Safer Gains, Smarter Choices

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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. Welcome to There Is a Method to the Madness. And you know what? I'm going to tell you a story that uh exemplifies the name of the podcast. It was probably late 90s, trying to think. Probably 96, 97, 1996, 1997, something like that. And um I was at one of the first locations that I rented, and I was renting uh the Silver Nautilus Gym from Dr. Michael Fulton, and uh he is a kind of a somewhat famous back surgeon in the Volusia County, Florida area, probably statewide. And uh he's a surgeon by name, but really he believed in rehabilitation and didn't do surgery. He was a big strength training guy. He was also the medical director of Nautilus Incorporated back in the day, and then later on, MedX, which is some of the finest equipment ever made. And um I got to know he and his family pretty well, and I leased, as I said, one of his gyms, Silver Nautilus, he called it, from the old Nautilus fame, and I started training my clients there. Beautiful little gym. Um kind of set up similar to how I have my gym now, but obviously Nautilus machines and uh some free weights. But it was called Silver Nautilus because he had one of the old chrome lines of Nautilus that was beautiful equipment. Us exercise geeks kind of get into equipment and stuff like that, kind of like car guys do. So anyway, it was just beautiful chrome, silver nautilus, literally. And um, as I said, I got to know him pretty well and work with him, and uh, you know, it was a good relationship, and I really trusted his uh mentoring, and man, he's just an expert on the back. I still refer patients to his family to this day. So anyway, one day I was uh working out in the gym by myself, and um I was doing a form of bent over rows with a barbell. And uh that's where you bend over at the spine, which is, you know, all good. You have to kind of get in the horizontal position to do that. And um you row the weight up towards your sternum area, upper part of your abdominal region, and uh that's what the exercise looks like. Now your back is not supported, you're on your heels, and I always had good form. It's not like I was yanking the weight, but I uh tweaked a muscle in my lower back. Nothing serious, just a little bit of a pull and probably one of the spinal erectors. And um, again, not a big deal, but uh Doc saw me either limping or, you know, babying it, or I might have even said something to him. I don't remember, but I do know the point of this story. He looks at me and he goes, you know, Rob, the reason we have these great machines over here, and especially that row machine right there where your back is supported, is so you can get the full effects of the exercise without the risk. And uh, you know, naturally he knew he was speaking to the choir, so he gave me a little wink and a chuckle. And I'm like, Yep, I know this doc, and you know, sometimes I still do idiotic things. So we all do, right? I mean, we all do sometimes. I mean, we're gonna make boneheaded decisions. Now, I named the podcast a method to the madness, and this morning one of my clients said to me, she says, uh, when I had her do an exercise or a series of exercises in a way, she goes, Well, how come we're doing that? And she was just curious, it was good. And I gave her some kind of sarcastic answer. And she goes, No, no, I want to know the method to the madness. I'm good, good. I'm like, good, okay, you know, that's true. It's like, so why are we doing that this way? And um I bring this up because there are just so many instances of this still occurring, oftentimes, in strength training gyms or strength training settings. I mean, the idea, let's go back to that compound row we call it, or chest supported row, or low row, whatever you want to call it. A row essentially is a row. A row uses your rhomboids, your latissimus dorsi, your posterior deltoids, and your biceps. So a well-executed row works a lot of the posterior muscles, which is great. And that's going to be the case whether you do a dumbbell row supported or unsupported. And when I say supported, I mean putting your hand and your knee on a bench. It's going to be that case if you do it unsupported, where you're just bent over in a uh position like I was when I was doing the barbell row in the story I described. It's going to be that case if you do a seated row where you put your feet up on the blocks and grab the weight, sit back and do a row. Chest supported row where you have a chest on your pad, on uh a pad on your chest or a chest on your pad, I guess it's the same thing, and pull in the horizontal position back, or seated on the box or the step, like we do often at the gym and doing a high row. I mean, a row is a row and it's going to work those muscle groups. Now, the reason we would do chest supported or some form of support is because then you can actually use the proper muscles to pull back without risking injury of your lower back. That's the method to the madness. Now, can you use barbells and do a bent over row in this instance of an exercise? Well, of course you can. I mean, you know, if you're safe and doing the right thing and you're doing the exercise correctly, it's a good exercise. Like I'm not dissing on a barbell row. But the point is that if you have the equipment, why would you take the risk of doing an exercise where you kind of have to back off the intensity a little bit? Because if you're not careful and you take a misstep, figuratively speaking, then you could injure your low back. And I'm one of those people that just believe absolutely that strength training is the way to avoid injuries, not get injured. It just is. Can we do boneheaded things? Yes, but we don't have to do bone-headed things. So if you're at home and you've decided to invest in a home gym and you buy free weights, because let's face it, free weights are a lot cheaper than selectorized machines, and they take up a lot less space, right? So if you have a gym like mine where you basically have every muscle group represented with a machine. So I'll have a low back machine, I have an ab machine, I have a leg press machine, a leg extension, leg curl machine, I have a calf machine, I actually have two. I have a cable row that can do, or a cable machine that can do basically everything. Then I have a chest press machine, then I have a dip machine for the triceps, then I have a low row machine for the lower and upper back, then I have a bicep and a tricep machine, so I have everything covered. Well, you know, through time I built that gym up, but basically, you know, you're talking about anywhere from four to five thousand dollars per machine. So they can get pricey and they take up a lot of space. My gym isn't huge, but it's big enough for a personal training gym. So that's about a thousand square foot. Most people don't have a thousand square foot at their house to put a gym. Some people do. Some people don't mind spending that kind of money if they have it. That's fine. But a lot of people will buy free weights and they're great because they're cheaper and they require less space. So if you're at home and you're trying to work your back, your upper back specifically, then yes, a barbell or dumbbell row will be great. But if you have the equipment to do machine-assisted rows, it makes sense to do the rows. Like, there's still this myth that I see. It's not as bad as it used to be. I mean, you know, look, I love people that work out and everything. I mean, I've been a bodybuilder, I've been on stage competitively, how many times? Four or five times. So, I mean, I've been in that crowd, but let me tell you, there still are muscle heads out there. And muscle heads aren't built people. They're just people that kind of have muscles and don't have much up there in the brains, right? I mean, they're still out there. And by the way, that has nothing to do with muscularity. There just happens to be people in every industry, including mine, that don't really know what they're talking about. And they're gonna spread misinformation and say things like, well, free weights are real weights, machines aren't. Look, I promise you this that your muscle fibers do not know the difference when they're being taken to exhaustion of a barbell row, a machine row, a cable row, a dumbbell row, or a band. It has no freaking idea. The muscle know it's under stress, the muscle knows it's under stress. It doesn't know what's causing the stress. Last I checked, our muscles don't have eyes. They do have proprioceptors, interestingly enough. So it makes them very kinesthetically aware, but they don't have eyes. Okay, I can promise you that. They don't know what you're using for the load. So that is silly. I can remember being a kid working out at the gym, and like there were the guys in the gym. When I say kid, I mean, you know, late teens, early 20s, they'd say, Oh, don't do nautilus, it's fake weights. I'm like, really? Like, I didn't know, you know, like so many kids. I mean, it's just, I don't know where this stuff starts, but it's just silly. So there is still that myth which isn't true. The bottom line is the method to the madness tries to tell you to use the best exercise that you can get your hands on to do what you're trying to accomplish. Let me give you another example. You know, dumbbell presses, like incline presses and flat presses and floor presses. That's a good way to do the chest press for sure. And sometimes we will use that because they allow for more range of motion than, say, a barbell for sure. Like you're allowed to get your hands in the right position where you can go a little bit lower in a safe direction. For example, when you're doing any form of chest press, you really shouldn't hold your elbows and humorous at 90 degrees, like it's the wrong angle. And if you're trying to imagine what that looks like, just think like of a squat. You're trying to get your femur parallel to the floor. That's good. That's ideal. But with a chest press, you don't want your humerus, which is the bone of your upper arm, parallel to the floor. It's not supposed to be in that angle, it's supposed to be somewhere between the elbow tucked and out to 45 degrees. Okay. So if you're using a dumbbell, you can take that down into a little bit more fuller, safer range of motion than you can if you're using especially a barbell and some chest press machines. So I get the use of a dumbbell and why it could be applicable in some situations. But when you're at the point where you need help loading those dumbbells up into position to do the set, for example, let's say you're grabbing 50 or 55-pound dumbbells and you're trying to get them into position to do a chest press. Most people, once they get the dumbbells into position, they can move the load okay. You know, I'm not obviously if it's too heavy, they can't, but the hardest part for a lot of people to do a dumbbell press in this situation is lifting the dumbbells off the floor, laying back with them with straight arms, holding them in the air to start the set. So you're putting yourself in a very precarious position to potentially get hurt. And why? Well, you see people doing dumbbell presses that way, or you heard they're safer. Well, they're not safer if they come crashing down on your forehead. And no, I'm not being dramatic. I have seen it before. I have seen a situation years and years ago at a gym I was going to, thank God not mine, where the guy couldn't control one of his arms on the dumbbell, his elbow bent, so he went into flexion and the dumbbell came crashing down on his nose and forehead. It was a bloody mess, literally. So that does he he was okay, but there was a lot of blood, embarrassment, mess, and everything else. And of course, he had, I think, a broken nose, not quite sure. I do know he survived. But, you know, that's the situation. So if you got 50-pound dumbbells and you're struggling to hold them up over your head to do a set, and you have a chest press machine sitting next to you, that can go up to, in my case, 245 pounds. Doesn't it make more sense to put the chest press on 100 pounds, which is double the 50 of the dumbbells, and do a safe set where the load is really set for you right there. You can change the range of motion on the arm. You know, if you need to start a little higher or a little lower, you can set that with the handle. Doesn't it make more sense? And then you can safely push the set to failure or close to failure without worrying about, you know, number one, not being able to handle the load when you're finished. And number two, not dropping the freaking weights, which drives me nuts. You know, that's the uh kind of a I don't know, it's not really a joke, but it's sort of the running joke for lack of a better word, along strength training circles that says that yo, if you can't handle safely putting the dumbbells back down to the floor after your set of dumbbell chest presses, you're going too heavy. Don't think you're like all that in a bag of chips when you're doing 100-pound dumbbells. And yes, I've seen people do that for chest presses, and then drop them afterwards because the hip failure, not worrying about cracking the concrete base at the bottom of somebody else's gym. I mean, it's just one of those faux pas you don't do. And you know what? It's not exactly great on your shoulder either. So the method to the madness says, look, you're trying to create as much stress on the muscles as you're trying to create. And in this case, it's the pectoralis major, the anterior deltoid, and the triceps. Those are the three muscles that are involved in a chest press, in a push-up, in a machine chest press, in a bench press, in a dumbbell press. Like it doesn't matter if it is what we call a horizontal press, meaning you are in the horizontal position or on your back, or the machines are set up in a way where it puts you in that position. A press is a press is a press. There's no such thing as activating your upper chest, your lower chest, your inner chest, your outer chest. People, it's the pectoralis major and it's one. And then on the other side, it's two. All right. There aren't all these three parts of the pectoralis major. Or if you listen to some boneheads five, they'll say upper, middle, lower, inner, outer. No. Oh, why does my outer chest look so much smaller than the other guy? Genetics, it's how your pectoralis major happens to be shaped. No, I think I need to do flies because it works the outside. No, flies are the primary exercise for the pectoralis major, just like shoulder raises are the primary exercise for the deltoids, and bicep curls are the primary exercise for the bicep. You're just isolating the pectoralis major, all of it. There's such a thing called the all-or-none principle in physiology, which means once a cell fires, it fires all the way. There is no going back. So there is no such thing. Once the pectoralis major fails, it fails all the way through. Every muscle fiber has been activated, has been recruited, and that's why you've hit failure. And that can happen whether you're doing push-ups, whether you're doing a horizontal chest press machine set up vertically or horizontally, whether you're doing standing horizontal chest presses on a cable machine, whether you're doing floor presses with the dumbbells or dumbbell presses or barbell presses or smith presses. And the objective is to use the safest means to get the result that you want to get. Look, I love dumbbells. I think dumbbells. I have a rack of dumbbells. Matter of fact, if you really want to get technical, I have three racks of dumbbells. I have a long rack at the gym, I have a short rack at my gym, and then I have a medium-sized rack at my house. I love dumbbells. I have dumbbells at my gym here that goes all the way from two pounds up to 50. And at my house, I have them that go from three, or I think it's five, five all the way up to 40, or maybe it's 45. I don't know. But I have racks of dumbbells and I like them. But I use them for what they're appropriate for. Dumbbells are great for flies because you don't have to use nearly as much load as you do for presses. You probably have to use at the most, if I'm the guess, 70, 70%, 60 to 70% of the load that you're going to use for a chest press, you're going to use for a fly. So that's very manageable for most people to prop up in position over the head, over the body, over the sternum to do a fly. Makes a lot of sense. Obviously, it makes a lot of sense to use dumbbells for dumbbell curls, side raises, kickbacks, goblet squats. There's a lot of good uses of dumbbells. I don't think doing heavy, heavy, heavy chest presses is good use. I have some clients do them here, but when we do them, it's good, it's because they have some kind of shoulder impingement to where anytime they do a bilateral chest press, for some reason they feel impingement. It's called impingement syndrome. But something about the laxity of a dumbbell allows them a little more flexibility in the shoulder to do what it wants to do. But they don't go heavy. They're not doing sets of five, you know, or even sets of 10. They're doing higher reps of, say, 12 to 15 to 20. That way that weight is manageable to hoist up over the head and safely do them. So that's what the method to the madness is about with exercise selection. Like there is a method to the madness. You know, sometimes with exercise selection, it's finding the right thing that the client feels the most. And we often have to explain to them, you know, a little side note here. Clients that have not worked with other trainers are usually easier, easier to educate. Well, yeah, it's educate, not re-educate, than clients who have come from other trainers who maybe aren't that qualified that we have to re-educate. Because they will have been told a lot of ludicrous things. Like, for example, let's look at the triceps. You don't know how many times I've had clients say, well, so-and-so said I should do kickbacks instead of press downs because kick hacks, kick hacks, kick hacks. Let's do some kick hacks. Because kickbacks work the medial head of the tricep greater than a press down that works the lateral head. Okay. Now, the only thing this trainer who told them that got right is that there are three heads to the tricep, but I think everybody knows that, which is why it's a tricept. Tricep. But again, you're not changing where you're training the tricep because you're changing the exercise or the angle. But sometimes people will feel exercises differently. It doesn't mean that they feel it maybe in one part of their tricep more than the other, because usually, if that's the case, they're just not very kinesthetically aware. They just think they're feeling that. But really, what they're feeling for the first time is maybe they're feeling their tricep more effectively. You know, some people don't have very good shoulder flexibility. So when they put their elbow high into a kickback position, they really struggle keeping it up there. And so they're so focused on keeping their elbow high, they're not focused on locking out their elbow, which is the whole function of the tricep. So they don't feel it as much. Then you move them over to a press down machine. They don't have to worry about that so much. They can take their elbows and lock them into their ribs and focus on elbow flexion only, and they feel it more. Now I've had people do the polar opposite of that. I put them on a press down, and for some reason, they either keep moving their shoulders because they're ADHD or they're not getting what I'm saying, or they're not completely locking out at the bottom. Then I say, all right, let's try these kickbacks over here, and all of a sudden they say, Oh, I feel my triceps. There's nothing different except probably the way that they're doing them. And to be quite frank, all of those exercises are good. Like I'm going to use all of them for myself and my clients in various settings. Like those two I just named, I love them both. I love kickbacks, I love press downs. I love them both in the same workout if need be. But the point is, is we move them around not because like one's superior to the other, because sometimes people feel them more. And I'm a big believer in kinesthetic awareness. Like if you feel it, why do you think one of my slogans is if it's burning, it's working? Because it's absolutely true. If you feel the muscle working and it's burning and you take it to fatigue, then it is working. Literally, what that means is that you are recruiting all of the muscle fibers, which is taking them to exhaustion. And what happens is once you take those muscle fibers to exhaustion, they split in the middle. There's parts of the muscle fiber called the actin and the myosin. The actin and the myosin cross-bridge each other. They shorten to the point where they split. When they split and they grow back, that muscle fiber itself comes back a little bit stronger. To do that, the muscle has to be taken close to failure. We call that mechanical tension. There has to be mechanical tension placed on the muscle. When that happens, the muscle can respond, the muscle can grow. Feeling that almost ensures that you did that. The other day I was working with one of my clients and uh give a little shout out to Patty, Dr. Ferdette. She's a uh a great physician who preaches wellness and fitness and nutrition, and she's a good living example of, you know, doing these things herself. And um we were talking about reps, and she says, you know, I'm not the greatest counter. And I said, Well, I lost count because I had her and another person in the gym. So I was, you know, my attention was split. And she she said something to the effect of the count. And I said, Well, you know, you really don't have to worry about it. I mean, there's a range we like people to fall in mostly because if you can do like if you can do uh a set for three or four minutes, the load isn't heavy enough. So we like a certain say range of reps to fall into because let's say if your rep range is somewhere around 15 or 20, if you're a little bit faster with your reps or 12 to 15 if you're a little bit slower, that's probably around the 60 seconds of anaerobic metabolism, which is ideal. So basically, I mean, she's a smart lady. She looked at me, she goes, so really it it doesn't matter about the count, it's just getting close to fatigue. I'm like, right, that's really what it boils down to. Like, there's nothing wrong with counting. And again, we'll count for certain reasons. But the idea is to get the muscle tired, to get the muscle to the point of exhaustion, and then those magical things can happen and it will come back stronger. And that's really the idea. So the method to the madness is understanding what we're really trying to do when we strength train. And I really wanted to cover exercise selection today. So I'm going to repeat what I said. The idea is to find the most suitable, suitable exercise that you have at your resources that can safely help you get to failure. That is really the idea of exercise selection. And, you know, if you're really fit and you don't have a lot of joint problems, that could be many, many, many exercises. Each muscle group, really. Doesn't mean you have to do many, it just means you have many options. If you're not and you have different issues, different joint issues, and you're kind of limited on the exercises you can do, that's okay. You can find that ideal exercise for you as well. All right. So I really hope you learned something today. Keep the questions coming. And remember, you're always going to feel better after you finish a workout. 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? 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