[Click! Health] My Precious Muscles... How to Exercise Without 'Muscle Loss'?

As summer officially begins, more people are visiting fitness centers to build a great body. However, to prevent injuries caused by incorrect exercise habits, it is essential to first understand the exercise methods that suit your body.

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Increasing and maintaining muscle mass is as important as losing weight. Especially with growing interest in preventing muscle loss and creating a balanced body, there is a common belief that aerobic exercises like running or jump rope cause muscle loss.

This belief is half true and half false. When we move our bodies or exercise, energy is metabolized and consumed in the order of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. For muscle loss to occur due to aerobic exercise, proteins must be consumed after fats, but unless you exercise at high intensity for a long time like a marathon runner, the likelihood of protein consumption is significantly low. Even when combining aerobic and anaerobic exercises at a typical intensity, significant muscle loss does not occur. Combining anaerobic and aerobic exercises improves heart rate and cardiopulmonary capacity, enabling more efficient anaerobic workouts. Unless you have a clear goal like a professional athlete, it is wise to create an appropriate and balanced exercise plan tailored to your individual goals.

Additionally, while aerobic exercise can reduce body fat, anaerobic exercise must be combined to maintain diet effects without side effects such as yo-yo dieting. Anaerobic exercise increases muscle mass, which raises basal metabolic rate. This makes it easier to maintain a body type that gains less fat, enabling efficient dieting. Combining strength training also helps reduce sagging skin that can occur with weight loss, resulting in a firm and healthy physique.

Yeom Seung-cheol, director of Gwangju Jaseng Korean Medicine Hospital, said, “Aerobic exercise is suitable for weight loss, but for a healthy diet, strength training should be done together for effective results. Strength training strengthens the muscles around the spine and joints, helping prevent various musculoskeletal disorders. I hope everyone can spend a confident and healthy summer this year through proper balance.”

There are also significant differences in opinions regarding methods of strength training. A commonly used concept in strength training is ‘1RM (one-repetition maximum),’ which refers to the maximum weight you can lift once with full effort. Exercise plans and total repetitions are based on this. There is debate over whether high-weight, low-repetition or low-weight, high-repetition training is more effective for strength training. However, there is no wrong answer. The method varies depending on the exercise goal.

If you want to increase muscle size or improve your 1RM, high-weight, low-repetition training that uses explosive strength in a short time is effective. On the other hand, if you want to build muscular endurance, rehabilitate, or strengthen a specific area through repeated stimulation, low-weight, high-repetition training that maintains strength slowly over a longer period is recommended.

Therefore, it is not necessary to always insist on high-weight training close to 1RM. In fact, excessive strength training is a major cause of spinal and joint injuries, so it is advisable to wisely set exercise methods according to your goals. Special caution is required before high-weight training, especially if you suffer from musculoskeletal disorders such as herniated discs or knee arthritis.

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Recovery after strength training is also important. To grow muscles, you need to repeatedly exercise the target muscle group at a certain intensity or higher to cause damage to muscle fibers. Then, satellite cells and proteins fill and promote regeneration of the damaged muscle fibers. Muscle fibers undergo a supercompensation process, meaning they recover to a state bigger and stronger than before. The recovery time usually takes 24 to 48 hours. Ultimately, the most important factors in muscle growth are damage and recovery. The higher the intensity of exercise, the longer rest time is needed. Without sufficient rest, damage deepens, and recovery time and injury risk increase. Excessive exercise can cause various musculoskeletal disorders such as rotator cuff tears, cruciate ligament tears, and plantar fasciitis.

Yeom Seung-cheol, director of Gwangju Jaseng Korean Medicine Hospital, advised, “One or two days of rest after exercise is not a time of muscle loss but muscle growth. For healthy muscle growth, appropriate plans such as split programs that target different muscle groups daily are necessary. If musculoskeletal disorders occur due to excessive exercise and treatment is needed, choosing Korean medicine treatments such as acupuncture, Chuna manual therapy, and herbal prescriptions, which have advantages in pain relief and functional recovery, is also a good option,” he said.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.