Aerobic or Anaerobic?

 Whether an exercise is “aerobic” or not, is determined by the manner in which it is done. The original concept was to establish at what levels exercise could be done by people with heart problems — so as not to unduly stress the heart, and not as it came to be distorted as — the minimal thresholds for exercise. Obviously, when a person hits 101% of their maximum theoretical heart rate, there is imminent danger of death.

And so the benchmark for determining this, was whether an activity could be conducted while continuing to carry on a conversation — which is a very low threshold. That makes an activity “aerobic” — because it is dictated by the cadence of normal breathing — rather than forcing the breathing to catch up to the activity or effort, which is best exemplified by maximum weight reps of 3–6 — often done with no breathing at all, or very shallow, forced breathing because the resistance is so heavy as not to allow any relaxation between reps.

A good example is the proxy for pushups of the bench press. When a weight is heavy, no proper breathing can take place because a minimal amount of chest pressure must be maintained at least equal to the weight of the bar, and one has to contract a minimum above that in the characteristic bounce off the chest. No competitor would begin their lift from a completely relaxed position — which is the hardest thing to do — but resulting in the greatest change from the complete relaxation of a muscle to its fullest contraction. That can only be done with extremely light weights — making deep and thorough exhalations and inhalations possible — which is the primary purpose of any exercise for health purposes.

The primary focus should be on the breathing — and once that is effected — circulation can be directed specifically to those other areas exercised with beneficial results. The effectiveness of breathing is determined by the change of chest volume housing the lungs. The objective is not to breathe faster, but more deeply and more thoroughly — so that the residual air that remains in the lungs is exhaled as completely as possible, thus creating space for new air (oxygen) to enter. The completeness of the exhalation is particularly important because of the structure of the lungs — which means branching tissue so that the last molecules out, are the first to be replaced — and if only the air in the top portion of the lungs is expelled, the deeper (residual) air remains — producing an anaerobic condition because there is no effective breathing until one can exhale fully again — when the load is removed, and one can carry on a normal conversation again.

A better exercise for aerobisizing the body is the bent-armed or straight-armed pullover done with a fairly light weight for 50 repetitions. More than any other single exercise, it focuses on the action of the breathing — and as such, was the foundational movement for bodybuilding in the ’60s along with the breathing squat with light weights also done for 50 reps. Those two movements alone accounted for the transformational developments of those times — and were highly recommended by the two most popular bodybuilding magazine publishers of the time, Bob Hoffman and Perry Rader. That was the characteristic development of bodybuilders in the ‘50s and ’60s — notable mainly for their ribcage development and differential between the chest and waist measurements.

An activity can be sustained indefinitely if it is performed “aerobically” — with this attention to breathing as the limiting factor, and if not, is terminated by the inability to breathe properly as when occurs in limit lifting because the breathing is constricted and not by true muscle failure. True muscle failure occurs when the muscle itself gives out before the lack of breathing forces them to stop — which is actually cardiovascular failure. That is anaerobic exercise. It can be attempted briefly and infrequently — when one’s life depends on it, but is not the preferred conditioning modality otherwise — because the organ most susceptible to a lack of oxygen, is the brain — and its neuromuscular functioning.

Invariably, this style of training will result in the absolute cessation of all movement activities because of its cumulative damaging effects overwhelming the decreasing benefits one achieves exercising in this manner. There is no net gain but an acceleration of the anaerobic effect. But at this point, most people don’t know how to exercise any other way — and so they just stop, otherwise they might go on indefinitely exercising in the manner that increases their aerobic capacities.