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Last week, I shared with you a video on the diet of Shohei Ohtani. How about his exercises?
Just like he is a biohacker in his interests in diet, he is very scientific about his workouts. He goes to Driveline Baseball, a data-driven baseball performance training facility. He optimizes his training based on the latest sports science. He uses heavy weights, as well. For example, he lifts 225 kg when he does a deadlift, which is three times heavier than the average adult male lift.
That is not unique to Shohei Ohtani; most major league baseball players use heavy weights to build their strength. Weight training is a common practice among athletes and even fitness lovers.
However, that is not the case with Ichiro Suzuki. He doesn’t do regular weight training. He applies a method called Beginning Movement Load Training, which makes your exercises closer to natural movement. You are not staying still when you lift weights; you move as if you are a wild animal. Ichiro says that tigers and lions don’t stay still and lift weights; they build their muscles naturally while running around.
I don’t know much about Beginning Movement Load Training, and I have never done it myself, but I like what Ichiro says about how our body works. He says if you build muscles bigger than your body structure, it creates stress on your joints and tendons, which leads to injuries. When he moved to the major league from the Japanese baseball league, he did weight training to make his muscles bigger, too, which increased his power as a batter, yet he felt that his swing speed decreased. That is why he stopped doing it.
The concept behind Ichiro’s style is similar to that of Shizenha Bio-hacking, meaning Ikigai Bio-hacking. We try to move as naturally as possible. We promote bodyweight exercises rather than weight training. You don’t want to build muscles too much, because they make your body stiff. Muscles need to be flexible as well as strong in oriental health practices. If you apply stress up to your body weight, it shouldn’t go beyond the capacity of your joints and tendons.
I can’t speak for athletes, I am not an expert on exercises for athletes. I can’t say if Ichiro’s style is better than Shohei Ohtani’s style, but for health and longevity for people over 50, I don’t think we need to build our muscles to the degree we have to use heavy weights. Ohtani is working out to increase his pitching speed, running speed, and batting power required to perform to be the champion in major league baseball. He is optimizing his exercises precisely for that. What about us? What do we need to be able to do? We need to be able to keep walking even after age 100. That means walking on flat land, walking uphills and downhills, and walking upstairs or downstairs. For those outcomes, we can do a lot of walking on flat land, hills, and stairs. We can jog, and sprint to train our legs.
We can do squats or mountain climbers to train our legs. However, we don’t need to use weights. We also need to be able to lift certain things and carry things. For that outcome, we can basically carry things in our daily lives. We can also do upper-body workouts, but bodyweight workouts are enough. We don’t need to use weights.
For details, please read Ikigai Bio-Hacking.