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Lift Weight, Not Too Much, Most of the Days – The Atlantic

Sep 28th, 2019

Over time, greasing the groove has trickled down through the fitness realm, with each lifter and CrossFit champ who practices it slightly changing its meaning. In The Complete Guide to Bodyweight Training, the sports therapist Kesh Patel defines it as lifting weights in smaller, but frequent chunks, rather than one large one. On Instagram, people tag everything from yoga poses to 100-pound deadlifts with #greasethegroove. (The term is, helpfully, both sciencey and sexy sounding.)

I cant say for certain why it has gained popularity, said Christopher J. Lundstrom, a professor of exercise science at the University of Minnesota, in an email, but I suspect it has to do with the simplicity of the idea, and the fact that it does not require a particularly hard effort (i.e., it doesnt hurt) and often requires little to no equipment.

In fact, greasing the groove has become something of a catchphrase for people who dont have the time or ability to do a full workout, but still want to squeeze in a little exercise. Some days your daily routine is better than others but the key is consistency and #greasingthegroove, one yogis Instagram caption says. The practice appears to have taken on a Michael Pollanesque definition: Lift weight, not too much, most of the days. For busy people who just want to squeeze in fitness however they can, that might be just the right mantra.

Read: The futility of the workout-sit cycle

One way to grease the groove is to just do the exercise whenever you think of it. Ben Greenfield, in Beyond Training, describes how he would do three to five pull-ups every time he walked under a pull-up bar installed in his office doorway. By the end of the day, hed have performed 30 to 50 pull-ups with minimal effort.

McKay opted for something similar: He set up a pull-up bar in his door frame, and every time he walked under it, he would do one. Youre allowing yourself to practice more without going to fatigue, he says. If youre constantly thrashing your body, doing max sets every time you do a pull-up, youre gonna have a bad time. Anyone who has tried to climb the stairs to their apartment on achy quads after an ambitious leg day knows the risks of overexertion. Within a month, McKay says, he went from being able to do about five pull-ups to about 15.

Kevin Weaver, a professor of physical therapy at New York University, told me that training by greasing the groove can help your body increase the number of muscle fibers it uses to perform a certain action. Brad Schoenfeld, an associate professor of exercise science at CUNYs Lehman College, also sees a potential benefit. Because of how the brain learns, he says, doing four sets of an exercise over five days rather than 20 sets in one day, for instance, might be a way to improve technique or form, which could result in getting stronger even if you dont add additional weight. This would be especially helpful for more complex exercises, like certain kettlebell moves.

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Lift Weight, Not Too Much, Most of the Days - The Atlantic

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