Potvin Personal Training

In Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking Glass, Alice and the Red Queen are constantly running but remain in the same spot. The Red Queen explains the predicament “Now, here (in Looking-Glass land), you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.“This statement serves as the catalyst for Van Valen's “Red Queen Hypothesis”in which species have to “run” or evolve in order to stay in the same place (not extinct). It's a rather tragic conclusion to make about the nature of life, but it remains convincing. This hypothesis does not only apply to Darwin, it can apply to business. Even the largest companies like the A&P grocery chain (who?) can fail. It can apply to fashion. Clothing companies must frequently innovate and keep up with the latest styles or risk falling into obscurity, remember the Romphim? Yeah, me neither. But most importantly (to us at least), the Red Queen applies to health and fitness.

Use it or Lose It

This hypothesis extends to the fitness world as well. The Red Queen is embodied in the phrase “use it or lose it!” which refers to the degeneration and atrophy of muscles and the cardiovascular system due to disuse and neglect. It takes less than 3 weeks for your V02 max and muscle density to atrophy during a layoff. This effect is magnified or minimized depending on how active you are. For the purposes of this article activity is defined as anything that causes extended elevation of heart rate and/or light perspiration. So, that would be walking, gardening, or light house work. All these things can minimize losses in fitness because you're still stressing the bodily systems somewhat and the adaptions you've previously made have more reason to remain. You're still using it, all be it not as strenuously, so you won't lose it. However, if you were to go on bed rest these losses would be greatly magnified because not even gravity is being resisted anymore. NASA has conducted multiple bed rest studies in a pursuit to understand and better treat the consequences of zero-gravity conditions on the body. Bed rest simulates these conditions because the largest and most impactful stressor to your body is gravity. The less you have to fight it, the weaker your muscles and bones get. One of the findings of these bed rest studies, the first of which were performed in the 70s, was that just 2-weeks of bed rest is comparable to 20 years of aging. This means, that over the course of 2-weeks you will lose the same amount of strength, muscle density, muscle quality, and bone density as you would in 20-years of aging. So, truly you must use it or lose it! You must continue to stress the body or it will fail you, and the best way to do this is through regular exercise that routinely stresses both the cardiovascular system and the skeletal-muscular system. However, because gravity is our biggest contender light housework, gardening, and walking are sufficient to maintain a baseline of health if you are injured and cannot workout. But, what you never want to do is go on complete rest. Complete rest is a treatment that is worse than the disease. So keep moving and don't take yourself too seriously!

All the best.