As you age, your muscle mass becomes a determining factor both in your quality of life and how long you live. Yet, most people don't take any regular action to keep their muscles strong because they believe it has to be hard. It doesn't. You don't need a gym membership. You don't have to go anywhere. Just 25 squats twice a day can begin to shift your biology. So, why exercise? And why do squats? Well, if you've never exercised or if you haven't exercised in years, let's keep it really simple and just do one exercise because you know you can do one exercise. And if you're just going to do one exercise, you want to do one that involves the largest muscles in the body. And those are your quadriceps muscles, the front of your thigh, the gluteus maximus, which is the back of your butt, and the adductors, which are large muscles on the inside of your thigh. And these are very much involved with squats, and they're called primary movers. They're what's doing the largest amount of works. They change length a lot, so they get a lot of work. But then with squats, you're also involving a lot of other muscles such as your abdominal muscles, your obliques that help you stabilize the sides of your trunk, and your spinal muscles. And these are your core muscles, and your trunk muscles. And even though they're not primary movers, they're very much involved. And they do change length a little bit. They aren't they're not just stabilizers. And these are the main ones, but squats actually involve a total of 18 different muscle groups. But one of the biggest things that we're going to try to drive home is that activating a muscle is a two-way street. The brain tells the muscle what to do, but the muscle signals the brain at the same time. So, you're always activating both. And that's one of the reasons why it is so critical for healthy aging. In fact, a squat could be described as a whole body neurological event. The most complete exercise we probably have. Let's talk about the concept of neuromuscular. Neural tissue and muscular tissue. How do they work together? Well, your brain controls everything. Absolutely everything in your body is directly controlled or indirectly regulated through some action of the brain. And your brain processes billions of bits per second. And yet you're only aware of thousands of bits per second. Your conscious mind takes snapshots of in the order of thousands of bits per second. Yet your brain is involved so much more. There's a million times more activity going on behind the scenes to keep your body functioning that you never know about. But if the brain controls absolutely everything in your body, how does it know what to do? Because the brain has never seen or heard or touched or felt anything. The brain just sends information and receives information. You can think of them as ones and zeros essentially. They're bits of information. And the fancy word is called efferent and afferent, but that's simple. It just simply means a signal going out is efferent and a signal coming into the brain is afferent. And all this afferent information, all those signals, those are the ones that tells the brain what to do. It tells the brain what the muscle tension is, where a body part is in space. And as you move, you're activating muscle spindle cells and joint mechano-receptors to tell the brain how much tension is on a muscle and where is a joint located in space. And the brain processes all this information and it comes up with a total picture and then it acts on this picture. But the key to understand here is that the job of the brain is to process information. It uses a lot of energy to do that. So it's like a muscle. A muscle you activate by putting tension on it. That's the purpose. That's the work of a muscle. But the work of the brain and the purpose of the brain is to process information. And it's some of the hardest work that there is. Your brain is 2% of your body mass and it uses 20 to 25% of all the energy in your body in processing these afferent signals and turning them into responses the efferent signals. But the key to understand here is that these afferent signals all the signals coming into the brain those are the stuff that keep the brain alive. So, let's talk a little bit more about use it or lose it. Everyone has heard that phrase, but very few people truly understand how far-reaching that concept is. It's like a law of gravity, a law of nature. And you can't violate it. You can't ignore it. It runs everything. And anything that's alive, anything that has life has the ability to adapt to its environment. and to conserve resources in order to survive. So even single celled organisms can detect and process their environment and they can take action to survive. Any plant, any flower, any blade of grass is alive and it has the ability to adapt. Plants can turn toward the sun when they want more life. And plants, flowers can close up during the night to re preserve resources, to conserve resources. So in order to survive, we have to conserve. And that's what use it or lose it is all about. And when it comes to the brain, it communicates with something called synapses. And a synapse is a connection where one nerve cell connects to another to send or receive a message. And we have a 100 billion brain cells and on average they have thousands of connections. And some places in the brain can have hundreds of thousands of connections. But these connections is how we learn and how we adapt. So early in life, from birth to about 3 years old, we have an absolute explosion of these synapses sprouting up. We're making a million synapses per second. A million new connections per second during that age. And in fact, it's more synapses than we're ever going to need. But the reason is so that that organism, that human, that child is ready for anything. whatever environment it's going to grow up in, it's going to be ready. It's going to be able to adapt to that environment. And then the child starts exploring its environment. And whatever stuff it needs, whatever stuff it uses, it's going to keep. It's going to become not permanent, but more ingrained. And whatever it doesn't need, it's going to start pruning. It's going to start getting rid of. And then there's a pruning and a building. So there's an optimization of your nervous system based on your environment and your interests and what you want to learn. So you have a maximum muscle and brain capacity at around age 25. But then after that your survival is going to depend on economizing on not wasting resources. So therefore, you're going to maintain the most important structures, both muscles and brain cells. And which ones are those? It's the ones that you use. And if you realize that this truly is a law of nature for the purpose of survival, then you also realize that it's actually wasteful to keep things in the body, to keep structures and tissues that you don't use. And this determines a lot of what we call decline or degeneration. So if you get little exposure to gravity, then your body is going to say, "Hey, in this environment, based on this lifestyle, this person only need tiny little bones. They're going to do just fine. They can be brittle and thin because there's no stress here. And if you have no regular muscle challenge or very little, if all you do is use your muscles just to get to the fridge and the bathroom and the car, guess what? Your body is going to say, "Hey, this person only needs enough muscles to get to the fridge, the bathroom, and the car. Let's just let the other muscles waste away because it'd be wasteful to maintain them when he doesn't need them." So up to about age 25, this growth is automatic. It's genetically determined. And yes, it is still influenced by your lifestyle, how active you are, obviously, but it's pretty much for free. You don't have to work a whole lot. It's going to develop on its own based on genetic programming. However, after 25, things change and from that point on, you need to earn it. And after age 40, then the degeneration will accelerate each decade that we stay alive. And as we have more and more people getting to an advanced age, it's becoming more and more clear that your quality of life and your longevity will both depend on your amount of muscle mass. It's such a strong influence. So hopefully you can see the critical importance of maintaining muscle mass. Let's talk about what just 25 squats twice a day can start doing. And there are some immediate effects. First of all, it wakes up your nervous system. Like we talked about when you move muscles, you're going to send a bunch of afferent of incoming information signals to the brain. It's going to boost your circulation. It's going to increase the delivery of oxygen and nutrients, especially to your peripheral tissues such as your hands and feet. When you're sitting still, there's not a whole lot of need to circulate blood to those areas. So, that's why often times why they tend to get cold. But if you move now, you're going to drive that circulation up. It also activates joints and connective tissue. So, your joints have very poor blood supply. There's very little blood circulation. There's really none inside the joint. It goes to the outside of the joint capsule. And then the joint depends on the pumping of movement to pump fluids and nutrients into that joint. So, when you move, when you do something active such as squat, you're going to activate that pump and start support your joints. And it's going to immediately improve your blood sugar control and your insulin sensitivity because your muscles are the largest user of glucose in your body. It's like a sponge. And the difference between resting and moving is that a working muscle will accept glucose without insulin or with much much less insulin. So that's where even if you're insulin resistant, once you move, those muscles will start sucking up that glucose. And then after a few days now, you're going to start noticing more far-reaching effects. For example, your legs are going to feel stronger. If you're standing up from a chair, you're going to notice that it feels much easier. It's not so much effort. If you are walking stairs, it's less of a strain. You will notice that your posture improves because squats will activate all the postural muscles and teach them to work together as a unit. And because you're teaching so many of your muscles to work together, then you'll also probably find that a lot of different movements are becoming more fluid and controlled. But even though you probably notice all these different benefits, there is no actual muscle growth yet. And this is where it's important to understand the neuromuscular balance that you have two sides of this. And in the beginning, the neural aspect is growing much much faster. The changes are starting much much earlier. So in the beginning, we're only getting neuroplastic changes. That means that these synapses, these connections that we talked about, you're making new connections that are more precise and you're strengthening the existing ones that you need. So up to this point, all the improvement in strength is due to improved timing and precision of the pathways. Squats are also one of the best exercises for mobility and flexibility. And you're going to notice that you open up your hips and your ankles. You're going to notice that it reduces stiffness in the knees and the low back. And squats will also help restore natural movement patterns in the body because unlike doing a dumbbell or doing a sitting down in a machine and pushing on a lever or something, which is fine, but with squats, you are teaching your body coupled mechanics because you're activating so many different muscles at the same time and you're teaching them these pathways to fire together. you are teaching the body to move as one functional unit. And one benefit of that is that it's going to dramatically reduce your risk of low back injuries and low back pain fromheavy lifting. And squats are also one of the best core strength exercises that you can do because the core is what stabilizes your trunk when you do a squat. So the core is going to get integrated. All those muscles are going to get integrated again into the natural mechanics of moving and bending. And I'm not opposed to doing other core strength exercises, but if you think about it, you don't really need your core when you're laying down flat on the ground. The core is there to stabilize you when you're moving about in a field of gravity. When you're laying down, then you can still work it, but you that's not when you really need it and it doesn't get integrated in your natural movement. Squats will also improve your balance and they will reduce the risk of falling, which is again the number one cause of traumatic death in elderly is falling. And the reason elderly are more at risk for falls is that they have reduced muscle. They have reduced core strength and they have reduced brain speed. Their brain is not fast enough and the muscle pathways are not quick enough and precise enough to compensate when you stumble or when you get out of balance. So by doing squats and improving all those factors, you're going to dramatically reduce the risk of falls. So if you want to give this a try, the most important thing is to not hurt yourself. So proper form is the key. So you start off putting your feet a little bit wider than your shoulders. And that way you get a nice stable stance and then you point your toes a little bit outward so that your feet are angled at approximately 45 to 60 degrees. So this little diagram here, the green area would be about 45 and the blue area would be about 60. And this is highly individual. It's wherever you feel the most comfortable. But don't try to do squats with your feet straight because that's going to put a lot of strain on your joints. And if you don't get the proper stance, you will be more likely to try to compensate and do things incorrectly. And then as you start lowering yourself, as you start doing the squat, you want to observe and make sure that your knees are aligned with your toes with your feet. So if your feet are angled out a little bit, then your knees should not be bending going inwards. So by making sure of this, you have much less strain on your knee and you're supporting and teaching your body proper mechanics. you're firing off the proper pathway so you create stability in that position. Next thing you want to do is to make sure that most of the weight, like way more than half, probably 2/3 or 3/4 of your weight, it should feel like it's on your heels. And that creates a lot of stability. But also, anytime you start shifting your weight forward away from your heels toward your toes, you're going to be putting much more strain on your knees. And anytime that you keep them on the heels, you're going to spare your knees, but you're also going to be working the back muscles, the gluteus maximus much more, which is what you want. And we also want to understand the difference between straight and upright. You want to have your back straight. You want to get a stable stance. You want to lock in that position, but it doesn't mean that you keep your back perfectly perpendicular, perfectly vertical. It's totally okay to keep your back straight and still bend forward when you do that squat. And if you try to do it upright, then again, you're going to compromise the mechanics and you're going to put more stress on your knees. And the way to think about that is that it's okay to stick your butt out and lean forward a little bit, but at the same time, you want to try to keep your chest up. So, as you do these squats, think about those two things that they're actually not incompatible. They're not opposites. You can stick your butt out and keep your chest up at the same time. And that is how you also work on those postural muscles to improve your posture. And one very important thing is to work within a controlled range only. And that's the controlled range for you at this time. It doesn't matter how deep anybody else goes in squats or what you've heard about, how many degrees you should have at your knees or how deep you should go. None of that matters. You follow these rules and you do them safely within your controlled range. You can improve on it later, but don't push it too early. And the same thing holds true for pain-free range. If you experience any pain or discomfort, don't go beyond your pain-free range. You can always improve on it later. So, I'm here to tell you that you can create real change at any age. Doesn't matter if you're 40 or 50 or 80 or 90, your body still have these responses built in. And if you challenge your body, if you stimulate your body, these mechanics, these processes, these neuroplasticity, it's there ready for you to start doing something. The only thing to be aware of is that the older you are, the slower the response is going to be, but don't despair. The response is going to come. You just have to be more patient. So basically from day one to day 10 all you're going to improve is your neurological timing. Any benefit you see and it's not unimportant. It's just your nervous system getting tweaked and fine-tuned much better. And then during week two to three, first three weeks, your body is getting ready to grow. It's putting all the production equipment in place, if you will. It's like you're going to start producing a machine of some sort. Well, you're going to have to get all your equipment in place first. You're going to hire the worker. You got to have a place. You got to get all of the variables ready. And so the body does as well. So during week two and three, it starts to upregulate the pathways for protein synthesis, the enzymes and so forth. And then during week three to six, now is where you actually start seeing real muscle growth. And it's not enormous and it's not as much as it could be or is going to be, but it is clearly detectable. During this time, your muscle fibers will thicken. They will hypertrophy. You will lay down more protein and more muscle fibers. And you can see an increase in lean muscle mass. And if you keep it up beyond that, between week 6 and 12, this is where we start seeing real changes, more obvious growth. If you keep this up, then you're going to see an increase, a measurable increase in thigh circumference, unless of course you're burning off more fat at the same time. But yes, your muscles will be larger at this point. There will be a more significant increase in strength. you'll be able to do more and heavier things with less effort. And this will be at this point, it will be due to both improvements in neural tweaking and in muscle mass. And now is also when you will notice your quality of life being materially different. A lot of the things that you used to do or used to have some trouble with now become so much easier. So, if you watched this far, I commend you on your dedication. And I want to let you know you can do this. So make a decision right now that you're going to do something. If you can do 25, great. If not, then start with five or 10. And just do something and be consistent with it. You can start off with half squats. You could do an assisted squat down to a chair. If you have one of those office chairs that come up and down, then you can start in the highest position and as you get better, you just lower it an inch at a time. But the key is, like I said, decide right now and know that you can do it. Just commit to doing it twice a day. You don't have to commit to how many you do. Just commit to doing something because if you start doing it, you're going to start getting better. And then when you get better, then you can do more. when it gets too easy, when it's not a challenge, now you change something, you add something. So now you can increase the reps. You can go from 10 to 15 to 20 to 50 maybe or you could increase the number of sets. You do them twice a day, but you do two sets of 25 each time. Or and you can increase the range of motion like I said with a chair. If it's adjustable, then you start on the highest and then you work your way down. Again, don't push it, but commit to doing something and improve gradually.
