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
Streamlining Your Workout: Maximizing Strength with Focused Training
Welcome to. There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell. I'm an exercise physiologist and a 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 is a Method to the Madness. Hence the name. There is a method to the madness. All right, so today I'm going to talk a little bit about exercise selection. What exercises should we do when we go to the gym? 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 and home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth to sell? 386-451-2412.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk a little bit about fitness. In my last episode I was talking about if it's burning, it's working, and why we need to focus on the two F's, which is form and feel, and why the other acute program variables, such as the sets and the reps and the load. They matter. But what's most important is what the muscles are feeling, what the muscles are going through, what is being broken down, and those variables are just tools to help us get there. That's really all they are. So since I've been working professionally as a personal trainer, which is over 30 years, I've always tried to use the scientific method. You know the method to the madness, like all right. So you know, forget all this, what your uncle Billy used to do, forget what these guys are doing over here, forget what these gals are doing over here. And nowadays we have to say, forget about what they're doing on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, and really figure out, like, what is it we're trying to do? And really it is very, very simple. We're trying to strengthen the body and we do that by mostly hypertrophy, meaning 95% of all strength comes from hypertrophy, which is, the muscles get just a little bit bigger. How big depends on genetics, it depends on your diet and in some cases it depends on illegal supplementation. But that's how we get bigger. We get bigger by eating properly and strength training. So what do we need to do to get the full benefits? So what is it we're trying to do Now?
Speaker 1:People kind of falsely think that there are a million exercises that have to be done Now. Of course, that's a major, major exaggeration. But they think that you know that there's so many different exercises they have to do and they think that for one reason they think it because they just don't know, and that's okay. There's a lot of things I don't know out there, outside of my field, there's a lot of things I don't know. So that's okay, that's not a shame on anybody going. Well, I see these people doing this and I see these people doing that, and so I. So that's okay, that's not a shame on anybody going. Well, I see these people doing this and I see these people doing that, and so I just think that's right, I mean, I get that, you know.
Speaker 1:And then the other side of it is people think that there's all these hundreds of thousands of exercises, or at least thousands of exercises that they have to do because it's kind of being sold that way by influencers who either don't know what they're really doing or they're pushing a particular agenda. Sometimes they're just showing off Like sometimes they're just doing exercises that are really hard to do and they do them and then they get a million likes. But that doesn't mean the exercises is good, the exercise is good just because you can do it. There's a bunch I can name that are like that, but I'm not going to. So you know I'm not going to step on people's toes, you know I'm not going to do that. I'm just trying to make a point that there aren't that many and I want you to understand that.
Speaker 1:So you have major muscle groups that you have to train, like. When I say have to, I mean the muscle groups that are going to make you stronger, that are going to add the proper tonicity to your body, that are going to improve your activities of daily living, like. There are certain muscle groups. We typically call them the glutes, the quads, the hamstrings, the pecs, the lats and rhomboids, the deltoids, the biceps, the triceps, the abdominal muscles and the erector spinae, gastrocs and soleus. We throw in as well with the calves. So those are like the major muscle groups that propel human movement. There's actually over 605 muscles in the body, but thankfully we only have to focus on about 11 muscle groups that are responsible for human ambulatory movement. All right, that's one consideration when we talk about exercise selection.
Speaker 1:The next is there's such a thing called joint actions. Now, joint actions were one of the most favorite subjects that I taught when I was teaching sports medicine. So it's a level of kinesiology, it's a level of physics, and I really really enjoyed it. The reason why I enjoyed it is because once you learn it you're like oh so, exercise selection is really that simple. So in those major muscle groups I just named roughly 11. I say 11 because sometimes we just lump the gastroc and soleus together, each muscle has a primary joint action that they're responsible for.
Speaker 1:For example, the quadriceps, which, yes, there are four, but it's still one muscle group, is responsible for knee extension. So that means it bends at the knee. It's a hinge joint. It bends at the knee, it only flexes or extends. That's what hinge joints do. They only flex or extends.
Speaker 1:And in this case the quadriceps extend the tib and the fib to straighten the leg. So it bends those particular two bones. That's the quads job. Bones, that's the quads job. So we have to figure out. So if I need to strengthen my quads, I need to do that movement, and we can either do that movement via an isolation exercise or a compound exercise. Isolation exercise means there's only one joint moving and only one muscle group involved. That would be a leg extension in the case of the quads. Now, compound movement means at least two joints are in motion, so at least two joints are involving two different muscle groups. I say at least because in the case of a row you have three, in the case of a squat you have three. So if we did a compound exercise to target the quadriceps, we would do a leg press or a squat, because one of the motions within this squat is knee extension, the other one is hip extension, so that is why the glutes get involved.
Speaker 1:All right, so exercise selection then comes down to understanding the joint actions. So when I'm designing workout programs and you know, the designing now is pretty easy for me because I've been doing this for so long and knowing that information makes it not complicated it is not hard. Like the art comes in figuring out how to come up with different exercises or modifications of exercise that somebody maybe cannot do, like it's rare. But let's say, for example, they get knee pain on a leg extension after a knee injury Again, it's rare. Usually a leg extension is a means to help the knee, but sometimes, you know, we don't know, like certain movements are going to bother somebody. So then what would be the modification we can do to still get the quads involved, like that's fun for me, like that's like a puzzle for me. I really, really enjoy that. The other trainers I work with that work for me will say the same thing. They're like you know, you like putting together workout routines like that I do. Like the formatting is really easy.
Speaker 1:I need to make sure the muscle groups are involved, all the major muscle groups of the body. Then I understand the joint actions. Then I take in the exercises and put them into the puzzle of the muscle group and the joint action and bing bang, boom, there you go. You have a workout program. But again, sometimes there needs to be a modification, either a complete change of exercise, like maybe the leg extensions are not going to work, so instead we have to do a straight leg raise where you're at least isometrically working the quad because the person can't bend their knee, things like that. But we need to. Or good trainers and physical therapists need to understand the joint actions. Physical therapists need to understand the joint actions. If you know the joint actions, you know the exercises to do. All right.
Speaker 1:So let me give you an example. Let's take the triceps, because for some reason I don't know triceps or pecs, one or the other of those that was easy to say are like the most common exercises for people in the gym to just load up with so many different exercises all doing the same thing. Okay, so the triceps is a three-headed monster. All right, it's a three-headed muscle, but it's one muscle group and the triceps only responsibility is to extend the elbow. All right, some little pronation of the wrist, but its main responsibility is to extend the elbow. So that means if your arms are bent in front of you, you extend the elbow down. That's its job.
Speaker 1:Elbow extension, we call it. That's it Elbow extension. That could look like a tricep extension machine like I have at my gym, the one that you put your elbows over. It goes both ways. You can do biceps or triceps on it. But in this case the mechanism is brought up to you. You put your hands on it, you keep your forearms or your triceps on the machine and you push down. That's elbow extension. Or you go over to the press down machine on the multi-cable machine and we put on either the rope or the handle, it doesn't matter and you keep your elbows in and you extend downward that way. Or you grab two dumbbells and you bent over at the spine and you get your elbows high and you do tricep kickbacks Okay. Or you grab a dumbbell, you pick it up, you lift it over your head and you bend your elbows down behind your head and then you straighten the dumbbell up at the ceiling. Okay, that's an overhead tricep extension. It's all the same movement.
Speaker 1:Yet you're going to have people telling you, not the most educated, sharpest tools in the shed, but people telling you we've got to work them from so many different angles. Man, if you want good triceps, you need to do skull crushers and press downs and tricep extension machine. And don't forget, throw in some compound exercises like seated dip and bench press and pushups. No, no, no, you don't. Now you can do other exercises for variety, and I suggest that I do that.
Speaker 1:We get bored, we get stale. Sometimes we quit feeling things as well. That's fine, but you don't have to load up on a million and one different angles. There has not been any research that proves that and really, when you think about what the triceps do, it is flat out silly. Ladies and gentlemen, do you really think your triceps are sitting there going, oh, I'm extending the elbow all the way out and this time I've got dumbbells behind me and I'm doing what this guy calls a kickback and writes in his workout log oh no, no, I can feel a difference. Now I'm standing by this cable machine and I'm pushing this weight down. Really, you really think your muscles are that smart? Well, if you think that they might be a lot smarter than you, think that they might be a lot smarter than you, that's not a compliment, ladies and gentlemen. So the point is is that you really have to understand that a good trainer or good resources have this figured out.
Speaker 1:Now there are ways to do it. So a lot of our structures that we use is one workout we do is just a standard 10-11 exercise session to where we're covering a compound and an isolation exercise and we'll do one to three sets, depending on the individual time, intensity and all that good stuff, and that's one way to hit all of the different muscle groups, handling all of the major muscle joint actions. Then another way that we commonly do is a mini circuit to where we're going to do three exercises in a row, then take a little break and do another three exercises, and there's modifications to these as well, but both of them are going to do what you need. In the case of the second style of workout need. In the case of the second style of workout the little circuit we end up doing more compound exercises that are combining all of these joint actions and muscle groups into, like three exercises in the first set, three exercises in the second and then in the former style of workout where we're doing 10 or 11 exercises. So we're doing a total of 11 exercises versus six. Well, there's more isolation exercises being involved, but both of them get you there, like that's the key.
Speaker 1:As long as you are training those major muscle groups and then covering those joint actions, you are doing it. And there's a lot of different ways to do it, like personally, I do a lot of variations of everything I just said. Some days I'll do a circus style like that. Some days I'll go straight sets and do more exercises. Other days I'll superset.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter. What matters is everything is getting covered. All the joint actions are working. What matters is everything is getting covered, all the the hamstrings and the quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes sorry, because we're covering all the joint actions. We're covering hip extension, we're covering knee flexion, we're covering knee extension. So all of it's covered.
Speaker 1:It's just covered with one exercise, a squat and then we're going to do a push, because a push is going to cover the pecs, it's going to cover the deltoids, it's going to cover the triceps, because why All of those joint actions are covered, and then we'll do a pull. The pull is going to cover the upper back, like the rhomboids and lats, and it's going to cover the biceps because we're covering those particular joint actions. All right, so there is a method to the madness, like, if you are doing a comprehensive program, somebody that built something for you this is why that it works. And the other thing that works is your garage door. After you bought it from overhead door of Daytona beach. They have the best service, they have the best sales department, they have the best product. So check them out at overhead door Daytonacom.
