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
Consistency Is Key to Fitness Success
Ever wondered why your training isn’t delivering the results you aim for? Discover the secret ingredient to success as I, Rob Maxwell, uncover the transformative power of frequency in your exercise regimen. Sharing insights from my personal journey of mastering both strength training and swimming, and even a musical interlude with the piano, you'll learn why regular practice is the cornerstone of muscle memory and neurological adaptation. Studies reveal that more frequent bouts of strength training lead to greater strength gains compared to sporadic, high-intensity sessions. This episode will guide you on crafting a balanced approach for optimal physical adaptations, from building muscle to boosting endurance, without the risk of overtraining.
Imagine honing your swimming skills through consistent, shorter workouts rather than exhausting, less frequent ones. Drawing parallels with the disciplined practice required to learn an instrument, we'll explore how maintaining consistency and momentum is vital for skill enhancement. The goal is to help you tailor a training frequency that aligns with your personal needs, ensuring you achieve maximum results. Tune in to understand the intricate neurological connections between your brain and muscles, and how mastering these can revolutionize your training outcomes. Let's embark on this journey toward fitness excellence together, ensuring every workout counts.
Welcome to there's 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. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and, most importantly, why things work. Hence the name. There's a method to the madness.
Speaker 1:Today I'm going to talk about one of the most important variables in strength training and that is frequency. Before I get to that, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales and they have the reviews and the sales to back that up. If you're curious as to what you can sell your house for, give them a shout 386-451-2412. So frequency is one of the most important variables in all of physical fitness and in strength training. I'm going to focus a little bit more on that. But frequency is just how often per week we should do something Now? Last week earlier this week I should say I finished up the principles of physical fitness and now I am working on the acute program variables, and the variables are things like frequency, intensity, time, reps, load, rest time, cadence, tempo let's see what did I leave out? Range of motion, so, like those are all the variables that go into an exercise program. They're all very, very important. They're all part of the planning process so we can figure out exactly what clients need to do or what we need to do. We kind of like put everything into the little equation, so to say, and figure out what's best for everybody. And frequency is one of those, and I would say it's one of the most important, because, let's face it, if you're not doing it, it really doesn't matter what else you're doing, right? So for strength training, for example, you could go to the gym two to three times a week, like you should, or you can go to the gym once a week and really blast yourself, right. So common sense says that the former is better, and that is absolutely true, and I'm going to talk about why Now.
Speaker 1:I think I mentioned it before on this podcast that I'm taking piano because it's something that I've always wanted to do. I always wanted to learn how to play an instrument, happened to have a piano in the house and I thought, oh, that's perfect. I'm not very musically inclined, other than the fact I like to listen to it. But you know, I figured I can learn this. It's good for everything, good for learning something new, good for the brain and so on and so on. So the great remote piano teacher her name is Natalie, and she says to me often she says, remember, Rob, just practice 10 minutes a day, 10 minutes a day. And that to me puts it in very manageable chunks, because I'm like, okay, I can do 10 minutes and then, lo and behold, when I sit down I end up going a little bit longer. Now, that's great, but that's not the main point.
Speaker 1:The main point is, from a learning perspective, we're going to gain so much more muscle memory when we do things frequently, versus a ton at one time and not do it for a while. For example, recent studies on pure strength, not hypertrophy, not so much power, definitely not endurance, and those are the four adaptations that we can get out of a strength workout. I'll repeat, just for your knowledge, the four things you can get out of strength training Strength, power, hypertrophy and endurance. Recent studies on strength just making the movement stronger with the primary focus of being able to use more resistance than you used before. That is what strength is. Did just a little bit five days a week, they're actually going to get stronger than if they did a ton one day per week or even two days per week. Now does that mean you have to up your strength training to daily doing the same muscle groups? Not at all. That's not the point. That's why I mentioned that there are four adaptations and not just one, because if you start doing that you're going to overtrain. Hypertrophy is not going to happen, muscular endurance isn't going to happen. That's why I wanted to point out that there is more than one adaptation. But for strength they showed that frequency is critical. Now why Strength has much more of a learning curve. So a neurological adaptation than, say, a metabolic adaptation that you're going to need when it comes to hypertrophy and endurance. So the neurological adaptation means that the brain to muscle connection needs to be strengthened and improved, and that is what we mean by muscle memory.
Speaker 1:And it's amazing how just there are so many correlations between, say, piano and strength. Like it's amazing to me that I will learn a song on the piano and yes, there are very basic songs right now but I will learn one. And if I happen to kind of learn it the wrong way, like memorize the notes in a certain way and think I really really have it down. And then I will play it for my instructor and she'll say, oh, you're supposed to hit G there, not A. I'm like, oh man. So I go back to fix it and it is so hard, not because the notes are that different, because if you know anything about the piano, those notes happen to be right next to each other. It's just one finger difference. Other, it's just one finger difference. But the fact that my muscle memory already has it learned one way. It's harder to go back and unlearn it and then learn it the new way, like it's just ingrained, and that's literally what we call neurological adaptation. It becomes ingrained. So that's from frequency. Now, of course, the good news is you can unlearn it and relearn it.
Speaker 1:But the whole point is there really is a huge connection between the muscular system and the neurological system and when it comes to strength, those two things have to be maximized at all times. At all times you can work on hypertrophy on a chest press machine, which I absolutely love. I mean to me it's more important to get stronger on a chest press than a traditional bench press for most people. But let's say all of your learning, all of your work is happening on the chest press machine. You're not going to automatically lay down, even if you have more muscle than somebody else. You're not going to automatically lie down and be able to outbench somebody if you haven't been benching, because there's a huge neurological adaptation, a pathway that is being sent from muscle to brain and brain back to muscle that recruits certain fibers for that, and so that's why so much technique is needed to bench press better or to say, box jump better or fill in the blank, anything you do, there's a learning curve that happens.
Speaker 1:That's neuromuscular. You can have all the muscle in the world like a bodybuilder and essentially not know how to use it and not know how to recruit it. If you're doing different things from what you were doing to get that muscle, can you learn it? Absolutely. Do you have a better foundation with more muscle? Absolutely. But to learn the movements you have to do the movements.
Speaker 1:So frequency is really, really important, and I'm just trying to drill that home that if you are trying to get better at anything, which we all should be trying to get better at all of this, we should be trying to get better at our strength training. We should be trying to get better at our cardio. We should be trying to get better at our flexibility and mobility and our balance. Really, the key is the frequency doing a little bit, not a lot, because if you do something every day but do too much, you're going to overtrain. So then let's take that a little bit into the cardio area here. So the same thing applies. I would much rather see somebody jog one mile per day than to do five miles twice per week. They're going to get more neurological adaptations out of that. They're going to get more muscle memory out of that. They're going to get less overtraining most likely again, unless they're doing too much. If they're doing just a little bit, stop before they're exhausted, stop before they're too tired and then repeat the next day. It's the frequency that is so important.
Speaker 1:I'll notice when I get into a swim phase. I love to swim, but it's hard for me to get there because I own my own gym. Me to get there because I own my own gym. So I have to go to another gym after being in my gym most of the day and I usually have a bunch of clients and then I'm working on other things. It's just tough. And before you say, oh, it's an excuse not to exercise, no, no, no, no, no, I get in my exercise. But the point is to add in an additional exercise where I have to drive somewhere to do it, after I most likely have either run or lift weights or potentially indoor bike, that day, is a little bit of added stress. I don't owe his knee, but when I'm in a groove and I'm doing it and I'm able to find the time, I notice that my swimming is so much better if I just do a little bit three or four or five times per week versus going once a week and doing a longer workout.
Speaker 1:The frequency, I mean gosh, swimming is so mechanical. It's not like running, where essentially you should have good form with running but essentially anybody can run. You could just run down the road and everybody has different form of it. But with swimming if you don't have proper technique you are not going to get very far and you really need the frequency and the reps to get that proper technique down. So you would be so much better off if you wanted to master swimming, to do like 10 minutes a day or 10 minutes five to six days a week, versus doing 90 minutes on a weekend.
Speaker 1:Sure, that's a great hard workout. It's going to utilize a lot of calories, it's probably going to make you feel like you did a lot, but as far as learning how to swim better, you would be far better off doing a little bit more frequently, okay. So frequency is one of my favorite things, and the other thing is with it, as I kind of alluded to with, I'll end up sitting at the piano. Doing a little more is once you know you're not going to do very much. It is so much easier to get going and then you can just use momentum and see where you land, because you might end up doing a little bit more. All right, like everything, it's a balance and it's just about figuring out what exactly works for you. But I wanted to share along the studies that show that a little bit done more frequently out benefits doing a lot less frequently.
Speaker 1:Okay, use that information however you like, and I just hope hopeful that you use it, and I'm also hopeful that you use Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, because they are the best garage door company in Volusia County and we are lucky to have the owners, jeff and Zach Hawk, that provide the highest level of customer service. So if you need any help with your garage doors, give them a shout. At overheaddoordaytonacom. Please hit automatic download on these. It helps my numbers. Please share them to other people and, of course, subscribe to the show. Be max fit, be max well.
