With NASA STRONG don't you only get stronger in the range of motion you train in?
Don't you need to move through a full range of motion?
Your muscles have an origin and insertion point between bones. Muscle cells run the entire length of the muscle. The muscle either contracts or it doesn't. The fact that movement is prevented or allowed is irrelevant. There is no adaptation to becoming stronger in only one joint angle and weaker in all the others.
Isometric contractions expose you to the highest loads possible in seconds. Moving through a full range of motion doesn't allow you to even come close to that kind of loading. Just look at a force vs. joint angle curve. Maximum neuromuscular engagement is best in your most efficient joint angles (which is what you do in Nasa Strong). Moving through a full range of motion is inefficient and places unnecessary stress on your joints.
How is it possible that one 10 minutes workout a week can produce optimal results?
A NASA STRONG program will improve your strength and your endurance, rebuild your bones and muscles, restore your vitality, and postpone the aging process more safely and effectively than any other form of exercise, in ten minutes a week. It sounds impossible, but it is absolutely true.
While the workout itself is responsible for stimulating changes in your body; it is actually your body itself that produces those changes. It is therefore crucial that you allow time for recovery between workouts, in order to continually improve. Due to the high-intensity nature of NASA STRONG an average of 7 days is necessary between workouts, in order to reach and maintain optimal results.
Can everyone participate in a NASA training program regardless of age and condition?
NASA STRONG is for everyone. It is a safe and very effective method of training suitable for everyone, from the top athlete to the person who can hardly walk due to weak muscles, and for everyone in between. For practical reasons there is a minimum age of 14 in order to be a member of NASA STRONG.
Will NASA STRONG improve my heart and lung endurance?
When people first hear that aerobics doesn't really strengthen the heart and lungs – when they hear that it only makes their muscles a little stronger and that it just seems like their hearts and lungs work better – and when they are told that 10 minutes a week doing a NASA STRONG workout will give them as much endurance as three hours of jogging, they hardly believe it!
However, this unlikely claim is true! The NASA STRONG workout will give you greater cardiopulmonary fitness and endurance than running. The endurance you get from running along for miles every week comes not from any cardiovascular conditioning but from the strength that such a routine ultimately develops, as well as from the sport-specific training effects that occur.
The heart and lungs don’t get much stronger, if at all. The muscles in general, and the legs and hips in particular, become stronger, and this increased muscular strength brings about the changes we call ”getting in shape”.
Running and other forms of “aerobic” exercise strengthen the muscles. Stronger muscles working more efficiently to draw oxygen from the blood reduce the demand on the heart and lungs, which gives the impression of improved cardiovascular or cardiopulmonary fitness.
You have the heart and lungs that you were born with. Each of these organs has a limited performance capacity, and as long as you are working within that capacity, they seem to work just fine. When you exceed that capacity, however, the perception is that your heart and /or lungs are out of shape. As you age and lose muscle mass, activities you used to do with ease when you were stronger now become difficult, you pant and puff and your heart pounds when you try to do them. But that isn't because your heart and lungs have gotten weaker – your muscles have, and as a result, their inefficiency makes you exceed the comfort level and capacity of your cardiopulmonary system. You don't need to strengthen your heart and lungs; in fact, you can't. You need to strengthen your muscles so that they can once again function easily within the capacity of your heart and lungs.
What about flexibility and stretching?
Flexibility as is also the case with just about everything else concerning our bodies, is genetics, to a great extent. The performers you see who are hyperflexible, who can bend over backwards, stick their heads between their legs, and do other seemingly impossible feats were born that way. You could practice for the next twenty years and never achieve that kind of flexibility, nor would you want to. Your ligaments would stretch, your joints would become loose, and you would be prone to dislocations etc.
Muscle strength actually enhances flexibility . A trained muscle is not only stronger, it is also more supple, has improved circulation, is better hydrated and can exert much greater force across the joint of motion. Strong muscles moving the joint through its full range of motion while maintaining the integrity of the ligaments produce optimal, stable flexibility.
Unfortunately, most people believe that the best way to improve flexibility is to stretch the joint. What they are gaining, in fact, is loose, unstable joints.
Medical evidence shows that all the components of the joint improve with proper strength training. The increased ligament and tendon strength, coupled with the tremendous increase in muscular strength and elasticity resulting from NASA STRONG training, gives joints enhanced flexibility as well as a dramatically decreased risk of injury. A stretching regimen, on the other hand, does just the opposite — it increases joint flexibility at the price of increased risk of dislocation.
So if you want to increase your flexibility forget about stretching, Yoga, Pilates, and all the rest. Do NASA STRONG for 10 minutes a week instead and make your joints be the best they can be.
Will the training also strengthen the bones?
Bones are designed to bear weight, to do work. When they are stressed, they adapt, grow and become strong, when they are not asked to do their load-bearing job, they quickly become thin, weak and frail. Disuse is deadly to a healthy bone.
Weak bones is an epidemic in many parts of the world, resulting in injuries and crippling conditions for millions.
Without reservation we can say that a properly performed NASA STRONG workout brings about bigger and better sustained bone-density gains in men and women of all ages — even those in their eighties and nineties — than any other form of exercise. Whether for you such improvement translates into better athletic performance, less risk of osteoporosis later in life, rebuilding bones already weakened and thin, or better endurance in everything from recreational sports to climbing stairs or lifting your groceries, a once a week NASA STRONG session is the key to healthier bones.
How does this help rehabilitate from injuries?
Have you ever seen an injured limb after it has come out of a cast? It’s withered, stiff, and weak. It looks like it has aged 20 years. The goal of rehabilitation is to restore normal function. Although ultra sound, electrical stimulation, stretching, and cryotherapy are helpful tools in the rehabilitation process, the most important tool is increasing the strength of the surrounding musculature. NASA STRONG provides a low force, fast and efficient way to restore a patient’s function.
Strong muscles act as a corset of support and provide you with better “shock absorbers” which decreases your chance of injury.
With no moving parts or heavy weights to cause injury, the amount of force generated for each exercise is entirely controlled by the trainee, eliminating the risk of new injuries while rehabilitating from surgeries or existing injuries.
How does this work with low back and neck rehab?
The isometric exercise you do on Nasa Strong will lead to large improvements in strength and voluntary activation of musculature. The vertical lift is the most valuable exercise out of all of them. This one has the most application to anything you do in your life. It directly taxes all of the vertebral muscles from top to bottom and adding the Shoulder Shrug exercise taxes the neck area directly. All of this leads to less fatigue and improved functional ability all over.
Isn't it sufficient to go on a diet if I want to lose weight?
One must create a caloric deficit in order to lose weight, meaning that more calories must be spent than consumed on a daily basis. However, the deficit necessary for one pound of fat loss is 3500 calories. The activity that is necessary to burn 3500 calories is about 40 miles of jogging ! However, you should not focus on calories burned during exercise (very little!) but on calories burned as a result of exercise. For every pound of muscle that you build through NASA STRONG training your body will burn about 70 extra calories per day, just by being there ! This means that if you could build 5-7 pounds of muscle you could burn up to 500 calories per day. In a week that amounts to 3500 calories. That is 40 miles worth of jogging without really running a single mile!
The average person loses about half a pound of muscle per year after age 25. This means that if you are over forty you most likely have 5 pound or more to re-build. This is the reason why your metabolism is so bad and it's so hard to lose fat in the first place. This is a much more time-efficient and effective way to burn calories. And you don't expose your knees to the 100 tons of force that the average jogger must withstand with every mile run.
Can I spot reduce?
Spot reduction is the idea that exercising a specific body part, such as the abdominals, causes the involved muscles to use the surrounding fat for energy. This belief is the reason why high repetition sit-ups, side bends, leg raises, and twisting movements have been practiced for years as a way to remove fat from the waist.
Spot reducing might seem logical to a lot of people, but, unfortunately, it does not work that way. It would be nice if the fat cells would be taken from the areas where you have the most fat deposits. But there are no direct pathway that exist from your fat cells to your muscle cells. When fat is used for energy, it is mobilized primarily through your liver from fat cells all over your body. The mobilization process actually operates in reverse order from which you store fat. The last places you store fat are usually the first from which you lose it.
The thickest layers of fat for a man are usually located on the waist. A woman sometimes stores fat there, too, but usually the thickest layers are over the buttocks and upper thighs.
Your muscles will burn calories 24 hours a day by themselves, just by being there. NASA STRONG will actually turn your body in an automatic fat burning machine!
And don't forget that 1 pound of muscle takes up much less space than 1 pound of fat. So, if you lose 5 pounds of fat and gain 5 pounds of muscle, your body will look quite different, but you will still weigh the same. This also illustrates the point that you should not be obsessed with your scale, but rather with losing excess fat and gaining lean muscle tissue.
Will women develop big masculine muscles?
A question on the minds of many women who consider strength training is: Will I bulk up? They don't want to look like the women they see in bodybuilding magazines and are a little apprehensive that the training will make them look more like men than women. It won't happen. The women in bodybuilding magazines are one in ten thousand in terms of their genetic ability to bulk up, sometimes further enhanced by a little help from steroids.
Can sports performance be improved by NASA STRONG?
The sports wisdom has long been that to improve your performance in any activity you should practice that activity — only more so. However, what practice builds is skill not strength.
To effectively build muscle and increase strength, you’ve got to take the muscle to complete fatigue, and you can't do that practicing the movements of any sport.
It is paradoxical that the very activities that demand the explosive power of your big fast-twitch fibers won't improve them. But you can bring them to utter fatigue with a single NASA STRONG workout each week. And by doing so, you'll make all your muscle fibers bigger and stronger and more capable of performing whatever explosive endeavor you ask of them — if you have the skill to perform it.
There is no activity or task or sport that won't improve if you are stronger.
Is the training always private and with a personal trainer?
All training in NASA STRONG is carried out with your own personal trainer from beginning till end – every time – always! There is no one else in the room.
Your trainer concentrates solely on you, adjusts the equipment, notes your improvements every time, and makes sure you perform the exercises correctly and with the right intensity. Your trainer will guide you and support you in order for you to achieve the best possible results, which will make a dramatic difference in your daily life.
Only with a qualified and personal trainer every time will the best results be reached.
Age in Reverse!
No matter what your health and physical fitness goal may be, the only way to get there is by challenging your muscles to become stronger. Increasing muscular strength is like a rising tide - it lifts all boats. By taxing your muscles, every system in your body that supports what the muscles is challenged to become healthier and more efficient. Therefore, every exercise-related health and fitness benefit that we know of can be achieved by simply getting stronger.
Nasa Strong provides the simplest, safest, and most time-efficient way to accomplish this.