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
You'll lift 40% more weight when someone has your back
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.
Speaker 1:Before I get to today's show, I want to thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gildan Group at 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. 1-888-386-451-2412.
Speaker 1:What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me, would you? Well, let me ask you something. Will you lend me your ears and let me sing you a song, and then I will really try not to sing out of key. Well, you probably didn't tune in for that today, now, did you? So those are the little lyrics from, with a little help from my friends from the Beatles. A little side note on that, and then I'll absolutely not leave you hanging and explain why I'm starting this podcast this way, like I don't know, five, six years ago now, we went to the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock celebration in New York and uh, just so happened to be up there, actually, and went and uh, one of the bands playing was Ringo and he sang that, which I thought was super cool because I'm a Beatle freak and, uh, you know, it was cool to just hear one of the Beatles do one of their songs. So that's interesting, isn't it? Only to me, I am sure, and you could give a you know what.
Speaker 1:But the reason why I bring all of this up is because I'm going to talk about the value of spotting, having a friend in the gym. I'm going to talk about some of the recent information on spotting. I guess I shouldn't say it's recent. We've known this for a while. But I want to talk about some of the research on this. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:There are so many things about the time and what happens and you know, quite frankly, people, most or many people don't have like the prerequisite scientific information to sometimes understand what's going on. Yet they want to know. I don't know. I mean, physiology is important, of course it is. I've got a degree in it, like I spent a lot of money for it. It is, but it's like we know so much information. The problem is people don't do it. You know, like we can say all this till we're blue in the face and then people don't show up. So it's like I spend so much time on these psychological things because they are so important.
Speaker 1:People get wrapped up into what is the best, the most ideal training program in the world, the most ideal training program in the world, and then we get hit with this information like this that I absolutely love, talking about the power of spotting and go. Well, I mean that's cool. You know, if you follow that perfect periodization, that classic linear periodization plan that charts your workouts for you for like literally two years leading up to your Olympic Games, yeah, I could see where that's going to have a lot of you know results for you. Of course you still kind of have to show up, but I could see where you know that's very beneficial. Or we can get a workout partner and just do a million different kinds of workouts that work. But the important thing is we've got to show up so they can work. We've got to do it right. So like we see all these fancy plans and then we get blown away with information. So one of them I've seen a few, but two of them that really really stand out to me I'm going to go over with you. I've seen a few, but two of them that really really stand out to me I'm going to go over with you.
Speaker 1:In Steve Magnus' new book, the Inside Game, I really like him. He's really good. I believe his educational background is in sports, psychology and all that. I know he's a performance coach. He was a performance coach at Nike. He was actually a whistleblower there that kind of caught them not the shoe portion of it, but caught like the training staff doing some things and some abuses that they shouldn't have been doing and using some drugs they shouldn't have been using. So unfortunately he got kind of infamous for being a whistleblower. With that I don't mean like that's a bad thing he did. I think it's totally, totally courageous for him to do that. I just mean that he's got so much more value out there than being just a whistleblower like this. Guy's a phenom in the performance world and he's given us so much great information.
Speaker 1:So in his new book In the Inside Game, he talks about this study they did on support, on literally spotting somebody, and what they found was that if a person has somebody spotting them on a bench press, like not even hands on the bar, not helping, just available like right behind the person, the person is going to get 4.5 more reps than if that person wasn't there. I mean that's a lot. I mean, if we're looking at what we call rep max okay, so rep max means that we're doing the most repetitions we can for a given rep range. So, for example, a rep max of 10 would be that's the most reps you can do for 10 reps. So if we're talking rep max and I'm not trying to confuse you, I'm just trying to show you, like, what this really means Like this is like a ton of extra repetitions. We can typically do rep max 10 with about 75% of our one rep max. That's usually what we can do, and five rep max is somewhere typically around 88% of our one rep max. So we're talking that alone's like a 12% difference in load. If we're looking at it that way which I like to do and I probably overcomplicated it or we can look at it simplicity and just say, dude, they can get 4.5 more reps. That's a lot, man, like that's huge just from somebody standing there and I can tell you that from my own personal experience as a gym rat when I was growing up, working out in my late teens and early twenties, like most young men, I was obsessed with the bench press, like I wanted to bench press At most.
Speaker 1:Like, let's just say, hardcore gyms Mondays are going to be like international chess day, like most guys are going to be benching and benching and benching that's just what guys like to do, especially younger men. So I was like obsessed with it. So I found, probably just through trial and error and accidentally finding this out trial and error and accidentally finding this out but I found that if my workout partner put their hands on the bar like in the middle on the smooth part, put their hands on the bar, gave me a lift off and then just held the bar, not helping, not pulling, just held it. I did so much more and I found of course I didn't invent this. I mean I got this idea because I saw other people do it right. So I found that I would really just push harder, to the point where I'd rack the weight, whatever rep range I wanted to do, and I'd ask my workout partner. I'd say, hey, man, did you help? Because it felt like you helped. And they'd say, no, I promise, I just had my hands on the bar, I did not help. It felt like they did, you know. And you say, oh well, you know, maybe they're just making you feel better. No, no, no, because I would flip around and do the same thing and I would be the spotter Again.
Speaker 1:I'm not educated yet. I'm not educated yet. I am not a personal trainer yet. I have not. Well, I've gone to college, but I'm majoring in psychology, most likely during this part. I've worked out for several years at this point, but I wasn't educated. It was just. This is what we did a lot of trial and error. So I would spot my friends and the same thing they said are you sure you didn't help? I've got man, I did not help. You know, I just have my hands on the bar. So it worked.
Speaker 1:There is something about it and I will tell you what that is. That something is security. When we feel safer, we push harder. I know that's counterintuitive, right, because you might think well, if you feel like your life's dependent upon it, you're just going to push and push. It's like yeah, I mean, I've heard those studies about. You know a person pulling the car off their kid. You know those types of things. I'm not going to like discount that. I mean, okay, that probably happened, whatever. But the studies kind of show like the opposite effect. I don't know about that, that's like life and death or whatever. I'm not even going to touch that. I'm talking about like the studies show that if we feel safer, we try harder, plain and simple. And when you're bench pressing or doing squats or you know exercises where your safety literally is at risk, you know like, let's say, you don't get a lift. Well, if you're bench pressing it's stuck to your sternum or if it comes down too hard it's going to break your sternum. A squat has even worse ramifications if something happens. So you know there is definitely risk involved and the studies have shown that we actually push harder when we feel safer.
Speaker 1:I can remember it wouldn't even be close. So I was pretty strong back. You know, in these times that was my goal, it was what I wanted to do. So I was bench pressing over 300 pounds and you know my maximum back then was 360 pounds with hands on the bar. I must say so I didn't compete in powerlifting because that would have been illegal. I was bodybuilding. That was more of the sport I competed in, but I still cared about strength and all. But you can have hands in the bar and obviously it counts to you in the gym. It's not going to count in a, you know, official powerlifting competition. But I guarantee this, I didn't even try it. I'm not an idiot, but I mean I guess I could be, but I wasn't in this situation. But I don't even know what would have happened if I would have tried 360 pounds without hands in the bar. I mean regardless. I don't believe partners were helping, but there would have been a panic in there and I wouldn't have gotten a lift. So I just know, for me it worked. And then the studies have shown that that's true for everybody. As I just quoted Magnus's studies.
Speaker 1:All right, so, and a little bit more, some Westcott studies have shown that people that end up doing spotted assisted reps Now in this case a person is assisting them. So now we can call this one of two things people in the gym world. You can call it assisted reps or you could call it forced reps either way. But that means now we're not just spotting Like at the gym. Here we spot I mean at least the trainers we spot. We're not going to have people really do forced reps per se. That's not usually the type of thing we're working on.
Speaker 1:Naturally we spot, so we do spot, and there's been countless times where I put my hands on the bar to help mentally feel like they're safe and secure. I'll do that, even with the Smith machine, leg press even. I'll keep my hands. You know, we recently had one of our clients who's in his early 60s, jake Johanson. He's a council member, you know, and his goal was to be able to stack the leg press machine, which is 300 pounds, which is really isolateral. So it's 600 pounds, believe it or not, for reps of six to eight. That was his goal and we've hit it. So I helped push that out and then I kept my hands close because I know there is a security factor in that. So even as trainers, we definitely spot that way staying tight, keeping our hands, sometimes even on a person's wrists if they're doing dumbbell exercises, not helping them but spotting them. So I just wanted to back up and say that in my professional experience, spotting has shown me that clients feel so much more safe when you do that and push harder, all right.
Speaker 1:So now let's move on to assisted reps, or forced reps. That's where you actually are assisting somebody. Even if it's minutely, even if it's like 5%, like they're pushing a hundred percent, they hit failure. You push 5%, they're giving it all they have and they do a few more repetitions. That is called forced reps, all right. So that has shown to increase somebody's strength by over 40%. Now, you don't want to do that all the time, you don't want to do that on every set and that's a whole another podcast. But like if all somebody ever did was forced reps on everything or assisted reps on every single set, every single workout, they would get burned out. So no, we don't advocate doing that all the time out. They would get burned out. So no, we don't advocate doing that all the time.
Speaker 1:But maybe on your last set of an exercise, a forced repetition, an assisted repetition, or two or three, can really help somebody. Well, I shouldn't say can, because research says it does. A person will build their strength by 40% by using that technique, and that is absolutely a fact. And that's another thing we would all do as young gym rats trying to get stronger in the gym, I mean like it or not. I mean this is like the late 80s and early 90s. I mean you're working out with your workout partners and they're like no, I said 10 more. And you're like what Hands in the bar Now they're pulling? It's like you're not even benching anymore, they're doing like an upright row and you're just hanging on for dear life. But you know, obviously kids will take it too far.
Speaker 1:But there's absolute truth to the fact that assisted reps or forced reps, done appropriately, like I said, done as far as the last set of an exercise for just two or three reps, will lead to significant strength, and that significant strength will be 40%, right? So what does all this mean? It means you can't get by without a little help from your friends. Like these are the things that matter people, and so many times people love to get into these arguments, right? I mean, they do it all the time, whether it be on social media or kind of like, in their group messaging or among friends. Right, people love to argue, and I'm not just talking strength training, I'm talking everything.
Speaker 1:People get so wrapped up into these big macro matters and they don't pay attention at all to the micro matters at all Like we can talk about the perfect workout program and it's not going to help you in the least unless you actually get to the gym. Or we can talk about, oh, is this a great technique I should be using and I'd say I don't know or get a workout partner, because you know a workout partner, you know, kind of does two things for you. Number one, they assist you with accountability, which is huge. And number two, they can spot you, which will give you some security, and they can assist you, which will give you some benefits. So I mean there's all these big things and then there's these like common sense things, you know common sense things that we can fall back on and go.
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't really know the science behind it and you know that's always kind of been. My job is to take the things that, like we know to work and go. Well, it's not just theory. I mean let's take these complicated matters, let's break them down. Let me show you the science on it. You'll see that actually, you know what they're saying is true, all right.
Speaker 1:So you know, think about that today. I mean, if you come to my gym and you work out at the gym, you know it's already covered. You know we do that, we spot, we encourage. You know we hopefully make you feel safe, because I know that is huge. In a gym or really anywhere else in any kind of a relationship, safety is absolutely critical. But if you don't have that luxury of having a personal trainer or a trainer or people that you know at the gym, go find one. I mean again, I know that's a luxury. So I don't mean go find a trainer, I mean go find a workout partner, find somebody who will spot you At the very least. If you go to the gym by yourself and you're on your last set of an exercise an exercise that would require maybe some kind of spotting say, hey, can you watch me on these and just kind of like make sure that my form stays good and you know, if you really have to, please assist. I mean, go ask for help. Man, asking for help is an absolute sign of security, not weakness. All right, we can't get by without a little help from our friends.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to today's program. I ask you to please follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and please select automatic download, because that really helps the show. Now I want to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product. They have the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great people with a great company. If you have any garage door needs, please give them a shout at 386-222-3165.
