There Is A Method to the Madness
This is a podcast where I will be discussing all aspects of physical fitness. I am an exercise physiologist and personal trainer and owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs for the last 25 years. My passion is health and fitness and I am excited to share my views, some stories, interviews and much more with you.
There Is A Method to the Madness
Lean into the Discomfort. Don't Lean Out!
What truly separates elite athletes from the average? Join me, Rob Maxwell, as we unpack the critical elements of work ethic and motivation in fitness and sports training. We'll confront the reality that being at the top doesn't always equate to a strong work ethic, and you'll discover why seasoned athletes still experience the burn of high-intensity workouts just like novices do. Learn how to differentiate between harmful pain and that beneficial muscle burn that signals growth, and grasp why pushing through discomfort is essential for reaching your fitness goals.
In this episode, we'll also explore the mindset needed to push your limits and achieve peak physical fitness. We'll discuss the philosophy of counting repetitions only after the lactic acid burn begins and delve into the importance of mental toughness with examples like Lance Armstrong's extraordinary pain endurance. Additionally, we'll cover the variability in strength training loads across different machines and the necessity of adapting to these changes for optimal results. This episode is packed with actionable insights and strategies to help you elevate the quality and intensity of your workouts. Don't miss out on these crucial tips to maximize your performance and achieve your best results!
Welcome to. There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell, I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I'm the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. That is 30 years this year.
Speaker 1:The purpose of this podcast is to tell you the truth, to get to the real deal, what really works and, most importantly, why things work or why they may not work. Hence the name Method to the Madness. Let me first thank our sponsors, jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gildan Group at Realty Pros. They're committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales and they have the reviews and the sales to back that up. So let's get to today's topic.
Speaker 1:It is Friday for me, not sure when you're listening and, as I've said before, oftentimes I will. And you know, as I've said before, oftentimes I will pick up on things as I think about them through the week, you know, as I'm training my many clients and things that come up, and I think you know what this is, something I have the motivation to speak on. It's going to kind of be in the old motivational or exercise and sports psychology realm, because that is so important. As I say, often, it really doesn't matter all the X's and O's, so to say if we're not motivated to actually do it, to actually do it. So really, the issue is, how do we get people to put their best foot forward, to care enough to give their most effort? And sometimes that's getting to the gym, and then other times that's once we're there. How do we put our best effort in? So that's really the most important part. I promise you that, as a person who has a degree in psychology and a master's degree in exercise physiology I don't know how many times I've said I use my experience and degree from psychology far more than the ex-phys, far more important. All right, so the topic of today's podcast is when do you lean in and when do you lean out?
Speaker 1:So, again, getting back to putting our best foot forward, I notice when people are training and it doesn't matter like the level of competency per se, like the eliteness of a trainee or athlete or what like that doesn't matter, like I think oftentimes people make the misconception that the more elite somebody is, so the more fit they are for talking fitness or the more athletic they are for talking sports, they kind of get like the reputation that that also means they're the hardest workers, and that's just not always true. I mean, I think for the most part it's irrelevant, like it, just there's no bearing on it. It's irrelevant, like it, just there's no bearing on it. Like, I think for the most part it's. There's some elite athletes and elite trainees that have a super strong work ethic and then there are some that have a very weak effort work ethic, I should say. And then, like there are novices to working out. You know people who are just starting to work out or people who have been deconditioned for many years that start working out. So not only are they novices, but they're also just not in the greatest of shape and they will have like an elite level of work ethic. And you know, somebody new back to the gym, regardless of their fitness level, might have an elite level work ethic. So oftentimes we just make this false assumption that the one that's already doing better also has the greater work ethic, and that's just not always true. I mean, sometimes there are people that they should just thank their lucky stars that they have great genetics, because their work ethic is not there. So what I'm talking about today with work ethic is the your ability to withstand being uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:Now I don't want to use the word pain because that gets misquoted. You know, like for years we used to say no pain, no gain. Right, I mean for years, I mean like 50 years ago. And then it got invoked to say, well, we don't say that because we don't mean pain. So people get confused. The deal on that is no, we shouldn't work through injury or joint pain. So that's absolutely true. When we go against the no pain, no gain model, right, we don't work through injury.
Speaker 1:A good trainer and also a good trainee, because it's not just on the trainer. Trainees need to really let on to what's going on in their body. You know, are they having pain in a joint or are they talking muscle burn or soreness? Like the trainer can only go by what you're saying, but like, if it's muscle burn, that's a good thing. That's the pain that we really do want. We want the burn in the muscles I talked about. That last time is in if it's burning, it's working. So we want that. So that is uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:And when you're doing your cardio and you're doing some form of interval training and your heart rate is getting really high and your respiration rate is on the verge of hyperventilating, if not hyperventilating, like that's uncomfortable, like nobody likes that. The funny thing I hear a lot too, along with people thinking that elite athletes always have a greater work ethic, which again isn't true. It's also that, um, people that are out there that do it a lot, whether they're great at it or not, but they do it a lot, get the reputation for, oh, it just doesn't bother you, like we're different, you know, for you, you do a lot of 5Ks, so it just not, it must not bother you. It's like what are you talking about? Hyperventilation, increased heart rate, and then, where my muscles are just shutting down because of a lactic acid muscle just burn just as much as anybody else. It's not that they don't feel it, it's that they've learned to tolerate it. They've learned that working through this is for my benefit.
Speaker 1:So, in any form of betterment, whether we're talking about physical, like I am here, mental, like you know, it can hurt to study right. I mean literally. I can remember when I was in college like I had a really strong study habit. You know, I just did, probably because I didn't do very well in high school, so I doubted myself quite a bit. So when I got to college, I'm like you know I don't know what's up with that, but I do know I'm going to study as much as I can and I ended up graduating magna cum laude, very high, high.
Speaker 1:Not bragging on myself here, but just bragging on my work ethic, like I would go to the library at ucf and dsc prior to that when it was dbcc immediately after class and put in my work long before it was cram time and that would hurt, like I'd be uncomfortable, like I'd be reading an hour and I'd be dozing off and have to wake myself up. And you know you probably think I'm crazy, but smack a book on my forehead, like whatever it took to wake myself up, I would do it. I mean that hurts, right. I mean we'd rather be taking a nap, we'd rather be, I don't know, doing whatever laying at the beach, right. I don't know doing whatever laying at the beach, right. So that takes effort.
Speaker 1:And then, on the other side of wellness, if you're trying to improve your spiritual life too, I mean that takes effort too, right. I mean I know some people think it doesn't, but I think they have that all wrong, like things aren't just going to magically happen if you're not giving it any effort, like, if you want to improve your contact with a higher power, you know, whatever you want to call it, I mean it is going to take effort on your part. You're going to have to sacrifice, going to have to give some things up, you're going to have to, like, take time to do it. Any relationship takes time and effort right. So none of these things happen without sacrifice.
Speaker 1:So, getting back to what I'm expert at with the physical part is do you want to lean in or do you want to lean out? Now, you want to lean out, I get it. When it starts to burn at the gym, you want to lean out? I get it. And how do people lean out? Well, they pause, they take a break and you know, often we encourage them, we'll give them a five second countdown to get right back at it. Cause I get it, we get it. Nobody's chastising you for doing it. We've all done it. We're just trying to encourage you to work through it because it is so good for you and I think if you knew how good for you it was, you would push through it to the best of your abilities. I mean, everybody has a breaking point. But do you want to lean into it.
Speaker 1:Another way is we might compromise our form, we might start to shorten the range of motion or speed things up to get it over with, like those are ways we lean out. Or we might just say, oh, that's enough and quit. That's leaning out, that's just getting away from what you're really trying to achieve. Because I think you falsely think it's about the numbers, like, well, I got the number Now, as trainers set numbers because we're setting goals for something to shoot for. But, as I've said countless times, the numbers aren't nearly as important as your form, your feel and what's going on inside, right? So the people who really, really maximize their exercise efforts, whether it be in the gym or on the trail, like doing your cardio, lean in to the pain. They lean in to the burn. Now, thankfully, I've learned that and I can say I'm good at that.
Speaker 1:So, like it's working out this morning and I would say you know that I'm only going to start counting once that burn comes on me and then my goal is to say how long can I hold it? So I remember consciously doing this on the chest press machine and I think I got to like rep 12 or 13. And at that point I started to feel that lactic acid start to burn, I said, all right, how far can I now go? And I think I did six more reps, something like that, because once it comes on, it's not like you got 10 more, it shouldn't. There's something's wrong with that. So you know how far can I go why? Well, because we really do want to hit or get close to muscular failure. We really do want to push that hormonal system and get as much lactic acid in there as possible so our body gets better at dealing with it. Like we get more fit. The more we can push ourselves, the more fit we're going to get. So we try to hold it as long as we can.
Speaker 1:I don't want to say like it's kind of punishing yourself, because that sounds a little sadistic, but in a way it's like true, but it's not at the point where you're doing any damage. Like that's the thing, of course, not like no, that's not how we get hurt in a gym. We get hurt in gym usually getting way too focused on numbers, just seeing somebody else do something and say, well, I want to beat them by one, and then you end up doing something stupid and hurting yourself, like we typically hurt ourself from momentum and doing things wrong, not really from getting closer to failure or really even from lifting heavy, like you know. No, it's just not really how we get hurt. We usually get hurt when we're being too extrinsic, we're worried about numbers. So I encourage you to like, lean in, like that's what we want.
Speaker 1:You know, lance Armstrong won seven consecutive Tour de France's and you know, no, I'm not a huge fan of him as a person. Like I know that he did some things wrong, as they all did. I will also qualify that everyone in that tour generation was doping, like he was, everyone, everyone. Okay, so he didn't win because he was doping. They all doped. He won and that's where this fits into the story because he had the capacity to suffer more than the rest and he used to say that all the time after the tours and before the wheels fell off the bus. And he used to say that all the time after the tours and before the wheels fell off the bus and, as the world typically does, they brought him from the Savior to the goat in a heartbeat, although they're the people that put him up on the pedestal to begin with, he was just a bicycle racer, so he talked about, his ability to suffer was greater than his opponents, because he knew that you know, and who knows, it might've had something to do with going through chemotherapy prior to that and he, just like, knew what true suffering was all about.
Speaker 1:I don't know Like, but I do know that he pushed himself harder than anybody pushed themselves, and he knew that. He knew it. He would say if I go super hard up this mountain, up this pyramid, if I go hard to the point where I can barely hold on, then I know how they feel too and I'm going to just keep pushing until they break. He had the capacity, so he didn't try to figure out if they were hurting. He already knew they were if he was. So he didn't try to figure out if they were hurting, he already knew they were if he was. So his mindset was I'll just make myself hurt as much as I can take, and eventually they will quit. And essentially he was right. I mean, he was not built as a great mountain climber, so to say, like that wasn't his style if he followed bicycle racing, but he became so good at it that people were like, oh my goodness, he can now climb like the 120 pound climbers can, and it broke him because his ability to suffer Right.
Speaker 1:So do we have to go to Lance Armstrong levels? Probably not. I mean, you know he made millions of dollars off of winning the Tour de France and tons of sponsorship and he, you know, won one of the greatest athletic events seven times in the world. So no, I don't think I would ever expect myself or anybody else to kind of have that in him, so to say. But we can learn that if we really lean into the burn and the pain not muscle, joint pain, not stupid stuff, I'm talking about like on intervals, like if we're out there pushing ourselves on a hard bike ride or a hard run or a swim and we feel spent, if we can say, okay, how long can I hold this? I think with Schwarzenegger, one of them used to just say, well, I can hold it for one more and then one more, and then one more.
Speaker 1:So really, this boils down to how long can you stay in it, how long can you lean into it and stay in it without worrying about numbers? The only reason the numbers count at all is if it's taken forever. The load's too light. That's really all that that comes down to. There's a lot of elite bodybuilders who don't really even know exactly what they're picking up. It's like, oh, this looks like a good load and they shoot for that mindset and if they end up doing too many, they just know okay, I need to add a little bit more weight.
Speaker 1:Like there isn't a perfect load on every given day. I mean it's going to change based on a lot of variables. And if you're using machines predominantly for your strength training, I mean they all change. I mean the difference between a pre-core, which I have mostly, and a Med-X is night and day. I mean it's night and day what the loads are going to feel like. 300 pounds on one, believe it or not. On a Med-X machine it's going to feel like 100. So it's just a lot of it's in their design and mechanics, so you can't go by that, you know. So it's about how far can we push ourselves? Do you want to lean in and get better, or do you want to lean out and wish you leaned in right? That's what it's all about. All right, thank you. Overhead door of Daytona beach, the best garage door company in Volusia County in the state of Florida. We just happen to have the franchise here owned by Jeff and Zach Hawk Amazing individuals, sponsors of our events and sponsors of this show. Check them out at OverheadDoorDaytonacom.
