Why is that exercise bad?

I gained a new perspective this past weekend.  I’m currently going through the stages of the Resistance Training Specialist Mastery program which has really opened my eyes to seeing what we as exercise people do every day in a different way.  Often times I will hear a trainer tell a client or another trainer “that exercise is bad for you.”  They often do this without any other qualifier or they have that perspective simply because they were told it by somebody else and believed it to be true without looking into it themselves, as happens with pretty much everything within our industry.  I have been guilty of this myself.  A good example is this little exchange:

“Leg extensions are bad.”

“Why?”

“Because it puts shear force on your knee.”

Normally then the person being told this will just think shear is a horrible thing and they need to stay away from it forever.  Usually this trainer will follow up the discussion by telling their client how they need to squat instead, because squatting is really “functional”.  Squatting on a BOSU is even better because it’s an unstable surface so it works your “stabilizers”.  The issue is simply that 99% of the time, the person giving the advice has no idea what shear even is, how it is represented as a force within that movement and how it is applied to the joint, or (more importantly) whether or not it should be.  Again, I’ll reiterate that I have been guilty of this too because I don’t want it to seem like I’m completely innocent with conversations like this.  I used words all of the time that maybe I shouldn’t have because it is an easy way to get a point across to a client or co-worker without them looking at you blankly.

Some questions that immediately spring to mind is does that person even know what shear actually is?  Why is shear bad?  Why is it bad for that person?  Is there another way to do the same thing with a different overall result?  Or a way to get the same result doing something different?  Often we as trainers don’t think much beyond “good or bad”.  What we don’t consider is if this is good or bad for that person at that time within the capacity of having no idea what might be going on within that joint beyond what we can find out with our limited ability to check it.  It brings things to a higher level of responsibility, which is where in my opinion people in my profession should hang out.  Unfortunately most of us can’t or even worse, can’t be bothered.

There really is no good or bad exercise, there are simply increasing and decreasing levels of appropriateness of the exercise based on the person involved, what you are trying to do to them and why you are trying to do it.  The great thing about what I am now learning is that I can completely alter the force going through a joint to make it harder, or safer, or apply things there that I want to without causing things I don’t want to have happen.  It’s like magic, but really it isn’t – it is just attention to detail, being as sure of something as you can be and keeping the intention in mind to help the client get what you want them to get.  It brings in the mastery of what we do, which is affect the body and it’s many joints in a way that can either bring something good or something bad.  There is a lot of trial and error involved, but as we get really masterful at it, there might be a bit less error.

I know a lot about the body and how it moves and works and does all of the little things that go on every second of every day that affect your daily living and health.  One of the most valuable things I probably learned this past week was what I don’t know.  And that’s okay – provided that I don’t pretend that I do or just ignore it and do something to somebody anyway without any mindful thought towards what I am doing.  That’s what study and application is for.  You just can’t label things right away without knowing exactly what is going on.  I’m happy to have this new perspective and with any luck I’ll be able to affect people in a much more appropriate way now that I have it.  Feel free to comment on what I’ve said and think about it yourself.  You might be surprised!

Shifting Gears

This article was prompted by a client of mine this morning so it is really fresh in my mind.  Having prepared her workout ahead of time, she walked in looking like a pile of something I would scrape off of the gym floor.  Asking her how she spent her weekend, she told me that her and her husband had spent the better part of the weekend moving furniture, painting walls, sealing decks and she was exhausted and sore all over.  After thanking her for coming in, I promptly revamped her workout completely (no deadlifts needed today!) and made sure she felt a lot better before she left through a combination of joint mobility, yoga and passive simple movement patterns.  She was grateful, but it also brought me to the point of today: shifting gears.

Often in life we get things thrown at us last minute, and as a trainer one of the harder skills to master is when a client comes in and states that they are unable to do something because of a minor injury or illness and we have to change things around without taking away from the time they have paid us for.  I’ve had clients actually walk into the gym on crutches, having a leg workout programmed for that day.  Surprise!  It is really irresponsible of a trainer to just go ahead and do whatever workout they have planned anyway, not realizing that the nervous system of that person may not be able to handle certain movements if they are tired, stressed or already feeling pain.  Being able to flow up and down the neurological scale is really essential to being able to provide a great exercises experience for that client on that day.

What about for us outside of the gym?  Are you easily able to shift gears in your personal and professional life?  Or even in the car on the way to work?  So many of us just move through life without thinking about what’s next because we are either used to a routine or pattern, or just don’t want to put forth the effort to adjust things around.  I have to admit that this type of thing really drives me crazy – which my wife can attest to – but I’m working on it slowly.  Being able to adapt to new and unexpected situations can be difficult, but it does not have to be as stressful as some people make it out to be.  It can also often be fun if you end up doing something or being somewhere unexpected.  I actually have read about a new movement called “Yes Man” like the movie where for one month you agree to do pretty much everything anyone suggests and just see what happens.  Some of the reports from people doing this type of thing are pretty incredible, from landing whole new careers to meeting the partner of their dreams.

Another way to think about this is just gearing either up or down a little bit.  If life throws you a curve ball, you don’t need to necessarily come to a screeching halt, turn around and head another direction.  You might just need to slow down, take a deep breath and keep moving forward.  Sometimes you need to shift into a higher gear to get past a checkpoint and begin to start working on the next one.  The point is to be able to easily adapt and be flexible to what life throws at you, and not let it throw you off.  Some simple strategies when you feel this coming on are to simply stop and take a few deep breaths and think about what you’re going to do.  I know when I have to do it I stand there like Rain Man for a few moments while my brain shifts over and I start thinking about what I have to do.  It might look funny, but it gets the job done.

I hope that I can make you think about this skill and how you can use it in your day to day world.  In mine it is really different than for example in an Emergency Room, or in a Board Room when a customer throws you a curve ball.  It takes some time and skill to master, just like anything else worth doing.  But the same basic principle remains – learn how to do it and if you can do it easily, your life suddenly gets a lot easier in a hurry.

By the way, we are 6 months done with the year – do you need to shift gears towards your goals?  Take a beat and think about it.  Then shift up!

Shoulder Mechanics and Movement Part 1

This is designed to be a (somewhat) brief look into the complexity of your shoulder joint and some common things that I see everyday people doing that can severely impact the ability of your muscles to control the joints in question, leading to inevitable injury.  We have all seen that guy at the gym who does a set of heavy bench press and then immediately grabs his shoulder and does a pec stretch, not realizing that by doing this his next set of bench presses is not only going to be harder to control, but also may have a much increased risk of injury.

When you think about your shoulder, we have no concept of how complex it actually is.  A lot of bodybuilders or laypeople simply think of “delts” and that there are three of them and they move forward, sideways and backwards.  Your shoulder is actually made up of several joints, many ligaments and tendons and more than a dozen muscles to help it move.  It can actually reach about 60,000 distinct positions across all three planes if you give one degree of freedom between each plane.  A lot of people also assume that any problem is in their rotator cuff without even knowing what it is and what it does to protect the main joints in your shoulder.

There are some common issues about the shoulder that I want to address in this article.  In a follow up I will go over some strategies that can be applied with any major shoulder dysfunction:

 Number One:  Your shoulder is not one joint.

When people think of the shoulder, they immediately cannot think beyond the glenohumeral joint, or where the arm bone connects into the glenoid fossa (think of it as the golf tee that the ball sits in), which is located on lateral part of the shoulder blade.  There are several other joints that contribute to shoulder movement.  They are (in no particular order) the acromioclavicular joint, the scapulothoracic joint, the sternoclavicular joint and some also add the subdeltoid joint, which is not a true joint in a physiology or anatomy sense.  Think of the shoulder as the link between your scapula (shoulder blade), your humerus (arm bone) and your clavicle (collarbone).  When you want to move any of these things, you end up moving your shoulder region and firing all of the muscles around it.  As I have said before, as soon as you move a joint, you use every muscle that crosses over it.

Number Two:  Your “rotator” cuff should actually be called a compressor cuff. 

We all likely have had what we think is rotator cuff issues at some point in our lifting careers.  Personally I have dealt with probably hundreds of rotator cuff issues with clients over the years.  However, there is one fundamental truth about this complex of muscles.  Usually it isn’t the muscles themselves that have the issue – it is the tendons attached to them and the ligaments involved in keeping the shoulder joint strong that cause pain and limited ability to control.  Tendons and ligaments only get involved when the muscles in place go beyond their ability to control force and get outside of their allowable range.  So when I’m pressing, pulling, flexing or extending or abducting or adducting my shoulder, what I really need to watch out for is going too far outside of what my joint will allow.  This spares the tendons and ligaments from having to take stress and possibly straining.  The rotator cuff is designed to help keep the shoulder joints under control, and assist with certain movements.  It is not supposed to be worked on its own (not that anything there actually does).

Number Three:  The position of my hand and wrist doesn’t make a difference. 

Of course it does!  Maybe it doesn’t in terms of forming a really nice tricep sweep, but it certainly matters to your shoulder joints.  Think about it – if you internally or externally rotate your feet during a squat, leg press or hip extension, does it feel wrong?  Would you do that?  Of course not.  If your hand is internally rotated during an abduction movement your shoulder will allow about 60 degrees of range before your greater tubercle smashes into your acromion.  Rotate it externally; you can now get up to almost 180 degrees. Why?  Because the joint now allows the part outside in order to move it properly.  I can take someone with shoulder issues and usually subject their joints to force with less worry simply by adjusting the position of their hand and wrist.  As an addition, how many people actually worry about their wrist position?  I see people in gyms constantly having no idea how much their wrists and elbows are getting negatively impacted by simple things like the wrist going into too much extension when they grip a bar.

Number Four: We all have a dominant side, and you need to be aware of it.   

You have a dominant side in your upper body that you use for fine motor control through the arm.  This was developed back when you were a small child and unless you have actively worked at it or developed as an ambidextrous person it is unlikely to change in adulthood.  Therefore you will always have one side that gets overworked during the day with minor things like how you carry a purse, mouse with your computer and put dishes away.  Your other side sometimes gets subjected to the same things (for example when you are pressing or pulling something) and simply isn’t as strong or able to handle these fine motor skills.  With beginners to exercise, I almost exclusively use unilateral movements when dealing with the body simply due to the fact that one side will always be weaker and less coordinated than the other.  Typically in the lower body it is the opposite side to the upper body.  Over time the body learns to do the movements, but this doesn’t mean that after a hard day at work constantly rotating your shoulder with a mouse in your hand your one side is going to be very happy if you suddenly force it to control 200 pounds.  Be mindful of how your joints are feeling before you fly into weights and make sure to warm your joints up properly and deload if you need to.

These are some simple things to think about when it comes to the shoulder.  It is a very complex series of joints and requires a lot of care and attention when walking into the gym and subjecting it to massive amounts of force.  So, to summarize:

 1)      Respect your shoulder area and realize how complex it is.

2)      Don’t overtax your tendons and ligaments, thinking you are working your “rotator cuff” and making it stronger. 

3)      Watch how you are gripping things, because it makes a difference.

4)      Make sure to pay attention to your dominant and non dominant sides respectively. 

If you have any questions feel free to contact me, or if you have any input into the shoulder area that you think I should cover more in the future just let me know.

 

 

Why can’t I lift as much as that guy?

At an event I attended and presented at this weekend, I was watching a friend of mine compete at powerlifting.  He did great considering he took 1st in his category but one thing that struck me was when he was squatting and benching, how much farther the bar was travelling than some of his competitors due to him being quite tall and narrow.  This was especially true with the females, who were using a very wide grip (which is perfectly legal for powerlifting) but had massive torsos and huge legs so the bar did not have to travel nearly as far.  Even the other guys were quite a bit shorter and stockier, which tends to be the trend with power lifting.

So the inner geek in me decided to do some math and see if there was a big proportional difference between what my friend did and for example, what pound for pound another competitor would do if they were simply a different shape or the bar didn’t travel as far.  There’s some very interesting results, but first I’m going to embrace my inner geek and go through some very basic math and physics for you:

A Joule is a unit of energy or work that factors in weight, distance and time and gives us a formula to derive the work done moving one Newton of force through a distance of one meter.  We’re going to assume that for our purposes today, the bar that they were using was travelling at the same speed for everyone.  I thought about getting into acceleration and stuff like that but my head started to hurt thinking about all of the parameters.  So, today let’s assume that the time taken to lift is a constant 1-second per foot of distance for everyone.

For a squat, we need to factor in the fact that the load is on the back, and that means that the weight involved is not only what is on the bar, but the bodyweight of the person in question as well.  They are exerting Joules into the floor.  So my friend puts 100 kilograms on his back at a bodyweight of 85 kilos for a total of 185.  He drops down and then lifts it a total of three feet or one meter over three seconds.

J = 185 * 1 / 9 for a total of 20.55 joules

Competitor number two lifts the same weight – 100 kilograms, but only lifts it two feet or .66 meters over two seconds (because it doesn’t travel as far).

J = 185 * .4356 / 4 for a total of 20.14 joules

So they are roughly the same.  Not a big deal in terms of the amount of force.  However, when another parameter changes, let’s see what happens:

My friend suddenly lifts the bar the three foot distance, but over the same two seconds of time.

J = 185 * 1 / 4 for a total of 46.25 joules

This is 229% more power generated than what the previous person did.  Simply because he lifts the bar further over the same amount of time.  For the second competitor to generate the equivalent amount of Joules, considering that he can only lift the bar two feet over two seconds, he would have to lift 424 kilograms – over 900 pounds!

We can really see how factors like acceleration; displacement and velocity come into play, especially when it comes to lifting things.  This is a very simple example for you not to take anything for granted when generating power on a bar or lever.  That person lifting significant amounts of weight can generate a surprising amount of power, which is the whole idea behind power lifting in the first place.  Hope you enjoyed this little display of how physics can be applied into proper lifting, but also consider things like how far the bar is travelling and at what speed when it comes to your own lifting.

Also, increasing your strength is a very slow process and should be.  Don’t get discouraged when you see guys in the gym lifting a lot more than you are.  Likely they have been doing those lifts for a lot longer, and have other factors into play (like the above) that make it a bit easier for them.  Do what your body allows and is designed to do properly, and keep everything healthy to stay strong and fit another day.  Think about the goal and then just keep moving towards it.  Hope you enjoyed this and feel free to comment and subscribe.