3/6/24
End of the 300 Challenge
So I have been thinking. And I’ve come across some new information.
While I find it to be unlikely that my strength will suddenly explode if I keep doing these 300 isometric hold for 10 seconds, and I said I wanted to give the remainder of the challenge a fair shake, I won’t be finishing it. And here is why.
What I’ve been thinking about is this:
Doing 50 minutes worth of an isometric hold, even with resistance, is not how any fitness person gets bigger and/or stronger for any other muscle.
Like let’s say someone wants to get bigger quads. They aren’t going to do 300 wall-sits for 10 seconds each- even if they did it with added resistance/weight with a dumbbell or a plate sitting on their lap. They wouldn’t even get into a leg press machine and do 300 10-second isometric holds with weight.
And it’s not that fitness people never do isometrics or that they don’t have their place in training and fitness, it’s just that it’s not how people get “jacked.”
Which is relevant to me because having a “jacked” pelvic floor aka thicker vaginal muscles is what creates the feeling of a narrow vaginal canal. Also, a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle all else being equal, or at least it has the potential to be a stronger muscle.
It is true size does not equal strength and there are powerlifters who can deadlift 4 times their bodyweight while being 130lbs while there are body builders who are bigger and weigh more who can’t do that. But also, there’s a reason why there are weight classes in powerlifting competitions- bigger means stronger or at least potentially stronger given that the person competing has maximized their neurological capacity for strength with the given amount of muscle fibers that they have, which is what powerlifters do. Bodybuilders typically don’t care to do this, they just care to get progressively stronger so they can get progressively bigger and don’t bother to be maximally strong.
Now a person looking to get as strong as possible (that would be me- at least as far as my pelvic floor is concerned) would ideally make their muscles as big as possible first like a bodybuilder and then make those big muscles as strong as possible like a powerlifter.
So, I think I should be training my pelvic floor like a bodybuilder and then later on I’ll train it like a powerlifter.
The thing about isometric holds is that they are what I would classify as a “powerlifting” technique, meaning they are a “stronger for my size” technique. Famously, overcoming isometrics were used by Bruce Lee and he would chain a barbell to the floor. He was very strong but not a big guy, nor did he want to be. If he did train like a bodybuilder and got bigger, he could have also gotten objectively stronger in terms of being able to lift more weight but that wasn’t his goal. As a martial artist, being as fast as possible was more of a priority than being as big or as objectively strong as possible.
And speaking of speed, I found a video that explains what speed has to do with strength:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DozNYzi-6Oo&list=LL&index=34&pp=gAQBiAQB
To summarize, when looking at Newton’s second law Force = Mass * Acceleration, in order to have more force aka strength to move a given mass/weight, increasing the speed aka acceleration will do this. And conversely, if you increase the mass aka the weight or resistance, you will need more force to move that weight- which means you will need greater acceleration because the only way to increase the Force in that mathematical equation after increasing the mass is to also increase the acceleration.
Admittedly, my pelvic floor speed is sort of lackluster. So maybe I would get better results if I was training speed/acceleration more than the isometrics I’ve been training.
Here’s another thing to note about my training with the Kegelmaster.
I love my Kegelmaster and one of the unique things about it is that because it springs open inside the vagina, it does provide resistance while the pelvic floor muscles are relaxed/stretched and not just when the muscles are contracted.
However, when doing my 300 Kegels per day, there is no way for me to guarantee that I am closing the Kegelmaster to the same degree on each rep since I can’t close it all the way on Level 3 yet and I can’t go back to Level 2 because it doesn’t spring open wide enough for me to really feel like my muscles are resisting anything. And unlike my Perifit which will give me a number on screen in the app for what strength I’m using, the Kegelmaster is analog not digital.
That being said, it is likely the case that as I am doing my 300 contractions with the Kegelmaster, I am training my endurance more than training strength or hypertrophy (muscle growth) because as I continue doing the contractions, I’m probably producing less and less force for each subsequent contraction until the amount of force/tension in producing in the muscles is below the minimum threshold required for strength or hypertrophy adaptations.
That’s another new thing I learned (as I’m still a baby in this world of weightlifting and fitness). According to Dr. Mike Isratel, he stated while discussing the concept of “time under tension” that there is a minimum threshold of tension/resistance required to make a muscle grow (hypertrophy) and you can’t just say that less tension and more time will give the same muscle growth results as less time with more tension. Otherwise, marathon runners would have jacked legs because they have low tension with a huge amount of time. But they aren’t- elite marathoners are generally known for lean physiques.
The opposite of marathon running would be powerlifting. Powerlifting is very little time but with a massive amount of tension because powerlifters use heavy ass weights and want to be able to have a very high 1 Rep Max (1RM) where they can lift the most amount of weight possible all at once. And by definition of 1RM, if a certain weight can be lifted multiple times (or can be held in an isometric contraction for an extended period of time), that weight is no where close to the 1RM.
I don’t think a powerlifter would be able to stand with the amount of weight they use for their 1RM squat on their back for 50 minutes. I’m not even sure that would be possible for 5 minutes. When using weights that heavy, the 1RM is performed as quickly as is safe and then the weight is put back on the rack as quickly as possible. Yes the reps are slow and sort of grinding as the powerlifters stand up from their squat but once they do come all the way up, they’re not just hanging around with the weight still on their backs, nor are they hanging around for minutes on end at the bottom of the squat either. I am very curious and interested in knowing just how much time in terms of seconds of an isometric hold equates to a 1RM. Like, how long could most powerlifters stand with their 1RM on their backs while standing in terms of seconds and how long could they hold it at the bottom of a squat?
Anyway, the takeaway here is that 50 minutes of isometric Kegel contractions (300 reps * 10 seconds per rep = 3,000 seconds/ 50 minutes of active time) don’t have the minimum amount of resistance or tension requires to produce improvements in either strength (powerlifting style training and neurological strength improvements) or hypertrophy (bodybuilding style training).
Basically, this challenge was based on a flawed interpretation of data so I ended up training for endurance and wondering why I wasn’t getting any stronger.
It’s not that endurance is a bad goal or not a useful goal for training the pelvic floor and I am almost certain that I will include endurance training in the future. But it wasn’t my primary intention with this challenge.
The book that I was following for this challenge reported that the patient, Dorothy, improved her pelvic floor after 2 weeks of 300 contractions per day. The book, The G-Spot by Ladas, Whipple, and Perry, states that Dorothy’s contractions started out “very low” and after 2 weeks of this training, her vaginal myography readings were 19 microvolts putting her in the top 2% of women measured.
If you don’t already know, a vaginal myograph is basically an EMG for the vagina. And as I recently learned from Dr. Mike Isratel, EMG readings are not entirely accurate.
So I began to dig further.
The thing about EMG readings is that there is not always a linear relationship between the amount of force a muscle produces (aka how much weight is being lifted) and the EMG reading. Especially when looking at endurance exercises.
A publication by Athletic Therapy today in the International Journal of Athletic Therapy and Training had this to say:
Muscle Force and Fatigu
Consider two experiments involving isometric activity of the biceps brachii while holding a dumbbell in a 90° elbow-angle position. In Experiment I, biceps brachii EMG is recorded for a 20-lb-dumbbell and a 40-lb-dumbbell condition. The heavier weight requires greater elbow-flexor force to generate an adequate flexor torque to maintain the isometric position. As a result, the 40-lb weight elicits a larger EMG signal. For Experiment II, a 20-lb dumbbell is held for an extended period of time. As muscle fibers become fatigued and produce less force, additional motor units are recruited to maintain a constant muscle force and flexor joint torque to maintain the isometric position. As a result, the EMG magnitude increases as the muscle fatigues. In both experiments, increased motor-unit activation was reflected in larger EMG amplitude. The increased EMG of the 20- versus 40-lb-dumbbell example reflected increased muscle-force production, but in the 20-lb- dumbbell fatigue example EMG increased despite no changes in muscle-force production.
Force-output and EMG-amplitude trends for muscle fatigue are presented in Figure 2. Submaximal efforts at 50% maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) lead to an increase in EMG amplitude while the muscle fatigues. Maximal force that is exerted for an extended period of time results in both force and EMG amplitude decreasing in parallel. Indeed, fatiguing efforts complicate any potential relationship between EMG and muscle force.
So basically, EMG readings will increase when doing “fatiguing” aka endurance exercises, even if the muscle force aka strength is staying the same. But also, EMG and muscle force production do have a linear correlation when measuring maximum force production (aka measuring a 1RM).
This is explains why Dorothy was able to improve her EMG readings after 2 weeks- she was practicing endurance by doing 300 ten-second isometric Kegel contractions per day. But that tells us literally nothing about whether or not Dorothy actually got stronger in those two weeks; the book just said “her husband never again complained about her muscle weakness.” It doesn’t even tell us if Dorothy experienced improvements in her sex life that are correlated with a stronger pelvic floor like increased natural lubrication, increased frequency and intensity and duration of orgasms, experiencing different types of orgasms, squirting, etc.
In the past when training, I got results in terms of increasing my strength by using my Perifit with maximum effort for 15-20 minutes per day.
I had hoped that this challenge would have allowed me to make progress much faster but alas, that is not the case.
Going forward, I will be training less like a marathoner and more like a bodybuilder. I’m not quite sure yet what exactly that program will look like but thankfully I am sure that it won’t take over an hour and a half per day.
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