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The InForm Fitness Podcast series REWIND is a listen back to classic interviews with high intensity gurus & master trainers. This is the 2nd of 3 parts with Doug Brignole. In part 2, Doug & Adam talk about Static vs dynamic exercise, along with speed movement and sports training.
Now listened to in 100 countries, The InForm Fitness Podcast with Adam Zickerman is a presentation of InForm Fitness Studios, specializing in safe, efficient, High Intensity strength training.
Adam discusses the latest findings in the areas of exercise, nutrition and recovery with leading experts and scientists. We aim to debunk the popular misconceptions and urban myths that are so prevalent in the fields of health and fitness and to replace those sacred cows with scientific-based, up-to-the-minute information on a variety of subjects. The topics covered include exercise protocols and techniques, nutrition, sleep, recovery, the role of genetics in the response to exercise, and much more.
Arlene 0:01
The Inform fitness podcast with Adam Zickerman is a presentation of inform fitness studios specializing in safe, efficient, personal high intensity strength training, in each episode Adam discusses the latest findings in the areas of exercise nutrition and recovery, the three pillars of his New York Times best selling book, The Power of 10. He aims to debunk the popular misconceptions and urban myths that are so prevalent in the fields of health and fitness. And with the opinions of leading experts and scientists, you'll hear scientific based up to the minute information on a variety of subjects. We cover the exercise protocols and techniques of Adoms 20 minute once a week workout, as well as sleep recovery, nutrition, the role of genetics in the response to exercise, and much more.
Adam 0:56
Hi welcome back Adam here. Welcome to the inform fitness podcast rewind. Once again, it's our listen back to classic interviews with high intensity gurus and master trainers, doctors and researchers. This is part two of three with veteran competitive bodybuilder, biomechanics expert and author Doug Brignole. Doug and I are going to talk about static versus dynamic exercise. Along with the proper speeds of movement and sports training. You start the discussion of the old saying less is more. I read something that you wrote that reminded me of something that we also always talk about, you know, we say there's a big difference between what we say Ken Hutchins came up with this, you know, are you familiar with Ken Hutchins, his work is super slow technique, right? All right. So So Ken Hutchins came up with what I consider one of the seminal articles and exercise history, which is the exercise versus recreation. And I know you agree with this, because I, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote something you wrote, actually, if you don't mind, it is important to understand the difference between the goal of muscular development bodybuilding in general fitness, and the goals, which also involve the use of weights but are not intended for the purpose of muscular development of general fitness, for example, powerlifting and Olympic lifting are sports that incorporate the use of weights but are fundamentally different from the goals of getting stronger. The goal of a power lifter is to lift maximum amount of weight in specific lifts. The goal of the bodybuilder or the person that's generally trying to get into good shape and get really strong is to develop the physique to gain a reasonable amount of useful strength to improve one's health and remain injury free. So you're right there. So it's kind of reminds me of all the things that the brands CrossFit is doing and trying to make those sport and recreational activities into some kind of fitness program.
Doug Brignole 2:41
Well, and then what I tell people is, it is very naive to assume that the heavier weight you're moving, the more you're loading a muscle,
Adam 2:49
right
Doug Brignole 2:50
you can actually load a muscle more with less weight based on the kind of physics you're using. So if you're using a longer lever, you're Magnum, magnifying the weight that you're using much more, if you have better align, you're magnifying the weight much more,
Adam 3:05
which means you don't have to use as much weight if you're if you're taking those things into account.
Doug Brignole 3:08
And, in fact, in fact, let's go one step further, I'll go so far to say that if you are able to use a lot of weight, it means that you're using an efficient mechanics, it means basically, you're lifting something up with a crowbar. Right? The heavier the weight feels, the more efficient the mechanics is, if you can load your site deltoid maximally with 30 or 40 pounds, and you think it might be better to overhead press 150 pounds, then you're just missing the point. The point is, it's overload the muscle, a lot of weight
Adam 3:40
again, now you're involving rotator cuff muscles, they just can't handle that kind of strain, we add all that extra weight. All right, good. Another question for you. static versus dynamic, dynamic exercises. Some people add static contractions into the routine to increase strength and break plateaus. That's the thought process. Do you see static exercise as a viable technique? Or is this is its application limited stat?
Doug Brignole 3:41
I think it's extremely limited. Look, there have been a number of studies that have shown that isometric exercise is far less productive, both from the perspective of developing a muscle enlarging the muscle. And from the perspective of gaining strength through a muscles entire range of motion, it gains strength, right where you're holding it. It does it gains a little strength and the other parts of the range of motion, but not nearly as much. So if you want strength, you want what let's use the word functional strength, strength through a muscles entire range of motion, you're better off using range of motion. Right? So is there a place for isometric? Sure, if you have an injured joint rehab, then you use as part of your rehabilitation. But this idea that we're going to do planks, as the best exercise for the ABS would be like saying, well, let's just do static everything then. Let's just do static wall squat where you just hold the squat position. Let's just do A static barbell hold that just aesthetic pectoral hold. I mean, if it's good for one, it's good for all if it's not good for one, it's not good for all people liked the idea of doing planks because they think that, you know, if you're a, if you're a boxer, and you're trying to improve the rigidity of your spine against an opposing boxer hitting you in the gut, okay, fine. That's a very specific application. But dynamic tension, the abdominal muscle is going to be more productive for the same reason that it's more productive on any other muscle in the body. So opening and closing the spine. I mean, if you look at the the function of the rectus abdominus, it is spinal flexion. That's each other up.
Adam 5:39
Yeah. And you're you're you're citing studies that have shown that doing dynamic exercises for a muscle group is more effective for strengthening than doing the static version of that muscle group. It's interesting, because you know, statics are done all the time. And, you know, negative Onlys. What do you think about negative only?
Doug Brignole 5:57
You know, I won't? I don't know enough about that. Again, this is this is physiology. and my specialty is mechanics. Right? I would have to refer to studies that were done to to know about that. I mean, I know there's benefit to eccentric motion, eccentric tension. And so I would be far less critical of that than I would be of static.
Adam 6:18
Sure.
Doug Brignole 6:19
But but the reason why static is popular right now is because the industry has declared it to be popular right now. The industry needs to keep everyone with something new. Right? Otherwise, how do you bring trainers back every year to a new convention? Right, they need you to keep coming back, they need you to keep coming to New seminars, you know, it's not like the body changes from one year to the next. It's like, what's good for the body this year is going to be good for the body next year.
Adam 6:46
That's true.
Doug Brignole 6:47
Part of the game that we have as trainers is to again, keep the workouts interesting for people and make them feel gratified by the workout they got. I will say, however, that when someone says you know, well, I'm surprised that parallel bar dips only load my triceps 119 pounds of load, it feels like I'm working so much harder when you're working so much harder, but the triceps aren't. Right? So getting back to the plank, you might be working harder, because now you've got quadricep working, you've got hip flexor working.
Adam 7:16
But if that only a spinal stabilizer muscles were rectus muscles working right?
Doug Brignole 7:21
So the question is, you know, for all the work in our job, to some degree is to educate these people and say, Well, you work and hard, but only 20% of what you were doing was actually something that is useful to you. The other percent of the effort, you know, the isometric, quadricep, the isometric, hip flexor is not going to be as productive as the dynamic hip flexor or that anamod quadricep. So, you know, let's let's not let ourselves be dictated entirely by the false impression we get by this quote, unquote, I'm working harder thing. And because we're talking about plants, we're talking about hip flexor. And so what I want to say is that anytime that you involve the hip flexor, as part of an ab exercise, you already have a conflict. And the reason I say that is because the hip flexor, the primary reflector, as you know, is the so as in the subtle as originates on the lumbar spine. So when you activate the psoas, when you activate the hip flexors, you are pulling forward on that lumbar spine. Well, the objective of an abdominal exercise is the opposite. It is to pull forward on the pelvis on the tailbone to curve the spine under. So anytime you're trying to do a leg raise, you have one muscle that's trying to arch the spine, and one muscle that's trying to curve the spine
Adam 8:39
this very unsafe, very productive for the abs,
Doug Brignole 8:42
you end up getting a conflict of interest where neither muscle gets what it wants to do very well look like if you're doing let's say, you know, like a Roman chair, knee tuck, where you're bringing your knees up and you're deliberately trying to pull your tailbone up under so that you can bring your pelvis, the ribcage, okay,
Adam 9:00
the legs stay where it Yeah, but the best way to do that then is you know, keep your legs up and then just keep just very, very short range of motion of that tuck. And that's all you have to do is that tuck, you don't have that legs going up and down.
Doug Brignole 9:11
But here's what I was gonna say is whether you intended or not, you're still activating the hip flexor.
Adam 9:17
Absolutely.
Doug Brignole 9:17
And that is pulling forward on that lumbar spine. Yeah. And so it is actually making the movement less successful. You know, I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but if you ask yourself, Okay, any book that you look at an anatomy book, we'll say here's the origin. Here's the insertion, right? Well, guess what? There's a pattern here. The pattern is whoever the anatomist were, that first designated which to call the origin and the insertion, you'll notice that whatever is the origin is the more stable the assertion is the more mobile right, the insertion of the bicep moves toward the origin. It's not the other way around. We don't bring the origin toward the insertion. Same for the pectoral. We don't bring our sternum toward our humerus. We bring the humerus toward the sternum. Well guess what the origin of the rectus. abdominus is the pubic bone. Yep. The origin is the insertion is on the ribcage. So the ribcage is meant to go down toward the pelvis, not the pelvis toward the origin. And either way, the muscle doesn't know the difference, because it's just shortening. So the idea that you would try to tuck, you would try to bring the pelvis up toward the ribcage, thinking that somehow it's going to create a different effect. All you've done is just eight made an exercise more difficult than it needs to be with the same outcome or less outcome.
Adam 10:34
Alright, so you know, you we veered off a little bit because you are going to talk about the lower abs not not the hip flexors. Alright, so So can you work the lower abs? Well, no, I mean, let's isolate the lower abs.
Doug Brignole 10:44
The reason the reason I even mentioned lower abs is because the V exercise is always given as the one to improve your lower abs is that is the leg raise. Right? So the idea that you're raising the legs to work a muscle that isn't even connected to it is ridiculous, right? So the only thing you can sort of imagine is that, oh, yeah, well, I'm bringing my legs up with a different set of muscles. I'm also bringing my tailbone my pubic bone up toward my ribcage. But if you have two guys on a tug of war, and first the guy on the red are winning them, the guy on the left is winning, that tension is going to be even throughout the whole rope doesn't matter who's winning, doesn't matter which end is moving toward which end, tension is always even throughout.
Adam 11:24
So you can isolate the lower abs
Doug Brignole 11:27
cannot preferentially load up. Now, here's what's interesting, they did an EMG study on about eight different exercises, and the connecting electrode to the top row of ABS, the next row, the next row. And by the way, for those people that are listening, that don't understand the genetics of this sort of thing, the dividers between those rows of ABS are called tenderness, intersections, those are essentially tendons,
Adam 11:52
to separate your six packs from each other.
Doug Brignole 11:55
They've been there since birth, you could never add another tendon. So if you've already gotten super lean, and you know that when you're lean, you have a four pack, you can never get a six pack or an eight pack, you cannot have tendons. But what I was gonna say is the muscle fibers that stretch between the tendons intersections have a very, very slightly different contractile ability. So what this EMG study discovered was that always, regardless of the exercise, regardless of whether it's a cable crunch, a machine crunch, a leg raise, or whatever it is, you're always going to get slightly more contraction in the upper rows, second most contraction in the next row, third most contraction in the next row. And the reason for that is logical, again, mechanical, the ones that contract with most force are straight across from the place of your spine that bends most, right, that's why you will no matter what you do, you could do a leg raise, from here until the day you die, you will never get more contraction in the lower fibers than the upper fibers, because that is again, genetically predetermined.
Adam 12:57
You all or nothing principle,
Doug Brignole 12:58
well, it's all or nothing, the abs are slightly different, except it's still not variable, you're always going to get more in the upper than in the lower regardless of what you do. But the fact that the rectus abdominus is anchored at the ribcage and of the pelvis for that muscle to do its job. It has to contract in its entirety. You know, people come like we know we've all been in this ready, they come to us, the first thing you say was, oh, I want to work on this. And I want to work on this. And I want to work on this. And I want to work on this and everything they're pointing to our fatty deposits. As we know the fatless the fight last switch is either on or it's off. Right if our body and for those people that are not going to listen to don't know how this process works, let's just say that you're riding a stationary bike, and your legs are doing the pedaling, your legs are doing the work your quadriceps, your hip flexors, your calves, your glutes. And let us say that you haven't eaten enough fuel. So you have a fuel shortage that you and your muscles are hoping will be fixed accommodated by releasing fat cells, that fat isn't going to come off the legs. It doesn't come off the muscle or the or the fatty deposit that's nearest to the working muscle. And there's two reasons for that. One is because body fat is called adipose tissue, it is a form of fat storage that in and of itself is not usable yet. It needs to be converted to a free fatty acid before it's actually a usable fuel. And that conversion process doesn't happen locally. It happens systemically. So if I'm a quadricep muscle and I'm pedaling this bike
Adam 14:38
has to go through the liver first,
Doug Brignole 14:40
it has to go I'm going to send out a systemic signal to the body for tiny little amounts of free fatty of adipose tissue to convert to free fatty acid, and then eventually enter the bloodstream and come to the working muscle. Which is why we lose fat everywhere on our bodies. When we're doing a stationary bike or anything we lose it on our face, even though we're not pedaling with our face.
Adam 15:01
I was just thinking, you know, think about how many times when somebody starts losing weight and everyone says to them, oh, look at you lost weight. Oh, really, thanks for noticing, yeah, your face looks so thin.
Doug Brignole 15:10
What I tell people is look, we're gonna focus on all the muscles of your body, including the abdominal muscles. But we're gonna get more fat loss results in your midsection. By doing leg exercises and stationary bike and abdominal exercises are not very metabolically active.
Adam 15:26
Suffice it to say, if you want to lose, you want a six pack abs just watch what you eat. Anyway, we were talking about dynamic versus static movements. And right, when you when you're talking about dynamic movies, you going through a range of motion, when you and when you talk about dynamic movies, it's hard to have that conversation without also talking about speed of movement, how quick these reps should be. So there have been arguments in the annals of exercise, of course, as you know, is that some people say that explosive movements are using speed, and momentum to help you train for certain movements in real life and sports. In other words, if you are an athlete, and you are required to play basketball, for example, and be very quick on the court, or a boxer that needs to be quick, that you should train quick. And when you're waiting, lifting weights, you should be lifting weights explosively to to mimic that sports movement or to improve your quickness. Would you agree with that?
Doug Brignole 16:24
Yes, I would say if you're sports conditioning, you want to mimic your sport as much as possible. The problem is that a lot of people fantasize about being a sportsman of some sort. And then in the real world, they don't actually do it. If your idea of working out is mostly fun, then that's great. But if you're let's say you're lying on your flat on your back with a pair of 20 fundamentals, then you're going to explode with those 20 pound dumbbells up, you're going to basically catapult those 20 pound dumbbells up, and that's going to pull your arms up. So if your objective is to gain strength, basic, usable strength, I would say always use a deliberate speed, not an explosive speed, control it up, control it down. If your goal if your niche is so specific, that you want to compete in boxing, you want to compete in tennis, then you do want to actually mimic what you're doing. But my observation has been that especially in men, we have this fantasy that they want to be a 400 pound bench presser, they want to be a boxer, they want to be a swimmer, they want to be you know, a surfer, and they want to, and there's only so many hours in the day, you know, you got to pick and choose you can't do it. All right?
Adam 17:38
True, but like you're not saying however, there's let me just make sure I'm clear on what you're saying. Because if you we have clients that are our true athletes, you know, their amateur athletes, and let's say you have a tennis player, you're not suggesting that we kind of mimic with weights in the weight room, a tennis stroke, just to improve their tennis stroke, are you
Doug Brignole 18:00
I would say that that could be part of what you do, not all of what you do. But I would definitely if I had a tennis of competitive tennis athlete, I would definitely work specifically on let's say, a backhand, trying to mimic some resistance on the backhand. So he's getting an improvement of power on the backhand or run an overhand. I mean, you don't want these people to go out on the court or wherever they're going. And then
Adam 18:23
we're going to strengthen their warranty to strengthen their deltoids that are involved in this and you know, their posterior delt anterior delts congruently, you know, according to muscle and joint function, and then let them go out on a tennis court and stop playing tennis.
Doug Brignole 18:35
That would work also. But I'm just saying that if I had a tennis athlete, it wouldn't hurt to also incorporate some very, very spas that I would say maybe 10% 15% of how I would train them might be mimicking certain sport, especially if they have a weakness in a particular part of their game. It because it couldn't hurt to do it. Right. But if you didn't do it, there are so going to improve on the tennis court just because he worked the muscles that are involved in that stroke. Okay, but I certainly wouldn't I certainly would not do it. If they're just pretending to be competitive. I would try to talk some sense into them. And I would say Yeah, but you know, the cost benefit, the amount of investment of time and the reward you're gonna get for that.
Adam 19:13
Yeah, that's how I see it.
Okay, that was part two with Doug Brignole on the inform fitness podcast rewind. Coming up in part three, we talked about balance and core training, intensity, and something called reciprocal innervation. Stay tuned. This is a good one.
Arlene 19:35
This has been the inform fitness podcast with Adam Zickerman for over 20 years inform fitness has been providing clients of all ages with customized personal training, designed to build strength fast, and now Adam and his staff would be delighted to train you virtually. Just visit informfitness.com for testimonials blogs and videos on the three pillars exercise nutrition and recovery