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
Stop Hip-Thrusting Like You’re Fighting A Bear
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 to today's show, I want to 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. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. When do you get your best ideas to do things? Is it when you're driving down the road, in the shower, working out, doing cardio, doing strength training? For me, it's really all those things, but uh predominantly a lot of times it's working out, at least for the ideas for the podcast, which makes total sense considering it is a health and fitness podcast. So this morning I was doing some glute bridges at the end of my uh leg workout. And for those that don't know, I mean glute bridges can be done in a lot of different ways. And back in the old days, we just simply called them bridges, and they were a big part of physical therapy, especially for back issues. They're part of the famous Mackenzie Back Program, which is actually a very good physical therapy program for lower back injuries. But anyway, you know, an old-fashioned bridge was you're laying on your back and you bend your knees and you push up through your heels, and you lift basically your waist up and your hips up, and you are supposed to come to about 90 degrees, and then you lower back down. So that's a basic bridge. It's really the same thing as when you call it a glute bridge, but a glute bridge maybe put a little bit more emphasis on the glutes versus the lower back. And typically you're going to suspend your shoulders, your scapula area across padding. There's a special bench they make for it that's soft, that I actually have not because I think you need a special bench for a glute bridge, but because it's simply comfortable on the shoulders and can be used for many other things. Dumbbell rows, flies. It's just a very good bench to have. But anyway, a lot of times you'll see people doing glute bridges suspended like that. And the heels are going to be underneath, as I said, and you're going to dip your hips down and then come up to roughly parallel. So your midline of your body from your, say, your sternum through your hips are going to be parallel to the floor. So that's kind of what we would call a glute bridge. Good exercise. I mean, there's a lot of different body exercises, body weight exercises you can do for the core. And essentially, that is still part of your core, you know. Um, yes, you emphasize your glutes a little bit, but it's mostly a core exercise. It's a good exercise. A bridge is a good exercise. There's a lot of good things to do with the uh using your body alone. But, you know, I do mine at the end of a workout. I typically do like a set of single leg on each side, meaning I suspend one leg up in the air, the other leg does the work, then I switch and I do the other side, and then I'll typically do a bilateral, meaning both legs, or sometimes a reverse it and do a bilateral and then an isolatal, isolateral. What I don't really do with a glute bridge, and that's the whole point of this, because as I said, where I get my ideas often for the podcast is while I'm working out, or a discussion with a client regarding food, sometimes on the internet, whatever, somebody might ask me questions, but that's where I usually get my inspiration. And I was talking to Ellen as we're working out. I said, you know, sometimes people go to the gym and they're all or nothing. And I think of the people that I see on social media oftentimes doing glue bridges with just a ton of weight. I mean, it's become one of the things that you see now in the last five years, maybe 10, that you wouldn't have seen 30 years ago. I mean, naturally, there wasn't social media 30 years ago. Um, so you weren't seeing vines and videos and all those types of things on the internet because it didn't exist. But you wouldn't have seen people like overloading those types of exercises back then either. It just really wasn't done. If you were doing any semblance of a bridge exercise, it was typically either, well, I don't know any scenario other than it was prescribed by a physical therapist or your physician or somebody for your lower back pain or to strengthen your back. I mean, it wasn't necessarily a gym exercise. So, you know, you're not going to see people overloading with like tons of weight on a glute bridge exercise back then. Now you do. You could say, well, you know, we've evolved, we've learned more, but you know, that's really not true. Sure, we've learned some things, we've evolved, but in this area, like this is not what I would call evolution, because we don't have to overload everything. I mean, I know that sounds terrible. Maybe it even sounds contradictory because, hell, one of my rules or commandments is overload. Yes, overload principle is critical. But too often people go to the gym or just people are, and I'm guilty of this, I can be very black or white, and I have to always challenge myself and get back to what is real and what is true. But not everything is black and white. Of course, most of life is gray. And when it comes to the principles of strength training, overload is a huge foundationary principle. There's no question about it. And for those that don't know, I'm just going to repeat it again. Overload, not again, but because I haven't said it today. I've said it in the past, but that's a false assumption to think that everybody's listening to every podcast, like I'm just all that important or something. So that's not true. Overload is simply stressing the body more than it's been stressed in the past. So if you used to use 100, if you've used 100 pounds on a chest press, then overload would be going to 105 pounds on the chest press. Or if you were doing 10 reps at that weight, then overload would be doing 12 reps at that weight. So, yes, overload makes us stronger. No doubt about it, overload works. But again, Tony, as a physiologist, you don't have to overload everything. There are some exercises you just need to do. And I would put glute bridges in that category. So for those that don't know how people overload, there's a lot of different ways. Now, there's a machine they make that sort of is a simulation of a glute bridge. I mean, that's fine and that's a little different. But when people are doing a traditional glute bridge off of a bench or the floor or some kind of gizmo, I've even seen people try to use, I laugh because it's like, what are you doing? But they'll try to use like the leg curl machine, the seated leg curl machine, kind of like I have, and they'll position the pads basically in the reverse position. So they'll move it up, they'll get underneath it, and they'll use that pad as sort of a way to push the weight up. It's like, what are you doing? Like if more people just like stuck to the basics and and did as the machines were intended to do and did them on a regular basis, we'd be all in better shape as a country. But, you know, I guess just human nature is, I mean, I don't know. I that's something I'd actually be very interested in. Does human nature need to be different from one another? I don't know. That'd be something to study. But at the same time, you know, you're gonna see things like that in the gym. And it's just, you know, I don't know, kind of comical. Don't have to do it. I can tell you that as an expert. But what we do see a lot when people are trying to overload, and when I say we, I don't mean my gym because I'm not gonna do that. But you'll see like bars, so typical 45 or 35 or 25 pound bars, those are your typical standard weight bars. And you know, if you're doing a little bit of overload, that's probably okay, meaning using the bar and maybe a small weight on each side. But you know, I'll see videos of people doing like massive weight and bragging about it. Like I did glue bridge with 300 pounds, I'll be told. And I'm like, okay, I mean, there's not a powerlifting competition for this event, so I really don't know why people are doing that. And I'll see football players playing for pro or elite college teams doing the same thing, and I'm like, what are you doing? Or physique competitors, you know, women especially, because the butt is a big part of physique competition, no doubt about it. And yes, glute bridges work the glutes, but you will see them using just a ton of weight that looks way too heavy to do it correctly. So, look, ladies, gentlemen, whoever wants to train your glutes, I can promise you right now that if you're able, there is no better exercise than a Bulgarian split squat. That is going to work your glutes and it's gonna work it in a normal way, a way that your body is supposed to bend together. Because I just don't know that we're supposed to like bridge the size of a bear off of us, you know. Maybe we are, but I just don't think that that's that normal of a movement. And the problem is with it, you can say, well, what's the problem? Well, the problem is it's probably very unnecessary. But the bigger problem is you can get hurt. I mean, it's an awkward position, and typically you have to get a spotter to lift the bar up with a pad on the bar, unless you're, you know, masochist and love steel going into your pelvic bones as you're doing the weight. Most people don't say, yeah, they make these pads now and they put it over the bar and it goes across your hips, and that's supposed to brace it a little bit, and it does from there. But now the bar's wobbly and your spotter's got to stand there, and they're standing over you awkwardly as you're hip thrusting. I mean, you can imagine the videos and memes that go around about that one, and just probably very unnecessary, and you could hurt your lower back, and that's the biggest issue when we start thinking we need to overload everything, and when we start overloading exercises that for the most part are just supposed to be completed. So I used the glute bridge as an example, but there are other examples. We don't have to overload everything to get results. Some exercises are just meant to do, and that is okay. As a trainer, I don't overload everything I do with my clients. Like if it's towards the end of a workout and we've had a nice workout, we've done most of the muscles of the upper body and lower body and core, you know, we're gonna do some biceps, triceps, at the end with some dumbbells. We don't need to overload, we just need to stimulate them. Let's do 20 reps with this and 20 reps with that. We don't have to overload everything. Areas that you need to get stronger, you're trying to get stronger, especially when you're in a you know a weakened state, an atrophied state, we gotta overload. It's a smart thing to do. Squats we want to learn how to overload, chest press, pull downs, all those good things. But then there are exercises that, yeah, you simply gotta do them and do them right. Check the boxes on them, you know? I put crunches in that category. I mean, what I mean, if you overloaded your crunches, where would I be at by now from the time I started doing crunches when I was, I don't know, 19 years old? I mean, where would I be number wise? Thousands? I mean, like, I'm really gonna try to beat that every time I go. I mean, that would be ridiculous. How many sets would I have to break that into? And then I'm adding weight, putting it behind my neck, all these things. It's like, no, let's just, you know, put crunch in that category as well. You know, let's go to the point where we feel it. Don't necessarily need to overload it, don't necessarily need to overload glute bridges, hyperextensions, um, leg raises, frog kicks, I mean, a lot of body weight exercises, especially of the core. And then, of course, hopefully, hopefully, you know this stretches as well. We don't always have to overload our stretches. We need to do it. You know, if we follow the model of the stretch, we go to the point of stretch and hold for roughly 10 to 30 seconds. Anywhere in there, studies have shown works really, really well. The physiology of it is because basically the um muscle spindle relaxes after about five seconds or so, allows you to get a little stretch, hold it for a little bit, relax, release. Doing more and more and more is not going to increase the flexibility of the muscle. More frequency would. So coming back and doing it later in the day would be very effective and smart, but not doing more time and certainly not overloading with more tension where you tear a muscle. So, some things we just need to understand stay nice and gray, not black, not white. Yes, overload is a great principle. No, we don't have to overload everything. When you go to the gym, I want you to have a nice balance of the things you should be trying to get stronger on, the things you're trying to maintain, and the things you simply need to do to have your effective workout. I have all of those things when I go to the gym. Today, my, you know, make sure I get it done are the glute bridges. Other days it could be, well, no, it was planks as well. I'm not gonna overload planks, I'm just not gonna do it. I'm gonna focus on every time I'm doing them, trying to stay very focused and alert to what's going on in my body for the 45 seconds or so that I'm doing it, but I'm not gonna overload it. It is really silly. Don't even get me going on those world records for the plank offs and things. What are people doing? All right, until next time, I want you to be Max Fit and I want you to be Maxwell, and I hope you're having a great beginning to 2026. All right, thank you everybody for listening to today's show. I really appreciate it. I want to remind you to please hit automatic download. It really helps me and it helps the show. And now I'd like to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product and the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great, they're going to get you exactly what you need. So if you have any garage door needs, give them a shout at 386-222-3165. And now I'm very excited to add another sponsor. Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer has joined the team. And let me tell you, they are a great product. I pop one after a workout. Each container has 40 grams of protein, so that's two servings. I take 20 grams after I work out. What's really cool about them is it's portable. You can throw them in your suitcase. You don't have to worry about mixing powders and making a mess. At least that's an issue I've had with some of the protein powders through the years. And you know what? They taste really, really good. So you can check them out on my website, fittothemax.net, or you can go right to them at prochargeprotein.com.
