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
Why counting reps and feeling the burn both matter in fitness.
Welcome to the Fit, Healthy and Happy Podcast hosted by Josh and Kyle from Colossus...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Welcome to there is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am 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. Before I get started today, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. Hello everybody. 886-451-2412. Hello everybody.
Speaker 1:Rob here and I'm here to talk about some fitness. I hope you are caught up on all of the past podcasts and if you're not, you know, go back and listen to some. Go back and pick out titles that you might really like. But I've got a pretty good collection of them now. It's hard to believe I've been doing this for a little over three years now. I look back at all the downloads and I think, man, that is. You know, that's pretty cool. I think I enjoy doing this. I think it is a great way to spread the positive message of physical fitness and give everybody the science behind things, because it is so important to kind of hear what we really need to do, because there's so much chatter out there regarding health and fitness, really everything I mean. Everybody has, you know, an opinion on so many different things that they often don't know anything about. So you know, people can do what they want, right, live and let live. But at the same time, we need to educate ourselves and you know, probably most importantly, know where to look.
Speaker 1:Today I'm going to talk about the balance between qualitative and quantitative measures, and you hear that don't get bored and go, oh, math or all whatever. No, it's not that. I'll explain what it means Basically. It's simple, it's both. So now I know I got you guessing. So what I mean is very simple. The last podcast I talked about how there is that great long what works for someone and how to, how and what to focus on. That always brings about good questions, and I mean that like really good questions. So some of it that came up or I shouldn't even say good questions, I should say great statements People like trying to now figure out how to make this work for themselves a little bit better and the feel of the muscle.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe I should not count or not keep track and all this and those are arguments I've heard in the past and let me just say don't do that. One of the tough things for people to grasp, I've noticed, is things can be both. Both things can be true. Two things can be true at one time. I go back to my teaching days when I had a little side hustle of teaching trainers how to be trainers, teaching trainers how to be trainers, and I really like I shouldn't say liked, because I believe I still teach and I still do workshops and things like that. But the thing I like about teaching is explaining these concepts. New learners want to know the black and white answers and I think a lot of people want to know black and white answers, but it's rarely black or white, it is often both. So that's what I want to talk about today.
Speaker 1:How do we dance the dance of qualitative and quantitative measures when we are tracking and or following our exercise program? Well, when it comes to strength training, if you remember from the last one and if you don't, don't worry about it, but remember that volume is the amount of exercises and the total number of sets per exercise and then, to an extent, the repetitions. Those are all like quantitative measures, that's how many, right? So a lot of clients will say how many, how many, how many? And yes, they might repeat that because they want to know, or each exercise might be a little different, but that's the quantitative is how many. Now, if quantitative measures didn't matter, then why would we have them? So they do matter. We just have to be able to look beyond them into the qualitative portion of it. So that would be the intensity. So how far into the set do you reach momentary muscular failure? That's intensity. Let's say you stop and you had five more repetitions in you, so we would measure that as intensity minus five. In other words, you had five repetitions in reserve. But it's things like that that become a lot harder to measure, that that become a lot harder to measure. So that is more of a qualitative function that we want to try to teach trainees or anybody really that is trying to work out appropriately. So we need to consider the qualitative factor how many is? How many repetitions are you doing, how many sets are you doing and what load are you doing? Qualitative is how close to failure are you and what is your form? Those two things are harder to gauge. They are far more subjective, they are far more gray, especially when it comes to intensity.
Speaker 1:You would think that failure is failure meaning that. Well, isn't failure a failure Like if a person can't do another rep, they can't do another rep? Yes, but there is a huge psychological component. I did this the other day with a client that I know pretty well. I lied to them as they're in the middle of their set and of course I did this to help them, not hurt them. But they kind of wanted to know what they did last time. So they hit momentary muscular failure on these exercises and I finally told them about, after five exercises, what I was doing which I should know, because then I can't use that tactic again but about three reps less than what I told them on most exercises, because their quantitative brain wanted to improve. That's a good thing and that's why we don't throw the baby out with the bath water regarding the quantitative brain, meaning their quantitative measurement, meaning we don't just go okay, so just go to failure and never count. I mean, you could, and I do know some people to do that, but I think it's a little bit better to do both. So anyway, their brain was focused on improving Again. That is a good thing and that's kind of what the quantitative entity brings to us.
Speaker 1:We know how many we did and as long as we keep our form consistent, then doing more means we're doing more certain exercises. Let's I'll just give you an example. Let's say they asked how many more or how many reps did I do on this chest press exercise? And I said oh you, I looked down at their chart and I said you did 15. Well, in reality they really did 12 the last time they worked out. So they said okay and they geared their brain up and they did 16. Amazing, one more than what I told them they did last time. The problem is the last time they really did 12. So they did four more and I trained them the time prior to that. So I know they hit failure. So the brain will do that. The brain will protect us.
Speaker 1:In fact, most of the new research in exercise physiology, and especially in the endurance side, in the cardiorespiratory or aerobic side of conditioning, is focusing in on the brain and fatigue, what they call the rate of perceived exertion. So if a person thinks they're tired, their body starts acting tired. The body starts acting tired, the person starts feeling more tired and the next thing you know they are no longer holding their ideal pace. So now they're doing different studies, while they've done a ton of studies. I shouldn't say this is like breaking news yesterday. I mean, this has been what they've been working on for the last few years is knowing this information? How do we then train athletes to trick themselves into not feeling tired, because that feeling is going to make them tired? And not to get off on a tangent here, but some of it has been literally what you tell yourself. But they know that those kind of affirmations don't work very far or for very long. And some of it's been on glucose. Putting a little bit of glucose under the tongue, giving you a little bit spark of energy, kind of motivates the person and makes them go a little faster, or at least temporarily. So these different factors to make somebody think they're not as tired as they are. So that's one of the reasons why failure isn't always so cut and dry.
Speaker 1:Another one is is everybody's a little bit, or I should say a lot, different in their pain threshold? And I know it's often been discussed that, the difference in genders. And you know, even in pop psychology and self-help books and things like that, they talk about how women have a greater threshold for pain due to the natural biology of giving birth. So there is something in the genes I don't know, because I'm not a physician that works on those types of things but I do know this, I've seen the studies that state it and as a trainer for the past 31 years that has also been my experience. Now I know that's a generalization, but from my experience, for the most part women have a higher tolerance of pain.
Speaker 1:As far as the clients I've had before, there are some that I know like I just use the leg extension as a great example because it burns. The quads are among the largest muscle groups in the whole body and it really, really burns when you're doing them appropriately. And I've seen some women, you know, I know it's burning at six, like I can just tell it's starting to burn already at six reps and just grind it out to like 15. And I'm like, wow, and I've seen others, when it starts to burn, they stop. They might rub their thighs out a little bit, you know, and guys have more of a tendency to stop earlier. So for those that are guys right now that have worked out with me, don't get your panties in a wad and get all mad at me.
Speaker 1:This is a generalization and remember, I'm a guy, so, look, I can own that too. I mean, when it hurts, it hurts, and if I'm not like overly feeling it that day, I'm going to take a mini break too. I try to gut through it sometimes, but sometimes it hurts, right, it burns, and some days I have more motivation to fight back harder, and some days I don't. So that's normal. And that's pretty much proving my point that failure can be kind of subjective sometimes. So you know you think it's cut and dry, but not always. You know I will say this that we typically have more in the tank than we think we do and I believe not to get off the topic here but I do believe, as long as you're really doing your best, you're doing your best and it's absolutely fine. But it can be slightly subjective. So we want to make sure we do both qualitative and qualitative that and quantitative measures.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, the other qualitative portion is form. Now, I'm a stickler for form. I always say form is everything and I just think it's other than showing up. It's the most important part of your strength training workout. If you're going to do it, you might as well do it right, and not necessarily because you could get hurt doing it wrong. You could, but mostly because it's not going to be as effective if you don hurt doing it wrong. You could, but mostly because it's not going to be as effective if you don't do it properly. So I want, I really stress, people to use less resistance, whatever it takes, to get the form down, because form is the most important thing.
Speaker 1:But form can be slightly subjective, also based on the person, and I know that may not make complete sense, but let me make it make sense for you. So one of the factors of form is tempo, that is, the speed of the movement. Now, if we're really going by like textbook quantitative learning, then a perfect rep would be like a six second repetition. That would be a two second concentric, which is the hard part, with the slight squeeze at the top or bottom, depending on which direction you're going with the four second, eccentric or negative. So that's a six second repetition. That is great and that's ideal. Some people actually can't keep that tempo very well. So they everybody's a little bit different with that. So there's not this perfect tempo with that. So we have to say, okay, so for this person their form is ideal at a two second repetition and for this person maybe a seven second repetition. So you might walk into the gym and go. Well, that guy's going a little slower than I think he should go. Well, you know, you don't know that. Or they might be going a little bit faster. So it's slightly subjective, based on what is best for the individual, and the only way you really know that is you yourself have worked out and experimented with different tempos. Or a trainer with a very trained eye can watch and figure out where their client tends to do their best. But those are the two measurements of qualitative performance in the gym your form and how close you get to failure. Quantitative is your exercises, your number of sets, your repetitions and your load. We have to think about both.
Speaker 1:In my gym and ever since I began being a personal trainer, I have kept charts. I keep a nice workout chart on each client. It's printed out. Of course. In the old days I used to have to go to the old UPS store and make like 100 copies of general charts and then I would pick the exercises based on the client's assessment, what's best for them, and also based on their assessment. I would have their beginning weight loads and it would be on the bottom, and then I would draw a line over the top of that and that would be how many reps I wanted them to do.
Speaker 1:And typically we would go, or I would go, with between an 8 and 15 rep range, initially trying to figure out where that person is best, again based on how fast they do the repetitions will also base how many repetitions they should do in total repetitions they should do in total. So I would figure that out as we go and have a generality in mind in the early stages of their personal training and I would write in their reps over their load and then when they would hit the top end of their load like let's say they did 15 reps at 60 pounds on the leg extension the next time they come in I would increase their weight a little bit, so say 65 pounds, and we would keep striving for 15 reps or whatever the top end was, and we would keep increasing that way and that is overload and, most importantly, I would be focused on making sure that they were doing it correctly. So I kept that qualitative function in there and I would make sure they got as close to failure as they could. Now if they had a condition like a joint injury or soreness in the joint that we had to be careful with, then maybe we wouldn't approach failure, but again, that would be logged and that's still gauging intensity. So it's a dance of both. We have to pay attention to both. Sometimes clients will say did you lose count? And I'll say yep, and then the most important thing is I'll remind them it's like it's okay, we got a few more in us. The most important thing is we're getting close to muscular failure. So we want to focus on both.
Speaker 1:I know people some people not all people hate to hear that because we live in a society now where everybody wants things black or white. They look on the internet and they'll hear from somebody a trainer I'll just keep it to my field and they'll learn that 8 to 12 repetitions is the ideal rep range. They'll come in and they'll ask me about that or I'll see comments and if I don't know the people I totally stay out of the comments. I don't get into these wars on these different social media platforms. But if it's somebody I know that asked me, I'll say look, 8 to 12 is a good rep range but it's not for everybody, it depends. And that gets back to my last podcast when I was talking about the difference between low volume, high intensity and high volume, and low intensity or lower intensity, and they'd say so. You're telling me that like one set is best and I'll say no, like I don't know.
Speaker 1:I know for some clients one set per muscle group has absolutely been ideal for them. And then I know for other clients who can't seem to get close to that intensity marker that I'm looking for, or I can't get them to slow down as much as I want them to on the repetitions I'm going to have to have them do more volume so I can get more inroads or more fatigue to the muscle. So there really isn't that ideal set number, ideal rep number, the ideal load number, like any of those things. It's both. But as long as we keep striving to get better and that's why the quantitative thing is important as long as we are striving to get better.
Speaker 1:I have a client who we do higher rep numbers now than like he used to back in his college days when he would go to the gym and try for PRs every time he would lift. You know I'm not a big advocate for that, so doing like one repetition maxes or whatever, but like a lot of us guys and maybe some of us gals when we were in our 20s or teens, you know that would be the way we would work out. We would try to do as heavy as we could on the bench press every time we went in or on the squat or on these different basic exercises. So that's not overly safe, but doing that PR personal record with higher repetitions on some of these exercises is a great way to kind of stay focused and zeroed in on what you want. So I train this individual two times per week and I know that he looks at each workout like he wants to attack the leg press or the chest press doing a new PR. So that's a quantitative measure. That's very important. And if every time he came in I said, well, I'm not really sure, mr Jim, but I know we hit failure, he wouldn't stay as motivated. He'd say, well, I know we did too, so I'm getting the benefits, but I really would like to kind of see if I'm getting better, and to him that's going to keep me more motivated. And then my job, of course, is to get him as close to failure as I can safely, which means watch his form, and he does a good job of both of that as well. He pushes himself hard and he knows when he's sort of getting sloppy on his form and he corrects it. So it's a perfect marriage of qualitative and quantitative measures.
Speaker 1:All right, most important thing, ladies and gentlemen, please get to the gym. Please value strength training. Please do whatever works that keeps you going to the gym and progressing safely. Thank you for listening to today's show. I ask you to please follow this show on wherever you get your podcasts and also please hit automatic downloads. It really helps me and it helps the show. Now I want to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, their premier garage door company in Volusia County, with the best product with the best service. I can vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great people. If you need any help with your garage doors, give them a shout. 386-222-3165.
