Pushing Back

Another Abstruse Concept

Recently, I tutored a former student about Timed Static Contraction (TSC) exercise. He, like many males, is one who seems totally consumed with what is now known as the Assumed Process of exercise.

The assumed process in exercise is the erroneous notion that the means by which we get to the stimulus is to lift the weights or to externalize our efforts to make the machine operate. This leads to many problems in exercise as are explained in the free download, Transitioning from TSC to Feedback Statics.

A critical aspect of his consumption is his insistence for the exercise tool to provide negative work in the sense that it is “pushing back” on his effort.

An esoteric of physics and engineering is that as one pushes on a supposedly immovable object, the object IS pushing back.

This is central to the discussion of weight and weightlessness. The weight that we measure on Earth under the influence of Earth’s gravitational field is dependent upon the Earth pushing back on our bodies. And weightlessness is a special condition whereby the Earth is not pushing back on us, despite us still being in the Earth’s gravitational field. This occurs when we are in freefall or in orbit about the Earth. This is also consistent with my emphasis that zero gravity is erroneous.

[Science journalists sometimes resort to microgravity instead of zero gravity—a misleading and lazy recourse.]

Physicists seriously talk of mass and consistently set off weightlessness in some way to emphasize such as a special condition. These distinctions are important to the linguistics of physics and do bear upon our applications of concepts to exercise, especially static exercise.

This is not merely theoretical as if this idea was a superficial model to analyze a problem in a statics coursework. It’s required linguistics for intelligent discourse on the subject.

Elasticity

All substances have an elastic element. Even steel and concrete bend or flex and have so-called spring. Nothing that I can think of is perfectly rigid as we commonly suppose and grossly observe.

Therefore, there is negative work in a so-called static exercise although we term it “static” as its degree of movement is relatively slight. And this does not just come from the object being pushed against, but it also arises from the elasticity of the body doing its pushing.

Static Exercise Experience

Another aspect of my erstwhile student’s misconceptions is his lack of experience with feedback statics (FS). This is performed with exercise equipment providing instantaneous and continuous reporting to the subject of his force output. As the subject becomes deeply challenged to sustain the target load during an exercise, he encounters the sensation that the equipment is moving his body against his effort—in essence a negative contraction.

Of course, this is an illusion fabricated by his nervous system, as the equipment has no such dynamic ability. Nevertheless, the effect is much the same as effort during the lowering phase of a repetition in dynamic equipment. The perception by the body is similar in static equipment, only much safer and more productive, and with a deeper inroad and presumedly enhanced stimulus effect. Those subjects who are highly skilled in the performance of TSC (static exercise without feedback) occasionally report the same phenomenon.

The Whirlpool Effect

In my book, The Renaissance of Exercise—Volume 2, I describe the appearance (behavior) of the nervous system as it draws upon progressively more of the local peripheral nervous system to assist the dedicated motor units that are faltering to sustain the target load in a static exercise. I term this the “whirlpool effect,” and while it occurs somewhat in SuperSlow exercise (our preferred dynamic exercise mode), it seems profound in TSC and FS (the two static exercise modes).

This is due to the unwavering continuity of muscular loading during static exercise. Also, the nature of moving during dynamic exercise obscures any whirlpool effect that might be present. The whirlpool effect is exhibited with dyskinesia by some subjects, most often presenting as involuntary tremors or convulsions during movement. We noted dyskinesia in some rare SuperSlow subjects AFTER their workouts, but with static exercise, it is more common as well as often during the exercise bout. This dyskinesia is always momentary.