Category: Article Posts

Why Don’t You Count Reps?

Walk into any fitness facility in any part of the world, and inevitably if you see a trainer working with a client, part of the workout will consist of the trainers standing there counting.  “One, two three” or “four more, three more, two more, last one!”  I joke with my clients that trainers are the only people who can count to fifteen better than any kid watching Sesame Street.  Now, here’s a little tidbit for those of you that see this all of the time, and it might just open your eyes into something that will make you rethink exercise.

The amount of reps doesn’t matter.

I know immediately I’ll have a bunch of weightlifters jumping on my head who will say things like “what about power training?” “8-12 reps is for hypertrophy and 15-20 reps is for endurance” and similar things.  While it is true that different rep ranges bring forth different types of stimulation, it has little or nothing to do with the actual rep range – it has to do with the load in question and the fibre type of the individual in question.  And this has been backed up in studies, unlike many of the lifting myths that are out there.  I’ll provide some background:

Without getting into too much detail here, Dr. Wayne Westcott (and this has been backed up by others) many years ago presented evidence of 10 different studies that basically all came to the conclusion that high repetition and low repetition training yield the same results in terms of strength gains or muscle gains.  People who trained two or three times a week – same results.  People who trained for 40 seconds versus people who trained for 80 seconds – same results.  Young men doing either 3 sets of 10 reps or 6 sets of 4 reps – same results.  8 reps versus 20 reps – same result.  And here’s really the fundamental truth behind the whole thing:

“It doesn’t matter how many you do if they all suck!”

I tell my clients constantly – we don’t train reps – we train CONTROL.  I would expect that every rep is as perfect as the first one, and when you lose the ability to control the movement, then we stop because we are likely pushing your body beyond the ability it has at that time to maintain joint control.  It’s as simple as that.  Our goal is to keep you coming back in a better position than you were before, and your body will adapt over time with appropriate positions, motions, time, effort, and intention.  Plus, some days you are going to be able to get that really heavy lift and be able to control it – some days, when you had a fight with your partner, you have two deadlines and work and haven’t eaten or slept – you’re not.  It is my job to program things accordingly and make sure we take your body to suntan, not sunburn (like in my previous article).  This applies whether you reach 8 reps one set, then 11 the next and then 4 on the next.

This is also why some of the workouts given in workouts like P90x, Insanity and CrossFit are ridiculous.  They will ask you to force your body to perform something it lost the capability to do about a dozen reps ago and greatly increase your risk of injury just for the sake of “being hardcore” or “feeling the burn”.  This is idiotic for most of the general population.  Pushing your body beyond its’ capacity, especially when it is telling you that it is tired by using sloppy form and the myriad of other ways it will tell you it is pushing too hard is irresponsible to your body, not “hardcore”.

For someone like a powerlifter, they are training to lift something exactly once with perfect form.  This is why they use really heavy loads because that is what they have to get used to controlling.  But for the average gym goer they (hopefully) aren’t looking to lift 400 pounds.  Just focus on doing a bit more than you did previously.  That’s how gains are made, no matter what you are doing.  Runners go up from 30 miles a week to 31.  Military people go from 45 pushups to 46.  That’s how we make progress and improve.  Write it down and focus on trying to do a bit more than you did last time, if your body will allow it.

So to that client, why are we stopping at fifteen?  Why are we not stopping at twelve or ten?  It’s not like if you do 17 reps you’re magically going to poof into an endurance athlete.  And if you can only do 4 you’re not going to become the Hulk.  It just means that the load, rest period and intention needs to be a bit different and also appropriate for what you are trying to accomplish as the goal of the exercise.

So next time that you decide to do 3 sets of 10, just think about what I have written first.  Take that first set and go until you are tired and can’t control the movement.  Once you are tired, stop.  If you feel you need to do more to get tired enough, do another set.  Figure out what works for your body, not what someone wrote down in a book.  And if you need someone to figure it out for you, that’s where people like me come in.  And you won’t hear me counting.

Don’t Fall For It!

This is just another rant for the month of September.  Just this morning on one of the sites I contribute to I got into it with a “trainer” and called him out on the ridiculous claims that he made on his web site.  I’m not going to tell you which one because he’s all about marketing and spam (not reality) and he would love that he got any more attention, which unfortunately is far too common in my industry.  However, the claims that he made are things that I commonly see on many salesman trainer web sites:

“Build 15-20 pounds of lean muscle in a month!” (physiologically impossible and if this was so easy then most of us would be walking around looking like the Hulk).

“Burn 10 pounds of fat a week!” (ditto.  The Biggest Loser is to blame for this one, although it is possible if you’re willing to work out 6-8 hours a DAY like they actually do on the show).

“This person got ripped in record time using x supplement”.  (these pictures, popular among supplement advertisements are sometimes even taken on the same day, and heavily doctored or photoshopped – or they have used drugs).

“My secrets to a 6-pack!”.  (you can commonly find these “secrets” on several other web sites, but they will charge you $14.99 for the privilege of reading something that they copied off of somewhere else on the internet and call it an e-book).

“Only I have the patented system that is GUARANTEED” (if anyone in this industry tries to guarantee you anything please run in the other direction).

Here’s the simple truth:

If you want to change your body, then you have to prepare for a couple of things right off of the bat.  A lot of time and a lot of hard work.  Athletes at any level, fitness competitors and bodybuilders get a lot of respect from me simply because the vast majority of the time they are in the gym pretty much every day working out really, really hard and eating really, really clean.  Even the ones on drugs.  For some people who do high level endurance events and other competitive sports, they usually train 20-30 hours a week.  If you think for one second that you can get to that level without doing these things then you’re fooling yourself.  And if you think you can go from the couch to working out that much then you’re also fooling yourself.  Somebody else might tell you it’s possible in order to sell you something.  I won’t, in fact I’ll do the exact opposite, which is the point of this article.

So for the average gym goer who works out maybe 3-5 hours a week (if they are lucky), is getting results like these impossible?  No, of course not.  It just means that it will take a much longer period of time than it might for somebody who is training four times that much (and has been for many years longer).  When people come to me and want to run a marathon and don’t run, do you think I tell them that they can do it in six months?  I’d much rather keep my integrity and get real, valid results over time for people.  So many people are seduced by quick fix hype that they don’t bother to find out if the claim is actually valid or not.  However, if you put in the hours over time, you are guaranteed to continue to make progress.  One thing I always tell my clients is that the only way they are going to move backwards is if they stop moving forward.  That’s the truth.

There is a massive amount of dishonesty and garbage marketing in the fitness industry.  Just like anywhere else in life, if something sounds too good to be true, it likely is.  Please find someone that you can trust that will tell you the truth and get you going down the right path so that you don’t waste money and time not getting anywhere.  If you need it, get help from someone that you trust and has actual referrals from people that they have gotten results for over time.  Challenge your trainer to give you phone numbers or emails of actual people, not just lines on a web site.  People do this when they are redoing their floors, but they won’t take the time to do it when someone is affecting their physical well being.  They would rather believe a pipe dream that is unproven.  Just like the title says – please don’t fall for it.  I can give you clients from ten years ago that will back up the job that I did for them and that is why I continue to be able to work with great people every day.

Here’s the bottom line.  Work hard, eat well and treat your body with respect and it will change for the better.  How long it takes and how far it goes is entirely up to you – not me.  And that’s a guarantee you can print on any web site.

Suntan or Sunburn?

Sometimes this is up to opinion, but there is a pervasive attitude in the fitness world that a workout needs to be something that leaves you on the ground gasping for air or unable to walk for days.  More often than not I hear other trainers’ clients come in and say things like “I’m so sore!” or “This hurts today”.  Through my experience and education I learned a long time ago that a workout is something entirely different.  There is a big difference between what somebody thinks is good for him or her and what is actually good for him or her.  In my RTS courses the instructor gave us an analogy that really rung true with me.

Imagine you decide it is a beautiful sunny day and you want to lie out in the sun to get a tan.  Depending on how hot it is, whether or not you have sunscreen on and what type (and how it is applied), what you are wearing and even something as simple as what time of day it is, there is a magic window.  At some point lying out you will walk over an imaginary line from tanning and get a sunburn.  You have no idea when, or why – it just happens.  And it can completely vary from one day to another.  You might get some subtle warning signs but for the most part it is very hard to tell exactly how long it will take before this happens.  So a nice pleasant experience can suddenly leave you suffering and cause damage to your body for no reason other than you went just a bit too far.

In the exercise world it is very similar.  I can manipulate sets, reps, load, and even finer points like angle, momentum and tempo in order to either give you a suntan – or take one of these things just a little bit too far and give you a sunburn.  What makes for a really skilled trainer is someone who can manipulate things with precision so that hopefully this doesn’t happen.  Your body will recover from one burn.  However, if you keep burning it over and over again eventually you might cause some permanent damage.  One of my missions as a trainer is to make sure that this never happens to my clients over the long term.  It requires a lot of thought, careful preparation and also simply making sure that if the client isn’t in the condition they normally are that you are mindful and can take that into account during their workout on that day at that time.  What is good for someone on one day is definitely not the same as the next.  If my client hasn’t slept, eaten well or is simply stressed out due to work or family, it all has to be taken into consideration.  This high level of care is something you should expect from the person responsible for improving your body.

Anyone can kick somebody’s butt and get them gasping for air and collapsing.  When I run into a client that wants that I can certainly do it.  That’s the easy part.  But what makes a really skilled trainer and an excellent workout is being able to control the workout to the point where the person is getting what they want without potentially sacrificing their performance the next day.  It’s like what Michael Jordan’s trainer used to say: “All I have to do is NOT HURT HIM.”  What I want for my people is not only to make progress, but for there to be absolutely no risk of not being able to do the things they need or want to do that day or in the days after.  My job is to make you better, not make you worse.  And with a high level of attention and guidance it’s actually easier than you think.

If you’re interested in finding out more, I welcome you to contact me and find out what the Exercise Experience is all about!

Why doesn’t Physio always fix my problem?

Over the many years I have been practicing the application of exercise, I have run across many physiotherapists and practitioners of other modalities like chiropractic and massage.  Since I don’t want this article to become several dozen pages, today I’m going to discuss the world of physiotherapy and specifically the limitations that I have seen within that system and how it can be helped by a competent trainer.  Like any type of practitioner, even medical ones there are both good and not so good people in the respective industry (including my own).  However, one of the biggest trends that I see with my clients is that more often than not, their experience with physiotherapy results in limited results and often doesn’t cover the whole need for the person involved.  This is what I’m exploring here. 

The format is fairly consistent whenever one of my clients or someone I know sees a physio.  They are evaluated, which can take the form of simply glancing at a person and doing a cursory examination and then diagnosing (and yes, I have seen this) or a full musculoskeletal workup including x-rays.  A diagnosis is given of what the person seems to have affecting their body in the form of painful movement.  Treatment is given, which normally takes the form of a couple of different types of therapeutic modalities (most commonly massage, ultrasound, hot/cold packs and TENS).  Sometimes simple exercises and stretches are prescribed as well depending on the patient.

When I went into some research about some of these modalities, some interesting things came about.  For example, did you know that ultrasound has rarely if ever been proven to actually do anything beneficial for pain reduction?  And, on top of that a recent study published in May of this year in the Ultrasound Journal found that therapists displayed “a lack of knowledge” of the basic physiological effects of ultrasound.  After several hours of searching, most studies I found basically stated that there was little to no difference with most patients in terms of reduction of pain whether they actually received the treatment or had a turned off machine hooked up.  The research on TENS is remarkably the same – there has been little to no evidence that it actually does anything useful in terms of healing or pain reduction.  One statement I found (from an actual physio site) suggested that TENS and acupuncture are essentially the same thing.  But many therapists use these all of the time of all of their patients without even considering if they will be useful.  Don’t even get me started on the various versions of stretching – that’s a whole other kettle of fish I’ll open up another time.  Of all the things that are performed, massage and hot/cold packing is most likely to create some relief, but it does absolutely nothing to address the joint and muscles in question strength wise, which is normally the source of the injury.

Then we head into the exercise area.  Granted, many people who come into clinics like this have quite limited function and simply want to get back to their normal daily sitting on the couch and in their office chair.  However, therapists often don’t even give exercises at all beyond simple joint mobility movements and suggestions like “take a yoga class” or “stop lifting heavy”.  I realize that therapists deal with some very broken people, but to me they should have some solutions in place in order to help the people make sure that these things do not happen on a recurring basis.  Doing rotator cuff rotations with a 2-pound weight isn’t likely to improve the ability of a muscle to maintain tension or generate force, especially if it isn’t even affecting what you think it is (standing dumbbell external rotations anyone?).  Many therapists who prescribe exercise in my experience have little knowledge of how to do it properly in order to maintain joint strength and increase the ability to generate force.  Machines are the devil and “functional movement” is the best thing.  I actually had a therapist months ago – who had been seeing her patient for a YEAR (and the injury happened several years prior) – tell me she should “definitely never do” anything like squatting, lunging or lifting.  Within about three weeks I had her client squatting and lifting without pain and able to at least hold herself on one leg without any problem or loss of control whatsoever.  From what I know of the therapy profession, if something isn’t improving after that amount of time, don’t you think it is time to try something else or stop taking that person’s money and admit you aren’t helping?

The other side of that coin is that patients are not educated and often try after a couple of treatments (thinking they are now reduced pain wise) to go right back to what they were doing before the injury.  They don’t realize that the body takes a while to improve back and they might have to modify their movements for a little while or simply approach their joints in a different way – and it will make little to no difference to the muscles in question.  In fact, by “rotating their tires” most of my clients find that they improve faster and can do more after they have laid off of a specific pattern for a while.  But they need to know what to do and how, and most therapists either don’t have the time for this, or don’t have enough knowledge in that area.  I acknowledge that there are also a lot of PT’s who think they are therapists and massage their clients with sticks and diagnose things they shouldn’t, but they don’t have a big official title and public trust behind their names.

I think that every PT should have to take a therapy based course, if not to get some more knowledge in anatomy and proper movement of joints, then for a very simple reason – to learn how to de-progress somebody to the point of ridiculously low loads that they might need at first.  Through my RTS/MAT knowledge I can do things like remove bodyweight, change the intensity of a load halfway through a movement, change directions of force entirely or even apply forces differently so that the joint can learn to maintain tension.  I realize that not a lot of trainers have this type of knowledge.  I wish that some of my colleagues cared enough to study these things.  I realize the fear that most physios have is the typical “boot camp” trainer who is going to take their client just getting over an injury and hurt them again (if it wasn’t the trainer who did it in the first place).  There are biases on both sides and instead of competing for clients, I often find the best solution is to work together so the client gets the best benefit.  Physio can take you to the point where you can move properly again, but more often than not much, much more needs to happen after that to ensure that nothing happens again, and that’s where someone like me comes in.  Many therapists simply don’t have the tools for what happens after and aren’t trained in them through no fault of their own.

Very recently (Monday last week) I had a client come in after not seeing her for a couple of weeks with pain down her leg which she said had been there for a few days after a weekend of doing things at the cottage.  She was upset because she didn’t know what she did and was worried that it was going to set her back with her running program.  After doing an assessment I found that her problem likely wasn’t anywhere near her leg and seemed like it might be the result of some strain from painting – with her opposite side on her upper body.  Her midsection was also not responding well to muscle testing.  After I applied some simple MAT and movements to those areas, she came in two days later claiming that I was a “wizard” because the next day she was 90% better and pain free.  One of the things I tell my clients constantly is that the body has no rules, and more often than not the source of the pain is not where the pain is.  These are things that a lot of practitioners fail to explore.  I often use the analogy of a person coming in with a headache.  You can give them an aspirin to mask the pain – or try to find the source of the headache and not only stop it completely but also prevent it from coming back.  Using MAT and RTS principles I am able to do this consistently with success.  And, the great thing is that usually they end up stronger as a result over time.

My advice is always the same with any practitioner, including my own industry.  Get referred to one (and please not through someone you don’t trust) and evaluate them while they evaluate you.  Get a sense for what they are trying to do to help you.  Don’t believe anything just because they say it, research and evaluate on your own as well.  Some people will research televisions they are planning to buy more than the person who is going to affect their body in a very fundamental way.  Never assume anything.  And good luck with whatever you are doing to your body today.