COURTESY MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
Students perform a study in Steve Elmer’s exercise physiology lab at Michigan Tech, where researchers seek to understand how leg and arm muscles work.
COURTESY MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
Steve Elmer, an assistant professor of kinesiology and integrative physiology at Michigan Technological University, studies body mechanics.
Since he once worked with Olympic athletes, you might think that physiologist Steve Elmer would be all about “bigger, faster, stronger.”
That’s part of his work, the Michigan Technological University researcher agrees, but the larger picture – the one he’s trying to develop with his study of body mechanics – is how to make exercise smarter and more user-friendly, especially as we continue toward increasingly sedentary lifestyles.
He also wants to know the best ways to help those who are recovering from injuries or without full use of their body.
“We think of exercise as a form of medicine,” Steve says.
The Michigan Tech assistant professor in kinesiology and integrative physiology works in both biological sciences and mechanical engineering in his lab on campus in Houghton. In short, he’s an expert on human exercise, on keeping the body moving to stay healthy.
Current science suggests that the human body needs at least 150 minutes a week in exercise to maintain good health. It could be walking, gardening, climbing stairs or more formal exercise. The simple key to maintain your strength for daily living, says Steve: “Keep moving.”
Doing just the 20 minutes of exercise recommended as the daily minimum, he notes, can reduce your rate of illnesses.
The American College of Sports Medicine pushes for strength training at least two times a week. That’s where Steve and his students get to work discovering how athletes – and everyone else – can gain benefits from weight and resistance training.
“It’s thinking about moderate intensity and increasing rates,” Steve says. “It’s not about going as hard as you can.”
COURTESY MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
Using a blood pressure cuff, Michigan Tech researchers study the impact of restricted blood flow on muscle strength and size. Preliminary data show that restricting blood flow increases a muscle’s size and strength even when using light weights.
In other words, not everyone is a world-class athlete, so routines need to match abilities and ages. Many 60-year-olds can’t expect to curl 50-pound weights without a lot of stress on the joints and even on the lungs and heart. Finding a way to use 10-pound weights to achieve the same muscle gain is what Steve and his students are up to. “Our work is about recovery and maintaining good health.”
Heading into winter, many find their activity level slows down, though not so in Houghton, Steve boasts. “We embrace winter.”
But taking up a winter recreation like skiing, skating or fat-tire biking aren’t the only options to keep it moving, Steve says. It just means paying attention.
Going to an indoor event, like a hockey game? Take the stairs.
Watching a football game on TV? Stand up and walk in place for part of the game. Take breaks from your computer to move around the house or at work.
Beyond keeping it moving, Steve and his students are working on techniques in weight training to make exercise the most productive.
One discovery is that restricting blood flow during exercise seems to increase the benefits of the workout.
“(It) typically involves lifting light weights while a pressurized cuff reduces some of the blood flow going to and from the working muscles,” Steve says. “This combination of light weight exercise and moderate blood-flow restriction causes muscles to grow in size and become stronger. … Blood-flow restriction exercise is being used with a wide variety of populations that have difficulty exercising, such as older adults, individuals who have arthritis, and active adults recovering from knee surgery.”
Thus, by restricting blood flows, exercising with 10-pound weights, for example, may have as much benefit as with 40-pound weights.
These discoveries can help in rehabilitation work or in wellness for older adults, Steve says. “We’re tricking the body into high-intensity exercise safely and practically.”
The team at Michigan Tech works with the regional medical community to find test subjects. A recent study used local people who had suffered knee ligament damage. After such an injury, the damaged leg might lag in muscle mass behind the uninjured leg. The Tech lab put the study subjects to work on weights and treadmills, using the blood-flow restriction to improve recovery. The results surprised even the skeptics among the patients, Steve says. “Each one improved; they were pleasantly surprised.”
COURTESY MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
Steve Short (right), an MTU alum and the director of sports medicine for the Denver Nuggets, tours Steve Elmer’s lab.
Steve and his team focus on how human body mechanics work here on Earth, but their research may have otherworldly applications. It might help those voyaging to Mars.
In space, without gravity, you lose bone and muscle mass. The lack of resistance tricks the body into thinking it no longer needs Earth-bound strength to keep all of its parts in moving shape.
NASA cites studies on astronauts with extended stays on space stations showing a 1 to 2 percent loss of bone mass per month. Muscle loss can be even more dramatic, about 20 percent after just a little more than a week in weightlessness.
Right now, NASA avoids creating 98-pound weaklings on the International Space Station through a regime of diet and exercise that eats up to two hours each day. The exercises include treadmill running, resistance by stretching rubber bands and stationary biking. That helps with the months-long stays on the space station, but what if we send humans to Mars, a more than two-year, round-trip journey?
“It’s one of the interesting challenges out there,” Steve says.
Under current practice, he explains, astronauts would need to ramp up the exercise intensity, practicing up to six hours a day.
The space challenge in his field is to find practical exercise regimes that take less time away from scientific study and ship operation.
Controlling blood flows in weight training, tricking the body into efficiently working its muscles with lighter weights, may be one answer. But meanwhile, Steve will keep reaching for the stars on his earth-bound research.
Mike Creger is a freelance writer and editor based in Duluth and also proofreads this magazine.