Why Evidence Beats Opinions In Your Workout Plan

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(Cont.) Why Evidence Beats Opinions In Your Workout Plan

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Welcome to There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell, and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Program, and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really worked and most importantly why things work. Hence the name, There is a Method to the Madness. Before I get started today, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gilding Group Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon, good evening, whatever time you are listening to the podcast today. Today I'm going to talk about science. Try to always keep the podcast scientific, meaning that uh like to talk about things that we know to be true, hopefully know to be true. But I'm going to talk about science in general. Specifically, if you've ever looked at my logo, which uh, you know, maybe you have, maybe you haven't, but at the bottom of it it says Maxwell's Fitness Programs. And then at the bottom of it, it says, Where training is science. That was important for me when I first got into business. For some reason, I don't know why. It was kind of like almost like an obsession, like I wanted to make sure I had the proper credentials to do what I wanted to do, which was I wanted to get into personal training because I believe that is where I could take my knowledge, expertise, and passion out into the world and make a living at it. I saw other models of people doing that, and I thought, okay, that'll work. But once doing that, once I decided to do that, I really did want to make sure that I went about it the right way. So, and the right way to me was having the proper level of professional education or at least professional training into doing what I wanted to do. And for me, that did happen to be education. So I had already graduated with a bachelor's in psychology, and I really was gearing that more towards sports psychology when I was uh, you know, in my undergraduate degrees. I did love the field of psychology. I still do. I think it's really interesting to me. Um, some of the things that still interest me in my readings are psychology and sociology and humanities and history and things like that. So it was always an interest, but I also was very interested in sports and very interested in health and fitness. I was working out quite a bit from the time I was 17 on as far as actual physical exercise went. And even prior to that, I'd really turned it around with a healthy diet after going through an uh overweight period in my early to mid to late, well, early to mid-adolescence. Um, so somehow that drove me into wanting to eat well, losing weight, and uh that never really left me, thank God. Uh it's it's continued to be a passion. So working in that field for a little bit of psychology, continuing to work out for my own uh personal benefits was still a huge part of my life. Probably I'd say at that time of my life, late teens, early 20s, the most important thing in my life, probably. And um I was working at uh Stuart Marchman at the time, it was Stuart Treatment Center, and I worked in the residential adolescent program for um alcohol and drug-dependent adolescence. And uh I enjoyed the job. I mean, to this day, I still think it's one of the most rewarding jobs I've ever had. And um, as I said, I was really into working out, and that was my lifestyle. So I was into some bodybuilding. I would go to work and I would pack my brown bag, and the kids in treatment would always kind of tease me that I'm not gonna eat any of the bad food they were served, and you know, I would eat healthy and they would talk to me about working out because I I did have a pretty muscular appearance, so it was pretty obvious, um, even though I didn't try to flaunt it, couldn't flaunt it. I mean, we had to wear certain clothes there, so it's not like I really could go out of my way to do that, but it was obvious to them that that was my passion. So they would talk to me a lot about it and uh we'd have conversations. And I remember one particular day one of the kids really wanted to talk to me about improving his bench press or something like that. And I got really juiced up talking to him and excited, and and I just realized that I really wanted to go more into that direction. So as I said, I believed in doing it the right way. So right away I looked into getting a degree in health and fitness. I didn't know which way to turn at that point because I had already had an undergraduate degree, a bachelor's degree in psychology. So I didn't really want to get another linear degree. So I thought, you know what, let me find a master's degree. And I found one at UCF, where I got my bachelor's in uh, and I found it in exercise, physiology, and wellness, the master's program. So I did what I needed to do as far as getting in, you know, taking the GRE and all that good stuff, applying, meeting with them and getting accepted, and then got into the program and I went from there. And then pretty soon after graduation, I uh started working in my own business as a personal trainer. While I was working on my graduate degree, I left Stuart Marchman. I went to Florida Corf and started working as a physical therapy tech, which really helped me a lot, actually. It helped me greatly with certain um patient care, blood pressures, things like that, transferring patients from wheelchair to standing or standing to wheelchair or from wheelchair to chair. I mean, just some really great skills I learned. And it's it's funny, I still talked to some folks that I worked with way back when. Um so I was there a couple years, as I said, finished my degree, went into personal training because I wanted to have the right credentials. And then from there on, I continued to learn. I got different certifications as the years go by, different expertise levels. But um the whole point of this is to talk a lot about science and why I found it to be so important and find it to be so important, and put that tagline into my logo, which says where training is science. So if we go to Mr. Google and we look at some definitions of science, the first one that pops up says the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, testing of theories, and getting the evidence obtained. All right. So that's like the long form definition there. Um so that's what science is, and the key to it to me has always been like, what is the evidence? Because that's what really is the most important thing about science. So we have a desire to learn and know and investigate, but then what does the science say? What does the data say? So that's what is the most important thing to me regarding science. We get, you know, you could take science and you can simply say scientific evidence versus opinion. Like you can, in my opinion, make it that simple and short. On one hand, you got somebody saying, I think, I think, I think we should do this, or I think, I think, I think this is why this worked. And another hand, you have the other person saying, Well, this is what the evidence shows. Right or wrong, this is what the evidence shows. I think this is very important, and I've always believed this is important. Um, as I speak, I want you to please excuse the scratchy throat been dealing with a little bit of a cold, but I can hear it now the longer I talk. But I think it is very, very important, even from the very beginning. I mean, I had evidence to what I was doing when I was a teenager or in my early 20s prior to ever getting any education on physiology or kinesiology or biology. Like I knew or I thought I knew what worked as far as exercise and strength training went. So I had a good opinion on that. And it probably would have been difficult to change my opinion on that. But what I didn't want to do, and I think that knowledge is important, but what I didn't want to do is go into a field as a professional, and then all of a sudden make, you know, kind of push my belief systems, which maybe we're not checked yet, onto other people. You know, we still joke and we always used to joke about the my uncle theory, you know, and that's the guy at the gym or wherever that says, Well, my uncle does this, so therefore we should do that. You know, I never wanted to be that kind of a trainer because I knew that there had to be more to it than that. And I mean, maybe I'm a little prejudiced because I work in the field of health and fitness, but I would almost venture to bet that there is more in my industry of that, unfortunately, than almost any other industry. Like the entire sport of bodybuilding actually is kind of founded in that premise, the premise of the old uncle theory. And what's sad is even one of the more recognized organizations almost does the research backwards. They go back to what some of the great bodybuilders did in the muscle beach era, which is the greatest era of bodybuilding, with the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Franco Colombo and Frank Zane and even Lou Ferrigno, like that era of bodybuilding in Venice Beach, California in the 70s into the early 80s is considered like the the golden years of bodybuilding. So they'll go back and they'll look at like the routines those guys were doing, and then some studies will go to show why it may have worked. And see, that's doing research backwards. So even a pretty respected organization still gets it wrong in this industry. And I can remember being in my early 20s, late teens, and you simply followed bodybuilding or strength training routines based on what those guys were doing. Now, number one, there's a big error in that because we're doing what we thought they were doing, like what they were telling Joe Weeder in Muscle and Fitness magazine and some of the other periodicals at the time, what they said they were doing. And I later learned that a lot of that is exaggerated and they might have done that some or once or twice, but that wasn't their, you know, regular way of doing things. And I found that out when I actually was uh briefly interviewed and then put in one of those magazines, and something was drastically changed, and I'm like, I didn't say that. So that's the first fault. But the bigger fault than that is the fact that, and these guys have made it very well known. So I'm not like spilling the beans on anybody, but these guys were taking an enormous amount of steroids. I mean, they were on drugs, so it's like number one, a lot of what they were doing was gonna work easier because they were on steroids. And number two, they could get away with these really, really super high volume two-a-day workouts, six-day-a-week workouts because they were on so many drugs that they were able to recover faster. And then you take the average ham and eggger who's trying to work out and stay natural to try to follow such a program, and you wouldn't, wouldn't be able to do it, let alone get any gains. And then, you know, it's like, oh, so he really wasn't growing because of this routine. He was growing because of his drugs and he could do this routine. So that's a big problem with that kind of, you know, my uncle used to do that, therefore it works type of thinking. So leaving the organization alone on that one, because most of the organizations are pretty good about making sure that they do the evidence in the right direction. They don't take something that somebody used to do and research it, they research it from the beginning. So, again, I will just leave it at that, that I think that even in uh in my industry, it's it's even worse than in other industries. So thankfully, in the last 20 years or so, we've come a long way with the science. The science is now giving really good information as far as many things regarding exercise. I mean, it's always been there. Like it's there's always been the right way or the better way, I should say, to do things. So when people say, oh, they changed their minds, that's not really true. It's like there's marketing companies that kind of change things around. But for the most part, like we've known many, many right ways to do things. But there has been an even greater influx of science into physical training, especially. I think they've always gotten pretty involved and outspoken on diet stuff, but there's been more on physical training. Now that's good because as I said, and with my logo, where training is science. So when somebody comes to me, I want to make sure that they know I'm not giving them my opinion. I'm gonna use my experience that I've learned, my own personal knowledge on things. But if somebody comes to me with a given condition, or even just as simple as a weight loss, like I'm gonna fall back on what we know the research has stated on, like, say, the effects of strength training on weight loss, as an example. So, as an example, what does the data say? The data says that strength training is a great way to aid weight loss because it helps with muscle wasting, meaning that as a person loses weight, if they strength train, they're not going to lose as much muscle as long as they're not overdoing it. And then it goes on to state that you still have to have a caloric deficit for you to lose weight. I mean, that sounds pretty simple and pretty obvious, but I'm just stating it because, you know, we'll go by the science. Instead of somebody saying, Well, no, I heard when so-and-so lost weight, you know, they worked out like this. They did a bunch of high reps and they did this and they worked out every day. And it's like, okay, that's, you know, great, but we're gonna go by what the science says. So that's that's an example of that. So if anybody comes in, I'm gonna be very clear that I'm gonna use what the data states as far as their particular condition or whatever. It could be what we know about training volume, what we know about number of sets based on muscle groups or based on the exercise themselves, or what the what do studies say about the amount of load, for example. Like, for example, there has been new research that shows that if a person is within 35 or so percent of their one rep maximum, and that's really light, by the way, and they take that set too close to failure, they're going to get benefits. So research shows that, and research has documented that over and over again. Whereas somebody might say, oh, well, you know, you can't get stronger unless you lose, use a certain percentage. So, well, is that your opinion? Probably. So, like these are just examples where exercise science does impact decisions for us or for me, oftentimes and all the time. I think it is very, very important. In today's world with social media, the internet, I mean, there are so many opinions going around about different things. Like, you know, there was this thing about five years ago, five to ten years ago. It has started to back off though. But everybody was talking about functional training. And there was a certain group of people that were going around saying people that go to the gyms doing traditional exercises, like on the machines or dumbbells or whatever, aren't getting the benefits of people that are doing like really thought of as to be functional exercise, they called them. So they would say, like, CrossFit is more functional than the average gym goer because they're doing things that simulate more of what real reality is. Well, I mean, that's flat out just not true. I mean, really, that's just ridiculous. But like, if you ever looked at the evidence of that, like, okay, so let's take that theory and then see if this is true, you know, that's just a marketing opinion. Like, that's really all that is. And when you look at the evidence, the evidence is like, well, no, I mean, there's nothing more functional than a person that has a higher level of muscles all around their body. So, for example, if a person has well-developed quads and healthy joints because of that, then they're going to be able to get up and out of a chair without getting stuck, which there's honestly nothing more functional than that. So the evidence was like, okay, like that sounds like a cool opinion on everything, but let's test the theories of whether or not you should do CrossFit style exercises versus, say, machine style and see if there's anything that proves that. And of course, there isn't. Like the evidence states, I mean, they don't even get involved in that nonsense, really. So, like, that's why it's important to know how to look at the studies and see what it really says. And I say it to people all the time, you know, um, if you see these arguments on social media and I'll see them sometimes in health and fitness, the only thing I might ask is, what does the evidence actually state on this? Like, are you just kind of like pulling numbers out of your ass, or is there really evidence to show what they're saying? And of course, you might guess 99 times out of 100, there's nothing to it. It's just fake news, so to say. Now, plain devil's advocate, though, and I'll um kind of give you the last part of this here. We have to also be careful with that because just because somebody is throwing a lot of scientific terms at you and trying to use really, really big words, it doesn't mean there's science behind it. And so you have to be really, really, really on alert about that with these grifters these days because they are going to tell you certain things, they're gonna use different terminology, they're gonna use words that you have to go look up, and they're gonna make you think they're smarter than you. And there's a lot of people selling crap out there that aren't true. And it's not just supplements. I mean, people need to wake up regarding supplements. I mean, we've been saying it for years that the majority of it is crap. There is some stuff out there that is really Researched and proven to be helpful. For example, one of the only supplements that you can take that they've actually shown an ergogenic aid to a person taking something natural has been creatin. That's like one of the few supplements out there that has passed every research test. Am I saying go take creatine? No, I'm not. I'm just saying that it, I was very skeptical of it actually, about 10 years ago, because I'm like, come on, this is just nothing more than people jumping on an amino acid kick when I did 30 years ago. But then I kept looking at the evidence and looking at the evidence, studying more about it, but but more importantly, and looking at the evidence. And we're talking, even the, you know, the most stringent researchers who were looking at creatine were like, yeah, I mean, it does show improvements in strength. But that's really the only one. I mean, the rest have like, and I'm not including protein in that because protein's a macronutrient. I'm talking about supplements. It's the only one. So people really need to be looking at that, going, why am I spending so much money? Well, you know, my answer to that is everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die because it's a hell of a lot easier to go drop$20 on a certain supplement than it is to go drop 20 minutes of running, right? Or weight training. So that's the answer to that, you know, and the grifters know that, so they're gonna sell it to you, but they can't just sell it to you basic because they know you're not gonna fall for that. So they have to use every scientific term in the world. I've said for the longest time that if it's coming from science, it's not gonna be that complicated. And I promise you that. I know the science. I am very strong in exercise physiology. Not only did I make very good grades, straight A's to be exact, in my graduate degree of physiology, I continue to study it long after I graduate, graduated, and I still do, and I can tell you that yes, some forms of exercise physiology can be extremely complicated, like trying to work yourself through the Krebs cycle will make you pull your hair out. I mean, there are parts of it that even going through a muscular contraction with the actin and the myosin and the troponin and the tropomyosin and all these different interactions that occur within a split second of a muscle fiber contraction will blow your mind. But that doesn't mean that what you have to do is complicated because it's not complicated. Like we know how many days per week that it's ideal for everybody to work out. Like we know, two to three days per body part, and then you could break that up however you want. There's no science that says there's a perfect way. We just know that if you want the benefits, you have to strength train at least two times a week, period. You have to cover all the muscle groups of your body. You should try to take the muscles as close to fatigue as you particularly can. But the fact you're showing up and trying most likely is enough. So, like we know that, and that's not complicated. We can break it down. I can break it down for you, and I can actually show you if you really, really need it, like what's happening while you're fatiguing a muscle, like how the recruitment fiber pattern changes are changing. The closer you get to exhaustion on a set, I can show you all that. And I can show you the metabolic things that occur at the same time with the lactate and the changing of the acidity of the muscle cell as we get closer to fatigue. I can show you all that. And it's pretty interesting when you're looking at it all, but it doesn't change what you have to do. So, what we do have to do is go, okay, so is there any research that says I need to train a muscle group more than two times a week? Is there any? No, there isn't. Like that's what we have to pay attention to, the meat and the potatoes and the difficult stuff. All right. So keep that in mind. Just because somebody on the internet is using really highly technical scientific terms, it does not mean that it's coming from science. At Maxwell's Fitness Programs, there absolutely is the saying is true where training is science. And it's also true that the science does not have to be complicated. Thanks everybody for listening to today's show. I want to ask you to please hit automatic download from wherever you get your podcast from. It really helps me and it really helps the show. Now I'd like to take a second to thank our sponsors. Without them, we would not be able to have the podcast. First overhead door of Daytona Beach, they are the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product and the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk. They are great people. If you have any garage door needs, please give them a call. 386-222-3165. Now I'm very, very happy and excited to announce we have a new sponsor, Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer. Each container has 40 grams of protein. And what's really cool about this is it's very portable. You can throw the tiny little containers into a suitcase, take it wherever you go. Now you don't have to worry about spilling. And you know what? It tastes really, really good. Just open up the cap, suck down the protein. It's that easy. If you want to try it out, you can check it out at my website, fit to themax.net, and click on Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer, or you can go directly to their website at www.prochargeprotein.com.