2. The resistance training exercises that will prevent you from getting a broken bone in the event of some accident or incident

This latter is interesting, because when people think resistance training, the usually immediate go-to exercises are often things like the bench press, or the chest machine in the gym.

But ask yourself: how often do we hear about some friend or relative who in their old age has broken their humerus?

It can happen, for sure, but it’s not as often as breaking a hip, a tarsal (ankle bones), or a carpal (wrist bones).

So, how can we train to make those bones strong?

Strong bones grow under strong muscles

When archaeologists dig up a skeleton from a thousand years ago, one of the occupations that’s easy to recognize is an archer. Why?

An archer has an unusual frequent exercise: pushing with their left arm while pulling with their right arm. This will strengthen different muscles on each side, and thus, increase bone density in different places on each arm. The left first metacarpal and right first and second metacarpals and phalanges are also a giveaway.

This is because: one cannot grow strong muscles on weak bones (or else the muscles would just break the bones), so training muscles will force the body to strengthen the relevant bones.

So: if you want strong bones, train the muscles attached to those bones

This answers the question of “how am I supposed to exercise my hips” etc.

Weights, bodyweight, resistance bands

If you go to the gym, there’s a machine for everything, and a member of gym staff will be able to advise which of their machines will strengthen which muscles.

If you train with free weights at home:

  • Wrist curls (forearm supported and stationary, lifting a dumbbell in your hand, palm-upwards) will strengthen the wrist
  • The farmer’s walk (carrying a heavy weight in each hand) will also strengthen your wrist
    • A modified version of this involves holding the weight with just your fingertips, and then raising and lowering it by curling and uncurling your fingers)
  • Lateral leg raises (you will need ankle-weights for this) will strengthen your ankles and your hips, as will hip abductions (as in today’s featured video), especially with a weight attached.
  • Ankle raises (going up on your tip-toes and down again, repeat) while holding weights in your hands will strengthen your ankles

If you don’t like weights:

  • Press-ups will strengthen your wrists
    • Fingertip press-ups are even better: to do these, do your press-ups as normal, except that the only parts of your hands in contact with the ground are your fingertips
    • This same exercise can be done the other way around, by doing pull-ups
    • And that same “even better” works by doing pull-ups, but holding the bar only with one’s fingertips, and curling one’s fingers to raise oneself up
  • Lateral leg raises and hip abductions can be done with a resistance band instead of with weights. The great thing about these is that whereas weights are a fixed weight, resistance bands will always provide the right amount of resistance (because if it’s too easy, you just raise your leg further until it becomes difficult again, since the resistance offered is proportional to how much tension the band is under).

Remember, resistance training is still resistance training even if “all” you’re resisting is gravity!

If it fells like work, then it’s working

As for the rest of preparing to get older?

Check out:

Training Mobility Ready For Later Life

Take care!

Don’t Forget…

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  • Quit Like a Woman – by Holly Whitaker

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We’ve reviewed “quit drinking” books before, so what makes this one different?

    While others focus on the science of addiction and the tips and tricks of habit breaking/forming, this one is more about environmental factors, and that because of society being as it is, we as women often face different challenges when it comes to drinking (or not). Not necessarily easier or harder than men’s in this case, but different. And that sometimes calls for different methods to deal with them. This book explores those.

    She also looks at such matters as how to quit alcohol when you’ve never stuck to a diet, and other such very down-to-earth topics, in a well-researched and non-preachy fashion.

    Bottom line: if you’ve sometimes tried to quit drinking or even just to cut back, but found the deck stacked against you and things conspire to undermine your efforts, this book will give you a clearer path forward.

    Click here to check out Quite Like A Woman, And Take Care Of Yourself!

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  • Dreams: Relevance, Meanings, Interpretations

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    ❝I have a question or a suggestion for coverage in your “Psychology Sunday”. Dreams: their relevance, meanings ( if any) interpretations? I just wondered what the modern psychological opinions are about dreams in general.❞

    We’ll indeed do that one of these Psychology Sundays! Thanks for suggesting it.

    What we can say in advance is that there’s certainly not a single unified scientific consensus yet, but there are two or three prevailing views definitely worth covering, e.g. randomly generated, a by-product of reorganizing information in the brain, or expressions of subconscious thoughts/feelings.

    There are also differences between a top-down/bottom-up approach to understanding dreaming, and efforts to tie those two together.

    Watch this space!

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  • The Two-Second Advantage – by Vivek Ranadive and Kevin Maney

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The titular “two-second advantage” can in some cases be literal (imagine you got a two-second head-start in a boxing match!), in other cases can refer to being just a little ahead of things in a way that can confer a great advantage, often cumulatively—as anyone who’s played Monopoly can certainly attest.

    Vivek Ranadivé and Kevin Maney give us lots of examples from business, sports, politics, economics, and more, in a way that seeks to cultivate a habit of asking the right questions in order to anticipate the future and not just be ahead of the competition—some areas of life don’t have competition for most people, like health, for example—but to generally have things “in hand”.

    When it comes to personal finances, health, personal projects, and the like, those tiny initial advantages that lead to incremental further improvements, can be the difference between continually (and frantically) playing catch-up, or making the jump past breaking even to going from strength to strength.

    Check out today’s book on Amazon!

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  • Pear vs Prickly Pear – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing pear to prickly pear, we picked the prickly.

    Why?

    Both of these fruits are fine and worthy choices, but the prickly pear wins out in nutritional density.

    Looking at the macros to start with, the prickly pear is higher in fiber and lower in carbs, resulting in a much lower glycemic index. However, non-prickly pears are already low GI, so this is not a huge matter. Whether it’s pear’s GI of 38 or prickly pear’s GI of 7, you’re unlikely to experience a glucose spike.

    In the category of vitamins, pear has a little more of vitamins B5, B9, E, K, and choline, but the margins are tiny. On the other hand, prickly pear has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, and C, with much larger margins of difference (except vitamin B1; that’s still quite close). Even before taking margins of difference into account, this is a slight win for prickly pear.

    When it comes to minerals, things are more pronounced; pear has more manganese, while prickly pear has more calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc.

    In short, both pears are great (so do enjoy the pair), but prickly pear is the clear winner where one must be declared.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Apple vs Pear – Which is Healthier?

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Decoding Hormone Balancing in Ads

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Time!

    This is the bit whereby each week, we respond to subscriber questions/requests/etc

    Have something you’d like to ask us, or ask us to look into? Hit reply to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom, and a Real Human™ will be glad to read it!

    Q: As to specific health topics, I would love to see someone address all these Instagram ads targeted to women that claim “You only need to ‘balance your hormones’ to lose weight, get ripped, etc.” What does this mean? Which hormones are they all talking about? They all seem to be selling a workout program and/or supplements or something similar, as they are ads, after all. Is there any science behind this stuff or is it mostly hot air, as I suspect?

    Thank you for asking this, as your question prompted yesterday’s main feature, What Does “Balancing Your Hormones” Even Mean?

    That’s a great suggestion also about addressing ads (and goes for health-related things in general, not just hormonal stuff) and examining their claims, what they mean, how they work (if they work!), and what’s “technically true but may be misleading* cause confusion”

    *We don’t want companies to sue us, of course.

    Only, we’re going to need your help for this one, subscribers!

    See, here at 10almonds we practice what we preach. We limit screen time, we focus on our work when working, and simply put, we don’t see as many ads as our thousands of subscribers do. Also, ads tend to be targeted to the individual, and often vary from country to country, so chances are good that we’re not seeing the same ads that you’re seeing.

    So, how about we pull together as a bit of a 10almonds community project?

    • Step 1: add our email address to your contacts list, if you haven’t already
    • Step 2: When you see an ad you’re curious about, select “share” (there is usually an option to share ads, but if not, feel free to screenshot or such)
    • Step 3: Send the ad to us by email

    We’ll do the rest! Whenever we have enough ads to review, we’ll do a special on the topic.

    We will categorically not be able to do this without you, so please do join in—Many thanks in advance!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Four Habits That Drastically Improve Mobility

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Mobility is critical for health living, but stretching isn’t the entire story:

    Beyond just stretching

    Liv Townsend, of LivInLeggings fames, recommends these four habits:

    1. Sit less: prolonged sitting affects hip and shoulder mobility. Specifically, it affects it negatively. It is also a bringer of woe in many other ways beyond the scope of what we’re doing here today, but the important thing for mobility is to sit less. So, if you spent a lot of time at a desk, invest in a standing desk (writer’s note: I dearly love mine, which is technically a sit-stand converter like this one on Amazon but I just keep it in the up position all the time, so it’s easy to forget it has multiple settings. Anyway, it’s sooooooo much better for my back than sitting for hours at a time.). For how to deal with other (i.e. not desk-related) reasons you might be sitting a lot, check out: Stand Up For Your Health (Or Don’t*)
    2. Take creatine: more than just for strength and muscle-building (and even aside from its brain-benefits that it bestows to older people, but not young ones), creatine also supports mobility and flexibility. Any brand is fine, so long as creatine monohydrate is the sole ingredient. Also, micronized or not is also fine—that’s just to do with whether it’s been pre-compacted into super-tiny beads (so small that it will still effectively be a powder), which helps it to avoid clumping when mixed in a liquid, that’s all. It shouldn’t have any additives either way (so, check labels to ensure it doesn’t).
    3. Spend more time under tension: no, we’re not talking about texting your spouse “we need to talk”, but rather, this means that when we do stretch, we should spend longer in the stretched position. While dynamic stretching has its place, passive stretching (holding stretches for longer periods) is essential and shouldn’t be overlooked.
    4. Incorporate “movement snacks”: this is about when we are going about our daily life, we should move more while doing everyday tasks. Get in some shoulder stretches while waiting for the kettle to boil, deep squat while petting the dog, etc. These are very important, because mobility is very much a “use it or lose it” thing, and so moving in many different ways, frequently, is the only way to ensure full coverage (no stretching regimen is going to be able to cover the many compound movements that we do in everyday life).

    *That article also covers how to avoid the damage of sitting even if you cannot physically stand!

    For more on all of these, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Mobility As Though A Sporting Pursuit: Train For The Event Of Your Life!

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: