In the last few years I've lost about 15 pounds. To most people that would sound like a good thing, except that I wasn't overweight to begin with. What I've lost is mostly muscle and bone mass, which is most definitely not a good thing. To complicate matters, what caused the loss, myalgic encephalomyelitis (a.k.a. chronic fatigue syndrome), also prevents me from exercising enough to gain it back, at least in the conventional way.
In search of unconventional muscle-building exercise I discovered the slow exercise movement. The basic theory is that the body is induced to grow and strengthen muscle and bone only when muscles are exercised to failure, that is, exercised to the point where they can no longer be exercised. The quickest and safest way to do that is to lift weights extremely slowly, with attention to form. According to The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution, that should only take about 30 minutes. What's more, according to medical studies, the ideal recovery interval for maximum muscle gain after this type of exercise is 5 days. I'm sure my recovery time would be significantly longer, but for most people it means they would only need to exercise once a week. Going slow saves time!
I wouldn't recommend buying The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution since it's quite short and the exercises are quite simple, especially if you are already a fitness geek. Some of the information on muscle physiology is interesting (once a biologist always a biologist), but there is also a certain amount of hyperbole, salesmanship, and cheap shots at other kinds of exercise regimes. Hahn is also mixed up in the high-protein diet craze. He does bring up a good point when he warns that conventional stretching just lengthens ligaments and tendons at the expense of joint stability (something I have to be careful of). I think he might change his mind if he read The Stark Reality of Stretching (highly recommended) which explains the proper technique for stretching muscles and not tendons or ligaments. But I digress.
This is not the first time I've encountered slow exercise and its counterintuitive benefits. Tom Brown Jr., who was trained in wilderness survival by an Apache scout, describes a set of exercises called "the slows." What he describes is exactly what The Slow Burn is about, if not more extreme. In one exercise he would take two or more minutes to move from a standing to a seated position. By the end of it his thighs were screaming, but it gave him the strength to stalk animals for hours.
Slow exercise also reminds me of t'ai chi, in which one practices self-defense movements extremely slowly—so slowly that most people don't realize that they are self-defense movements. Most people also don't know that t'ai chi's slow, graceful movements actually increase aerobic capacity and bone density. What is even more counterintuitive is that the more slowly you practice, the more deeply you integrate the movements and the faster you will be able to perform them when the need arises. You have to slow to go fast—one of the many paradoxes that t'ai chi proves to be true.
So, I recommend a change to the Olympic motto. Instead of Citius Altius Fortius, I propose Lentius Altius Fortius. Do you think it will catch on?
