Feruchemy work out

[Sirscott13 he/him]

So what I want to know is if you could use feruchemy to cheat on a work out. So the idea behind working out is to push your muscles so that they have to heal back together stronger than before.

What if you were storing about fifty percent of your strength with pewter feruchemy so that you become a lot weaker than before. Then you go work out and what would normally feel like a low intensity workout becomes high intensity relative to your muscle capacity. Now you are exhausted and you stop storing pewter.

Would any of the following happen?

A) the work out transfers relative intensity and exhaustion so you still feel like you've worked out a ton and your muscles will grow stronger than you could have managed due to time constraints on a high intensity work out

B ) you don't feel the exhaustion from the work out, but a few of your muscles that endured the workout still get the boost from the time they did all the work

C) you don't get any benefit (seems unlikely)

D) the next time you tap pewter you get more out of it.

Thoughts?

Edited May 12, 2016 by Sirscott13

[king of nowhere]

i think you'd get the same benefit, plus you'd also have stored strenght.

as far as i know, a workout works because when the muscles are used a lot, the body decides that more of them are needed. if they are not used, then the body reabsorbs them because they consume food, and we evolved in a food-poor environment. so, the fact that the muscles are used to their limits is what is important.

[Oversleep]

Actually it's because when muscles are under heavy strain, the little fibers break. Literally. That's why we feel pain. Muscles then repair the fibers and that's how muscles grow.

[hoidhunter he/him]

I've done some pondering on this very idea...alas...I don't think we have any in world references for WoB to give us a positive answers.

 

But...the fun is in the theorizing right?

 

Since storing strength actually reduces your muscle mass, I would think that you might end up with some weirdly lopsided muscle mass.  I.E. You start storing strength, 50% of your muscle mass goes away, you get a wicked pump, your remaining muscle mass strains and tears, you stop storing strength, you original muscle mass returns.  The result is that ONLY the muscles that remained while storing actually got a work out, the muscles that returned when you stopped filling your pewtermind have not been worked out.  You now have some muscles that have been exercised, and some that have not.  

 

To take the idea in a different direction...instead of hitting the gym to lift weights, could a skimmer or full feruchemist just tap some weight while going about their business to put added strain on their muscles, causing an increase in strength and endurance once you recover...or would the relative increase in density that occurs when tapping weight prevent such a thing from being effective?

 

OR...some fitness minded persons use masks that restrict the amount of oxygen they are getting while exercising.  It's basically a way of simulating high altitude training.  The idea is that your body gets used to having less oxygen as fuel while enduring physical stress.  Later, when you are in an oxygen rich environment, it seems much much easier to endure prolonged physical activity without suffering from exhaustion.  Could a Gasper use their powers to produce a similar effect?  Meaning, you store a small amount of breath (say 5 - 10%) all the time as you go about your day.  Over time, you body gets used to operating with less oxygen, later when you really need to run a marathon like distance as fast as you can...just not storing breath makes it much easier to push your endurance...plus, you have a TON of breath stored up to use as needed...and you generally need less of it.

 

The one with lots of question marks around it is speed. Let's say that I, a steelrunner, go for a jog capped off with a sprint every morning as I start my day.  I do this while storing 25% of my speed.  The result is that my jog is more like a brisk walk, and my sprint is more like a jog.  Do I store more speed than I would while sitting still?  Does my body suffer more strain despite the fact that I not moving very fast at all?  Would I become conditioned to operate more efficiently with the restriction on my speed, so that when I'm not storing speed, I can run much faster than a person who has been following the same fitness routine without storing speed?