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
From Gym Myths to Muscle Mastery: Insights with Rob Maxwell
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.
Speaker 1: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 is a method to the madness. Today I'm going to explain why I always say to our clients if it's burning, it's working, all right. Before I get to that, let me thank our sponsors, jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service and home sales and they have the reviews and the sales to back that up. So if you want to figure out what your home is worth selling, why don't you check them out at 386-451-2412. If it is burning, it is working. Let me start with a little story.
Speaker 1:Years and years ago, when I was teaching sports medicine, to hammer this point home, I would have two students go grab two pairs of 10-pound dumbbells and they would bring them back to the classroom and they would go back to back to each other and each student relatively the same strength levels would have a pair of 10 pound dumbbells in their hand, not being able to see what the other one is doing. And I would tell them to do 20 bicep curls, and that was the only thing, the only piece of advice I would give them, or the only instruction I would give them. I should say, and they had to do them bilaterally, so they were doing them both at the same time. Both arms Did not give them a cadence or anything. I said do 20 reps at what feels natural to you. And they would, and I would believe every time. I mean, I did this a lot and I don't ever remember this experiment not working, but every time one person would finish way sooner than the other and it would probably be somewhere around one person would do 20 reps and the other person was at 14 or 15. And then you know what would that be? 20 seconds or so goes by, the other person finishes and I'll say all right, kids, there you go. And the students would look at me and they'd go and I'd point out how repetitions are not all created equal. People have different cadences, right, different rhythms, different tempos, so they are not all the same. So what this means is that we just can't walk around thinking that the acute program variables all by themselves are magic or special.
Speaker 1:Now, besides repetitions, which I just named, there are other acute program variables. There is the load, there is the amount of sets, and there is the tempo, and there are others. Rest time is a biggie too. So they all collectively add up. But you know what adds up even more If it's burning, it's working, your muscles can't count All right.
Speaker 1:So what happens is when we grab resistance, when we grab a load and that could be anything from dumbbells to barbells, to kettlebells, to machines, to bands, tubes, body weight if there is resistance. So officially, in my world of exercise science we call it dynamic, constant external resistance or DCER. If those things are reached, then we have what we need for resistance training. So if we have resistance and we are taking the body or the limbs, whatever particular limb at the time is through a range of motion with resistance, we are doing what we need to qualify for resistance training. So the muscles just know they're being stimulated.
Speaker 1:If you've ever had electrical stimulation, or E-STEM for short, for physical therapy for any limbs or injuries or whatever, you'll know what I'm talking about the physical therapist or the occupational therapist or the chiropractor or whoever is administering this, is trying to provide stimulation to the muscles so the muscles don't atrophy while you're injured. Well, strength training does it mechanically. It doesn't do it electrically. It does it through mechanics, not electrics, all right. So the bottom line is it's true, if it's burning, it's working. You know you are getting a stimulus to the muscle. That's what really counts. Really doesn't matter, and sometimes we can get way too caught up in things. But the anaerobic system is roughly 30 to 90 seconds and strength training needs to be done in the anaerobic system so we can stimulate mostly those fast twitch muscle fibers. And by itself strength training is an anaerobic system. All right. So if we are fatiguing those muscles within that time frame, we are getting what we need for muscular strength, for muscular hypertrophy and muscular endurance. We are getting what we need.
Speaker 1:This is why, so often now, clients joke sometimes and I joke back with it, but they'll say, well, you're not really counting. It's like right, I mean I am in a sense, because we do kind of keep track. I mean we definitely keep track of clients', progress and what's most important. But when I say kind of keep track, I mean it comes back to ranges, repetition, ranges, like that's so much more important than the actual rep. So what this means is that, yeah, we're kind of counting. Some of us count better than others. I pay way more attention to form. I look at form, I look at facial expressions. I look at breathing, like that's what I look at. Form, I look at facial expressions, I look at breathing, that's what I look at, because I want to see how close the client is getting to fatigue. That's the most important thing, that's what I look for. But we do count a little bit on the repetition ranges, because if a person can do, say, 30 repetitions, well, the load is too light and now we're simply just taking too long to get done what we need to get done Because, again, sets don't need to go beyond 90 seconds. So that's the reason for the count. But the most important thing is how close we are getting to fatiguing the muscle. Now, you know these things, these acute program variables, right?
Speaker 1:It's kind of like when you hear people discussing like ethics and laws you know, I used to use this as an explanation as well. So there's the law, and then there's the spirit of the law, right. So it's like, well, we shouldn't run a stop sign. Well, that's the law. Well, why do you not run a stop sign? Well, because I don't want to cause an accident, or I don't want to get in an accident myself. Okay, that's why there are laws. You can ask somebody else why don't you want, why don't you run that stop sign? It's like, well, I'm not worried about the law, but like I don't feel like getting hit and there's nobody around, like whatever. So then there's people that really understand why laws are made. And then there are people that only focus on the laws where we kind of call that, you know, only focus on the laws where we kind of call that, you know, fundamentalism versus not right. So it's like it's important. And that's one of the things I've always done in my training in exercise science, and that's why we call this there's a method to the madness is get beyond the law, because I want people to understand what they're really trying to accomplish. To understand what they're really trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1:It could be far more simple. For example, when I go on vacation and I can't find a gym that I like or whatever, so I say, all right, so I'm going to work out on the trail, or I'm going to work out in the hotel room or whatever. So I only have my own body weight. That's okay. I can make it burn. I can get the resistance I want. How Well, if we slow down and pause, we're going to create more tension on the muscle with less load. So that's one way I can do it. I can also choose more. Why am I having trouble saying this? What is wrong with me this morning? Need more coffee. I could choose harder exercises than I would if I weren't, if I needed to use body weight. Only then I'm going to have to do split squats potentially, versus regular squats, because split squats are harder. So I can make the resistance work. I don't need a fancy gym to get resistance. It helps, it makes it more efficient. There are exercises I need in a gym that I'm not going to be able to get with body weight. I need in a gym that I'm not going to be able to get with body weight, but at the same time, I can make it work, because I understand that what I'm really trying to do is to provide stimulus to the muscles.
Speaker 1:Now, bodybuilders have always gotten kind of a bad rap at the gyms or just in general right Lunk heads, muscle heads. You know, I don't know if you remember the commercial where the guy I think it was a Planet Fitness commercial where the guy would say, oh, I pick things up and I set them down. So yeah, they get a little bit of that reputation. But I will say in many cases it's unfair because out of all the different types of trainees in gyms whether you look at bodybuilders or powerlifters or crossfitters or general fitness people or endurance athletes trying to train, the bodybuilders have always figured that out better than everybody else. They know the numbers don't matter a whole lot. They know that they can go to the gym and if they do say pec flies prior to pec press, they're not going to be able to bench press or pec press, chest press, as much as they would if they just sat down without pre-loading it with the fly. They know that and they don't care because they just want the chest muscles to get the stimulus that it needs. So they don't focus on that and they're actually getting more out of that because they are pre-loading the muscles.
Speaker 1:So if we do supersets or giant sets or different types of complex sets complex doesn't necessarily mean more complicated, it just means you're putting two things together, all right. So if we're doing that like I like to do with clients I love to do it myself then I understand. Well, I'm not going to be as strong on a particular exercise. I mean, if I went to go squat a goblet squat I might say, grab the heaviest dumbbell I have in the gym, which is a 50. And I might use that because you know my legs are fairly strong and if I don't use that, I might do too many repetitions based on time, not reps. So I'll grab a 50, right. But let's say I do a set of leg extensions first, like directly before, because I'm really trying to target my quadriceps. Well, I can grab a 25-pound dumbbell right afterwards and do a goblet squat and get the same stimulus that I would with the 50, meaning if I never did the pre-exhaust set prior to that.
Speaker 1:So I don't get wrapped up in oh, I'm not using a 50-pound dumbbell. Oh, my goodness, I'm getting weaker. It doesn't work that way. That's just not how it works. All right, that's.
Speaker 1:You have to think about it. You know, I've said it to clients before when I've said if it's burning, it's working. And I try to explain how. You know, don't get too wrapped up in the reps and load, you know, and they'll look at me kind of funny. I'll say, look, do you really think your biceps know you have an eight pound dumbbell versus a 12 pound dumbbell? I mean, do you really think your bicep, your hundreds of thousands of muscle fibers, are counting each rep as you lengthen and contract? I mean, come on, I mean really, of course not.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you look at people who do manual labor for a living and not as many now as used to be, but they were in pretty darn good shape without ever going to a gym, right. So if somebody's grabbing a hammer and they're hammering in nails all day long and you know obviously I'm not, you know there's diet, there's all these things, yes, but most likely they've got pretty darn good developed bicep muscles and forearm muscles, right. So they're not sitting there counting how many repetitions they're doing with the hammer. I mean what? It's going to be thousands all day, right. I mean no, they're getting stimulus to the muscles.
Speaker 1:Or landscapers who don't have the luxury of having a riding lawnmower, that are pushing a mower all day long, even with a cyst. I mean they're going to have decent pec muscles from holding on and pushing and tricep muscles from gripping and brachioradialis muscles from gripping, leg muscles from pushing. I mean, the muscles don't count people. Okay, what I want you to do if you're a client of mine, if you're not, you're a listener and you go to the gym somewhere else focus on your form and feel the two F's form and feel, focus on that, you will get the workout necessary. Okay, now let me thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, who are the premier garage door company of Volusia County, owned by Jeff and Zach Hawk. They have the best product, they have the best service. If you need any help with your garage door, please call them at 386-222-3165.
