36 Bodybuilding and Biomechanics with Doug Brignole

Professional bodybuilder, author, trainer, and biomechanics expert Doug Brignole joins us here on Episode 36 of the InForm Fitness Podcast.

Doug will share his deep knowledge of and training principles, including compound movements vs isolation movements, exercise vs. recreation, the pros and cons of adding variety to your workouts, static vs dynamic exercises, the proper forms of exercise to improve your balance and core strength, and intensity & recovery.

Show Notes

Professional bodybuilder, author, trainer, and biomechanics expert Doug Brignole joins us here on Episode 36 of the InForm Fitness Podcast. Doug will share his deep knowledge of and training principles, including compound movements vs isolation movements, exercise vs. recreation, the pros and cons to adding variety to your workouts, static vs dynamic exercises, the proper forms of exercise to improve your balance and core strength, and intensity & recovery.

For more information about Doug Brignole:
http://www.greatestphysiques.com/doug-brignole/
http://billcomstock.net/bodybuilding/biomechanics/
To purchase Doug Brignole’s book, Million Dollar Muscle: A Historical and Sociological Perspective of the Fitness Industry click this link to visit Amazon: http://bit.ly/MillionDollarMuscle

To purchase Adam Zickerman’s book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon: http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTen
To find an Inform Fitness location nearest you visit www.InformFitness.com

36 Bodybuilding and Biomechanics with Doug Brignole Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

muscle, exercise, leg, triceps, movement, doug, compound movements, weight, bodybuilding, bosu ball, quadricep, lift, overhead presses, workout, abs, body, standing, lever, fitness, good

SPEAKERS

Sheila, Tim Edwards, Mike, Doug Brignole, Adam
 

Doug Brignole  00:05

It is very naive to assume that the heavier weight you're moving, the more you're loading a muscle, 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, your magnet magnifying the weight that you're using much more. If you have better alignment, you're magnifying the weight much more. If you are able to use a lot of weight, it means that you're using an efficient mechanic. So it means basically, you're lifting something up with a crowbar, right? The heavier the weight feels, the more efficient the mechanics. 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.

 

Tim Edwards  00:55

Hey what's up inform nation. Thanks again for joining us here on the inform fitness podcast, where we discuss slow motion high intensity strength training in a safe and effective manner. I'm Tim Edwards, the founder of the inbound podcasting network, and a client of inform fitness. And in just a moment, we'll have the founder of inform fitness and New York Times best selling author himself, Adam Zickerman who will lead the show along with the GM of the Manhattan location, Mike Rogers, and co owner of the Toluca Lake Burbank location. Sheila Melody. The voice you heard at the top of the show belongs to professional bodybuilder Doug Brignole. Now listen, if you're not interested in bodybuilding, don't go anywhere, because you are really going to enjoy our time with doug. Not only does he have a really big and fun personality, but he's chock full of valuable information that would be both interesting and useful for anybody interested in strength training safely. Doug's going to share his deep knowledge of biomechanics and training principles, including compound movements versus isolation movements, exercise versus recreation, the pros and cons to adding variety to your workouts, static versus dynamic exercises, the proper form of exercise to improve your balance and core strength. And finally, intensity, and recovery. And we'll touch on all those topics and more, which means that this episode might last a few of your commutes. If you're listening in the car, or several walks around the block, if you're walking the dog, however, you might be listening. We hope you enjoy our time with Doug Brignole.

 

Adam  02:28

So glad to have you with us.

 

Doug Brignole  02:30

Thank you. It's great to be here.

 

Adam  02:32

It's a real honor to talk to somebody with your experience and expertise in this field. So So Doug is a bodybuilder right doug?

 

Doug Brignole  02:43

Yes, I guess you could say that. Although that's sort of like a small piece of what I do a lot of body builders that don't do what I do

 

Adam  02:49

So what makes Doug so unique is that Doug is an intellectual bodybuilder, I guess you can call it and he that he hasn't really fallen prey to all the cultural and mythological aspects of bodybuilding that have existed for, I don't know, 50 years, 60 years, 70 years and beyond.

 

Doug Brignole  02:58

100 years, actually. Yeah

 

Adam  03:10

there you go. What I like about your doug is as a bodybuilder, you debunk a lot of the myths that people have, have had about bodybuilding. Like, for example, we're gonna get into a lot of things about this. But like, for example, you say, which is unusual for the bodybuilding community, you say that bearing exercises for the same body part is really not essential for muscle growth. So many popular exercises in bodybuilding are just downright dangerous. And at the very least, and inefficient. You talk about why it's impossible that to isolate your lower abs for example, and the myths go on and on that, that that you talk about, that we've been talking about, too. So it's nice, but but no one listens to me really sometimes because let's, you know, I'm not big and muscular

 

03:57

you're not a titleholder that ends up getting more attention than a PhD. 

 

Adam  04:01

Yeah, so what do I know? Right? I mean, look at you, you're a skinny little, you know, nine to five foot nine Jew and come on. So, so thing is, this is why I like talking to guys like you because you are not following the culture and still you've been a competitive and very successful bodybuilder. So can you just give us a little brief synopsis of your bodybuilding history and some of your accomplishments not just the bodybuilding, but also as succinctly as possible talk about your career as well.

 

04:33

Alright, well, I started weight training when I was 14, because I was very skinny. And I just wanted to gain some muscle. And I was fortunate enough to be living about five blocks away from a gym that was owned by 4 times Mr. Universe winner Bill Pearl. And I went there I had no money essentially, and we struck a deal and I would go into every Saturday and scrub the showers and do janitorial work in exchange for membership and I started competing within a year 16 years old was my first contest. By the time I was 19, I had won teenage California teenage America, at 22, I won Mr. California, at 26, I won my division of Mr. American Mr. Universe. And I continued competing on and off until I was 56, which is a 40 year span of competitions, longer than most people for sure who've been in that sport. So along the way, of all these years of competing, I was very analytical about you know, what it is that constitutes a good exercise, or a bad exercise, there has to be mechanical components. And whatever those mechanical components are, that could be deemed good or bad, would naturally be consistent across the board. If incomplete range of motion is bad, in one exercise would be bad in all of them, for example, and bench presses one example of that, right? When you finish a bench press, your hands are far away from the center of your body. So if that's an incomplete range of motion anywhere else, why wouldn't it be there? So a lot of the things that I was realizing were very profound, and have names, technical names, and I would later discover them as I would go to cadaver dissections, and read University textbooks and, and, and just sort of ponder sort of the correlation between the physics, the anatomy, the sociology, the brainwashing that has, you know, been happening through all these years that have led people to believe that certain things are just to be not questioned, like compound movements, and people will say, Oh, you need a foundation in the power lifts to bodybuild? Well, there's just no logic in that, really, I mean, a muscle doesn't know if it's working alone, or if it's working at the same time other muscles are working. So I came up with this book about a year ago called the physics of fitness, which basically explains, biomechanics and explains what works and what doesn't work, and why and how physics and anatomy sort of joined forces. And it's, I guess, you could say it's rocking, making waves because it goes against conventional wisdom.

 

Adam  07:19

You know, as far as I see it, I always see approaching exercise and and how to build a program for yourself as coming at it from two fronts. One, you have the biomechanics front, then you have the physiology front, right. Alright, so what I like to focus on, initially, because I do want to get into both fronts, but initially, I want to get into this biomechanics front. And when I was first introduced to you, you had sent me a chapter of one of your books, basically talking about compound movements versus isolation movements, which, which is really fascinating because I when we're talking about beliefs before, and all these beliefs that exists in exercise culture, one that can be traced back hundreds of years, like you said, is that is the belief that compound movements, otherwise known as multi joint, multi muscle type movements are generally better than simple isolation movements, single joint single muscle fragments. Now, I want to talk about how this belief got started. But before I do just for people listening that don't know the terminology, quickly explain the difference between a compound movement and a simple movement.

 

Doug Brignole  08:28

Yeah, as you said, a compound movement is a multi joint multi muscle movement that some people refer to as functional, which is absurd, because it suggests that something that isn't compound is dysfunctional. Right. But that would almost suggest that if you do isolation exercises, somehow your body isn't going to be able to coordinate all of its various muscle strains at the same time. It's absurd. I mean, yes, it's true that if you're doing Dead Hand cleans, you get skilled at doing dead head cleans, right. So that doesn't necessarily mean that you can cross that over into something that doesn't look anything like a dead hand clean, just means you're learning the skill you're learning to coordinate, all of the muscles are participate in that movement, in a particular event, but the idea that, that it's a compound movement will then make you better able to use those participating muscles, as as compared to isolation exercises, has no logic in whatsoever.

 

Adam  09:28

So how did this get started? I mean, like, where did this fascination and this reverence of compound movements get started? 

 

09:35

Well, it started in fact, in my book, I talked about how, you know, once upon a time, without superior strength. As a man, you were in big trouble, right? You couldn't provide food for yourself. You couldn't protect yourself in battle. You can provide for your family, you can provide for your offspring.

 

Adam  09:57

It's a good thing I live now.

 

Doug Brignole  09:59

That's the whole point. In my book, I talk about how today, you know, survival is about having knowledge, skills, you know, earning ability, this is how we survive today in a civilized society, but back then, none of that mattered what mattered was literally your physical strength. And so what ended up happening was that they would, there would be like, you know, stories of her whether it's Hercules, or, you know, any of these people that has superior strength, Milo cretin, you know, that, you know, he would carry a ball every day on his shoulders, his daily exercise. And so it became this sort of like fabled thing where exhibitions of strength were really, really, really respected. And so what what ended up happening was eventually became circus acts, there would be people that would hold a platform up with 16 people standing on the platform, or a man lifting an elephant. And so nobody cared how strong each individual muscle was, what he cared was how much total the lift was. And so, but when bodybuilding came along, and by the way, in the early years of bodybuilding, it was considered vain. It was considered dishonorable to pursue aesthetics.

 

Adam  11:12

Yeah, I remember you saying that isolation exercises were regarded as vanity exercises. Well, yeah, it was, it was only focusing on one's appearance.

 

Doug Brignole  11:21

Right? If there's a magazine that was actually several issues, had a banner at the bottom that said, weakness, a crime Don't be a criminal. Well, what it might as well have said is, a lot of failing to exhibit strength is a crime. So if you did a variety of exercises that were isolation exercises, you can be deemed a criminal because you weren't exhibiting a large lift at one time. Never mind that each individual muscle that's working in isolation, might actually be working harder than it would be in a compound lift. So it just became that this sort of conventional wisdom that if you wanted to body build, you have to start off with deadlifts and heavy squats and bent over barbell rows and overhead presses. But if you look at the body is just a machine with of pulleys and levers and pivots. And then you realize that it's just a mechanism. And the idea that you can I mean, it, you wouldn't, you would never, let's say, look at an actual machine made out of steel and pulleys and, and somehow come to the conclusion that that machine would work better if it had multiple things working at one time than one I mean, the machine is the machine, right in the body as a machine. And so if you really want to train as efficiently as possible, meaning the lowest risk of injury and the maximum amount of loading for the energy and amount of weight used, isolation are actually better.

 

Adam  12:52

Yes. So are you telling me then that in your career as a bodybuilder, you avoided compound movements? Or, or in most of your training was done with isolation movements? Or are you mixed it up?

 

13:07

Well, I will tell you this, that I had a very, very good sense from the very beginning of what, what felt natural or what didn't feel natural. Okay, so a squat, for example, is a compound exercise, but it involves basically two natural movements, hip extension and knee extension. Now, we can talk about how efficient that is in just a moment. But at least each of those two joints are doing what those joints do best.

 

Adam  13:33

Right.

 

Doug Brignole  13:33

Now, let's look at an upright row. That is absolutely not true for an upright grown up try to do is a very contorted exercise. Yeah. Which makes you twist your wrist sideways.

 

Adam  13:42

Yep.

 

Doug Brignole  13:43

Your deltoid does not end up where the deltoid would end up if you were doing a lateral abduction. And so I always tell people, like if you look at someone doing an upright row, and you imagine the straightening their arms, when they're on top, you go, Oh, guess what, that pretty much ends where a side raise would end. The only thing you've done now is is bent the elbow and inverted it forward.

 

Adam  14:04

Yeah,

 

Doug Brignole  14:04

and there's there's no benefit to the deltoid for doing that. It's just a less comfortable movement. So I avoided the compound movements that seemed unnatural.

 

Adam  14:15

Sure

 

Doug Brignole  14:15

but I did do the compound movements like squat that seemed natural, without joint distortion. But then you can get into things like, like, if you look at a let me just get into a little tiny bit of physics here. I won't dwell on it too much. But in physics, any lever that is parallel to the direction of resistance, and right away, people are glazing over. Right? As I say that, like a lamppost is vertical, because a lamppost is vertical to gravity. And so it's balanced over its base. But if you tried to anchor that lamppost at a 45 degree angle, you have to bolt it down to the ground with a lot more force a lot more bolts, because now it wants to fall. Okay, so uh, lever that is parallel to gravity or whatever resistance is going to be a zero neutral lever and one that is perpendicular to gravity or whatever you happen to be using for resistance is going to be what I call a 100% lever, a maximally active lever. So when you look at a squat, and you realize that the lower leg is the operating lever of the quadricep, and you realize it doesn't even reach a 45 degree angle, you say, Well, it's actually closer to neutral than it is to fully active.

 

Adam  15:31

It's more of a more of a glute exercise, and then a quad exercise. 

 

15:34

So let's look at that in just a moment. So what I want to say is, you know, if you're doing, let's say, a 200 pound squat, you got 200 pounds pressing down on your spine, that's the cost, right? And the benefit is 30% of that is going on your quad. That's not a good trade off. 30% benefit in all the spinal compression,

 

Adam  15:57

right? So as opposed to, let's say, a knee extension,

 

16:00

right, so So then someone would say, Well, yeah, okay, maybe the lower leg does actually only go to about a 30 degree angle from neutral, but the femur does get vertical, I mean, does get horizontal, right? It does get perpendicular, and I go yes, but look what's happening. With the lower leg, the lower leg is doubling under the femur, right? It's doubling back under the femur, which is effectively shortening the femur. Right? So when we talk about mechanics, there's a thing called the moment arm. And the moment arm happens when you draw a vertical line, straight up from the, say, the heel straight up and straight up through the hip joint. And you realize instead of being the length of a regular femur, it's about half the length of a regular femur. So yes, you're getting an active femur, but a very shortened femur. And someone says, Well, how can we make that better? Well, ironically, the way you make the femur more effective is by taking that lower leg. And instead of having it be an inward angle, having it straight it straight down, and then you've eliminated the quad. Right? So that's the irony is by working both, you're compromising both.

 

Adam  17:11

Right

 

Doug Brignole  17:12

That's a good argument for why it's better to isolate because as soon as you try to combine a glute and a quad exercise, you literally compromise both, you got a percentage. And this is all about percentages. By the way, when someone says, you know, what is your what is your method all about? I basically say, well, it's about efficiency

 

Mike  17:31

in the context of how we use our muscles in our life, when people talk about functional training, muscles work together, the quadriceps, the glutes, the hamstrings, the hips, and should we be thinking about how to train these muscles in the context of working together,

 

17:48

the first thing we should probably do is define what a natural movement is. Okay? So if we go by the the, the fact that all muscles pull toward their origins, okay, that is an absolute fact that muscle can do nothing other than pull towards its origin. If you are if you are a pectoral muscle, fiber origin, standing on a sternum, and you're holding that pectoral fiber that goes across the chest crosses the shoulder joint ties into the upper end of the humerus, the only thing you can do is pull toward you, you're going to pull that humerus toward you now whether that humerus actually does come toward you depends on whether or not other pectoral fibers are also pulling. And so maybe collectively, we'll pull in a slightly different direction. But I can only pull toward me, right, so. So the most natural movement would be taking a limb towards directly toward its origin, muscle origin. The other way of looking at natural movement is to say, how have our joints evolved, and for what reason that they've evolved that way. So once upon a time, we were quadrupeds, we walked on all fours. Little by little, we started walking slightly more upright, which meant that we when we were quandra, pets, we were pushing straight down with our pecs. And as we got more and more upright, we were pushing progressively more downward, right, but we never had to push upward. It was never a reason it was never a need to push toward an incline angle. There were no incline benches in the early days of hominids, right, and the only way to create an incline angle would have been to elevate your upper body so that your head was much lower than your feet. And there would have been no functional, purposeful reason to do that. So our shoulder joint nor our musculature has evolved to perform an incline movement. It has evolved to perform forward and downward decline movements. So this is how I typically say, let's start off by saying what is a natural movement something that we have evolved to do an overhead tricep extension is not something that we have to do with that shoulder joint on a regular basis. If the objective is to work the triceps You can work it with the shoulder joint in a much more natural position, that being with your upper arm alongside your, your, your torso. Anyway. So what I say is this is, you know, since my background and my focus is bodybuilding, what I try to do is I say, how can we get the most bang for the buck in terms of muscle development? Well, the best way we do that is by be working in as pure a form as possible, maybe by making that lever go directly to an exclusively to the origin of that muscle.

 

Adam  20:30

So the most efficient way of using that muscle

 

20:32

yeah, now, if you do that, the strength you gain in that those petrol fibers can be applied anyway, they can be applied when you're washing dishes, they can be applied when you're juggling, they can be applied in a million different ways. It would be ridiculous to assume that it would only work for exercises that were similar to the ones you did in the gym. So it is functional, right? There's no way that a muscle can get stronger and then not coordinate with other muscles when the time comes. But when someone says So are you saying that we should never do compound exercise? I say no. Because if you combine, let's say, let's say you're doing a curling with a step up, okay, you're stepping up and at the same time, you're curling. Okay, well, you've got more muscles working, you've got more oxygen demand, you've got more cardiovascular stimulation, there's benefit there, if you're working only in isolation, you know, let's say if you're trying to combine some strength training with some cardiovascular and some proprioception training, which is basically coordination, right? That's a good thing to do. But if your goal is to is to build muscle, and you're going to care less about proprioception.

 

Adam  21:41

Yeah, well, that's why that's why we do both. That's why when we program most most of our clients workouts, and when we recommend people how to work out, we like mixing both in we like we like the efficiency of the isolation movements and really working on muscle to its truest function to is tracking it's true as function. And like you said, I mean, there's no, there's no doubt that doing a knee extension tracks that function of the quadriceps a lot better than a squat would or even a leg press would. But I also take in consideration what you were mentioning before also, I mean, compound movement is metabolically much more demanding. And you go from exercise to exercise doing compound.

 

Doug Brignole  22:23

And it's more athletic. Right? There's, there's more athletic system that is required. And there's a, that's a coordination advantage.

 

Adam  22:31

Yeah, and I see physiological benefits from pushing the energy systems drastically. And the best way to push energy systems

 

Doug Brignole  22:38

yes

 

Adam  22:39

to their max is through is through compound movements. So as long as those compound movements are generally safe, and I'm not putting I'm not putting barbells on or recommending people put barbells over their shoulders to do a compound type movement. Like, like you mentioned, I know, you mentioned this stuff, there are other ways of doing squats or, or compound leg movements without putting huge levers on your shoulders with lots of weight on

 

23:07

and putting a metal barbell on the very top of your spinal column is not a good idea. I mean, the spine is a lever, right? So you put a load the top lever, and I was talking to the Leaning Tower of Pisa has its greatest stress at the base opposite the lean, yes, the lower back. So there's no way you're going to be able to put a wheel jump and not strain the lower back. A purist, someone like let's say me, who just says, you know, I want to get from point A to point B, as forcefully and dramatically and as quickly as I possibly can, then I'm going to exclude the stuff that is maximally productive, right. But when we're dealing with the public, as trainers, we also have to realize that there's a compliance issue. There's a motivation issue, there's a fun enjoyment issue, right. So if

 

Adam  24:02

screw that

 

Doug Brignole  24:03

if we're too, if we're too monotonous, monotonous, by the way, is certainly productive. But it makes it less fun. And there are some people with a psychology psychological profile that just absolutely need some variety, or else they will get so bored, they will end up quitting. And so for those people are better off to just keep things a little interesting, even if it means that what you're trading away is 5% 8% productivity, but you're bringing more enjoyment to the program. And so it helps them with their compliance. If you were to lay out in the sun every day for 30 minutes. And after doing this for two months, you think you're plateauing and so you think you need variety. So you decide that you're going to go try some incandescent light instead, or you decide you're going to try some fluorescent light or infrared light or neon lights, right? And you realize, no, because these aren't all equal forms of stimulation. Right? So if you've plateaued from being in the sun, it doesn't mean that sunlight or UVB light, or UV light, isn't the best way to tan, it just means that you need a little break, take three days to six days off, and then when you come back, everything's fresh again. Right? So now, let's compare that to exercise. Let's say someone says, you know, I've been doing these tricep pushdowns. With the cable for the last three months, I think I'm going to switch to parallel bar dips. Well, guess what, the tricep is still doing the exact same thing. The tricep extends the elbow. That's all it does

 

Adam  25:40

just not as efficiently, far from it actually

 

Doug Brignole  25:42

far from it.

 

Adam  25:43

So it's more it's more stress on your anterior delts. And your triceps. So why do it

 

Doug Brignole  25:48

and this is this is what I explained to people is getting back to what we were talking about before about parallel levers versus perpendicular levers. When you see someone doing a bench dip, or a parallel bar dip, and you notice that their forearm is almost vertical, it only breaks from the neutral vertical position by about 11 degrees,

 

Adam  26:09

which is it, which means your triceps is

 

26:13

only getting about 11%. Right, right. So here's the math I do on that, as I say, if you're 180 pound guy, and you want to figure out how much load each tricep is going to get. You say, Okay, I'm 180 pounds, I'm gonna divide that by two arms, that's 90, the length of your forearm is about a 12 to one ratio, so you have a magnification of 12 say 90 times 12 times 11% active lever gives you about 119 pounds of load per tricep, at a cost of 180 pounds of effort. But if that same person would rely on a flat bench with a pair of 20 pound dumbbells scope, with a pair for him does actually cross gravity at 100%. You do the same math, you say 20 pounds times 12 times 100% is 240 pounds of load per tricep, at a total cost of 40 pounds. Right? So this is efficiency? Why would you bother doing an exercise that cost you 180 pounds of effort, but only load your tricep with 119 pounds when you can do 40 pounds of cost and 240 pounds of load. And it's not like it's working a different head of the tricep

 

Adam  27:24

Right

 

Doug Brignole  27:25

All three heads are working in both ways. It's just that they're they have drastically different efficiencies.

 

Adam  27:30

So let me let me let me translate that for somebody, for example, because you know, they're gonna be like most of our listeners that don't understand a word you just said, listen, the bottom line, this is the bottom line. The bottom line is this that that what you're saying is we're trying to work the triceps and the triceps don't function as well. For that barbell dip as it does for the other exercise that you talked about the skull crushers. And the thing is this, let's make an analogy. Just so you understand this. We we use word processors nowadays to write letters. And just for variety sake, we're getting bored with a word processor, we decide to dust off old Corona. Right, that's a much less efficient system. But we're just doing it because what the hell, I'm nostalgic, and I want to go back to the old days and using a typewriter, but it's not going to do the job as well

 

Doug Brignole  28:21

Right

 

Adam  28:21

It's not it can still do the job, right? Yeah, it does the job much less efficiently. So the question is,

 

Doug Brignole  28:29

if you're doing it for fun, and you understand that you're trading down, and you you're willing to accept that trade down, great or equal,

 

Adam  28:38

right, and I want to add one more thing to that. Now, in the case of the typewriter and the word processor, you're not taking any risk to get injured, you're just wasting your time. And if you want to have fun and go back to the old krona days, have fun and type a letter and all Corona and kind of go down memory lane. But in the case of what you're talking about choosing an inferior exercise is not only less than less efficient sometimes. But it's also much more dangerous because in the case of parallel dips, right? You are putting undue stress on the anterior delt, right and the pecs for that matter, because they're being stretched in an unnatural position

 

Doug Brignole  29:12

Right

 

Adam  29:12

All right, and they're being they're not You're not they're not bringing the humerus towards your middle of your torso or the sternum, right? They're going up. So So not only is your deltoids, you enter your delts taking a strain that's unnecessary. So as your pecs off, are very inefficient way of working. You're Delts your your triceps doesn't make sense. Why do you do it?

 

29:31

if you ask the average person, why are you doing parallel bar dips, they would say for pecs and triceps. But ironically, as you said, the pecs and triceps are getting far less work than the front deltoids. And that's not the objective of the exercise. And there are far better front delt exercises.

 

Adam  29:46

Yeah, exactly. Alright, so let's move on that that that covers that. Alright. So just choose your exercises carefully. We've been saying this forever. We've been saying it's over. I want to talk to you about a couple other things. I've 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 is you know, you're familiar with Ken Hutchins work and super slow technique right. Alright so So Ken Hutchins came up with I consider one of the seminal articles in 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, alright, it says this is this is a you, 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 to 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 real 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, you know, it's kind of reminds me of, of all the things that the brand's CrossFit is doing and trying to make those sports and recreational activities into some kind of fitness program.

 

Doug Brignole  31:21

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, right, 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 alignment, you're magnifying the weight much more,

 

Adam  31:46

which means you don't have to use as much weight if you're if you're taking those things into account.,

 

31:49

And in fact, in fact, let's go one step farther, I'll go so far to say that if you are able to loot to use a lot of weight, it means that you're using inefficient mechanics, it means basically, you're lifting something up with a crowbar. Right? The heavier the weight feels, the more efficient the mechanic says, if you can load your side 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, is to overload the muscle, again, a lot of weight

 

Adam  32:22

again, now you're involving rotator cuff muscles, they just can't handle that kind of strain, we add all that extra weight.

 

Doug Brignole  32:27

Right

 

Adam  32:27

right, good. All right. Another question for you. static versus dynamic dynamic exercises? Ah, some people add static contractions into their routine to increase strength and break plateaus. That's what that's the thought process. Do you see static exercise as a viable technique? Or is it is its application Limited?

 

32:48

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 in the other parts of the range of motion, but not nearly as much. So if you want strength, if you want what, let's use the word functional strength, strength through 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 static barbell hold. Let's just do static petrol. 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 right, so the idea that you're going to people like the idea of doing planks because they think that, you know, if you're a bot, 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 than any other muscle in the body. So opening and closing the spine. I mean, if you look at the the function of your rectus abdominus, it is spinal flexion. That's its job. So there are certain closer together.

 

Adam  34:30

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, right, that muscle group. It's interesting because, you know, statics are done all the time. And people think, you know, I mean, there's there some equipment being made, you know, what about negative onlys. What do you think about negative onlys?

 

34:54

You know, I won't, I don't know enough about that. Again, this is this is physiology, and my specialty is mechanics.

 

Adam  35:00

Right

 

Doug Brignole  35:00

I would have to refer to studies that were done to to know about that. I mean, I know there's benefit to E centric motion, II centric tension. And so I would be far less critical of that. And I would be ecstatic.

 

Adam  35:13

Sure, absolutely.

 

Doug Brignole  35:14

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  35:42

That's true

 

Mike  35:43

I think, like a part of what creates debate is that people are different, they react to stimulus very differently. I mean, I know that the muscle is going to act the same way if it's flexed or if it's holding a static position. But observationally, I have plenty of clients who would I try to do an ab crunch and an ABS machine or, you know, where they actually have to actually flex the abdominal muscles. And they feel it and they get a decent they feel like they stimulated the muscle, but they don't feel like they quote unquote, worked out versus then all I say, okay, holding a plank for, let's say, 60 seconds, they like, Man, that was like, 50,000 times harder than doing what he told me to do before. And I feel it in my abs so much more,

 

36:22

you know, you make a good point. And 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 with 119 pounds of load. It feels like I'm working so much harder. Yeah, well, 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, but

 

Adam  36:55

if at all your spinal stabilizer muscles were rectus muscle.

 

36:59

Right? 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 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 quadriceps, the isometric, hip flexor is not going to be as productive as the dynamic if flexor or the dynamic 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 any time 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 so as originates on the lumbar spine. So when you activate the so as 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  38:17

 very unsafe, very unproductive for the abs,

 

38:20

you end up getting a conflict of interest where neither muscle gets what it wants to do very well.

 

Mike  38:26

Even if you can create up a posterior pelvic tilt, and by maintain that position with that, you know what I'm saying?

 

38:33

Well yeah I mean, 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 forward the ribcage, okay, the

 

Adam  38:46

legs, they were Yeah, but the best way to do that then is you know, just keep your legs up, and then just keep just very, very short range of motion of that tuck. And that's all you have, is that tuck, you don't have that legs going up and down. So far.

 

38:58

But here's what I was gonna say is whether you intended or not, you're still activating the hip flexor.

 

Adam  39:03

Absolutely

 

Doug Brignole  39:04

And that hip flexor is pulling forward on that lumbar spine.

 

Adam  39:07

Yeah

 

Doug Brignole  39:07

And so it is actually making the movement less successful. It is it is literally preventing the abdominal muscle from fully contracting because it has something that's actually blocking that from happening,

 

Mike  39:21

maybe even also causing strain on the back. Oh, yes.

 

39:24

Now, here's the thing as to like, 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 will 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 insertion is the more mobile right, the assertion 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

 

Adam  40:08

Yep

 

Doug Brignole  40:08

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  40:37

Alright, so you know, you we veered off a little bit because you were going to talk about the lower abs not not the hip flexors. Alright, so So can you work the lower abs?

 

Doug Brignole  40:45

Well, no, I mean

 

Adam  40:46

can you just isolate the lower abs.

 

Doug Brignole  40:47

The reason the reason I even mentioned lower abs is because the the exercise it's always given, as the one to improve your lower abs is the is the leg raise, right? From the time it connects to the legs?

 

Adam  41:01

Exactly right.  

 

Doug Brignole  41:02

So the idea that you're raising the legs to work, a muscle that is 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 right are winning, then 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 a wedge in tension is always even throughout.

 

Adam  41:33

So you cannot isolate the lower abs 

 

Doug Brignole  41:35

you cannot preferentially low. 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 AMS, 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 tendinous. intersections. Those are essentially tendons,

 

Adam  42:01

so it separates your your six packs from each other.

 

Doug Brignole  42:03

They've been there since birth, you can 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. Right, what do you have is what you have, right. But what I was gonna say is the muscle fibers, that stretch between the tendinous 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 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 fours are straight across from the place of your spine that bends most.

 

Adam  42:59

Right

 

Doug Brignole  42:59

That's why you will no matter what you do, you can 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  43:11

The all or nothing principle,

 

Doug Brignole  43:12

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 the pelvis for that muscle to do its job. It has to contract in its entirety. 

 

Sheila  43:35

I'm, I'm chiming in here for the first time, because I've been listening, paying attention, but the abs are a big, big thing with obviously everybody that we train. So um, what is the best ab exercise that you recommend?

 

Doug Brignole  43:53

Well, okay, there's two things you said right now that are buzzwords. One is the abs are a big, big thing.

 

Sheila  43:58

Yes

 

Doug Brignole  44:00

that's absolutely not true.

 

Sheila  44:01

Okay. Well, I mean, for clients, it's a concern. 

 

Doug Brignole  44:04

Oh, no, they know, I know, I know, that is what they come to us and complain about. But the reason I say it's a buzz is because what they're really saying is I want to get rid of the fat that's covering my abs

 

Sheila  44:14

right. We tell them that

 

Doug Brignole  44:16

we say they're calling it the abs, but they're not saying that their abdominal muscle is, you know, only a form pack and not a six pack or weak, right? They're saying I want to work on my abs, which is code for our fat there that I want to spot reduce. Yeah, part of the problem and then the next part of the problem is that, you know, people come like we know we've all been in this ready, they come to us the first thing you say is 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. Suggesting that I want to remove these localized areas with some spot exercise, right we'll leave that as we know the fat let's the fight last switch. Is he They're on or it's off. Right if our body and for those people that are not that are listening that don't know how this process works, let's just say that you're writing a stationary bike, right, and your legs are doing the pedaling, your legs are doing the work your quadriceps, your hip flexors, your calves, your glutes. And let's just 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, right? 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 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 these, this bike

 

Adam  46:06

has to go through the liver, first

 

Doug Brignole  46:08

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  46:30

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. Yeah, like they're working out with their face, like you said, right? Please, you notice that

 

Doug Brignole  46:43

it comes off in the reverse sort of came on, you can't do it, you can't. And I always tell people, you can't choose where to put fat on. Right. So you certainly can't choose where to check it off, all you can do is either put yourself in fat loss mode

 

Sheila  46:54

right

 

Doug Brignole  46:55

Or not,

 

Mike  46:56

we should start using our face then.

 

Doug Brignole  47:03

When someone says to us, I really want to focus on my abs. What I tell people is look, we're going to focus on all the muscles of your body, including the abdominal muscles, but we're going to get more fat loss results in your midsection. By doing leg exercises and stationary bike and the abdominal exercises are not very metabolically active, you're not going to burn a lot of calories doing abs, right? So you're certainly not gonna get a lot of localized fat loss doing abs.

 

Adam  47:29

Suffice it to say, if you want to lose, you want a six pack abs just watch what you eat. Anyway, uh, we talked about dynamic or static movements and right. Dynamic. When you when you talk about dynamic movies, you going through a range of motion. When you 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 momentum. 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 in 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 lift weight lifting weights, you should be lifting weights explosively to to mimic that, that that sports movement or to improve your your quickness. Would you agree with that?

 

Doug Brignole  48:36

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. In other words, they'll train like a boxer, but they're never really gonna box. Right? They just like the idea that the training like a boxer, right? Okay, if you're, 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 pound dumbbells and you're going to explode with those 20 pound dumbbells up, you're going to basically catapult those 20 pound dumbbells up, right? 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 and 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 can't spend three hours You got to work, you got to sleep, you probably have a job and family and, you know, you got to pick and choose you can't do it. All right,

 

Adam  50:07

true. But like you're not saying however, I mean, 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, okay, they're 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 just to improve their their tennis stroke, are you?

 

Doug Brignole  50:32

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 on an overhand. I mean, you don't want these people to go out on the court or wherever they're going, and then

 

Adam  50:54

willing to strengthen their warranty to strengthen their deltoids that are involved in this and either the posterior delts, anterior delts, congruently, you know, according to muscle and joint function that then let them go out on a tennis court and start playing tennis

 

Doug Brignole  51:07

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 present, 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. But 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 they've worked the muscles that are involved in that stroke but I certainly would not, 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 going to get for that. I mean, look, I see people spending hours and hours and hours in the gym, hitting their fists on rubber mats, you know, hitting their shins against plastic surfaces, you know, purpose, hoping that someday when they punch, some guy in the face or hand isn't going to break. The reality of them ever having to punch some guy in the face are astronomically small. But in the meantime, they're developing arthritis,

 

Adam  51:35

Okay

 

Sheila  52:10

they're probably attracted to them, right. So

 

Mike  52:13

like, more practical, more practical for like our situation is, for example, like a lot of golfers, for example, do a lot of resistance, they you know, there's things with medicine balls, and all sorts of things where like, you know, like, resistance, backwards resistance for an Adam's point is about like, you know, oftentimes, with too many repetitions of that, you know, you're taking them out of, you know, proper muscle and joint function and perhaps injuring them while training before they even get to where they want us.

 

Doug Brignole  52:40

And I agree with that, there are some things that you could actually argue are more damaging to you along the way, like if you're a pitcher, and you're doing a lot of repetitive pitching in the gym. And that's already a stressful thing to do

 

Adam  52:51

exactly

 

Doug Brignole  52:52

All you're doing is adding to the stress.

 

Adam  52:54

Yeah, that's how I see it. Moving on, I want to talk about balance and core training, which is another, you know, we started this whole talk, you know, talking about myths and belief systems. And here, here's another topic where that's fraught with a lot of different belief systems, right. So I think you'd agree that many physical therapists and trainers misuse the word balance when they refer to doing specific type of exercises that improve balance, right? Aren't they really referring to improving proprioception rather than balance? And isn't proprioception and balance two different things?

 

Doug Brignole  53:29

Yes, absolutely balances equilibrium. Balance is an inner ear. Also, the bottoms of your feet and your eyes are the sensors that basically inform you, whether you're standing upright, or leaning to the right or about to fall, whether the ground you're standing on is flat or not. The that is actually balanced. Right. And as people get older, their senses start to deteriorate their eyes, they're they're there, they have neuropathy. So they don't feel their feet as much, right. So when someone says, you know, I lose my balance, well, they could have inner ear problems, he could have visual problems, they could have, you know, neuropathy problems, and those things are contributing to them. Not understanding not being informed as to whether or not their upright or not, but if you put that person on a BOSU ball, which is basically proprioceptive training, it's not helping their sensors. They need to see a specialist, an ear, nose and throat specialist, an eye doctor, you know, someone is going to address their neuropathy in order to really fix their equilibrium issue. But what bothers me about the fitness industry is that it has sold proprioception as balance, because balance seems to have more value as a buzzword than proprioception. And so people don't want to argue with fixing their balance, they might argue with improving their proprioception, which is basically a skill. Right? It's coordination Add a particular skill, they might say, well, that's fine. But you know, if it's going to compromise and it always does, by the way, if it's going to compromise, the resistance exercise portion of that, when I'm combining it, then I'd rather not trade it off.

 

Adam  55:14

So, so, so doing doing unstable exercises, you know, doing, let's say, a set of squats on on a BOSU ball or wobble board or something like that, that you don't feel that that improves balance, for some

 

Doug Brignole  55:29

No, what, what it what it improves, it improves your ability to coordinate yourself on that Bosu ball. Right? You will eventually get very good at that,

 

Adam  55:38

of course, we all know is very important in life to be able to do that circus trick, right? 

 

Doug Brignole  55:43

No, it is a circus trick. And that's exactly what it's gonna say is once you get off of that Bosu ball, you're no longer in that environment to which you have adapted. Right? So it's essentially worthless. Right now, I had a client who said, you know, I had a trainer who had me standing on BOSU balls, and I didn't find myself any any more easy to stand on one leg when I'm washing one foot in the shower. Well, that's because when you're standing in the shower, that's not the same thing as standing on a BOSU ball. You got good at the BOSU bat coordination trick. So good. It's like It's like learning how to juggle.

 

Sheila  56:13

So when you're talking about balance and strength, I mean, I find that I have some of those exercises in yoga, you know, yoga standing on two feet bouncing, saying I one foot, whatever. And I really like doing those and I definitely, yeah, it's it's a skill, but you don't feel that that to me, I guess it has a it has an impact on my confidence, maybe you know, my my ability to

 

Doug Brignole  56:41

Here's where we can't ignore the sociological aspect of fitness

 

Sheila  56:44

Right

 

Doug Brignole  56:45

Right. People pick certain types of exercise for identity based reasons

 

Sheila  56:50

Okay, okay.

 

Doug Brignole  56:51

So they'll pick yoga, because it appeals to their sense of identity, or their pick martial arts. Or they'll pick bodybuilding because something about that label appeals to them, they want to be known as holistic or they want to be, they want they want to, they want a certain, you know

 

Adam  57:09

image

 

Doug Brignole  57:10

belief system, right? And it's all part of like, you show up with your rolled up yoga mat, you say you're a master, you know, it's part of

 

Sheila  57:17

true and I love it

 

Doug Brignole  57:19

It's part of the but it is it means very few people say, you know, from a mechanical standpoint and a physiological standpoint, here's how I've improved in yoga, what they say is doing I look good in this particular pose. Here's a picture of me on a beach.

 

Sheila  57:33

Well, it also helps I feel like it also helps with release of stress and and my hips are tight, and it definitely helps me

 

Doug Brignole  57:43

Listen, I'm not Pooh poohing yoga. Okay, let me just explain. What I'm saying is that we have to understand that there are certain aspects of anything that we select, right, that are based on our ideals and our our sense of self

 

Sheila  58:00

selection bias.

 

Doug Brignole  58:02

so when in part of what happens when we do this proprioceptive training, this BOSU, ball training, yoga training, standing on one leg, part of what happens is that we we improve at that thing, and when we improve at that thing, we feel successful. Right? And that feeling of success may or may not be misplaced. In other words, yes, you can be proud of the fact that you've gotten better and standing on one leg, how useful that is in day to day life, whether or not that's actually lowered your cardiac risk factors, word or whether or not you know, it's going to make you live longer,

 

Adam  58:38

well, maybe maybe, maybe you get an acting position where you have to be a stork.

 

Sheila  58:43

It helps with your focus

 

Mike  58:46

for practical purposes. And, and thinking about it from a training perspective, like the idea of like, just forget, like a wobble board, or a Bosu ball, but just the idea of standing on one leg, practicing doing that. I mean, clearly, for I would assume, for most people standing on two legs is more stable than standing on one leg just because of the nature of awareness bodies are in general, okay, in life, going back to training people, let's say the elderly population who need to who are very concerned about falling all the time being knocked into tripping over a crack in the sidewalk or something like that, and being able to sort of catch themselves or put all of their weight onto one leg for a split second, just to prevent them from falling. That's it. I mean, I understand we're talking about skills here, but I feel like I feel that actually standing on one leg, not necessarily for yoga necessarily, but for the sake of just being able to do so, you know, with with in various positions with with the, with the with the leg that's in the air of the front to the side to the back. You're asking the leg to actually develop the skill of how to actually stand on one leg. And I think it seems to me that for training purposes, People develop confidence to stand better, you know, or to be able to catch themselves. If they have actually practiced something like I know it's not it's not the same thing as being pushed or shoved or tripping. Like, I mean, you can practice training doing those things. But I feel like it's a step in the direction of being able to have

 

Adam  1:00:19

Hey Mike, trip me see how I do.

 

Mike  1:00:22

more stability when you're confronted with a time in your life where you want to be,

 

Sheila  1:00:27

or going up and down stairs.

 

Adam  1:00:30

Now, I bet you can't trip me now, I've been practicing my tripping. 

 

Mike  1:00:34

But that's I mean, hey, I guess that's what you train for that. All right, well just sneak up the behind.

 

Adam  1:00:40

Let me kind of do like the Pink Panther, you know.

 

Doug Brignole  1:00:42

So let me let me parse that out for you. Okay, first of all, we're talking about actually sort of vastly different things. All right, what happens is, as we get older, we narrow our movements down to straightforward. When we're young, and we're playful, and we're playing in the in the beach, on the sand, we're playing volleyball, we're doing lateral movement, we're doing backward movement, we're jumping up and down. And as we get older, we pretty much move straightforward, right? So we lose our ability to move laterally, we lose our ability to coordinate our brain with these automatic leg movements, right. So let's just say that you are in a party, and somebody has put their purse down, right next to your right foot. And all of a sudden, you realize that as you started to move to your right, something blocked your foot, by this point, you've already leaned your bodyweight, so far over to the right, that you are going to fall, having stood on one leg will not help you. What will help you is having practiced lateral movement, repositioning that foot. So if I were training you, I would say okay, here's what we're gonna do, I'm going to throw this basketball to you, you're going to shuffle to three stops to the right, you're going to catch it, throw it back, you're going to shuffle it to the right, and maybe I won't tell you where it's gonna go, it won't be right left, you'll have to think with and then all of a sudden, your feet will start to become automatic, again. Because preventing falling is more about coordination. It's more about having your legs work in autopilot, right? It's not about standing on one leg, literally, when you're standing on one leg, you will not prevent a fall. It makes you it may give you the false sense that you will prevent a fall. But a fall happens when you lead your body way too far over. And the only that'll save you is lifting that leg and moving it somewhere else. And that has to have happened time and time again, in some kind of exercise program. Where you actually learning, basically athletic coordination.

 

Mike  1:02:45

That makes complete sense to me to evolve into that, I guess I'm saying when you're dealing with an elderly person, I feel like I would in my mind, I was thinking step one could be starting with getting the muscles like activate I know that your your skill of standing on one leg is not the same thing as being pushed, shoved, or tripping over something and having to catch yourself

 

Doug Brignole  1:03:08

well I train seniors and I have a lady that's about 78 years old. And and this is exactly what we do. I have her shuffled. I started off having her two steps left two steps, right, catch the ball, throw it back. She's thinking about the ball. She's not thinking about her feet. The other day we were in the gym, guess what happened? She got her foot snagged, she lifted it reposition and said, Oh my god, I did it. Well, that's exactly what you trained to do when your foot snags, right, you have to have auto autopilot auto reaction, right to left and replant. And that is very different than standing on one leg.

 

Mike  1:03:39

Right Right. Right

 

Doug Brignole  1:03:40

Okay, that's number one. Number two is the muscles that you're talking about, that are activated on one leg. Do work with two legs, right? When you're squatting, when you're doing calf raises when you're doing leg extension, hip extensions, hip flexion, those muscles will be strong. If and when you have to lift that leg and reposition it.

 

Adam  1:04:00

Yeah, I've always said I agree with you 100% on that

 

Doug Brignole  1:04:04

but here's what happens is, if someone says, you know, I like the way I feel when I'm standing on one leg on a BOSU ball. I like what that does, whether it's right or wrong. I see. Okay, great. But, but try not to do it at the same time that you're doing your dumbbell curls, because you'll compromise the dumbbell curls

 

Sheila  1:04:21

Right True

 

Doug Brignole  1:04:23

Now, if you're, if you're if you're okay with that, then I would say Okay, so the actual question would be is how much am I losing? In terms of the compromises number then how much am I gaining in terms of the one legged, whatever you want to call it stability? And I would venture to say that you're going to gain maybe two 5% benefit on the on the leg part and lose 10 or 12% on the dumbbell part. You're going to lose more than you're going to gain but if you want to do with them, I would suggest doing them separately.

 

Adam  1:04:51

I would I would want to add one thing and this is a kind of it's not too common but but it's something to consider anyway, when you're doing this one legged exercises to improve proprioception balance call while you will, you have to also take into account the person you're doing with because I have a couple of clients, for example, have knee that have knee issues and their little bow legged. And when you're standing on one leg, you actually strain the knee and you can actually, you can actually hurt the knee by standing on one leg. So here you're working on balance, but you're actually going to screw up the knee or lower back for that matter. So yeah, right careful with that person.

 

Doug Brignole  1:05:25

Even even if they don't have that, that's exactly what happens in all cases. So for those who are listening, here's what happens, you're standing on two legs, you basically have a foot under a knee under a hip, right? Now, if you were to just lift one leg up off the ground, you're going to fall to the side, you lifted unless you reposition the standing leg so that it's straight in the center of your body. Right, so that means instead of having two parallel legs, your one remaining standing leg is actually now turn sideways, that changes what's called the cue angle at the hip. And in order to compensate for that cue angle of the hip, the lower leg goes the other direction, which is called valgus, which is what you're talking about is which is that knee valgus having to compensate. So you get this person was standing with a pair of 20 or 30 pound dumbbells. So now he's added a load to the cue angle in the valgus. And you've got more hip strain and more knee strain and damage in the in him you can end at the same time he's compromised his ability to coordinate the curling movement in exchange for what he thinks is going to be better equilibrium

 

Sheila  1:06:32

Yeah

 

Doug Brignole  1:06:32

no, maybe better proprioception in that one specific thing. But how often will that be necessary?

 

Adam  1:06:40

It becomes riskier when you have older people because they are the ones who have the knee and knee problems, the instability in the knee, you're much better off probably just doing some knee extensions with them and really just strengthen your quads.

 

Doug Brignole  1:06:51

So So while we're talking about one legged things, let's let's talk about one legged squats, right, we see people doing these one legged squats. And again, this this delves into this sociological issue, which is a guy's in the gym, he sees a guy doing it. And right away, he feels challenged. Hey, I bet I can do that. Well, you know, that isn't the reason why we should do things. It's not like, you know, we're not kids anymore. I mean, when you're 12 and 14 years old, you want to keep up with the kids. But you know, when you're 40 years old, 50 years old, you know, you want to make sure that you're getting nothing but reward and very little risk, right? So the guy goes over there and he starts maybe he has a conversation with the guy that's doing the one legged squat. Why are you doing that he goes, Oh, I'm improving my core, I'm improving my balance, I'm doubling up the load on one leg, instead of using, you know, my body weight on two legs, I'm using my body weight on one leg. So I would say okay, let's, let's parse all of this out. If it's just a matter of load, you can actually hold weight dumbbells in your hand and compensate for that load factor. Use two legs, maintain your balance, maintain your neutral spine. Right and get that aspect of it. What about the balance? Well, again, we're not talking balance, we're talking proprioception. But more importantly than that, in the cue angle, and the button, the valgus. And all this is what I'm going to say right now, if you see a person doing a regular two legged squat with good form, you'll notice that their back is slightly arched, right, they're holding a neutral spine, you will never see a neutral spine on a one legged squat.

 

Adam  1:08:21

It's rounded

 

Doug Brignole  1:08:22

it's rounded. And there's a very, very good reason why it's rounded. Not that it's beneficial to it's a very clear reason. But here's what happens is and we haven't talked about this, but I know you know about reciprocal innervation. For people that don't know what reciprocal innervation is, is basically the body has a system that involves the central nervous system so that you won't compete with yourself. If you're doing a bicep curl. The central nervous. Yeah, the tricep shuts off. Okay, well, the same thing happens by the way when we stretch, right? That's why I lying leg curl is harder because when you stretch the quadricep, the hamstring loses power. Alright, so what happens is when you when you go down into a one legged squat, you obviously have to have one leg in front of you. Well, the fact that that leg is on front of you means that you are actually stretching your hamstrings. Right, and the lower you go, the more you have to lift that leg up. And the more you lift that leg up, the more of a quarter of a hamstring stretch you get. Well that hamstring stretch is trying to shut off the hip flexor in the quadricep which is holding the leg up. Right. So what would end up happening is if you had a neutral spine, the hamstring stretch would increase completely shutting off the hip flexor in the quadricep. So in order to have that not happen, the spine gets rounded to diminish the hamstring stretch to allow the hip flexor and the quadricep to hold the leg up. So you end up with basically a risk of herniating a disc because As you descending into the squat with a rounded spine, and all you had to do was a two legged squat, maybe holding a pair of dumbbells to compensate for the resistance difference, and eliminate the valgus. Eliminate the cue angle, eliminate the rounding of the back. You know, a lot of what we use as deciding factors is whether or not it's hard, like a guy will hang upside down by the ankles and do his abdominal exercise hanging upside down. Well, that's because it's hard. It's not because it's good stuff, because it's productive. It's because it's hard, it's because he's going to get a lot of admiration by his peers in the gym, is because other people don't want to dare it or maybe can't do it. But that is it a good healthy way to strengthen the abdominal muscles, obviously, you're gonna have a major hip flexor component in there, which creates that lower back strain because you have your abdominal muscles pulling forward on the tailbone, and the soul is pulling forward on the lumbar spine. So, you know, we have to be smart. I mean, we should be smart in how we select exercises, we shouldn't do them just on the basis that it's hard to do

 

Adam  1:11:08

or its impressive

 

Doug Brignole  1:11:09

or its impressive. Yeah, we should be it's hard to sever that. But a lot of people are completely ruled by showing off in the gym.

 

Mike  1:11:16

I honestly, I think a lot I think that's the great majority of people who walk in our door and walk into gyms everywhere is they and they, when they feel, quote unquote, the workout, it means really, it's that that's what dictates that they got a good workout. Right? Fortunately, you don't see the results that day you see them over time, or you don't. But there's also a reason why a lot of people don't stick to their workouts because they don't get results over.

 

Doug Brignole  1:11:41

and you know, the fitness magazines. And by the way, you know, there's a reason for everything, right. And fitness magazines have a good function in our society, right, but, but let's face it, if you were the publisher of a magazine, a lot of the exercise that we know, our best, are not very interesting to look at or photograph the ones that are more dramatic. The ones where you're hanging from your ankles, that were the ones where you're doing a one legged, something, those are more dramatic. Right, so you make a better visual

 

Adam  1:12:14

one arm push ups

 

Mike  1:12:17

No, yeah, I was gonna say that. The physical therapists have people doing one legged stuff all the time, you know, and that's not that's not Fitness magazine, that's medical rehab type of stuff, you know

 

Doug Brignole  1:12:29

if I can make this one comment about physical therapist, and again, there's a there's a time and a place for everything. And there's a good way and a wrong way to do everything. But I remember one time, I saw like a five point method of physical therapy. And one was, you know, assessment, and then this and this and this. And the fifth thing was return the patient to the thing that injured them. In other words, if overhead presses are what injured you, the goal is to be able to get that person to be doing what they were doing before. It's like, no, no, no, no. How about re educating people and saying you shouldn't be doing overhead presses to begin with.

 

Adam  1:13:06

But like doing overhead presses is natural?

 

Doug Brignole  1:13:10

Well, I got a funny story about that. But I was gonna say is if you're a pitcher, and you have to if you're going to make a million dollars, or $10 million dollars, because you are one of the greatest pitchers in the in the country. All right, well, maybe the wrist, the shoulder joint is worth the risk, right is worth the amount of money you're making. But for people that are not making millions of dollars, you know, it's just not a sensible thing. What I was gonna say was, I actually heard someone say, What happens if you get stuck in a basement, and something heavy lands on the trap door above you. And the only way for you to escape is for you to push that trapdoor up and out. And you haven't done overhead presses. And I thought, Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

 

Adam  1:13:51

You're screwed, man.

 

Doug Brignole  1:13:52

Does anybody have a basement anymore?

 

Adam  1:13:56

With that type of door?

 

Doug Brignole  1:14:00

by the way, I never do overhead presses, by the way, I haven't done them in 20 years

 

Adam  1:14:06

your shoulders look a little...

 

Doug Brignole  1:14:11

I found myself in that situation, I'd be able to push that trapdoor up just fine. I mean, it's not the healthiest thing to do, as you said on a repetitive basis.

 

Adam  1:14:19

But you know, anyway, moving on. We're moving. We're moving right now. Where are we doing our house and we're redoing the floors. So we had to move all this furniture off our main floor into another into the upstairs. And my wife and I actually carried a small couch upstairs. And she works out with us. I mean, credit to my wife, by the way, a little aside here just to kind of plug my wife a little bit. You know, we've been married 10 years now and she's been working out with me ever since we met

 

Doug Brignole  1:14:46

wonderful

 

Adam  1:14:47

Yes, she has been doing high intensity exercise ever since we met

 

Doug Brignole  1:14:50

and she wasn't doing it before he before she met you

 

Adam  1:14:53

no, she wasn't she wasn't doing the conventional stuff. And anyway, that's a whole other story. But yes, she's been around me ever since. And I'm very proud of her. She's, she's very dedicated to it. We were carrying his couch up the stairs, and it was heavy. And you know, it's awkward, right? You have to kind of, if you're at the bottom, you got to lift it up. So, you know, level up way and, and she she handled it like a trooper and she's really strong and but what's really funny about this is is we never prac when she trains with me, we never do that particular movement. Somehow, however, she got that couch up the stairs, it's amazing. 

 

Doug Brignole  1:15:34

The point I made earlier was the muscles are stronger through isolation exercise, they'll know what to do when the time comes.

 

Adam  1:15:40

You know, we've been doing low back, extend her low back held up I mean, she she she struggled with this a long staircase, but she did it. And this case in point that, you know, you don't have to do that actually, you have to carry, you have to join, you know, join a moving company to to

 

Doug Brignole  1:15:55

be strong and moving one day.

 

Sheila  1:15:56

I also think like doing our exercise, you know, because we are always when you're lifting the heavy weights very slowly when perfect form and you're being guided to do that you do that for years and years. Whenever you're doing a movement, you're more mindful of it. You're more mindful of your movement.

 

Doug Brignole  1:16:14

what's doing the work. Yeah.

 

Adam  1:16:15

That's an excellent point, Sheila. Because you know, let me think about those Tai Chi misses that move so slowly, but I wouldn't want to throw a punch at those guys. Yeah, we're running out of time, Doug. And I do want to, I mean, I can talk to you all day, actually. But I don't know how our listeners are going to feel about that. But But I do have one more thing I'd love to talk to you about. And that and that is the topic of intensity. Right? We talked about, you know, which is different from just working out hard, right? I mean, and you know, this, this comes up recently in the New York Times article, because they were talking about they had an article about Rhabdo. Or, technically, technically speaking, rhabdomyolysis will always Yeah, yeah. My Is that how you say it. Myameiosis? Yeah, I guess. So. Anyway, Rhabdo for short. And that's a condition in which damaged skeletal muscle breaks down very rapidly. And it can really lead to kidney damage as a very bad condition. It's been getting a lot of press lately, because you know, high intensity workouts, you know, have definitely come into vogue, you know, the brand, CrossFit comes to mind all these boot camps, and in the high intensity spin classes, which, which is what this article kind of talks about this woman who is doing a spin class, she ended up with a case of Rhabdo, which is a very serious medical condition that sometimes is not reversible, and you can actually have long lasting effects from that. 

 

Doug Brignole  1:17:38

Right, because because the muscle releases toxins that affect the liver.

 

Adam  1:17:41

Exactly. So, uh, you know, extremes excite is that that's an extreme case. And they are relatively rare. And I think some people have a genetic predisposition to reaching that. But aside from those extremes, many people do believe though, that going too deep muscle failure, will lead to maximum muscle gains. The harder you workout, the deeper you erode a muscle, the better your gains. So in regards to intensity recovery, do you agree with me? Is it Is there a right amount of intensity? How do you measure intensity? Do you think the harder the more intense and exercise, the better?

 

Doug Brignole  1:18:24

Absolutely not. There is a right level of intensity. In my book, I have a chart where I show what happens if the intensity level is too low. What happens if it's too high? And what happens if it's just right, and clearly just right has nothing but benefit. But if it's too low, you won't get the benefit? If it's too high, it's like getting a sunburn. In other words, instead of giving you stimulation, you get injury. And when you have an injury, you actually basically have to heal. So some people think, hey, if I workout super intensely, and I just work a body part once a week, in other words, take a longer amount of time between workouts, I can compensate for the high intensity, no, you cannot it doesn't work that way. You can't. It's unlike recovery time is the great equalizer like if you do more frequency, you can do super low intensity. Or if you do super high intensity, just take a little extra time and everything will be fine. No, pretty much the way the body works is when you work a muscle, you're going to have somewhere between a two day and four day amount of recovery, after which comes what they call super compensation. That's when the muscle is getting stronger. Right. So the goal is to not work then muscle again, assuming you've worked and relatively hard to not work and until you've passed recovery, and have gotten into super compensation.

 

Adam  1:19:40

So this is good, I'm sorry,

 

Doug Brignole  1:19:43

compensation then goes up and then back down. So your goal ideally is to get that muscle worked again, when it's at the top of super compensation before it comes down to the baseline again. So if you wait, let's say 7 8 9 days before you work that body part again regarding of how hard you worked it, you're basically always going back to your baseline. That's why ideally, you want to work on myself no more frequently than every other day, and no less frequently than once every four or five days.

 

Adam  1:20:12

So how do you how do you? How do you find the right? I mean, like, you know, one, one rationale for working out to full intensity until till muscle failure is that you know, where you're at, you can be consistent without time after time, once you reach muscle failure, you're done. But how do you? How do you stop short muscle failure consistently? And how do you find that sweet spot of intensity? I assume, you know, obviously, it differs for each individual. And there's a lot of other factors involved. But how do you go about as as, as a technician, training people or training itself? How do you know where to find that sweet spot for intensity?

 

Doug Brignole  1:20:48

Well, there there are people who have thought that a muscle will not grow unless you take it to failure. And that has been completely disproven in research. They've shown that not only is it not necessary, it's actually less productive than if you go to a 90 95% effort. Sorry, how do you find it?

 

Adam  1:21:08

Yeah

 

Doug Brignole  1:21:08

the only way you can find it, is experimentation. And experimentation only happens with really, really, really good consistency. So when a person comes into the gym, and they're sporadic in their workouts, you'll never find it, you have to be intimately familiar, intimately familiar with about how many repetitions you can probably get with this weight on your fourth set. You have to know that right? And the only way you're going to know that is if you haven't missed a workout for the last three months. Right then and only then will you know, what 90% is what 95% is what I know exactly where my 95% Mark is, I know that I can that I can get the next rep or that I can't get the next rep, whether the next rep will be, you know, beyond the amount of effort that I want that I want to use. And so that's why I always tell people, before we even start talking about how much intensity is right we nd we need to get you absolutely 100% consistent, you need to be really, really, really on track so that you are very familiar with what you can predict will be your level of failure with this weight with this rep with the set, then you can then you can start to say okay, I'm going to get better results doing let's say, eight sets of 95% effort, then I will with four sets of 100% effort. Now that takes more time, right. But for muscle growth, that has been proven to be the point, you will get better growth with a little bit more volume and a little less intensity. And by a little less intensity. And basically just mean less than max.

 

Adam  1:22:40

don't wimp out. Yeah, it's not an excuse to wimp out. Oh, Doug said you don't have to work out.

 

Doug Brignole  1:22:47

Yeah, that's why I made it clear. You know, I'm not saying less intensity in that sense. But I am saying you don't have to go to 100%.

 

Sheila  1:22:53

Well for what purpose are you talking about here? Because it's like what we do is we we do one set to? Well, we call it temporary muscle failure. But it's usually just I would think that most of our clients are only doing about 95% You know, because they can't go that intense.

 

Doug Brignole  1:23:13

we don't have the psychological makeup

 

Sheila  1:23:15

Yeah. So we we do time under load. So we're timing it, we're we're checking their time and different things.

 

Doug Brignole  1:23:22

I mean, my context, usually is bodybuilding, but your context or the context of people that are basically doing their three or four day a week workout. And they're doing fewer sets because they're trying to get in and out. Yeah, you can go or just 5% maximum effort for one set. Your fine.

 

Adam  1:23:39

Yeah, and stay very strong and weigh into O life. But yeah, bodybuilding is a whole other ballgame. You know, obviously volume and varying intensity and being you got to be so exactly when it comes to maximizing muscle hypertrophy. And you have to have the genetics to I mean, well, I'm noticing that some people do better. Like you were saying, though, you know, some people do better at this level of intensity and this amount of reps versus somebody else. I mean, there's so many just genetic components alone, that that can affect all this not to mention, the what else they do in their life, their stress levels, their age, their sleep, it goes on and on.

 

Doug Brignole  1:24:15

Yeah, I was gonna mention that, you know, when you talk about intensity, you have to take into consideration their age, their hormone levels, their nutrition, how much sleep they're getting their other activities that are requiring calories, you know, all of that factors into how much intensity is appropriate for that person today.

 

Adam  1:24:31

Yeah, but you also said something that's very key and that is, you know, the starting the starting point for all this is consistency. And I can't tell you how much I implore that to all my clients that you know, you have to be consistent with it. 

 

Doug Brignole  1:24:47

Yeah, the most. I always tell people intensity and frequency are far less important than consistency. Consistency and frequency and regularity matter much more than intensity.

 

Adam  1:24:57

Amen brother. Thank you very much. Well, this has been great. I really appreciate all the time.

 

Doug Brignole  1:25:03

We will have to do it again some time. My pleasure.

 

Adam  1:25:06

Oh God. All right, I'll take you up on that.

 

Doug Brignole  1:25:08

All right its a deal

 

Tim Edwards  1:25:12

thanks again to professional bodybuilder trainer and biomechanics expert, Doug Brignole for joining us here on the inform fitness podcast. We will have links in the show notes to Amazon for you to pick up Doug's book, million dollar muscle, a historical and sociological perspective of the fitness industry. And also in the show notes as always, will be a link to grab Adams book power of 10. The once a week slow motion fitness revolution included an atom's book or several exercises that support this protocol you can actually perform on your own if you are not currently near one of our seven inform fitness locations across the US. And to find out if you are lucky enough to be near an inform fitness. Click on over to informfitness.com. There you'll find blog posts from Adam we have several videos and of course, bios and photos of all the trainers that you're hearing here on the inform fitness podcast. We really do appreciate you inform nation for joining us each and every week. And until next time for Sheila Melody Mike Rogers and Adam Zickerman of inform fitness. I'm Tim Edwards with the inbound podcasting Network.

What is The InForm Fitness Podcast?

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.

36 Bodybuilding and Biomechanics with Doug Brignole

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
muscle, exercise, leg, triceps, movement, doug, compound movements, weight, bodybuilding, bosu ball, quadricep, lift, overhead presses, workout, abs, body, standing, lever, fitness, good
SPEAKERS
Sheila, Tim Edwards, Mike, Doug Brignole, Adam

Doug Brignole 00:05
It is very naive to assume that the heavier weight you're moving, the more you're loading a muscle, 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, your magnet magnifying the weight that you're using much more. If you have better alignment, you're magnifying the weight much more. If you are able to use a lot of weight, it means that you're using an efficient mechanic. So it means basically, you're lifting something up with a crowbar, right? The heavier the weight feels, the more efficient the mechanics. 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.

Tim Edwards 00:55
Hey what's up inform nation. Thanks again for joining us here on the inform fitness podcast, where we discuss slow motion high intensity strength training in a safe and effective manner. I'm Tim Edwards, the founder of the inbound podcasting network, and a client of inform fitness. And in just a moment, we'll have the founder of inform fitness and New York Times best selling author himself, Adam Zickerman who will lead the show along with the GM of the Manhattan location, Mike Rogers, and co owner of the Toluca Lake Burbank location. Sheila Melody. The voice you heard at the top of the show belongs to professional bodybuilder Doug Brignole. Now listen, if you're not interested in bodybuilding, don't go anywhere, because you are really going to enjoy our time with doug. Not only does he have a really big and fun personality, but he's chock full of valuable information that would be both interesting and useful for anybody interested in strength training safely. Doug's going to share his deep knowledge of biomechanics and training principles, including compound movements versus isolation movements, exercise versus recreation, the pros and cons to adding variety to your workouts, static versus dynamic exercises, the proper form of exercise to improve your balance and core strength. And finally, intensity, and recovery. And we'll touch on all those topics and more, which means that this episode might last a few of your commutes. If you're listening in the car, or several walks around the block, if you're walking the dog, however, you might be listening. We hope you enjoy our time with Doug Brignole.

Adam 02:28
So glad to have you with us.

Doug Brignole 02:30
Thank you. It's great to be here.

Adam 02:32
It's a real honor to talk to somebody with your experience and expertise in this field. So So Doug is a bodybuilder right doug?

Doug Brignole 02:43
Yes, I guess you could say that. Although that's sort of like a small piece of what I do a lot of body builders that don't do what I do

Adam 02:49
So what makes Doug so unique is that Doug is an intellectual bodybuilder, I guess you can call it and he that he hasn't really fallen prey to all the cultural and mythological aspects of bodybuilding that have existed for, I don't know, 50 years, 60 years, 70 years and beyond.

Doug Brignole 02:58
100 years, actually. Yeah

Adam 03:10
there you go. What I like about your doug is as a bodybuilder, you debunk a lot of the myths that people have, have had about bodybuilding. Like, for example, we're gonna get into a lot of things about this. But like, for example, you say, which is unusual for the bodybuilding community, you say that bearing exercises for the same body part is really not essential for muscle growth. So many popular exercises in bodybuilding are just downright dangerous. And at the very least, and inefficient. You talk about why it's impossible that to isolate your lower abs for example, and the myths go on and on that, that that you talk about, that we've been talking about, too. So it's nice, but but no one listens to me really sometimes because let's, you know, I'm not big and muscular

03:57
you're not a titleholder that ends up getting more attention than a PhD.

Adam 04:01
Yeah, so what do I know? Right? I mean, look at you, you're a skinny little, you know, nine to five foot nine Jew and come on. So, so thing is, this is why I like talking to guys like you because you are not following the culture and still you've been a competitive and very successful bodybuilder. So can you just give us a little brief synopsis of your bodybuilding history and some of your accomplishments not just the bodybuilding, but also as succinctly as possible talk about your career as well.

04:33
Alright, well, I started weight training when I was 14, because I was very skinny. And I just wanted to gain some muscle. And I was fortunate enough to be living about five blocks away from a gym that was owned by 4 times Mr. Universe winner Bill Pearl. And I went there I had no money essentially, and we struck a deal and I would go into every Saturday and scrub the showers and do janitorial work in exchange for membership and I started competing within a year 16 years old was my first contest. By the time I was 19, I had won teenage California teenage America, at 22, I won Mr. California, at 26, I won my division of Mr. American Mr. Universe. And I continued competing on and off until I was 56, which is a 40 year span of competitions, longer than most people for sure who've been in that sport. So along the way, of all these years of competing, I was very analytical about you know, what it is that constitutes a good exercise, or a bad exercise, there has to be mechanical components. And whatever those mechanical components are, that could be deemed good or bad, would naturally be consistent across the board. If incomplete range of motion is bad, in one exercise would be bad in all of them, for example, and bench presses one example of that, right? When you finish a bench press, your hands are far away from the center of your body. So if that's an incomplete range of motion anywhere else, why wouldn't it be there? So a lot of the things that I was realizing were very profound, and have names, technical names, and I would later discover them as I would go to cadaver dissections, and read University textbooks and, and, and just sort of ponder sort of the correlation between the physics, the anatomy, the sociology, the brainwashing that has, you know, been happening through all these years that have led people to believe that certain things are just to be not questioned, like compound movements, and people will say, Oh, you need a foundation in the power lifts to bodybuild? Well, there's just no logic in that, really, I mean, a muscle doesn't know if it's working alone, or if it's working at the same time other muscles are working. So I came up with this book about a year ago called the physics of fitness, which basically explains, biomechanics and explains what works and what doesn't work, and why and how physics and anatomy sort of joined forces. And it's, I guess, you could say it's rocking, making waves because it goes against conventional wisdom.

Adam 07:19
You know, as far as I see it, I always see approaching exercise and and how to build a program for yourself as coming at it from two fronts. One, you have the biomechanics front, then you have the physiology front, right. Alright, so what I like to focus on, initially, because I do want to get into both fronts, but initially, I want to get into this biomechanics front. And when I was first introduced to you, you had sent me a chapter of one of your books, basically talking about compound movements versus isolation movements, which, which is really fascinating because I when we're talking about beliefs before, and all these beliefs that exists in exercise culture, one that can be traced back hundreds of years, like you said, is that is the belief that compound movements, otherwise known as multi joint, multi muscle type movements are generally better than simple isolation movements, single joint single muscle fragments. Now, I want to talk about how this belief got started. But before I do just for people listening that don't know the terminology, quickly explain the difference between a compound movement and a simple movement.

Doug Brignole 08:28
Yeah, as you said, a compound movement is a multi joint multi muscle movement that some people refer to as functional, which is absurd, because it suggests that something that isn't compound is dysfunctional. Right. But that would almost suggest that if you do isolation exercises, somehow your body isn't going to be able to coordinate all of its various muscle strains at the same time. It's absurd. I mean, yes, it's true that if you're doing Dead Hand cleans, you get skilled at doing dead head cleans, right. So that doesn't necessarily mean that you can cross that over into something that doesn't look anything like a dead hand clean, just means you're learning the skill you're learning to coordinate, all of the muscles are participate in that movement, in a particular event, but the idea that, that it's a compound movement will then make you better able to use those participating muscles, as as compared to isolation exercises, has no logic in whatsoever.

Adam 09:28
So how did this get started? I mean, like, where did this fascination and this reverence of compound movements get started?

09:35
Well, it started in fact, in my book, I talked about how, you know, once upon a time, without superior strength. As a man, you were in big trouble, right? You couldn't provide food for yourself. You couldn't protect yourself in battle. You can provide for your family, you can provide for your offspring.

Adam 09:57
It's a good thing I live now.

Doug Brignole 09:59
That's the whole point. In my book, I talk about how today, you know, survival is about having knowledge, skills, you know, earning ability, this is how we survive today in a civilized society, but back then, none of that mattered what mattered was literally your physical strength. And so what ended up happening was that they would, there would be like, you know, stories of her whether it's Hercules, or, you know, any of these people that has superior strength, Milo cretin, you know, that, you know, he would carry a ball every day on his shoulders, his daily exercise. And so it became this sort of like fabled thing where exhibitions of strength were really, really, really respected. And so what what ended up happening was eventually became circus acts, there would be people that would hold a platform up with 16 people standing on the platform, or a man lifting an elephant. And so nobody cared how strong each individual muscle was, what he cared was how much total the lift was. And so, but when bodybuilding came along, and by the way, in the early years of bodybuilding, it was considered vain. It was considered dishonorable to pursue aesthetics.

Adam 11:12
Yeah, I remember you saying that isolation exercises were regarded as vanity exercises. Well, yeah, it was, it was only focusing on one's appearance.

Doug Brignole 11:21
Right? If there's a magazine that was actually several issues, had a banner at the bottom that said, weakness, a crime Don't be a criminal. Well, what it might as well have said is, a lot of failing to exhibit strength is a crime. So if you did a variety of exercises that were isolation exercises, you can be deemed a criminal because you weren't exhibiting a large lift at one time. Never mind that each individual muscle that's working in isolation, might actually be working harder than it would be in a compound lift. So it just became that this sort of conventional wisdom that if you wanted to body build, you have to start off with deadlifts and heavy squats and bent over barbell rows and overhead presses. But if you look at the body is just a machine with of pulleys and levers and pivots. And then you realize that it's just a mechanism. And the idea that you can I mean, it, you wouldn't, you would never, let's say, look at an actual machine made out of steel and pulleys and, and somehow come to the conclusion that that machine would work better if it had multiple things working at one time than one I mean, the machine is the machine, right in the body as a machine. And so if you really want to train as efficiently as possible, meaning the lowest risk of injury and the maximum amount of loading for the energy and amount of weight used, isolation are actually better.

Adam 12:52
Yes. So are you telling me then that in your career as a bodybuilder, you avoided compound movements? Or, or in most of your training was done with isolation movements? Or are you mixed it up?

13:07
Well, I will tell you this, that I had a very, very good sense from the very beginning of what, what felt natural or what didn't feel natural. Okay, so a squat, for example, is a compound exercise, but it involves basically two natural movements, hip extension and knee extension. Now, we can talk about how efficient that is in just a moment. But at least each of those two joints are doing what those joints do best.

Adam 13:33
Right.

Doug Brignole 13:33
Now, let's look at an upright row. That is absolutely not true for an upright grown up try to do is a very contorted exercise. Yeah. Which makes you twist your wrist sideways.

Adam 13:42
Yep.

Doug Brignole 13:43
Your deltoid does not end up where the deltoid would end up if you were doing a lateral abduction. And so I always tell people, like if you look at someone doing an upright row, and you imagine the straightening their arms, when they're on top, you go, Oh, guess what, that pretty much ends where a side raise would end. The only thing you've done now is is bent the elbow and inverted it forward.

Adam 14:04
Yeah,

Doug Brignole 14:04
and there's there's no benefit to the deltoid for doing that. It's just a less comfortable movement. So I avoided the compound movements that seemed unnatural.

Adam 14:15
Sure

Doug Brignole 14:15
but I did do the compound movements like squat that seemed natural, without joint distortion. But then you can get into things like, like, if you look at a let me just get into a little tiny bit of physics here. I won't dwell on it too much. But in physics, any lever that is parallel to the direction of resistance, and right away, people are glazing over. Right? As I say that, like a lamppost is vertical, because a lamppost is vertical to gravity. And so it's balanced over its base. But if you tried to anchor that lamppost at a 45 degree angle, you have to bolt it down to the ground with a lot more force a lot more bolts, because now it wants to fall. Okay, so uh, lever that is parallel to gravity or whatever resistance is going to be a zero neutral lever and one that is perpendicular to gravity or whatever you happen to be using for resistance is going to be what I call a 100% lever, a maximally active lever. So when you look at a squat, and you realize that the lower leg is the operating lever of the quadricep, and you realize it doesn't even reach a 45 degree angle, you say, Well, it's actually closer to neutral than it is to fully active.

Adam 15:31
It's more of a more of a glute exercise, and then a quad exercise.

15:34
So let's look at that in just a moment. So what I want to say is, you know, if you're doing, let's say, a 200 pound squat, you got 200 pounds pressing down on your spine, that's the cost, right? And the benefit is 30% of that is going on your quad. That's not a good trade off. 30% benefit in all the spinal compression,

Adam 15:57
right? So as opposed to, let's say, a knee extension,

16:00
right, so So then someone would say, Well, yeah, okay, maybe the lower leg does actually only go to about a 30 degree angle from neutral, but the femur does get vertical, I mean, does get horizontal, right? It does get perpendicular, and I go yes, but look what's happening. With the lower leg, the lower leg is doubling under the femur, right? It's doubling back under the femur, which is effectively shortening the femur. Right? So when we talk about mechanics, there's a thing called the moment arm. And the moment arm happens when you draw a vertical line, straight up from the, say, the heel straight up and straight up through the hip joint. And you realize instead of being the length of a regular femur, it's about half the length of a regular femur. So yes, you're getting an active femur, but a very shortened femur. And someone says, Well, how can we make that better? Well, ironically, the way you make the femur more effective is by taking that lower leg. And instead of having it be an inward angle, having it straight it straight down, and then you've eliminated the quad. Right? So that's the irony is by working both, you're compromising both.

Adam 17:11
Right

Doug Brignole 17:12
That's a good argument for why it's better to isolate because as soon as you try to combine a glute and a quad exercise, you literally compromise both, you got a percentage. And this is all about percentages. By the way, when someone says, you know, what is your what is your method all about? I basically say, well, it's about efficiency

Mike 17:31
in the context of how we use our muscles in our life, when people talk about functional training, muscles work together, the quadriceps, the glutes, the hamstrings, the hips, and should we be thinking about how to train these muscles in the context of working together,

17:48
the first thing we should probably do is define what a natural movement is. Okay? So if we go by the the, the fact that all muscles pull toward their origins, okay, that is an absolute fact that muscle can do nothing other than pull towards its origin. If you are if you are a pectoral muscle, fiber origin, standing on a sternum, and you're holding that pectoral fiber that goes across the chest crosses the shoulder joint ties into the upper end of the humerus, the only thing you can do is pull toward you, you're going to pull that humerus toward you now whether that humerus actually does come toward you depends on whether or not other pectoral fibers are also pulling. And so maybe collectively, we'll pull in a slightly different direction. But I can only pull toward me, right, so. So the most natural movement would be taking a limb towards directly toward its origin, muscle origin. The other way of looking at natural movement is to say, how have our joints evolved, and for what reason that they've evolved that way. So once upon a time, we were quadrupeds, we walked on all fours. Little by little, we started walking slightly more upright, which meant that we when we were quandra, pets, we were pushing straight down with our pecs. And as we got more and more upright, we were pushing progressively more downward, right, but we never had to push upward. It was never a reason it was never a need to push toward an incline angle. There were no incline benches in the early days of hominids, right, and the only way to create an incline angle would have been to elevate your upper body so that your head was much lower than your feet. And there would have been no functional, purposeful reason to do that. So our shoulder joint nor our musculature has evolved to perform an incline movement. It has evolved to perform forward and downward decline movements. So this is how I typically say, let's start off by saying what is a natural movement something that we have evolved to do an overhead tricep extension is not something that we have to do with that shoulder joint on a regular basis. If the objective is to work the triceps You can work it with the shoulder joint in a much more natural position, that being with your upper arm alongside your, your, your torso. Anyway. So what I say is this is, you know, since my background and my focus is bodybuilding, what I try to do is I say, how can we get the most bang for the buck in terms of muscle development? Well, the best way we do that is by be working in as pure a form as possible, maybe by making that lever go directly to an exclusively to the origin of that muscle.

Adam 20:30
So the most efficient way of using that muscle

20:32
yeah, now, if you do that, the strength you gain in that those petrol fibers can be applied anyway, they can be applied when you're washing dishes, they can be applied when you're juggling, they can be applied in a million different ways. It would be ridiculous to assume that it would only work for exercises that were similar to the ones you did in the gym. So it is functional, right? There's no way that a muscle can get stronger and then not coordinate with other muscles when the time comes. But when someone says So are you saying that we should never do compound exercise? I say no. Because if you combine, let's say, let's say you're doing a curling with a step up, okay, you're stepping up and at the same time, you're curling. Okay, well, you've got more muscles working, you've got more oxygen demand, you've got more cardiovascular stimulation, there's benefit there, if you're working only in isolation, you know, let's say if you're trying to combine some strength training with some cardiovascular and some proprioception training, which is basically coordination, right? That's a good thing to do. But if your goal is to is to build muscle, and you're going to care less about proprioception.

Adam 21:41
Yeah, well, that's why that's why we do both. That's why when we program most most of our clients workouts, and when we recommend people how to work out, we like mixing both in we like we like the efficiency of the isolation movements and really working on muscle to its truest function to is tracking it's true as function. And like you said, I mean, there's no, there's no doubt that doing a knee extension tracks that function of the quadriceps a lot better than a squat would or even a leg press would. But I also take in consideration what you were mentioning before also, I mean, compound movement is metabolically much more demanding. And you go from exercise to exercise doing compound.

Doug Brignole 22:23
And it's more athletic. Right? There's, there's more athletic system that is required. And there's a, that's a coordination advantage.

Adam 22:31
Yeah, and I see physiological benefits from pushing the energy systems drastically. And the best way to push energy systems

Doug Brignole 22:38
yes

Adam 22:39
to their max is through is through compound movements. So as long as those compound movements are generally safe, and I'm not putting I'm not putting barbells on or recommending people put barbells over their shoulders to do a compound type movement. Like, like you mentioned, I know, you mentioned this stuff, there are other ways of doing squats or, or compound leg movements without putting huge levers on your shoulders with lots of weight on

23:07
and putting a metal barbell on the very top of your spinal column is not a good idea. I mean, the spine is a lever, right? So you put a load the top lever, and I was talking to the Leaning Tower of Pisa has its greatest stress at the base opposite the lean, yes, the lower back. So there's no way you're going to be able to put a wheel jump and not strain the lower back. A purist, someone like let's say me, who just says, you know, I want to get from point A to point B, as forcefully and dramatically and as quickly as I possibly can, then I'm going to exclude the stuff that is maximally productive, right. But when we're dealing with the public, as trainers, we also have to realize that there's a compliance issue. There's a motivation issue, there's a fun enjoyment issue, right. So if

Adam 24:02
screw that

Doug Brignole 24:03
if we're too, if we're too monotonous, monotonous, by the way, is certainly productive. But it makes it less fun. And there are some people with a psychology psychological profile that just absolutely need some variety, or else they will get so bored, they will end up quitting. And so for those people are better off to just keep things a little interesting, even if it means that what you're trading away is 5% 8% productivity, but you're bringing more enjoyment to the program. And so it helps them with their compliance. If you were to lay out in the sun every day for 30 minutes. And after doing this for two months, you think you're plateauing and so you think you need variety. So you decide that you're going to go try some incandescent light instead, or you decide you're going to try some fluorescent light or infrared light or neon lights, right? And you realize, no, because these aren't all equal forms of stimulation. Right? So if you've plateaued from being in the sun, it doesn't mean that sunlight or UVB light, or UV light, isn't the best way to tan, it just means that you need a little break, take three days to six days off, and then when you come back, everything's fresh again. Right? So now, let's compare that to exercise. Let's say someone says, you know, I've been doing these tricep pushdowns. With the cable for the last three months, I think I'm going to switch to parallel bar dips. Well, guess what, the tricep is still doing the exact same thing. The tricep extends the elbow. That's all it does

Adam 25:40
just not as efficiently, far from it actually

Doug Brignole 25:42
far from it.

Adam 25:43
So it's more it's more stress on your anterior delts. And your triceps. So why do it

Doug Brignole 25:48
and this is this is what I explained to people is getting back to what we were talking about before about parallel levers versus perpendicular levers. When you see someone doing a bench dip, or a parallel bar dip, and you notice that their forearm is almost vertical, it only breaks from the neutral vertical position by about 11 degrees,

Adam 26:09
which is it, which means your triceps is

26:13
only getting about 11%. Right, right. So here's the math I do on that, as I say, if you're 180 pound guy, and you want to figure out how much load each tricep is going to get. You say, Okay, I'm 180 pounds, I'm gonna divide that by two arms, that's 90, the length of your forearm is about a 12 to one ratio, so you have a magnification of 12 say 90 times 12 times 11% active lever gives you about 119 pounds of load per tricep, at a cost of 180 pounds of effort. But if that same person would rely on a flat bench with a pair of 20 pound dumbbells scope, with a pair for him does actually cross gravity at 100%. You do the same math, you say 20 pounds times 12 times 100% is 240 pounds of load per tricep, at a total cost of 40 pounds. Right? So this is efficiency? Why would you bother doing an exercise that cost you 180 pounds of effort, but only load your tricep with 119 pounds when you can do 40 pounds of cost and 240 pounds of load. And it's not like it's working a different head of the tricep

Adam 27:24
Right

Doug Brignole 27:25
All three heads are working in both ways. It's just that they're they have drastically different efficiencies.

Adam 27:30
So let me let me let me translate that for somebody, for example, because you know, they're gonna be like most of our listeners that don't understand a word you just said, listen, the bottom line, this is the bottom line. The bottom line is this that that what you're saying is we're trying to work the triceps and the triceps don't function as well. For that barbell dip as it does for the other exercise that you talked about the skull crushers. And the thing is this, let's make an analogy. Just so you understand this. We we use word processors nowadays to write letters. And just for variety sake, we're getting bored with a word processor, we decide to dust off old Corona. Right, that's a much less efficient system. But we're just doing it because what the hell, I'm nostalgic, and I want to go back to the old days and using a typewriter, but it's not going to do the job as well

Doug Brignole 28:21
Right

Adam 28:21
It's not it can still do the job, right? Yeah, it does the job much less efficiently. So the question is,

Doug Brignole 28:29
if you're doing it for fun, and you understand that you're trading down, and you you're willing to accept that trade down, great or equal,

Adam 28:38
right, and I want to add one more thing to that. Now, in the case of the typewriter and the word processor, you're not taking any risk to get injured, you're just wasting your time. And if you want to have fun and go back to the old krona days, have fun and type a letter and all Corona and kind of go down memory lane. But in the case of what you're talking about choosing an inferior exercise is not only less than less efficient sometimes. But it's also much more dangerous because in the case of parallel dips, right? You are putting undue stress on the anterior delt, right and the pecs for that matter, because they're being stretched in an unnatural position

Doug Brignole 29:12
Right

Adam 29:12
All right, and they're being they're not You're not they're not bringing the humerus towards your middle of your torso or the sternum, right? They're going up. So So not only is your deltoids, you enter your delts taking a strain that's unnecessary. So as your pecs off, are very inefficient way of working. You're Delts your your triceps doesn't make sense. Why do you do it?

29:31
if you ask the average person, why are you doing parallel bar dips, they would say for pecs and triceps. But ironically, as you said, the pecs and triceps are getting far less work than the front deltoids. And that's not the objective of the exercise. And there are far better front delt exercises.

Adam 29:46
Yeah, exactly. Alright, so let's move on that that that covers that. Alright. So just choose your exercises carefully. We've been saying this forever. We've been saying it's over. I want to talk to you about a couple other things. I've 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 is you know, you're familiar with Ken Hutchins work and super slow technique right. Alright so So Ken Hutchins came up with I consider one of the seminal articles in 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, alright, it says this is this is a you, 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 to 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 real 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, you know, it's kind of reminds me of, of all the things that the brand's CrossFit is doing and trying to make those sports and recreational activities into some kind of fitness program.

Doug Brignole 31:21
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, right, 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 alignment, you're magnifying the weight much more,

Adam 31:46
which means you don't have to use as much weight if you're if you're taking those things into account.,

31:49
And in fact, in fact, let's go one step farther, I'll go so far to say that if you are able to loot to use a lot of weight, it means that you're using inefficient mechanics, it means basically, you're lifting something up with a crowbar. Right? The heavier the weight feels, the more efficient the mechanic says, if you can load your side 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, is to overload the muscle, again, a lot of weight

Adam 32:22
again, now you're involving rotator cuff muscles, they just can't handle that kind of strain, we add all that extra weight.

Doug Brignole 32:27
Right

Adam 32:27
right, good. All right. Another question for you. static versus dynamic dynamic exercises? Ah, some people add static contractions into their routine to increase strength and break plateaus. That's what that's the thought process. Do you see static exercise as a viable technique? Or is it is its application Limited?

32:48
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 in the other parts of the range of motion, but not nearly as much. So if you want strength, if you want what, let's use the word functional strength, strength through 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 static barbell hold. Let's just do static petrol. 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 right, so the idea that you're going to people like the idea of doing planks because they think that, you know, if you're a bot, 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 than any other muscle in the body. So opening and closing the spine. I mean, if you look at the the function of your rectus abdominus, it is spinal flexion. That's its job. So there are certain closer together.

Adam 34:30
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, right, that muscle group. It's interesting because, you know, statics are done all the time. And people think, you know, I mean, there's there some equipment being made, you know, what about negative onlys. What do you think about negative onlys?

34:54
You know, I won't, I don't know enough about that. Again, this is this is physiology, and my specialty is mechanics.

Adam 35:00
Right

Doug Brignole 35:00
I would have to refer to studies that were done to to know about that. I mean, I know there's benefit to E centric motion, II centric tension. And so I would be far less critical of that. And I would be ecstatic.

Adam 35:13
Sure, absolutely.

Doug Brignole 35:14
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 35:42
That's true

Mike 35:43
I think, like a part of what creates debate is that people are different, they react to stimulus very differently. I mean, I know that the muscle is going to act the same way if it's flexed or if it's holding a static position. But observationally, I have plenty of clients who would I try to do an ab crunch and an ABS machine or, you know, where they actually have to actually flex the abdominal muscles. And they feel it and they get a decent they feel like they stimulated the muscle, but they don't feel like they quote unquote, worked out versus then all I say, okay, holding a plank for, let's say, 60 seconds, they like, Man, that was like, 50,000 times harder than doing what he told me to do before. And I feel it in my abs so much more,

36:22
you know, you make a good point. And 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 with 119 pounds of load. It feels like I'm working so much harder. Yeah, well, 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, but

Adam 36:55
if at all your spinal stabilizer muscles were rectus muscle.

36:59
Right? 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 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 quadriceps, the isometric, hip flexor is not going to be as productive as the dynamic if flexor or the dynamic 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 any time 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 so as originates on the lumbar spine. So when you activate the so as 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 38:17
very unsafe, very unproductive for the abs,

38:20
you end up getting a conflict of interest where neither muscle gets what it wants to do very well.

Mike 38:26
Even if you can create up a posterior pelvic tilt, and by maintain that position with that, you know what I'm saying?

38:33
Well yeah I mean, 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 forward the ribcage, okay, the

Adam 38:46
legs, they were Yeah, but the best way to do that then is you know, just keep your legs up, and then just keep just very, very short range of motion of that tuck. And that's all you have, is that tuck, you don't have that legs going up and down. So far.

38:58
But here's what I was gonna say is whether you intended or not, you're still activating the hip flexor.

Adam 39:03
Absolutely

Doug Brignole 39:04
And that hip flexor is pulling forward on that lumbar spine.

Adam 39:07
Yeah

Doug Brignole 39:07
And so it is actually making the movement less successful. It is it is literally preventing the abdominal muscle from fully contracting because it has something that's actually blocking that from happening,

Mike 39:21
maybe even also causing strain on the back. Oh, yes.

39:24
Now, here's the thing as to like, 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 will 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 insertion is the more mobile right, the assertion 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

Adam 40:08
Yep

Doug Brignole 40:08
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 40:37
Alright, so you know, you we veered off a little bit because you were going to talk about the lower abs not not the hip flexors. Alright, so So can you work the lower abs?

Doug Brignole 40:45
Well, no, I mean

Adam 40:46
can you just isolate the lower abs.

Doug Brignole 40:47
The reason the reason I even mentioned lower abs is because the the exercise it's always given, as the one to improve your lower abs is the is the leg raise, right? From the time it connects to the legs?

Adam 41:01
Exactly right.

Doug Brignole 41:02
So the idea that you're raising the legs to work, a muscle that is 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 right are winning, then 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 a wedge in tension is always even throughout.

Adam 41:33
So you cannot isolate the lower abs

Doug Brignole 41:35
you cannot preferentially low. 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 AMS, 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 tendinous. intersections. Those are essentially tendons,

Adam 42:01
so it separates your your six packs from each other.

Doug Brignole 42:03
They've been there since birth, you can 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. Right, what do you have is what you have, right. But what I was gonna say is the muscle fibers, that stretch between the tendinous 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 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 fours are straight across from the place of your spine that bends most.

Adam 42:59
Right

Doug Brignole 42:59
That's why you will no matter what you do, you can 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 43:11
The all or nothing principle,

Doug Brignole 43:12
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 the pelvis for that muscle to do its job. It has to contract in its entirety.

Sheila 43:35
I'm, I'm chiming in here for the first time, because I've been listening, paying attention, but the abs are a big, big thing with obviously everybody that we train. So um, what is the best ab exercise that you recommend?

Doug Brignole 43:53
Well, okay, there's two things you said right now that are buzzwords. One is the abs are a big, big thing.

Sheila 43:58
Yes

Doug Brignole 44:00
that's absolutely not true.

Sheila 44:01
Okay. Well, I mean, for clients, it's a concern.

Doug Brignole 44:04
Oh, no, they know, I know, I know, that is what they come to us and complain about. But the reason I say it's a buzz is because what they're really saying is I want to get rid of the fat that's covering my abs

Sheila 44:14
right. We tell them that

Doug Brignole 44:16
we say they're calling it the abs, but they're not saying that their abdominal muscle is, you know, only a form pack and not a six pack or weak, right? They're saying I want to work on my abs, which is code for our fat there that I want to spot reduce. Yeah, part of the problem and then the next part of the problem is that, you know, people come like we know we've all been in this ready, they come to us the first thing you say is 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. Suggesting that I want to remove these localized areas with some spot exercise, right we'll leave that as we know the fat let's the fight last switch. Is he They're on or it's off. Right if our body and for those people that are not that are listening that don't know how this process works, let's just say that you're writing a stationary bike, right, and your legs are doing the pedaling, your legs are doing the work your quadriceps, your hip flexors, your calves, your glutes. And let's just 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, right? 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 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 these, this bike

Adam 46:06
has to go through the liver, first

Doug Brignole 46:08
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 46:30
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. Yeah, like they're working out with their face, like you said, right? Please, you notice that

Doug Brignole 46:43
it comes off in the reverse sort of came on, you can't do it, you can't. And I always tell people, you can't choose where to put fat on. Right. So you certainly can't choose where to check it off, all you can do is either put yourself in fat loss mode

Sheila 46:54
right

Doug Brignole 46:55
Or not,

Mike 46:56
we should start using our face then.

Doug Brignole 47:03
When someone says to us, I really want to focus on my abs. What I tell people is look, we're going to focus on all the muscles of your body, including the abdominal muscles, but we're going to get more fat loss results in your midsection. By doing leg exercises and stationary bike and the abdominal exercises are not very metabolically active, you're not going to burn a lot of calories doing abs, right? So you're certainly not gonna get a lot of localized fat loss doing abs.

Adam 47:29
Suffice it to say, if you want to lose, you want a six pack abs just watch what you eat. Anyway, uh, we talked about dynamic or static movements and right. Dynamic. When you when you talk about dynamic movies, you going through a range of motion. When you 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 momentum. 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 in 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 lift weight lifting weights, you should be lifting weights explosively to to mimic that, that that sports movement or to improve your your quickness. Would you agree with that?

Doug Brignole 48:36
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. In other words, they'll train like a boxer, but they're never really gonna box. Right? They just like the idea that the training like a boxer, right? Okay, if you're, 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 pound dumbbells and you're going to explode with those 20 pound dumbbells up, you're going to basically catapult those 20 pound dumbbells up, right? 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 and 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 can't spend three hours You got to work, you got to sleep, you probably have a job and family and, you know, you got to pick and choose you can't do it. All right,

Adam 50:07
true. But like you're not saying however, I mean, 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, okay, they're 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 just to improve their their tennis stroke, are you?

Doug Brignole 50:32
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 on an overhand. I mean, you don't want these people to go out on the court or wherever they're going, and then

Adam 50:54
willing to strengthen their warranty to strengthen their deltoids that are involved in this and either the posterior delts, anterior delts, congruently, you know, according to muscle and joint function that then let them go out on a tennis court and start playing tennis

Doug Brignole 51:07
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 present, 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. But 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 they've worked the muscles that are involved in that stroke but I certainly would not, 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 going to get for that. I mean, look, I see people spending hours and hours and hours in the gym, hitting their fists on rubber mats, you know, hitting their shins against plastic surfaces, you know, purpose, hoping that someday when they punch, some guy in the face or hand isn't going to break. The reality of them ever having to punch some guy in the face are astronomically small. But in the meantime, they're developing arthritis,

Adam 51:35
Okay

Sheila 52:10
they're probably attracted to them, right. So

Mike 52:13
like, more practical, more practical for like our situation is, for example, like a lot of golfers, for example, do a lot of resistance, they you know, there's things with medicine balls, and all sorts of things where like, you know, like, resistance, backwards resistance for an Adam's point is about like, you know, oftentimes, with too many repetitions of that, you know, you're taking them out of, you know, proper muscle and joint function and perhaps injuring them while training before they even get to where they want us.

Doug Brignole 52:40
And I agree with that, there are some things that you could actually argue are more damaging to you along the way, like if you're a pitcher, and you're doing a lot of repetitive pitching in the gym. And that's already a stressful thing to do

Adam 52:51
exactly

Doug Brignole 52:52
All you're doing is adding to the stress.

Adam 52:54
Yeah, that's how I see it. Moving on, I want to talk about balance and core training, which is another, you know, we started this whole talk, you know, talking about myths and belief systems. And here, here's another topic where that's fraught with a lot of different belief systems, right. So I think you'd agree that many physical therapists and trainers misuse the word balance when they refer to doing specific type of exercises that improve balance, right? Aren't they really referring to improving proprioception rather than balance? And isn't proprioception and balance two different things?

Doug Brignole 53:29
Yes, absolutely balances equilibrium. Balance is an inner ear. Also, the bottoms of your feet and your eyes are the sensors that basically inform you, whether you're standing upright, or leaning to the right or about to fall, whether the ground you're standing on is flat or not. The that is actually balanced. Right. And as people get older, their senses start to deteriorate their eyes, they're they're there, they have neuropathy. So they don't feel their feet as much, right. So when someone says, you know, I lose my balance, well, they could have inner ear problems, he could have visual problems, they could have, you know, neuropathy problems, and those things are contributing to them. Not understanding not being informed as to whether or not their upright or not, but if you put that person on a BOSU ball, which is basically proprioceptive training, it's not helping their sensors. They need to see a specialist, an ear, nose and throat specialist, an eye doctor, you know, someone is going to address their neuropathy in order to really fix their equilibrium issue. But what bothers me about the fitness industry is that it has sold proprioception as balance, because balance seems to have more value as a buzzword than proprioception. And so people don't want to argue with fixing their balance, they might argue with improving their proprioception, which is basically a skill. Right? It's coordination Add a particular skill, they might say, well, that's fine. But you know, if it's going to compromise and it always does, by the way, if it's going to compromise, the resistance exercise portion of that, when I'm combining it, then I'd rather not trade it off.

Adam 55:14
So, so, so doing doing unstable exercises, you know, doing, let's say, a set of squats on on a BOSU ball or wobble board or something like that, that you don't feel that that improves balance, for some

Doug Brignole 55:29
No, what, what it what it improves, it improves your ability to coordinate yourself on that Bosu ball. Right? You will eventually get very good at that,

Adam 55:38
of course, we all know is very important in life to be able to do that circus trick, right?

Doug Brignole 55:43
No, it is a circus trick. And that's exactly what it's gonna say is once you get off of that Bosu ball, you're no longer in that environment to which you have adapted. Right? So it's essentially worthless. Right now, I had a client who said, you know, I had a trainer who had me standing on BOSU balls, and I didn't find myself any any more easy to stand on one leg when I'm washing one foot in the shower. Well, that's because when you're standing in the shower, that's not the same thing as standing on a BOSU ball. You got good at the BOSU bat coordination trick. So good. It's like It's like learning how to juggle.

Sheila 56:13
So when you're talking about balance and strength, I mean, I find that I have some of those exercises in yoga, you know, yoga standing on two feet bouncing, saying I one foot, whatever. And I really like doing those and I definitely, yeah, it's it's a skill, but you don't feel that that to me, I guess it has a it has an impact on my confidence, maybe you know, my my ability to

Doug Brignole 56:41
Here's where we can't ignore the sociological aspect of fitness

Sheila 56:44
Right

Doug Brignole 56:45
Right. People pick certain types of exercise for identity based reasons

Sheila 56:50
Okay, okay.

Doug Brignole 56:51
So they'll pick yoga, because it appeals to their sense of identity, or their pick martial arts. Or they'll pick bodybuilding because something about that label appeals to them, they want to be known as holistic or they want to be, they want they want to, they want a certain, you know

Adam 57:09
image

Doug Brignole 57:10
belief system, right? And it's all part of like, you show up with your rolled up yoga mat, you say you're a master, you know, it's part of

Sheila 57:17
true and I love it

Doug Brignole 57:19
It's part of the but it is it means very few people say, you know, from a mechanical standpoint and a physiological standpoint, here's how I've improved in yoga, what they say is doing I look good in this particular pose. Here's a picture of me on a beach.

Sheila 57:33
Well, it also helps I feel like it also helps with release of stress and and my hips are tight, and it definitely helps me

Doug Brignole 57:43
Listen, I'm not Pooh poohing yoga. Okay, let me just explain. What I'm saying is that we have to understand that there are certain aspects of anything that we select, right, that are based on our ideals and our our sense of self

Sheila 58:00
selection bias.

Doug Brignole 58:02
so when in part of what happens when we do this proprioceptive training, this BOSU, ball training, yoga training, standing on one leg, part of what happens is that we we improve at that thing, and when we improve at that thing, we feel successful. Right? And that feeling of success may or may not be misplaced. In other words, yes, you can be proud of the fact that you've gotten better and standing on one leg, how useful that is in day to day life, whether or not that's actually lowered your cardiac risk factors, word or whether or not you know, it's going to make you live longer,

Adam 58:38
well, maybe maybe, maybe you get an acting position where you have to be a stork.

Sheila 58:43
It helps with your focus

Mike 58:46
for practical purposes. And, and thinking about it from a training perspective, like the idea of like, just forget, like a wobble board, or a Bosu ball, but just the idea of standing on one leg, practicing doing that. I mean, clearly, for I would assume, for most people standing on two legs is more stable than standing on one leg just because of the nature of awareness bodies are in general, okay, in life, going back to training people, let's say the elderly population who need to who are very concerned about falling all the time being knocked into tripping over a crack in the sidewalk or something like that, and being able to sort of catch themselves or put all of their weight onto one leg for a split second, just to prevent them from falling. That's it. I mean, I understand we're talking about skills here, but I feel like I feel that actually standing on one leg, not necessarily for yoga necessarily, but for the sake of just being able to do so, you know, with with in various positions with with the, with the with the leg that's in the air of the front to the side to the back. You're asking the leg to actually develop the skill of how to actually stand on one leg. And I think it seems to me that for training purposes, People develop confidence to stand better, you know, or to be able to catch themselves. If they have actually practiced something like I know it's not it's not the same thing as being pushed or shoved or tripping. Like, I mean, you can practice training doing those things. But I feel like it's a step in the direction of being able to have

Adam 1:00:19
Hey Mike, trip me see how I do.

Mike 1:00:22
more stability when you're confronted with a time in your life where you want to be,

Sheila 1:00:27
or going up and down stairs.

Adam 1:00:30
Now, I bet you can't trip me now, I've been practicing my tripping.

Mike 1:00:34
But that's I mean, hey, I guess that's what you train for that. All right, well just sneak up the behind.

Adam 1:00:40
Let me kind of do like the Pink Panther, you know.

Doug Brignole 1:00:42
So let me let me parse that out for you. Okay, first of all, we're talking about actually sort of vastly different things. All right, what happens is, as we get older, we narrow our movements down to straightforward. When we're young, and we're playful, and we're playing in the in the beach, on the sand, we're playing volleyball, we're doing lateral movement, we're doing backward movement, we're jumping up and down. And as we get older, we pretty much move straightforward, right? So we lose our ability to move laterally, we lose our ability to coordinate our brain with these automatic leg movements, right. So let's just say that you are in a party, and somebody has put their purse down, right next to your right foot. And all of a sudden, you realize that as you started to move to your right, something blocked your foot, by this point, you've already leaned your bodyweight, so far over to the right, that you are going to fall, having stood on one leg will not help you. What will help you is having practiced lateral movement, repositioning that foot. So if I were training you, I would say okay, here's what we're gonna do, I'm going to throw this basketball to you, you're going to shuffle to three stops to the right, you're going to catch it, throw it back, you're going to shuffle it to the right, and maybe I won't tell you where it's gonna go, it won't be right left, you'll have to think with and then all of a sudden, your feet will start to become automatic, again. Because preventing falling is more about coordination. It's more about having your legs work in autopilot, right? It's not about standing on one leg, literally, when you're standing on one leg, you will not prevent a fall. It makes you it may give you the false sense that you will prevent a fall. But a fall happens when you lead your body way too far over. And the only that'll save you is lifting that leg and moving it somewhere else. And that has to have happened time and time again, in some kind of exercise program. Where you actually learning, basically athletic coordination.

Mike 1:02:45
That makes complete sense to me to evolve into that, I guess I'm saying when you're dealing with an elderly person, I feel like I would in my mind, I was thinking step one could be starting with getting the muscles like activate I know that your your skill of standing on one leg is not the same thing as being pushed, shoved, or tripping over something and having to catch yourself

Doug Brignole 1:03:08
well I train seniors and I have a lady that's about 78 years old. And and this is exactly what we do. I have her shuffled. I started off having her two steps left two steps, right, catch the ball, throw it back. She's thinking about the ball. She's not thinking about her feet. The other day we were in the gym, guess what happened? She got her foot snagged, she lifted it reposition and said, Oh my god, I did it. Well, that's exactly what you trained to do when your foot snags, right, you have to have auto autopilot auto reaction, right to left and replant. And that is very different than standing on one leg.

Mike 1:03:39
Right Right. Right

Doug Brignole 1:03:40
Okay, that's number one. Number two is the muscles that you're talking about, that are activated on one leg. Do work with two legs, right? When you're squatting, when you're doing calf raises when you're doing leg extension, hip extensions, hip flexion, those muscles will be strong. If and when you have to lift that leg and reposition it.

Adam 1:04:00
Yeah, I've always said I agree with you 100% on that

Doug Brignole 1:04:04
but here's what happens is, if someone says, you know, I like the way I feel when I'm standing on one leg on a BOSU ball. I like what that does, whether it's right or wrong. I see. Okay, great. But, but try not to do it at the same time that you're doing your dumbbell curls, because you'll compromise the dumbbell curls

Sheila 1:04:21
Right True

Doug Brignole 1:04:23
Now, if you're, if you're if you're okay with that, then I would say Okay, so the actual question would be is how much am I losing? In terms of the compromises number then how much am I gaining in terms of the one legged, whatever you want to call it stability? And I would venture to say that you're going to gain maybe two 5% benefit on the on the leg part and lose 10 or 12% on the dumbbell part. You're going to lose more than you're going to gain but if you want to do with them, I would suggest doing them separately.

Adam 1:04:51
I would I would want to add one thing and this is a kind of it's not too common but but it's something to consider anyway, when you're doing this one legged exercises to improve proprioception balance call while you will, you have to also take into account the person you're doing with because I have a couple of clients, for example, have knee that have knee issues and their little bow legged. And when you're standing on one leg, you actually strain the knee and you can actually, you can actually hurt the knee by standing on one leg. So here you're working on balance, but you're actually going to screw up the knee or lower back for that matter. So yeah, right careful with that person.

Doug Brignole 1:05:25
Even even if they don't have that, that's exactly what happens in all cases. So for those who are listening, here's what happens, you're standing on two legs, you basically have a foot under a knee under a hip, right? Now, if you were to just lift one leg up off the ground, you're going to fall to the side, you lifted unless you reposition the standing leg so that it's straight in the center of your body. Right, so that means instead of having two parallel legs, your one remaining standing leg is actually now turn sideways, that changes what's called the cue angle at the hip. And in order to compensate for that cue angle of the hip, the lower leg goes the other direction, which is called valgus, which is what you're talking about is which is that knee valgus having to compensate. So you get this person was standing with a pair of 20 or 30 pound dumbbells. So now he's added a load to the cue angle in the valgus. And you've got more hip strain and more knee strain and damage in the in him you can end at the same time he's compromised his ability to coordinate the curling movement in exchange for what he thinks is going to be better equilibrium

Sheila 1:06:32
Yeah

Doug Brignole 1:06:32
no, maybe better proprioception in that one specific thing. But how often will that be necessary?

Adam 1:06:40
It becomes riskier when you have older people because they are the ones who have the knee and knee problems, the instability in the knee, you're much better off probably just doing some knee extensions with them and really just strengthen your quads.

Doug Brignole 1:06:51
So So while we're talking about one legged things, let's let's talk about one legged squats, right, we see people doing these one legged squats. And again, this this delves into this sociological issue, which is a guy's in the gym, he sees a guy doing it. And right away, he feels challenged. Hey, I bet I can do that. Well, you know, that isn't the reason why we should do things. It's not like, you know, we're not kids anymore. I mean, when you're 12 and 14 years old, you want to keep up with the kids. But you know, when you're 40 years old, 50 years old, you know, you want to make sure that you're getting nothing but reward and very little risk, right? So the guy goes over there and he starts maybe he has a conversation with the guy that's doing the one legged squat. Why are you doing that he goes, Oh, I'm improving my core, I'm improving my balance, I'm doubling up the load on one leg, instead of using, you know, my body weight on two legs, I'm using my body weight on one leg. So I would say okay, let's, let's parse all of this out. If it's just a matter of load, you can actually hold weight dumbbells in your hand and compensate for that load factor. Use two legs, maintain your balance, maintain your neutral spine. Right and get that aspect of it. What about the balance? Well, again, we're not talking balance, we're talking proprioception. But more importantly than that, in the cue angle, and the button, the valgus. And all this is what I'm going to say right now, if you see a person doing a regular two legged squat with good form, you'll notice that their back is slightly arched, right, they're holding a neutral spine, you will never see a neutral spine on a one legged squat.

Adam 1:08:21
It's rounded

Doug Brignole 1:08:22
it's rounded. And there's a very, very good reason why it's rounded. Not that it's beneficial to it's a very clear reason. But here's what happens is and we haven't talked about this, but I know you know about reciprocal innervation. For people that don't know what reciprocal innervation is, is basically the body has a system that involves the central nervous system so that you won't compete with yourself. If you're doing a bicep curl. The central nervous. Yeah, the tricep shuts off. Okay, well, the same thing happens by the way when we stretch, right? That's why I lying leg curl is harder because when you stretch the quadricep, the hamstring loses power. Alright, so what happens is when you when you go down into a one legged squat, you obviously have to have one leg in front of you. Well, the fact that that leg is on front of you means that you are actually stretching your hamstrings. Right, and the lower you go, the more you have to lift that leg up. And the more you lift that leg up, the more of a quarter of a hamstring stretch you get. Well that hamstring stretch is trying to shut off the hip flexor in the quadricep which is holding the leg up. Right. So what would end up happening is if you had a neutral spine, the hamstring stretch would increase completely shutting off the hip flexor in the quadricep. So in order to have that not happen, the spine gets rounded to diminish the hamstring stretch to allow the hip flexor and the quadricep to hold the leg up. So you end up with basically a risk of herniating a disc because As you descending into the squat with a rounded spine, and all you had to do was a two legged squat, maybe holding a pair of dumbbells to compensate for the resistance difference, and eliminate the valgus. Eliminate the cue angle, eliminate the rounding of the back. You know, a lot of what we use as deciding factors is whether or not it's hard, like a guy will hang upside down by the ankles and do his abdominal exercise hanging upside down. Well, that's because it's hard. It's not because it's good stuff, because it's productive. It's because it's hard, it's because he's going to get a lot of admiration by his peers in the gym, is because other people don't want to dare it or maybe can't do it. But that is it a good healthy way to strengthen the abdominal muscles, obviously, you're gonna have a major hip flexor component in there, which creates that lower back strain because you have your abdominal muscles pulling forward on the tailbone, and the soul is pulling forward on the lumbar spine. So, you know, we have to be smart. I mean, we should be smart in how we select exercises, we shouldn't do them just on the basis that it's hard to do

Adam 1:11:08
or its impressive

Doug Brignole 1:11:09
or its impressive. Yeah, we should be it's hard to sever that. But a lot of people are completely ruled by showing off in the gym.

Mike 1:11:16
I honestly, I think a lot I think that's the great majority of people who walk in our door and walk into gyms everywhere is they and they, when they feel, quote unquote, the workout, it means really, it's that that's what dictates that they got a good workout. Right? Fortunately, you don't see the results that day you see them over time, or you don't. But there's also a reason why a lot of people don't stick to their workouts because they don't get results over.

Doug Brignole 1:11:41
and you know, the fitness magazines. And by the way, you know, there's a reason for everything, right. And fitness magazines have a good function in our society, right, but, but let's face it, if you were the publisher of a magazine, a lot of the exercise that we know, our best, are not very interesting to look at or photograph the ones that are more dramatic. The ones where you're hanging from your ankles, that were the ones where you're doing a one legged, something, those are more dramatic. Right, so you make a better visual

Adam 1:12:14
one arm push ups

Mike 1:12:17
No, yeah, I was gonna say that. The physical therapists have people doing one legged stuff all the time, you know, and that's not that's not Fitness magazine, that's medical rehab type of stuff, you know

Doug Brignole 1:12:29
if I can make this one comment about physical therapist, and again, there's a there's a time and a place for everything. And there's a good way and a wrong way to do everything. But I remember one time, I saw like a five point method of physical therapy. And one was, you know, assessment, and then this and this and this. And the fifth thing was return the patient to the thing that injured them. In other words, if overhead presses are what injured you, the goal is to be able to get that person to be doing what they were doing before. It's like, no, no, no, no. How about re educating people and saying you shouldn't be doing overhead presses to begin with.

Adam 1:13:06
But like doing overhead presses is natural?

Doug Brignole 1:13:10
Well, I got a funny story about that. But I was gonna say is if you're a pitcher, and you have to if you're going to make a million dollars, or $10 million dollars, because you are one of the greatest pitchers in the in the country. All right, well, maybe the wrist, the shoulder joint is worth the risk, right is worth the amount of money you're making. But for people that are not making millions of dollars, you know, it's just not a sensible thing. What I was gonna say was, I actually heard someone say, What happens if you get stuck in a basement, and something heavy lands on the trap door above you. And the only way for you to escape is for you to push that trapdoor up and out. And you haven't done overhead presses. And I thought, Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

Adam 1:13:51
You're screwed, man.

Doug Brignole 1:13:52
Does anybody have a basement anymore?

Adam 1:13:56
With that type of door?

Doug Brignole 1:14:00
by the way, I never do overhead presses, by the way, I haven't done them in 20 years

Adam 1:14:06
your shoulders look a little...

Doug Brignole 1:14:11
I found myself in that situation, I'd be able to push that trapdoor up just fine. I mean, it's not the healthiest thing to do, as you said on a repetitive basis.

Adam 1:14:19
But you know, anyway, moving on. We're moving. We're moving right now. Where are we doing our house and we're redoing the floors. So we had to move all this furniture off our main floor into another into the upstairs. And my wife and I actually carried a small couch upstairs. And she works out with us. I mean, credit to my wife, by the way, a little aside here just to kind of plug my wife a little bit. You know, we've been married 10 years now and she's been working out with me ever since we met

Doug Brignole 1:14:46
wonderful

Adam 1:14:47
Yes, she has been doing high intensity exercise ever since we met

Doug Brignole 1:14:50
and she wasn't doing it before he before she met you

Adam 1:14:53
no, she wasn't she wasn't doing the conventional stuff. And anyway, that's a whole other story. But yes, she's been around me ever since. And I'm very proud of her. She's, she's very dedicated to it. We were carrying his couch up the stairs, and it was heavy. And you know, it's awkward, right? You have to kind of, if you're at the bottom, you got to lift it up. So, you know, level up way and, and she she handled it like a trooper and she's really strong and but what's really funny about this is is we never prac when she trains with me, we never do that particular movement. Somehow, however, she got that couch up the stairs, it's amazing.

Doug Brignole 1:15:34
The point I made earlier was the muscles are stronger through isolation exercise, they'll know what to do when the time comes.

Adam 1:15:40
You know, we've been doing low back, extend her low back held up I mean, she she she struggled with this a long staircase, but she did it. And this case in point that, you know, you don't have to do that actually, you have to carry, you have to join, you know, join a moving company to to

Doug Brignole 1:15:55
be strong and moving one day.

Sheila 1:15:56
I also think like doing our exercise, you know, because we are always when you're lifting the heavy weights very slowly when perfect form and you're being guided to do that you do that for years and years. Whenever you're doing a movement, you're more mindful of it. You're more mindful of your movement.

Doug Brignole 1:16:14
what's doing the work. Yeah.

Adam 1:16:15
That's an excellent point, Sheila. Because you know, let me think about those Tai Chi misses that move so slowly, but I wouldn't want to throw a punch at those guys. Yeah, we're running out of time, Doug. And I do want to, I mean, I can talk to you all day, actually. But I don't know how our listeners are going to feel about that. But But I do have one more thing I'd love to talk to you about. And that and that is the topic of intensity. Right? We talked about, you know, which is different from just working out hard, right? I mean, and you know, this, this comes up recently in the New York Times article, because they were talking about they had an article about Rhabdo. Or, technically, technically speaking, rhabdomyolysis will always Yeah, yeah. My Is that how you say it. Myameiosis? Yeah, I guess. So. Anyway, Rhabdo for short. And that's a condition in which damaged skeletal muscle breaks down very rapidly. And it can really lead to kidney damage as a very bad condition. It's been getting a lot of press lately, because you know, high intensity workouts, you know, have definitely come into vogue, you know, the brand, CrossFit comes to mind all these boot camps, and in the high intensity spin classes, which, which is what this article kind of talks about this woman who is doing a spin class, she ended up with a case of Rhabdo, which is a very serious medical condition that sometimes is not reversible, and you can actually have long lasting effects from that.

Doug Brignole 1:17:38
Right, because because the muscle releases toxins that affect the liver.

Adam 1:17:41
Exactly. So, uh, you know, extremes excite is that that's an extreme case. And they are relatively rare. And I think some people have a genetic predisposition to reaching that. But aside from those extremes, many people do believe though, that going too deep muscle failure, will lead to maximum muscle gains. The harder you workout, the deeper you erode a muscle, the better your gains. So in regards to intensity recovery, do you agree with me? Is it Is there a right amount of intensity? How do you measure intensity? Do you think the harder the more intense and exercise, the better?

Doug Brignole 1:18:24
Absolutely not. There is a right level of intensity. In my book, I have a chart where I show what happens if the intensity level is too low. What happens if it's too high? And what happens if it's just right, and clearly just right has nothing but benefit. But if it's too low, you won't get the benefit? If it's too high, it's like getting a sunburn. In other words, instead of giving you stimulation, you get injury. And when you have an injury, you actually basically have to heal. So some people think, hey, if I workout super intensely, and I just work a body part once a week, in other words, take a longer amount of time between workouts, I can compensate for the high intensity, no, you cannot it doesn't work that way. You can't. It's unlike recovery time is the great equalizer like if you do more frequency, you can do super low intensity. Or if you do super high intensity, just take a little extra time and everything will be fine. No, pretty much the way the body works is when you work a muscle, you're going to have somewhere between a two day and four day amount of recovery, after which comes what they call super compensation. That's when the muscle is getting stronger. Right. So the goal is to not work then muscle again, assuming you've worked and relatively hard to not work and until you've passed recovery, and have gotten into super compensation.

Adam 1:19:40
So this is good, I'm sorry,

Doug Brignole 1:19:43
compensation then goes up and then back down. So your goal ideally is to get that muscle worked again, when it's at the top of super compensation before it comes down to the baseline again. So if you wait, let's say 7 8 9 days before you work that body part again regarding of how hard you worked it, you're basically always going back to your baseline. That's why ideally, you want to work on myself no more frequently than every other day, and no less frequently than once every four or five days.

Adam 1:20:12
So how do you how do you? How do you find the right? I mean, like, you know, one, one rationale for working out to full intensity until till muscle failure is that you know, where you're at, you can be consistent without time after time, once you reach muscle failure, you're done. But how do you? How do you stop short muscle failure consistently? And how do you find that sweet spot of intensity? I assume, you know, obviously, it differs for each individual. And there's a lot of other factors involved. But how do you go about as as, as a technician, training people or training itself? How do you know where to find that sweet spot for intensity?

Doug Brignole 1:20:48
Well, there there are people who have thought that a muscle will not grow unless you take it to failure. And that has been completely disproven in research. They've shown that not only is it not necessary, it's actually less productive than if you go to a 90 95% effort. Sorry, how do you find it?

Adam 1:21:08
Yeah

Doug Brignole 1:21:08
the only way you can find it, is experimentation. And experimentation only happens with really, really, really good consistency. So when a person comes into the gym, and they're sporadic in their workouts, you'll never find it, you have to be intimately familiar, intimately familiar with about how many repetitions you can probably get with this weight on your fourth set. You have to know that right? And the only way you're going to know that is if you haven't missed a workout for the last three months. Right then and only then will you know, what 90% is what 95% is what I know exactly where my 95% Mark is, I know that I can that I can get the next rep or that I can't get the next rep, whether the next rep will be, you know, beyond the amount of effort that I want that I want to use. And so that's why I always tell people, before we even start talking about how much intensity is right we nd we need to get you absolutely 100% consistent, you need to be really, really, really on track so that you are very familiar with what you can predict will be your level of failure with this weight with this rep with the set, then you can then you can start to say okay, I'm going to get better results doing let's say, eight sets of 95% effort, then I will with four sets of 100% effort. Now that takes more time, right. But for muscle growth, that has been proven to be the point, you will get better growth with a little bit more volume and a little less intensity. And by a little less intensity. And basically just mean less than max.

Adam 1:22:40
don't wimp out. Yeah, it's not an excuse to wimp out. Oh, Doug said you don't have to work out.

Doug Brignole 1:22:47
Yeah, that's why I made it clear. You know, I'm not saying less intensity in that sense. But I am saying you don't have to go to 100%.

Sheila 1:22:53
Well for what purpose are you talking about here? Because it's like what we do is we we do one set to? Well, we call it temporary muscle failure. But it's usually just I would think that most of our clients are only doing about 95% You know, because they can't go that intense.

Doug Brignole 1:23:13
we don't have the psychological makeup

Sheila 1:23:15
Yeah. So we we do time under load. So we're timing it, we're we're checking their time and different things.

Doug Brignole 1:23:22
I mean, my context, usually is bodybuilding, but your context or the context of people that are basically doing their three or four day a week workout. And they're doing fewer sets because they're trying to get in and out. Yeah, you can go or just 5% maximum effort for one set. Your fine.

Adam 1:23:39
Yeah, and stay very strong and weigh into O life. But yeah, bodybuilding is a whole other ballgame. You know, obviously volume and varying intensity and being you got to be so exactly when it comes to maximizing muscle hypertrophy. And you have to have the genetics to I mean, well, I'm noticing that some people do better. Like you were saying, though, you know, some people do better at this level of intensity and this amount of reps versus somebody else. I mean, there's so many just genetic components alone, that that can affect all this not to mention, the what else they do in their life, their stress levels, their age, their sleep, it goes on and on.

Doug Brignole 1:24:15
Yeah, I was gonna mention that, you know, when you talk about intensity, you have to take into consideration their age, their hormone levels, their nutrition, how much sleep they're getting their other activities that are requiring calories, you know, all of that factors into how much intensity is appropriate for that person today.

Adam 1:24:31
Yeah, but you also said something that's very key and that is, you know, the starting the starting point for all this is consistency. And I can't tell you how much I implore that to all my clients that you know, you have to be consistent with it.

Doug Brignole 1:24:47
Yeah, the most. I always tell people intensity and frequency are far less important than consistency. Consistency and frequency and regularity matter much more than intensity.

Adam 1:24:57
Amen brother. Thank you very much. Well, this has been great. I really appreciate all the time.

Doug Brignole 1:25:03
We will have to do it again some time. My pleasure.

Adam 1:25:06
Oh God. All right, I'll take you up on that.

Doug Brignole 1:25:08
All right its a deal

Tim Edwards 1:25:12
thanks again to professional bodybuilder trainer and biomechanics expert, Doug Brignole for joining us here on the inform fitness podcast. We will have links in the show notes to Amazon for you to pick up Doug's book, million dollar muscle, a historical and sociological perspective of the fitness industry. And also in the show notes as always, will be a link to grab Adams book power of 10. The once a week slow motion fitness revolution included an atom's book or several exercises that support this protocol you can actually perform on your own if you are not currently near one of our seven inform fitness locations across the US. And to find out if you are lucky enough to be near an inform fitness. Click on over to informfitness.com. There you'll find blog posts from Adam we have several videos and of course, bios and photos of all the trainers that you're hearing here on the inform fitness podcast. We really do appreciate you inform nation for joining us each and every week. And until next time for Sheila Melody Mike Rogers and Adam Zickerman of inform fitness. I'm Tim Edwards with the inbound podcasting Network.

- 1 -
00Transcribed by https://otter.ai