Show Up, Train Smart, Skip The Nonsense

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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 Gilding of the Gilding 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. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time you might be listening. This is Rob here, and welcome to There Is a Method to the Madness. You know, let's think about that title for a second. I use it a lot. Obviously, it's the title of the show. My first book was written, There's a method to the madness. I say it a lot, you know, and ultimately what it really means is there's a reason we do things, you know, like there's an opinion. This is my opinion. This is why this works. It isn't always a matter of this is the right way, or the only way, or the best way, or what somebody else is doing is the wrong way, or a terrible way. Like there is a method to the madness. Similarly speaking, I heard somebody say recently, they said, with enough information, everything makes sense. So this is that podcast. Like, let me help you make it make sense. Because I have found that when things make sense to people, they actually have better adherence to their exercise programs, to the way of eating, to whatever. Like, once people understand something, typically it helps them stick to it. And that's my whole goal. Like, I want people to understand the science between or behind exercise and eating, therefore, they will stick to it. All right. Today I'm going to talk about that there isn't a perfect way to work out. I know I've said this over and over, but I want to talk about one of my sayings that is that know what not to do. Know what not to do. There are a lot of right ways to do things. There probably are as many wrong ways to do things, but there aren't perfect ways to do things. So know what not to do. And I'm going to give you some tick tips or ticks. Hey, I can give you a tick. I've known to have a few. Get me a little awkward. I might throw a tick out there. But anyway, all uh, you know, humor aside, I want to give you some tips and tricks and whatnot to help you know what not to do. Um, the first thing we need to do is we need to be able to decipher fact from fiction. Where are we getting our information? I was listening to a podcast just this morning and it was funny. And um, you know, what the it's always a funny podcast. Like it's more um, you know, historically based, philosophy based, but typically there's always a funny guest on. And this morning there was absolutely a funny guest on for me. So um the host of the show was talking about Facebook and uh, you know, how so much information is gotten from social media and how that is such a problem. And he was talking about how his parents, now, this guy I think is the age of a millennial, so he's a millennial. So his parents were boomers. I'm pretty sure they were in that. Yeah, they had to be. Um, I guess I'm old enough. No, no, he couldn't know. Uh uh, nope, thank goodness. All right. I mean, I guess maybe his parents could be a Gen X, but I don't think so. I think they're a boomer. It it doesn't matter. Gen X, my generation, we have so many screw ups as well. Like every generation has them. So, like, it's not that. But his parents were boomers, and you know, just like the kids say today, so my daughter, she's a Gen Z, and she says, Okay, boomer. You know, you hear a lot of that from kids, and you know, it makes a lot of sense. But anyway, talking about how his parents used to say, like, don't watch this on TV, and like they were really trying to the quote he said was that you know, they didn't want kids watching TV because they didn't want them to see boobs, but now the boobs are the ones they're getting the information from. So I had to think about it. But what what what this means is that his generation, the boomers, were like, don't watch these certain programs late at night because you're gonna see boobs. But then it's like the boomers are on Facebook getting their information from boobs, in other words, idiots. I had to think about it, but I thought it was kind of funny. So they went on to talk about how in today's era, so much of everything is just published information, and how like your next door neighbor, who just might be a complete idiot, like he, you know, he's your neighbor. We all got him. Hey, maybe I'm the idiot to my next door neighbor. I don't care. I know it sounds judgmental, but like your neighbor might be a complete idiot, and you know that by like kind of watching their interactions, you know, watching what they do, and you're like, oh my god, what the hell is he doing? You know, like putting his recycle out the day before a hurricane, you know, things like that. He might just be a total moron. And yet, these are the people, for the most part, publishing information on social media, right? And then people read it and go, Oh my goodness, did you see so-and-so just did this? Oh, did you hear this country just did this? Nobody verifies anything, they just get it and then they spread it, and then the next thing you know, you're believing it if you're an idiot, but hey, the shoe fits. Like, we shouldn't be getting our information that way. And then, let alone, maybe not so much in the health and fitness industry so much, but there aren't organizations trying to necessarily spread disinformation, you know, like purposely lying to you. To, I mean, maybe there are some cases that are some groups are doing that. I could see that maybe in the food industry. But for the most part, there is a lot of misinformation, though. And the difference is disinformation is information that's purposely untrue, and purposely the objective is to fool you. So that's disinformation, where misinformation is just you're misinformed, you don't know better. There's more of that in my industry. You still don't need to be listening to it. So, rule number one to know what not to do, because remember, I premised this whole discussion with the fact that there are many right ways to do things. I just said it today. I'm gonna repeat it over and over today. To I have already, it's early in the morning, I've already had three clients, and uh one of them, you know, and they agree that it's like preaching to the choir, but I'm like, you just show up. Like, number one, get your ass to the gym. Show up. Get there. Like, that's a win. You know, there's not a perfect way to work out, know what not to do. There are things you probably shouldn't do based on your situations. We all have those. So, for example, um, I talked about it in my email a little bit, but like I started playing on a softball league again and I'm having a lot of fun. I love it. I'm generally in good shape, I'm generally fit, but I didn't do a great job of warming up before I took some swings with the with the bat. And so, like, my oblique is sore, a little bit pulled, nothing major. It's gonna be gone in a couple days, but it's a little bit pulled. So if I'm going to the gym with the premise of know what not to do, you know, many right ways to work out for me this morning. I did some upper body push exercises, strength exercises. You know, I know not to do any powerful oblique throws, right? You're like, well, duh. Yeah, but you don't know how many people do duh all the time. Like, you don't need to be doing that just because you saw your neighbor doing it. What's the reason? So for me, there's a lot of right ways to work out today, but doing anything that flares up or exasperates my oblique muscle would be stupid. So I know what not to do. I'm not gonna do anything that pulls on that muscle, right? So, I mean, there's a lot of right ways to do things. So we have to go back to our information diet because we're all consuming things. We consume information, and we have to know what to listen to. I mean, I'm telling you right now, I post videos on social media. I mean, to just be perfectly frank with you, the main reason I do it is to like keep some relevancy. Like, I'm full, like I have a waiting list. I have people, I honestly some weeks don't know where I'm gonna put them. And if I get any kind of training shortages with people, it becomes even worse. So I'm not really actively at well, I'm not actively advertising at all. But then there's this weird, you know, fixation that I go, oh, but I gotta stay relevant. So I'll think of some like video I'm doing and I'll post this or I'll I'll post some of my clients who don't mind being posted, you know. And it's it's usually the same few. And people are like, why do you post them all the time? I'm like, well, you know, if I'm gonna be perfectly frank, which I'm being perfectly frank with you right now, it's because I'm thinking about it in the morning and I have my phone out. I mean, the majority of the clients come later in the day. Like, there's so many more clients than people on my social media probably see. But number one, I'm not thinking about taking the picture because my phone's away or whatever. I I don't know why my phone is more away, but it is, or just maybe I know these people are chill, and I'm literally doing it because I feel like I have to be relevant, which is kind of silly, you know. But there you go. So I will post some things. I think our emails are very effective. Like I get good feedback on them. I try to really um think about what I'm gonna say. My ultimate goal is to get people in the gym to work out. So I try to say something uplifting there. These podcasts, I try to just like really give you the straight dope on stuff. I really try to like break things down for you, things that I see, things that bug me throughout the week. I feel like, okay, let's talk about this a little bit to my circle of the people that listen, and more and more I'm I'm getting like word that people are listening, and that's great. Very happy about that. So the first rule is just know where to get your information. Like, don't get it from social media. I mean, how many times am I hearing people say, well, I see so-and-so doing this? I'm like, okay. I mean, why are you paying attention to that? I mean, I guess in the old days, we would go to the gym and you might see somebody doing something and maybe they're fit, and so you're curious as to what they're doing and why they're doing it. But at least then, if you had like the assertiveness, you might walk up to them and strike up a conversation and talk to them about why they're doing it. And then because you're eye to eye with them face to face, you can judge if they're full of shit or not. You can judge if they know what they're talking about. I mean, I can. I pretty much can decipher through all that pretty quick. And then you can go, okay, I think this is warranted for me to maybe start doing this. But now with social media, I mean, you're seeing a video and you think, oh, I should do this exercise. Why? Like, know what not to do. It's such a rule, it's such an important rule. I put it in my last book. It's one of my top 10 rules. Know what not to do. In other words, there are a lot of right ways to do things. I mean, a little, it's not a trade secret. There's no secrets here. But when people come in for workouts, like I know what's effective, I know what the research says, I know what the minimal, and for the most part, the maximal, which is harder to determine for most people, is to get the benefits of strength training. Most people want to start like with the minimum, like what's the least, not because they're lazy, but because they're usually time deficient. So, like, what works and then where can we go from there to grow? And so we know that training the major muscle groups in the week, you know, somewhere around two to three workouts a week, hitting all the major muscle groups of the hips, which is the glutes and the lower back, the thighs, which is the quads and the hamstrings, the upper torso, which is the lats, the rhomboids, and the pec major, the arms, which is essentially the deltoid, so the shoulder muscles, the biceps and triceps, the core, which is mainly your abdominal and your low back, and then your calves, which are your gastrox and soleus muscles. Like if we train them two to three times a week on a regular basis, and I'll get to what training means, then we're hitting the right muscle groups. Know what not to do. So there are a lot of ways. Let me just take the pecs, the pectoralis major, for example. Let me just take the pecs so you can understand. There are a lot of right ways to exercise the pecs. You can do push-ups, you can do a chest press machine, you can do dumbbell chest press, you can do dumbbell fly, you can do cable fly, you could do dips, you can do pullovers. Now, if you have really healthy shoulders or elbows and elbows, you might be able to do every one of them as a peck alternative. Great. Doesn't mean you have to, but you can choose any one of them and do a variety of them. That's awesome. Know what not to do. But if you don't, like let's say you had um labrum surgery six months ago, like one of my clients did, well, it probably doesn't make sense that you're doing deep chest presses or maybe full push-ups yet. So you would pick something friendlier on the shoulder for you. Know what not to do. And then when you say when you say, well, then how do I train it? Well, research is clear on that. If you get close to volitional fatigue, which now we're we now we know is like within three reps in reserve to failure intensity-wise. Three reps in reserve means if you can do 15 and you can't do 16, like that was your max at a given weight, like you can do 15 chest presses with 100 pounds and you can't do 16. Well, research has shown if you get as close as 12, you're probably getting enough stimulus for that muscle to get stronger and grow. If you're reaching that level, you definitely are. So we know that. We know it. So know what not to do. Get the exercises that work for you, train it close to fatigue. Now, do we know how many sets a person needs? No, there's there's some ambivalence on that. There's, you know, there's no way to know that perfectly. How young are you? The younger you are, the more volume you can get away with. Meaning that, you know, one set might be your a great number, let me say. Two sets might be your ideal number. Three sets might cause too much fatigue, your body doesn't recover, and so you're not going to grow as well. That we don't know. That depends on age, depends on um if you're taking any drugs, which hopefully you're not, especially if it's illegally. Um, it depends on how much you sleep and how much you eat. So we don't know exactly the volume, but we have ideas and we know how to listen to our bodies on that, or we teach people how to listen to the body. So we know what not to do. We know that training the same muscle group over and over and over every day isn't going to benefit you. We know that. So don't do that. But if you like going to the gym, and going to the gym is better than maybe an old lifestyle of going to the bar, then go to the freaking gym every day. Do different muscle groups. So, in other words, there's no perfect split routine. There just isn't. People have been searching for I shouldn't say normal people, but bodybuilders, which I'm in that club, so I'm allowed to make fun of them. We're not normal, been looking for the perfect split, you know, since Hippocrates was running around teaching people to exercise. We've been looking for it. It's not out there. Know what not to do. Know to go to the gym, number one. Number two, if you want to go every day, do something you didn't do yesterday or you're gonna do tomorrow. I mean, it's that simple. Know what not to do. Don't train your legs every time you go to the gym if you go every day. Don't work your chest, guys, and your biceps, guys. Every day you go to the gym if you go every day. Like, know what not to do. There is not a perfect split. The method to the madness says we need to provide enough stimulus. I've already taught you how to do that by picking the exercise that stimulates the muscle group. And for everybody, that is a little bit different. Taking it close to failure or within three reps of reps in reserve. Boom. Now we know to do that. What do we not do? We don't do that every day. Why? Because the principle of recovery states we need at least 48 hours between workouts of the same muscle group for it to recover. Because when we break things down, that's called a catabolic response. We're breaking it down, we're splitting the muscle fibers so they can come back. That's the catabolic process in it all. Anabolic means growth. Anabolic steroids, you've heard that, right? When people say they take anabolic steroids or so and so, Jose Canseco of the Oakland A's got popped for taking anabolic steroids. Okay, there's that word. Anabolic means growth. So anabolism or anabolic means it's happening in recovery. So if you're training the same muscle groups every day, there's no Way for them to get into the anabolic stage of growth. All right, so we know what not to do. So, Rob, you're saying I can go to the gym every day if I want to, because I'd rather do that than waste my time on Zuckerberg's stupid Facebook app or go to the bar or drive around and waste gas because now I'm retired. I got nothing to do. Absolutely, man. Go to the gym. There's plenty of great gyms out there. Go to the gym. I'm telling you, you're allowed to go to the gym. You don't have to like not go to the gym, know what not to do. You don't have to train the same muscle groups every day. I know I'm beating a dead horse here, and by the way, I really hate that analogy. So got to think of a better one here. Um, won't be able to do that right now. So we don't have to go to the gym and copy what we've seen other people do. Like there are just things we can go to the gym and know what is absolutely good for us. All right. So step two in all of this is understand. Step one is where do you get your information? Know what not to do. Don't listen to influencers on social media. And hell, that includes me. Like, this is a podcast where I'm like giving you some science, but I'm also like giving you my opinion, you know, and I'm willing to talk to anybody about it, you know, that's fine. And I think podcasts can be good because you can listen to them and then give somebody enough time to explain themselves. But you know, there's a logarithm in social media. I think everybody, you know, even probably most boomers and older know that. There's a logarithm. So, like you can look it up and see exactly how many seconds that people are willing to watch. And now I can't remember, but I'm thinking it was like a 10-second video, like of an exercise. Like, isn't that sad? But that's like people's attention span. So the advice is because of the logarithm, because you want a lot of clicks, like so many things these days are about clicks and views and all that stuff. So the logarithm says that if you make your video on how to do a, I don't know, I did a payload press today for my video. Again, I already told you why, right? I'm giving you my trade secrets. It's like I feel like I'm supposed to, so I kind of like put a half-assed video up there with hardly any like words by it. I mean, that's what I do right now. I've talked to people about maybe upping my social media, but quite frankly, sometimes I just don't feel like it. I think social media is largely stupid and uh I don't see the point. But anyway, having said that, like I try to keep the videos to 10 seconds or so. I don't even think this one I did. I don't even think I altered it hardly, but because the algorithm says there's going to be that many clicks and like likes and all this stuff if you make it a certain thing. So there's a science to it. So know that like when these influencers are posting stuff, like they're totally basing it on social media science. Like, what are the buzzwords? What are the hashtags? What are the, you know, what how long should it be? What words should you stay away from? What you should wear, what you should filter. I mean, these things are like made to get your attention. That's what they're made for. They're not made to help you, they don't give a shit. That person making their video in their garage when they have filtered their looks, when they have done everything they can to make this video of this exercise for whatever reason. But the reason I promise you isn't to help you. It's to somehow help their bottom line financially. I mean, they get paid based on how many views that they get. Like that's what the famous influencers do. And now there's a way for even unfamous, you know, or hacks to make a little bit of money off of this stuff. So they're not there to help you. So number one is don't get your information from social media. Number two, show up to the gym, listen to your body, have a Jenny plan in mind. I guess number two is really long, isn't it? But that's okay. I I trust y'all's attention span. You're listening to this, so you're a smart person if you're listening. I trust your attention span. Go with your general idea of hitting the major muscle groups that you need to hit. Work the exercises that you know work best for you. Give you an example on that. I worked, again, upper body push this morning, so pecs, shoulders, triceps. I don't do that because I think a split routine is better. I do that because I like to work out every day. It's good for me. It gets me in a good mood. No, you couldn't tell right now, but it's true. So for me, I'm strong enough to where if I'm pushing, say, 50-pound dumbbells up for dumbbell chest, which isn't a whole lot of weight compared to some people. So, you know, I'm not bragging by any means, but I'm strong enough where if I get the 50s into place, I can press them up into a chest press relatively easy. But like anybody else, 50 pounds is awkward. So getting that into position to do the chest press isn't worth the risk because I have to kind of like do almost like a hammer curl as I'm laying back to get the weight up. And then right next to me, two feet away, is my chest press selectorized machine, right? Know what not to do. So I'm like, okay, I can do this if I had to. If I had to use, and don't get me wrong, I love dumbbells, but if I had to use my dumbbells, I could. But why when I have this selectorized machine that all I have to do is lay back in the same position I have my dumbbell bench set at, same angle, reach down, change the pin in the weight stack and push up without having the whole weight in position. Because I don't care what anybody tells you, it's not really a different movement. Sometimes with dumbbells, you have like the luxury of being able to move in and out a little bit, and you can definitely work them isolaterally one side at a time. And that's a good thing, but it's not worth worth the risk to me to get them in position when I have this other tool. So, like, so much of this comes down to that. All right. What I really want you to do, what I want to end on, because you know this has been a 30-minute rant. I feel better. Hopefully, you learn something from it. And then we have what we call in business a win-win. Ultimately, I want you to get your booty to the gym. Get to the gym. Don't overthink it, don't listen to other people. Get to the gym, show up. Once you get there, you will feel better. Know what not to do when you're there. That's kind of easy, I think, but get there. All right. Get to the gym, know what not to do, do the things that work for you. 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. 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