Yossawee Laowattanawong (Beam) 6220212010

Fitness and Nutrition: Elements of Getting Stronger

Introduction

Nowadays, fitness has been the main concern in our daily lives. Most people tend to
be better and create a better version of themselves than yesterday. Their terms of better selves
could have different meanings due to their own perceptions of what they have been through
their lives. People have been dissatisfied with their looks and muscularity when they were not
satisfied with relationship status (Schneider, 2019). Not only fitness is the main concern;
nutrition is also one of the aspects that people want to maintain and has a sustainable life.
Having a sustainable life is one part of being a better self. People believed in self-
improvement so that they went to the gym as a self-practice (Doğan, 2015).
There are various factors to increase one’s performance, such as increasing the
strength of lifting more bench presses if one can do more push-up (Alizadeh, 2020).
Maximizing strength is also a must to getting a better result. Thomas (2016) found that
people could benefit neither of low or high-frequency exercises rather than doing nothing. If
a person is not interested in strength training, they could go for endurance training such as
circuit training like Tabata or HIIT class that is a popular class for this year, 2020
(Thompson,2019).
In addition to training, nutrition is key to pursue well-being and long-lasting lives.
Teenagers and young adults in the current year are looking for shortcuts to build muscle and
physique like their idols. They seek supplements such as whey protein or enhancing drugs to
get huge as they can in a short period of time. Using enhanced drugs might affect their
growth and severe other health issues (Yaeger, 2020).
Nonetheless, there were people that need surgery to help keep their body moving.
After undergoing surgery, all muscles would be working in the same manner. Using motion
sensor games would help their muscles working back to normal in a short period of time and
not having atrophy effect (Yun Ling, 2017).

Literature Review

Alizadeh et. al. (2020) found a correlation between push-up and bench press of both
males and females In this test, 10 men and 10 women perform a maximum push-up and
bench press repetitions with loads relative to the push-up resistance. Electromyographic
(EMG) was used to detect each muscle group that used.
Based on the result, there was a strong correlation between the number of bench press
and push-up repetitions. Greater push-up repetitions resulted in doing more bench press
repetitions according to the strength of the participant. Females used more muscle than males
for doing push-up which could greater training stress to women than men (Alizadeh et al.,
2020).
Moreover, Brauner et al. (2020) researched serious motion-based exercise games to
increase physical health in ambient assisted living(AAL) environments. Older adults would
benefit from independent living with more physical activity.
Serious exercise games were another mean approach to meet the demographic change
of the society. Games were integrated into the AAL environment and work as a daily routine.
Games were invented without the use of physical equipment in using. The current technology
offers exciting opportunities. The result showed that it reduced the pain effect on various
aspects for older people from mental to physical function (Brauner et al., 2020).
Dankel et al. (2017) had experimented with a group of people in testing whether
exercising two days per week or training 6 days per week would have a higher growth rate.
Yossawee Laowattanawong (Beam) 6220212010

The first group trained 6 days per week and lifted only 3 sets of 4-6 exercises. The second
group trained for 2 days per week and lifted 3 sets of 6 exercises. The last group trained for 2
days per week and lifted 9 sets of exercises.
The first group was so successful in having a steady muscle growth rate. The second
group had reached the anabolic limit which was the utmost limit that you wanted to have
when training. The last group trained extravagant and wasted too much effort (Dankel et al.,
2017).
Di Liegro et al. (2019) had sought how physical activity(PA) and brain health worked.
The aim was to see the correlation between the body and the brain worked. As people aged,
people tended to do lesser PA, and brain health could be malfunctioning.
A habitual exercise that ranged from cardiovascular fitness to weight training can
improve glycemia and insulin response. Brain Neurons tended to work more once a singular
task was done. PA did a variety of aspects of brain function and contribute synergic effects to
brain health as a whole (Di Legro et al., 2019).
Doğan (2015) had researched the purposes of why people go to the gym. It was
unnotably that people went to the gym not just physical training, but also life training. The
gym workouts were created to create better versions of oneself.
Upon the results, the gym can be said to be the Re-Inventive Institution which could
also be called “spill-over effects”. People believed in self-improvement so that they went to
the gym for “self-practices”. Once they had achieved their goals, they would feel that they
had controlled over their lives (Doğan, 2015).
Schneider et. al. (2019) had studied the correlation between relationship status and
sex-life satisfaction with body dissatisfaction. In this research, the drive for muscularity
(DfM) came for many reasons in the recent field of study. The male body image had been
proven to divide dissatisfaction with body fat and with muscularity.
Single males felt dissatisfaction with muscularity from those in relationships. The
single males cared about their looks and spent time thinking about their goals rather than
doing. Males with the relationship was not prone to be dissatisfied with their muscularity.
Those who were satisfied with their muscularity would show to be satisfied with the
frequency of sexual encounters. To conclude, there were connections of relationship and
sexuality with body image concerns for men (Schneider et al., 2019).
Thomas (2016) studied the effect of strength training frequency on improvements in
lean mass and strength. The participants were distributed to one of two group training which
were low-frequency training group (LFT) and high-frequency training group (HFT). Low-
frequency training group (LFT) would be assigned to train each muscle group as push, pull,
leg workouts that train 3 days per week. High-frequency training group (HFT) would be
assigned to train every part of the muscle group in one day and would be training for 3 days
per week.
After the experiment, both HFT and LFT group received similar changes in lean mass
for the consecutive 8 weeks. HFT had improved by 1.9% and LFT for 2.0%. There were no
significant changes in both groups and both increased almost the same amount. On the other
hand, testing 1 Repetition Max to each participant had slightly changes (Thomas, 2016).
Thompson (2019) researched for American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) to
find the trend annually. In this article, it was surveyed by sending about 58,000 surveys forms
out to the people that related to the health and fitness industry. The responses were 3,037 and
it turned out to be a very good return rate of 6%.
The top 20 fitness trends were recorded. Wearable technology took over the no.1
followed by HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) and group training. The trends were
quite similar to last year (Thompson, 2019).
Yossawee Laowattanawong (Beam) 6220212010

Yager et al. (2020) had studied the uses of muscle building supplements such as
protein powder, creatine, and enhanced drugs on adolescent boys. (Yager & McLean 2020)
had 237 participants aged between 14 to 16 to analyze in this research. The participants were
asked to do the questionnaire and the researchers had evaluated the result. The adolescents
had engaged in many sports and the top three were: Australian Rules Football (45.6%),
Weight Training (41.8%), and Basketball (41.4%). The adolescents were reported to have
used protein powder at 49.8% and intend to use protein powder at 62%. 4.2% had used
anabolic steroids and 5% intended to use steroids too.
It was concluded that the use of protein supplements was linked to participation in
weight lifting and other sports that they had engaged (Yager et al., 2020).
Ling el at. (2017) studied that patients who received rehabilitation after hip
replacement surgery. They had increased in muscle strength and performance if they had
gone through traditional physiotherapy. Exercise games would gradually increase the uptake
of rehabilitation exercise in elderly patients.
75% of patients enjoyed the game at higher experience levels; however, not with the
squat exercises. Fietsgame can be used as a tool for rehabilitation patients. Lunges and squats
were essential for patients to increase more balance (Ling el at., 2017).

References

Alizadeh, S., Rayner, M., Mahmoud, M., & Behm, D. G. (2020). Push-Ups vs. bench press
differences in repetitions and muscle activation between sexes. Journal of sports
science & medicine, 19(2), 289–297.

Brauner, P., & Ziefle, M. (2020). Serious motion-based exercise games for older adults:
Evaluation of usability, performance, and pain mitigation. JMIR serious games, 8(2),
e14182. https://doi.org/10.2196/14182

Dankel, S. J., Mattocks, K. T., Jessee, M. B., Buckner, S. L., Mouser, J. G., Counts, B. R.,
Laurentino, G. C., & Loenneke, J. P. (2017). Frequency: The overlooked resistance
training variable for inducing muscle hypertrophy?. Sports medicine (Auckland,
N.Z.), 47(5), 799–805. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-016-0640-8

Di Liegro, C. M., Schiera, G., Proia, P., & Di Liegro, I. (2019). Physical activity and brain
health. Genes, 10(9), 720. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes10090720

Doğan C. (2015). Training at the Gym, Training for Life: Creating Better Versions of the Self through
Exercise. Europe's Journal of Psychology, 11(3), 442–458.
https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v11i3.951

Ling, Y., Ter Meer, L. P., Yumak, Z., & Veltkamp, R. C. (2017). Usability test of exercise games
designed for rehabilitation of elderly patients after hip replacement surgery: Pilot study. JMIR
serious games, 5(4), e19. https://doi.org/10.2196/games.7969

Schneider, C., Bartuschka, J., Voracek, M., & Hennig-Fast, K. (2019). The association of
relationship status and sex-life satisfaction with body dissatisfaction and drive for
muscularity in male weight-lifters. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 2759.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02759
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Thomas, M. H., & Burns, S. P. (2016). Increasing Lean Mass and Strength: A Comparison of
High Frequency Strength Training to Lower Frequency Strength
Training. International Journal of Exercise Science, 9(2), 159–167.

Thompson, Walter. (2019). Worldwide survey for fitness trend. ACSMʼs Health & Fitness
Journal. 23. 10-18. 10.1249/FIT.0000000000000526.

Yager, Z., & McLean, S. (2020). Muscle building supplement use in Australian adolescent
boys: Relationships with body image, weight lifting, and sports engagement. BMC
pediatrics, 20(1), 89. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-020-1993-6