The Hidden Work Behind Real Fitness Results

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(Cont.) The Hidden Work Behind Real Fitness Results

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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 programs, and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and most importantly why things work. Hence the name, There Is a Method to the Madness. Before I get to today's show, I want to thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group at 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. Hello everybody. Let's get down to today's podcast. I hope everybody got in a workout this morning or at least are planning on getting one in today. I think a workout makes everything better. For me, I did some upper body weights today, letting my uh legs heal a little bit from a long weekend of different stuff. Happy to report that my minor oblique injury is all healed up, able to swing the bat for my softball league. So that's all well and good. And that kind of leads me into today's podcast. Today is kind of a tote parter because I had a question that I did uh want to field from somebody. They asked me to talk about this via on the podcast. And then um wanted to get into a quote I heard and how it relates to physical fitness. So I'm going to do both today. First, let me jump into the quote or saying. It's not so much a quote as much as it's a story, and then how that relates to my minor oblique injury in getting back into it pretty quickly. I was listening to a podcast the other day. It was yesterday, actually. Um, and the podcaster was telling a story to somebody who was talking to a group of baseball players. I think he was talking to the Chicago Cubs, either that or the Arizona Diamondbacks. He frequently talks to those two clubs. But I think yesterday was the Cubs when I was listening anyway. And he was telling a story about Frank Robinson, who is a great old-time baseball player. I believe he played for the Baltimore Orioles. Um, if that was completely necessary to this story, I would have looked it up, don't worry. But I believe that's who he played for from memory. Definitely have heard of him before. But anyway, there's a uh story that goes around regarding like a story we would tell for integrity or doing the right thing. And he was a I mean, he is a perennial 500 home run guy, um, high batting average. I mean, he's in the Hall of Fame. He's an all-time legend. So he was in a game and his team was blowing out the other team, and he hit what he thought was a home run. Um, you know, he hit a lot of home runs, so it probably wasn't a bad guess on his part. And he, you know, he didn't shoot out of the uh batter's box right away. He didn't necessarily sit there and admire it, but he didn't hustle because he thought it was going to be a home run. And as he was starting to round first base, he realized that the ball hit off the wall and didn't go over the fence. So it was, you know, a double because he stopped at second base. So again, it wasn't a big deal. Nobody said anything to him because he's a legend, he wasn't a loafer, and uh they ended up winning the game anyway. But because he didn't hustle as fast as he could, he ended up at second where he could have been at least at third base for a triple and maybe even inside the park home run if he would have gone all out. But he thought it was a home run. So the game ends, and uh it's shower time and you know, go home time and all that good stuff. He walks up to his manager's office, and this uh this is a long time ago. I I don't know the exact date of the story, but based on when he played, I'm guessing this is probably like in the 1960s. So that's relevant here in a second. So he reaches into his pocket and he pulls out$200 and he slams it on the table and he says to the manager, I'm fining myself. You should have fined me for not running as hard as I could. It cost us an extra base. So I say the timing mattered because$200 in the 1960s when they didn't have the money that they have now was, you know, it was substantial. So it was a it's a great gesture on his part. And that's the most important part was it was a gesture. He fined himself. He did not like the example he set for himself. Being the legend that he was, a great player in the league, one of the best, one of the best ever play. I doubt the manager would ever got on him, but he got on himself because he expected more of himself. So I love stories like that, and I often say that physiology is so, so important, but so is psychology. So's this a part of it. Like, how does the brain go? Now I'm gonna tie this into two areas of fitness. Number one is what do you do when nobody's watching? I mean, do you exercise because you're supposed to exercise? And do you do everything you really know you should do because you're really trying to get better? Or do you shortchange it? You know, and the crazy part is, and we have clients that often say this, and they're absolutely right. We might jokingly say, or, you know, just casually say, Well, we know you're not going to cheat. And they'll say something to the effect of, well, why would I cheat? I'm only cheating myself. And that is exactly right. But we do see it. We do see where people don't value the exercise or the workout plan or the diet plan or, you know, whatever you want to put into that category really as much as we feel that they should. Like it's not for us. You're not doing it for us. We're making the suggestions so you can get better. I don't know what the statistics are, but you know, I don't know. I would say more people do what they're supposed to do, especially when they know what they're supposed to do. That's a big part of personal training and personal coaching, as I talk about in my book, is the fact that you have a plan. You don't have to guess at what you're supposed to do. Now, me personally, I love structure. You know, I'll type things out for myself to do, even though I know what I'm supposed to do. In my brain, I still like to print my little check sheets because for me, having that structure really, really matters. It just helps me. And that's the whole idea is what helps you do what you need to do? You know, what helps you do it? So, along the same lines of that, you know, I'm talking about my oblique injury. I brought that up in the beginning. It wasn't a big deal. I'm not trying to make this out to be a big thing, but I started playing in a men's softball league, which I really, really enjoy. Love that sport, and I'm glad to play. I'm in an over 50 league. And, you know, even though I'm fit, I should know better than to not warm up properly. I mean, I did warm up, but when I was taking some early swings at the plate at batting practice, I overswung on a couple and I pulled my oblique and then didn't rest it completely, went back the next week, pulled it a little bit more. Then I often talk about seds, which stands for specific adaptations to impose demands. So I know better. But what that means is that I should have specifically warmed up the area by like taking a couple easy swings and a few more moderate swings and harder swings and then hard swings. If I would have done that, probably wouldn't have pulled my oblique, but I didn't. So I pulled it in, you know, it probably was a grade two because there was discoloration, there was bleeding in there internally. So I could tell that it was more than just a muscle pull. It was into a strain, a type two strain, we call that, which again, with just a couple weeks off essentially, it goes away. And I did that. And so that's the point I'm trying to make with this story was I wanted to be better and I know what to do. So I made my little checklist, return to play checklists that I made. I knew better, but I wanted to write it out. I wanted to follow my instructions. Nobody was, you know, nobody knows if I'm doing it or not. The boring exercises, the boring stretches, the rehab, the icing, you know, nobody knows. So there's no glory behind it. A lot of people didn't even know I heard it because naturally it's well, I shouldn't say naturally, but an injury like that, it's not like it affects you day to day. It's just if I go to swing the bat or a golf club or something like that or do some rotations at the gym, I was going to feel it. So, and I'm not that type. I don't go around telling people I'm hurt and stuff. I don't like when people do that unnecessarily to me, except in my job when there's a reason to. But other than that, I just think people are looking for pats on the back or excuses a lot. So I don't like to do that personally. So I didn't, you know, I barely told anybody. And I definitely didn't tell anybody about my rehab checklist. And that's the whole point. Like I was doing it for me. I had my checklist. I had to do the boring exercises of first, of course, letting it heal. And then the next thing would be is if I don't feel it when I sneeze or cough, I know that it's healing. Okay. So then I'd pass that test. I'm like, yeah, no pain there a couple days later. And then I knew then to try some static exercises for it to see how the obliques are mending and make sure that they're prepared to go at it again when I wanted to play. I'm already better, by the way. It was like I needed to be better by Monday, and I'm already better. This is a few days before that. So I did my paylock presses, which are kind of an oblique static exercise. That went well. So then a couple days later, I was able to do my rotations on the cable machine. That went well. Then I was able to do what we call lateral side flexion. That went well. Meanwhile, on my checklist, I also had a lot of stretching I was doing for my obliques and my rib cage area and my abs and my core and all that stuff. So I was doing all that, probably taking 15, 20 minutes a day to just specifically work on the rehab of the injury for like two weeks. And Sunday I went to batting practice a couple days ago. And I mean, I was fine. I was like 100%. And of course, naturally, this time I was smarter about how I warmed up. I did all of my warming up and then I did specific warmups, as I said, swung the bat, you know, light and moderate, then heavier. I never I didn't swing all out this time. Not that stupid. But I mean, I could have. I'm just again letting it heal. But the whole point is that we do things, discipline is doing what we need to do for ourselves with nobody watching, nobody looking over us, like we're doing it for the right reason. Frank Thomas find himself because he didn't like how he handled that double off the wall. Like nobody can really be there, or they can be, but you're not going to get better unless you want to do the boring things, the things that you don't get like credit for, the things that aren't like a whole lot of glamour involved, you know. Cranking out some pull-ups is like, you know, you get a pat on the back and you go, Oh wow, you know, I did this, I did that. So much of fitness, so much of it is not about that. Like, so much of fitness is like the little things you should be doing on your own that there's really nothing to get praise for. If you're doing everything for praise, you're pretty much building a foundation on a house of cards. It's going to fall apart. I say to people all the time, I'm like, you know, to the runners I coach, to the runners I train, you know, I'll say, look, it's like, it's not like the person did well or did poorly by accident. You know, I mean, we all have bad days. That's a little bit different, but like everything we're doing going into it is building the foundation. There are so many things that you can't see at the start line with people just using these running and travel on or endurance events as an example. So many things at the start line you can't see. But I guarantee you, if they did the things they're supposed to do, more than likely they're going to be the better opponent that day. Meaning, we don't know if that person at the start has been managing their diet to be in the best weight they can be, if that's an issue for them. We don't know if they've been managing their diet to have enough energy to race appropriately or if they've been starving themselves, which is unhealthy, which will lead to a bad performance. We don't know that. We don't know if that runner has been working on their mobility, working on their flexibility, even though it's not sexy, even though it's not fun sometimes, even though there's no praise for it. Like you can't just sit on the ground and do the hurdle stretch, take a picture of it and put it up on your Instagram, right? I mean, that's not what people do. They put the pictures of them doing pull-ups, or they took the videos of them doing pull-ups or the pictures of the awards at races. Like, yeah, great, but where did the winner really win? They won with those boring exercises of flexibility and mobility that nobody really knows if they did it or not. Only that person knows. They won with that nice, consistent diet that they just follow all the time because they want to be healthy. I'm not talking about a restrictive diet. Like, this is an area I can confidently say I'm proud of myself for. Like, I eat very well. I eat very healthy. I eat a lot. I just eat a lot of good food and I do manage how much in and how much out, but I still eat a lot. Rarely does a day come across where I'm eating under 3,000 calories a day, you know. And so I'm eating more than my share, but I'm eating healthy foods. I'm not eating crap. I don't want to feel like crap. Do you know that? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I guess you could assume, but you know, we don't always know when people are eating healthy or they're not eating healthy. So the point is, you're not fooling anybody when you're not putting in the work where you're supposed to put it in. Like for me, the work over the last two weeks was doing less, not more. That's the work. Sometimes it takes discipline to take those days off. People are like, oh man, that guy's an animal. You know, he runs 20 miles a day. And I'm like, yeah, well, that's very undisciplined because they're hurt all the time and they're running that mileage out of an obsession or an exercise addiction. Well, that's not anything to give somebody a pat on the back for. Like, that's they need help. I mean, that's that's not a good thing. Like that, they're showing promise when they actually go, you know what? I'm gonna take the day off from this and I'm gonna go stretch, or I'm gonna go for an easy walk on the beach. Like, that's when you know they're getting better. So we don't know when somebody's putting in the work or not. You might assume from social media that somebody's putting in the work because they're always logging these minutes, they're logging these miles, and it's like, yeah, but maybe for them, the work is a lot less, and it's hard for them to be still, but being still is where they're going to get better. All right. So I want you to think about that. Like if you if you're that person who needs that constant validation, and and you only do things when people are watching. You're you're not doing the Frank Thomas, you're doing the opposite. Think about it. Like, what are you really gaining from that? You know, you're really not. I mean, you think you are, but you're not. You're building your foundation on a house of cards. You might as well figure out what you need to do for you. Like, what is best for you? Like, I know me personally, I played this little ranking game with Ellen the other day just for fun. And we both guessed it out of the five things, the five fitness components. I said, What do you think is my area where I need to work on the most? And she said, Mobility. I said, Yeah, me too. Like, I need more mobility and flexibility. Like, um personally, I like to stretch now. I didn't always, but I like to. It's kind of like a nice little mental timeout for me. And I take my time and I take 15 or 20 minutes a day and I do it, but I definitely need it the most. Like I'm gonna need that. And I'm, you know, my my former self might have said, well, I'd rather go for a run. It's like, well, yeah, because you know, you're you're getting something out of that ego-wise. We're stretching, it's hard to get any ego validation out of that. But in the long run, it's making me better. Frank Thomas knew if he threw that money down on the desk, he'll be less likely to make that same mistake. And he wanted everybody around him to know that he takes ownership for his mistake, and he doesn't want to do that in the future. So, like, that's what this is all about. What are we gonna do to get better in the future? All right. So now I said there's gonna be a two-parter today because I do want to handle it, and I don't think it necessarily requires um a major whole podcast by itself. But you might find this practically speaking, my physiological people who love the physiology stuff and maybe the psychology stuff that get a little bored. Well, this is the best of both worlds because now we get both. Somebody asked me, they said, How do you train for grip strength and why is it important? So let me take the the latter first. Why is it important? So, studies have shown for sure that grip strength is actually correlated to your overall health. That the stronger your grip is, the healthier that you are. They've been able to literally correlate that back to your health. Now, I don't want to use one of the fitness influencers who did a major thing on this because he's gotten a little bit of bad press lately. And so I'm not going to associate myself with that. I never really liked the guy anyway, to be honest with you. But um, he uh definitely is in a little hot water now. And what he was talking about is absolutely true, but the way he was talking about it was typical in his fashion of self-promotion. But he was really pushing the whole grip strength there, and everybody was going out and they're measuring their grips and doing all this stuff. He's the same fellow that did the same thing with VO2 Max, and everybody was talking about their VO2 Max. So if you're a big fitness buff person, you know exactly who I'm talking about. But anyway, his two things, it seems like, over the last two years have been VO2 Max and grip strength. So he did a lot of good research on this, hate to give him credit, but he did talk a lot about the grip strength and the importance of it. Where he falls short, where he always falls short as he tries to sell something, is then he was selling people gizmos of how to improve their grip strength, which is silly. But let me just agree with him that grip strength is very, very important, but not why you think it is. Okay. So it's not like just because you can uh, you know, you have the the grip of a phenom, you know, that that means anything by itself. No. But see, grip strength is correlated to overall body strength. It's correlated to your overall body strength. Is that true a hundred times out of a hundred? No, it's not, but it's true to an extent. I remember trying to prove my point to a group of sports medicine students that I was teaching years and years ago. I had a, I still do, I had a dynamometer, which is a grip strength tension meter. And uh I had one in the classroom. And I said, All right, so my prediction is, and I looked at the biggest, strongest kid in the class and I said, he's gonna have the best grip strength. And people were like, Well, you don't know for sure, you don't know for sure. I mean, that guy over there, he's got big forearms, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I kind of do. Now, did I know for sure? Again, no, it's not 100% of the time because sometimes it's not true. So you have arthritic fingers, and that's going to impact how well you squeeze the dynamometer. But in this case, I was right. He grabbed it and he squeezed over 160 foot pounds of pressure, which is like amazing. And, you know, he had the best squat, he had the best bench, he was the strongest kid in the class. So, like, that's why grip strength is important because it's usually correlated to your overall body strength. And it is important to, and this is where I'm going to take this next part, which is the most important, is how do you train it? It is important because if you don't have a strong grip, it's going to impact your other exercises. For example, I know so many folks that struggle with pull-ups because of their grip. And they're, they blame it on their grip. And I say, Yeah, okay, but you know, that's still a part of you. You just can't say you got the strongest lats in the world, but you can't prove it because your grip isn't strong enough. I mean, you still have to train that area. So it's important for us to have a strong grip for that very reason. Again, I already gave you the longevity reason, but now it's like important to understand that like if your grip is weak or not as strong as it can be, just in the gym alone, it's going to impact your other exercises. Your grip is going to wear out before you can finish your pull down set. Your grip is going to wear out before you can finish your row set. Your grip may wear out before you finish your bicep set. And obviously, I just said it because I see there more than anywhere, your grip is going to wear out before you can finish your pull-up. So grip matters. It's the weak link in the chain if it's weak. So it does matter. Now, how do you train it? If you want to go out and get one of those hand squeezer things, that's fine. I sometimes have them laying around, keep them in the car, but that's more for like my ADHD and boredom as I'm driving down the road. I don't have one currently. I don't know what happened to it. But anyway, probably threw it at somebody in a road rage. Yeah, could have been. But yeah, that's all great. You know, you could do specific grip exercises, doesn't hurt. But the number one way to train it is just don't freaking avoid it. The people that I see with the weakest grips are always trying to get around their grips. They're wiping the pull-up bar of sweat off before they grip it. And I'm thinking, well, if this is a competition, I get it. But if you're trying to train your grip, why are you trying to make it easier? Or they'll wear gloves. It's like, I mean, I get it. You know, there are people out there that have really pretty hands. They don't want to mess with their hands. Totally get that. But if you're trying to strengthen your grip, you are not going to strengthen it wearing gloves. And then there's wrist straps. You see the guys in the gym mostly, sometimes women too, but mostly guys, using the wrist straps where it goes around your wrist and then the rope-like thing goes around the bar and you twist it up. It's basically doing the grip for you. Again, if you're in a competition like a deadlift competition where they allow it, you'd be silly not to use it. But when training, you want to train your grip. So the number one way to train your grip is don't avoid using your grip. If you're doing pull downs, grab the bar, no gloves, no wraps, keep doing it until your grip fails. It will get stronger. Remember the SEDs principle I said earlier about softball, specific adaptations to imposed demands. If your grip is most noticeably failing you on a pull down, but you continue to stay with it over time, that specific adaptation of grip strength holding the pull down or pull-up bar will get stronger. And then that will translate into other areas. Now, if it's really a problem and you want to specifically train more, well, I shouldn't say if it's really a problem. It's still the main reason is to not avoid doing grip exercises. Don't use gloves, don't use wraps, quit wiping it with towels, make it harder, not easier, and your goal and your grip will get stronger. So many people forget that in training. They're always trying to make their training easier. Make your training harder. But if you wanted to add in some reverse curls or things like that that specifically work the forearms, look, that's great. But the most important way is don't avoid hard work. Don't avoid hard work. Do pull downs where you have to actually grip the bar without gloves, without wraps. Do pull-ups where you actually have to grab the bar without wraps. Do your rows without wraps, without trying to baby anything, and make your grip stronger. It will get stronger. So my guess is for those who complain of not having overly strong grip, probably the biggest factor is you have used different tools to protect your grip in the past, and now you're paying the price. All right. Don't do that. Do the hard work. The grip will get stronger. All right. Thank you everybody for listening to today's show. I really appreciate it. I want to remind you to please hit automatic download. It really helps me and it helps the show. And now I'd like to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product and the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great. They're going to get you exactly what you need. 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