For Personal Trainers

Are Your Workout Routines Actually Hurting Clients!

 

First I want to establish I know you have the best intentions and you truly care about your clients.

 

This article will dive deep into the actual science and psychology about changing behavior. Stay with me because at the end you will have much more understanding about how to PERMANENTLY change your clients’ lives so they love you, trust you, and refer more people to you. The side effect is you feel more fulfilled knowing that you didn’t just help Suzy Q lose weight or inches, you helped her become happier, more empowered, and more fulfilled herself.

 

So let get started…
16 years ago, I was on a plane thinking to myself, what just really happened. I just finished lecturing to hundreds of personal fitness trainers about the science of movement and the most effective ways to get people to drop body fat fast.

 

I felt this empty feeling as if I just went through something important but something was missing. Sure I felt accomplished. Yes, I was able to share some advanced biomechanics of movement and the science of fat loss. Hey, the 142K I spent on education had to be put to good use somehow.

 

Well it took me 12 years from that day to realize the powerful message my gut feeling (i.e. intuition) was telling me.

 

I didn’t truly make an impact…

I was so consumed with wanting to help personal fitness trainers I was blinded by what was really happening.

 

From being in the fitness industry, fitness training or in personal training industry since 1994, I repeatedly saw people in gyms day in and day our not getting results. Many of them would either stay the same or they would go on a program. While on a program (any program) they lost weight. But after weeks, months, and sometimes years, they would gain the weight back. NO weight loss! It was a constant fight and struggle for them.

 

I understand their pain. I used to measure my foods and used my will power and made sacrifices to avoid eating some of those “bad” foods (this is coming from a kid who used to eat a bag of Oreo cookies a day for his entire food source…). I even used to bring my own food to restaurants so I can socialize yet control my calories…

 

Before we get to how transformation programs may not solve this problem, let’s discuss what is really happening with these people…

 

First I have to admit, I should have realized the TRUE problem a long time ago. When I was 14 years old, 2 things happened that changed my life. The first thing was someone said “you have chicken legs” to me. As a teenage boy who already felt awkward, that only fueled my desire to be good enough. So that was big reason why I started lifting weights (aside from looking good for the ladies of course). Second was when a girl I was dating asked “what do you want out of this relationship?”

 

At the time I couldn’t answer it. Probably because of the raging testosterone in my blood wanted me to shout out “sex”. However, I did reflect on that after the hormones calmed down. I really didn’t know that answer and felt I didn’t know myself.

 

So I started on a voracious journey to read. My first book at age 15 was Psychocybernetics. I would read or listen to all the self help Gurus on cassette tapes (yes, I am that old) any chance I could get.

 

It was because of this experience that led to the ultimate big “Ah Ha” moment.

 

I realized that for me to change permanently, I had to work on changing ME.

 

Let’s use an analogy here…

 

Imagine one of your friends named Bob. He is married. However he and his wife Susan have always had this abusive relationship. They argue frequently. Sometimes they go through periods where they get along. You can see from the outside that they individually are good people. It’s their relationship that doesn’t work.

 

They’ve even tried to work on it. They have read and implemented books on different programs.

 

Bob works a lot and he feels like he’s overwhelmed. When his fights with Susan get unbearable, he does take action. He searched for some type of solution or program to get Susan to be nicer and the fights to stop. Some of the programs recommend that they take a trip to get away. So they go away on vacation and spend some time together and feel better.

 

When they get home and get back to the stresses of life, the fights start again. Then he tries to buy her flowers. She feels happy for a few days then the fights start again. Bob’s thinking “I just need the perfect program and when I find it my marriage will be fixed”. So he tries buying her more expensive gifts. First it’s a ring, then eventually a car. Each time, the fighting stops a bit longer but yet, it always comes back. He feels stuck sometimes and eventually he ignores the problem and becomes numb to his emotions as a way to deal with this.

 

 

So you offer to train them to help them through this. You tell Bob, you have the BEST program there is. You are passionate about helping him and you tell him you will transform his marriage in 8 weeks.

 

So you take Bob under your wing.

 

On the first day, you get some initial measurements of where his marriage is currently at. You ask him how often he fights with Susan, how long each lasts, how he feels about the marriage. Then you set some powerful goals with him. You say, “we are going to decrease your fight frequency by 90% and the duration by 90%”.

 

So Bob naturally says “that would be awesome…I’m in”.

 

So Bob shows up for his first Marriage Transformation training session. You coach him on what to say to Susan to help her feel better. You tell him to measure the duration of your conversation because talking too much would be counterproductive. You tell him the specific words to say because saying these “bad” words would ruin his marriage and that he should stick only with “good” words.

 

Eventually Bob confesses and says, he’s been wanting to see other women. You tell him he needs to be more determined in his marriage and to use will power to fight those urges. You even give him some NLP mental tricks to not think about and want other women.

 

After a few weeks, Bob says “I just can’t take it, I really want to date other woman”. So you say “OK you can have these cheat days… On weekends, you can date as many woman as you want. But come Monday it’s back to Susan and those specific words I want you to say”.

 

(ok you can stop laughing and keep reading on…)

 

 

I’m sure you can see from this story Bob has NO CHANCE of having a happy ending (at least not with Susan)

 

However let’s continue this story. Bob actually feels like your program is amazing! He gets what he wants. His marriage with Susan has never felt better. Based on your recommendation of what to say and how to say it, he reaches his goal of decreasing his fight frequency and duration by 90%. He feels awesome! He says to you “your program is exactly what I needed”.

 

But then it happens…

 

Months later, his work schedule increases a bit. He can feel the pressure from work bearing down on his chest crushing him. So he thinks “I’ll just work a little harder and sacrifice a few things to make it through this”. So eventually his words with Susan are not the ones you recommended. Some of the “bad” words come back to his language. He doesn’t have the will power and discipline to continue using the “good” words. Every time he says a “bad” word to Susan, he feels guilty and shame afterwards.

 

So his marriage starts to crumble again.

 

Because of this, his weekend “cheat days” of seeing other woman, start to spread into his weekdays. Instead of talking to Susan with the words you recommended, he spends time getting comfort with the new girls. The first time Bob does this, he thinks to himself “I deserve this because I’ve worked so hard and Susan is just so impossible sometimes”. Then after the date, Bob says “dam it! I’m such a failure. I should not have given in to my temptation”.

 

Over the next few weeks, the feelings of failing build up and eventually Bob just gives up. He’s now “cheating” frequently and the marriage is a disaster.

 

Can you see the similarity of this story to your client’s relationship with FOOD and THEMSELVES?

 

Does Bob really need another program? Now, you might be thinking your program is different. It’s more effective. It’s easier to do. It’s more comprehensive. It’s life changing. You have better tools and give more motivation.

 

Now it may be. Let’s look at what’s really happening and what are the ingredients of TRUE TRANSFORMATION

 

There is a subtle but huge difference between a BIG change versus a transformation. A big change can and will happen with use of will power, determination, clear goals, motivation, and preferably a coach. I am sure many of your clients have achieved big changes. They feel amazing afterwards. The feeling of losing a large amount of weight is extremely motivating and inspiring. I am not discounting that.

 

I agree that all the client has to do after these big changes is to stick with the nutrition plan and the workouts and possibly the supplements you have recommended. I get that.

 

However how likely is it that they do for the rest of their lives…

 

Before we get to the answer of that question, let talk about Transformations.

 

A transformation in itself is a permanent change. If we apply this to clients, it’s a permanent change in who they are. In other words, it’s more than just a change in physical aspects. The most important part is a permanent change in their mindset and beliefs.

 

This is why I felt I failed to make an impact 16 years ago. I delivered only half the solutions. I gave the fitness trainers all the tools to train people as effective and as safe as possible.

 

(information like 99% of people should never do a sit up, a standard lunge, squat with their backs against something like a wall/bar/ball, upright rows, and the list goes on. You can see details about this at the end)

 

Because of my own lack of introspection and experience at the time, I didn’t talk about the mental aspect of it and the true problem involving people’s relationship with food and with themselves.

 

I should have known that the mindset was important from the hundreds of self-help, mindset, and psychology books I read. Looking back I’ve realized it was just not my time to share that with the world at that time.

 

It’s perfectly OK. We all have our journey and there are lessons that take some time to learn.

 

Anyway, let’s talk about the steps to getting your clients to completely transform.

 

First I want to say that a complete instruction manual on this would be an entire book. My intention with this article is to bring awareness to this topic and open your mind to the possibilities of what’s possible with your clients.

 

I want to share with you an approach that allows for effortless weight loss. If you feel you have to control your food yourself, then you may benefit from the information below. It’s the same process that I have incorporated that has allowed me to eat 26 course tasting meals and still be lean, health, and fit. (yes that’s a whole lot tastier than bringing my own food to microwave…)

 

STEP 1: To make weight loss a side effect of your program

It’s my opinion that we make weight loss and inches lost a complete side effect of your training and NOT the main goal. This is like the science of happiness. When you set a goal to get more happiness, you immediately become less happy. Happiness has to be a side effect of intense focus on doing something you are passionate about.

 

So by setting goals like losing 10 pounds or 10 inches, you are saying to your client’s brain “you are not good enough until you are 10 pounds or 10 inches less”.

 

So set goals on establishing habits, changing behaviors, letting go of what doesn’t serve their health, etc. These goals will automatically make weight loss happen anyway. When a client arrives for training, don’t ask about what they ate, ask about what habits they think they want to work on to be healthier.

 

By focusing on this you help them improve their relationship with food and with themselves.

Forcing them, pressuring them, and motivating them to eat healthier without deep discussions to bring about awareness of their relationship will make their weight loss hollow and without some life changing lessons.

 

Step 2: Subtract before you add

Right off the bat as fitness trainers we tend to want to give the solutions and be problem solvers. So we give the clients a to do list. We give them nutrition plans, We give them exercises, workout routines. However the clients came to you with certain beliefs, habits, and actions that led to their current weight.

It’s extremely powerful to help them realize the beliefs that are holding them back from living a life of health not just having health. (There is a difference. Having something suggests you work to get to a destination while living it is a path and journey. In other words, don’t give them the carrot, guide them to live the path of being health). From talking to clients and with fitness trainers over the last 20+ years, I’ve seen clients say things like:

 

 

 

 

 

1. “I don’t feel like I deserve to be happy”
2. “I am addicted to _______ (sugar, fat, deserts, etc..)”
3. “I just can’t lose weight”
4. “I am too busy”
5. “I don’t believe I can do this”
6. “I need this to be happy”

There are many more but those are some common beliefs that people can let go of. So have a deep conversation with the client using the most vulnerability you can muster. Don’t just go through the typical process of asking “why” five times to get the root (mainly for closing sales). Have a deep conversation and ask “what beliefs can you identify and let go of to help you achieve success…”. Do this out of compassion and with NO expectations of anything in return.

 

Once you identified the beliefs, work with the client to revamp those beliefs. Help them realize that beliefs are by choice. Then help them construct new ones to better serve their life and weight loss goals.

 

(as a side note. Our brains can only perceive 5% of reality. Right now, you are not looking at the specs of dust on your phone or computer, or feeling the sensation of your shirt on your shoulder, or the amount of pressure you feel on your neck. Imagine we are blinded from reality by looking at the world through a black piece of paper with a small hole through it. Where that hole is dictates what you see in life. Your beliefs are what dictates where that hole is. Our goal is to not help our clients look through their current hold to see the “positive”. Our goal is to completely change where that hole is for our clients…)

Step 3: Establish habits not programs

Our beliefs shape our habits. Once you have addressed the clients’ beliefs, work on establishing healthy habits. This does not mean give them an instructional list of what to eat, when to eat it, how to exercise, etc.. I used to do the same thing but realized that approach does little to establish new habits effectively. You ideally wan to identify their current habits, what triggers, them, and then help them find a new routine.

 

With this process will they be able to establish an effortless way to live healthy and sustain permanent change. Talk to them about triggers that lead to some of their unhealthy behaviors. Once you establish these triggers, help them establish a healthy alternative. Then help them connect that healthy alternative to a reward. The reward is the real reason they did the old habit.

 

For example, you can’t say “every time you bacon, eat broccoli”. Find the trigger to bacon (maybe breakfast time or the smell of coffee). The reward for eating bacon may be the satisfaction of the salty or crunchy feeling. Then find a different routine to give the same reward. For example, Lean unprocessed meat cooked in coconut oil until crispy or salty kale chips. Same reward but different routine.

 

There are many books on habits and I recommend “The Power of Habit” on this process.

 

Step 4: Plant the seed not the tree

In the book The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, he talks about habits you have in place that don’t pay off until much later. Habits that are like seeds for today but glorious fruitful trees later. A personal example for me was the habit of reading personal growth books. It wasn’t until recently did that habit that started back in 1990 have a profound impact. Over the years that habit has been more and more profound as the tiny choices and perceptions as a result of those books have led to actions that have impacted my life (somehow I ended up hanging out with Richard Branson and traveling the world to eventually help over a million people). I really should thank Kathy for this (the girl I dated when I was 15).

 

Ok, back to clients…

 

When you first consult with a client, they have these weeds that provide no room for planting of these seeds.

 

As you remove the weeds (i.e. beliefs that hold them back) you clear the field for these seeds. When they grow the seeds themselves, they take ownership of the tree that forms. It becomes a part of them. When you go in there and plant a big tree, for them it becomes a burden to take care of. A burden that takes will power and determination.

 

When you train a client, we have a tendency to give them what they want. It’s what we marketed. It’s what expectations we set. “big results fast… a transformation”.

 

So we put them on a program. We tell them to eat “good” foods and not eat “bad” foods. We give them a program and tell them about cheat days and the cycle of a poor relationship with food continues. We inadvertently set up a process that feeds the cycle of guilt and shame whenever they deviate from the program.

 

We make such big changes, in their actions, it like planting a big tree and saying, “here, take care of this”. Let’s consider planting a seed and saying “nurture this with love and gradually see it blossom”.

 

So consider helping them establish these seeds of young but powerful habits. These habits are small effortless changes that come from a foundation of self love, self care, and self empowerment. When they experience the growth of this seed, they will have a much deeper relationship with it.

 

This takes us to the next step

Step 5: Make them know they are 100% perfect right now

They come feeling inadequate, needing change, and unhappy. They want a better body. They want happiness.

 

So we do what they ask. We give them the program and we motivate them. We tell them we WILL give them results. We want them to transform…

 

So how do we do this from a place of love and strength. How do we let them know they are already empowered, good enough, and perfect now. How do we let them know that this journey they are about to start is about learning something that will serve them in the future and not about being better, thinner, happier. In fact their happiness is a choice and not dependent on their body size or shape.

 

First we have to believe this ourselves. Then we realize that it’s not our burden to transform them. It’s our gift and our own learning journey in this process. The approach in which we help them transform and their process of transformation is nothing but the practice of knowing ourselves better. That is the beauty of this relationship. It’s an exchange of gifts.

 

Based on some amazing work by Carol Dweck, I recommend encouraging them on their efforts and not achievements. Instead of saying “great job on pushing that extra weight or losing those inches”, say “ I love how consistent you were, how you never gave up, how you listened to your body (my personal favorite)”.

 

Again it may be outside the scope of this article to teach this lesson and the process of getting each and every client to realize they are already perfect. However some of the key ingredients to be aware of to help this happen would involve, mediation, being present, letting go, being vulnerable, and 100% pure love from you for them.

 

Once they are empowered and filled with love they are ready to transform through movement.

 

 

Step 6: Fall in love with movement

I was personally obsessed with progress. I was motivated by the “PR train”. You know the need to set a new personal record of more weight lifted, more reps, less body fat, etc. However there were days where I just felt like I was exhausted from the need to be stronger and BETTER.

 

That pressure to lift more, to become more, and to do more fed the vicious cycle of “accomplish more to feel better about myself”. Yes, it felt amazing when people said “you look awesome”, “wow that’s a lot of weight you are lifting”, or “man I wish I can look like that”. However there were days where the thought of going to the gym felt like “work”.

 

That described the first 20 years of my weight lifting experience. I realized that people mainly used exercise, workout routines as a tool to get from A to B (physically and emotionally). Ask yourself “why do I exercise”. If the answer is “to feel.. to get… to …” then you also use exercise as a tool.

 

Imagine asking someone who loves painting, playing a musical instrument, taking pictures, etc. why they do it, they will likely say “because I enjoy it”. They are “intrinsically motivated”. In other words they do it for the love of it and NOT for an end result.

 

If I gave you a magic wand to give your clients one power, would you give them a life long love of health and exercise or immediate perfect body now without the love of health and exercise.

 

One is a destination and one is a path.

 

So how do we provide this key ingredient for transformation. Again, it would be beyond the scope to teach that here but I can tell you authors like Daniel Pink have identified the key ingredients for intrinsic motivation (in the book Drive). You must provide your clients with Purpose, Mastery, And Autonomy.

 

Purpose is the easy one. Help them find their BIG why. Mastery may be a bit more complicated. Chasing more weight lifted is unsustainable is a path that leads to accelerated joint wear and tear (i.e. faster onset of arthritis). So I believe choosing a mastery of self or mastery of depth of movement quality is more sustainable and has huge potential for life lessons.

 

The toughest one is Autonomy. As personal fitness trainers, we are used to telling people what and how to exercise with workout routines. However to have them love exercise and movement life long, you have to provide a place for them to choose their own workout… So think about that. It’s like providing the “programless” program or structured “flow”.

 

In Summary

OK, it’s been quite a journey up to his point. I look forward to seeing many of you hug your clients in tears not because of accomplishment, but from true inner shift and self transformation at the deepest level. You will know this when you deeply feel that the client has learned, realized, and grown to a place where they put their health first, where they truly love themselves, where they feel 100% perfect they are right now.

 

If you are a personal fitness trainer I know this choice came from a place of giving, a place of service, and from a place of kindness. No matter how you have approached your training and transformation process, know that it’s a constant evolution of growth and learning. I hope this article provided some food for thought.

 

I have nothing but love for you. I know your passion will impact many lives. It’s my gift and my passion to provide some input along your journey.

 

I am grateful for your time. I know it was a bit lengthy.

 

If you are interested in more please comment below and reach out to me at steve@bodysolutionsinc.com

 

Oh, if you are interested in learning why 99% people should not do exercises like sit ups, lunges, etc. you can click here to watch some videos about that.

 

 

Dr. Steve Young, DPT, CSCS
Emperor of Empowerment at Body Solutions
Awesome Asian At Body Readiness Ranking System
Head Foodie at my life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lesson of “the thing is not the thing” I learned from this experience.

Watch these video to learn how each of these functional training exercises are actually harmful!

Common fitness training exercises like Sit ups/ crunches/ leg lifts, bicycles, etc are harmful- Why?

In this video I will show you how to do core training exercises and abs without killing your back or core muscles. Hi this is Doctor Steve Young, owner and founder of Body Solutions. I have been motivated to shoot this video because on Facebook, on YouTube and on various websites I have seen many video of really fit looking guys and girls typically in their 20s and 30s doing all kind of ab workout routine stuff, you know crunches, bicycle twists, leg lifts, leg trunk twists all with their premises for teaching you how to get abs.

 

However none of those approaches are healthy for you, they are not effective and I am going to show you why, in this video.

 

So let’s break down how do you get killer abs without killing your back muscles. First thing to understand here is the concept of what called spot reduction, right so spot reduction. It is a belief that you can actually burn fat from one specific area of the body. So numerous researchers has shown this is not possible. If we were able to, you know burn fat from one area of our body, and let’s say you tend to be extroverted and you talk a lot and you would have the leanest jaw line in the world, even if you are 200-300-400 pounds.

 

Right, because of your jaw muscles are continuously working as you are talking to people. So that is not just the case, our body can not selectively say let’s burn fat from here or just here or just here, that is just no possible. So then we look at well, how do we burn fat from this area, well it comes down to burning as many as calories possible. The more calories that you will burn more body fat that you will loose overall. And for some that will come from this area. So you would have maximized the amount of calories that you burn. So we know that spot reduction is just not possible.

So the concept is if you want to get abs, you want to maximize calories burned.

 

The best way to get abs perhaps the fastest way to get abs is burning calories.

 

So now let’s look at how do we do that! Well, imagine the all the sit ups that you are doing, all the crunches, bicycles, leg lifts, trunk twists they are all designed to isolate a specific part of your ab. The crunches work on your 6 pack ab muscles, then you will going to do twists to work your obliques, you might even do some side bends to work on the sides, you might even do some back extensions to do the back or lower back muscles.

 

All of those were designed to isolate one muscle at a time. How many calories do you think you are burning when you isolate a specific muscle? Well, actually science has looked at this, they researched and compared how long does it take to lose fat or burning fat walking on a treadmill vs doing sit ups. And what they found in that for every 10 minutes of sit ups that you do it takes about 1 minute of walking to burn the same amount of fat.

 

Wrap your brain around that, so it takes 10 amount of sit ups to burn the same amount of fat for walking just 1 minute. It is a great example for how sit ups or any kind of twists, trunk twists do not burn many calories. You are lying on your back, your legs are not working, arms not working, your back muscles not working, shoulders not working, you are just isolating specific muscles. So the calorie expenditure is very low, so from a maximizing calorie burn perspective, sit ups, crunches, leg lifts, twists are not effective.

 

Now let’s talk about functional perspective, how does our core work?

 

How are the muscles designed in your body? They are designed to support your spine. You see, you move throughout the day, the goal is to keep your spine stable as you move. Right when you lift up a box, when you push open a door, when you get out of your bed, when you get out of your car, the goal of the all trunk muscles, back muscles are to brace. It is almost like wearing a weight lifting belt. The guys in the gym lift heavy they wear that belt because that helps them lift more weight and support their spine like your back muscles.

 

Our core muscles/ back muscles exactly do this thing, we are born with this thing, natural weight lifting belt. So the goal is to prevent the spine from shifting or twisting like this. Imagine when you are doing sit ups, crunches, leg lifts, bicycles and all that stuff what’s happening as you moving your spine you are rubbing your back bone. You have this little joints here that rub, you have big joints that crushing down on the disk that rub repeatedly.

 

Imagine how much pressure and damages are going through your back. Science says sit ups, a single sit up its like 740 pounds of pressure. That is like saying 3 NFL lineman standing on your spine as you rub your spine repeatedly. Even worse if you are doing bicycles you are rubbing this way and you are twisting and much more rubbing through your spine. And over time it develops arthritis, that’s why you don’t see 60, 70 years doing leg lifts, crunches, sit ups and stuff right?

 

Because your back, your core just can’t take it, if you are in your 20-30, it can take it but it accelerates the breakdown of your back. As far as current technology goes, there is no back replacement yet. You can’t replace your spine, so what you want to do is conserve the amount of rubbing into your body. if you keep rubbing what happens is this that the disk gets worn out, this bone gets closer to this bone and pinched its nerves.

 

And if you keep damaging the joints, here they called the facet joints you develop bone spurs and again those bone spurs it’s a reaction of crushing bone against bone. If you keep doing that your body is like create more bones to protect itself. So the bone spurs will also pinch the nerve as your develop them. And as over time as your keep repeatedly bending forward like this, round your back forward like this, there are ligaments at the back of your spine and they respond like, look if you are going to pull on me throughout the day or you know do 50-60 sit ups they respond.

 

Because your body is made to adapt to the responses by getting bigger and thicker. Unfortunately when the ligaments get bigger, it’s called ligament inflammation. They take more space and pinch the nerve. So over time all those thing contribute to back arthritis. So we know you don’t want to do repeated motions like this when you are working your core.

 

Back muscles anatomy

 

Because your core muscles does not work this way from a functional perspective. From a functional perspective they should be all working at the same time so you can push and pull things in life without your spine shifting. That’s how you should train your core muscles. Here is the beauty of this. When you train your abs, your core correctly, you actually get abs much faster.

 

So the last concept is how do you get fast abs right? You work them the way they were designed to work. Right so, let’s say for example if you’re picking up a bag of groceries, or you want to be in the gym, you take a band, kind of pulling ,let say if I took it this way and simply brace my core and brought this way across my body like this. As its moving across my body my trunk right now have to brace pretty hard so my spine does not twist and moves.

 

Now if I were to do that as I am squatting and moving the way across my body, my legs are working, my core is working, my shoulders, my back so many muscles are working that you are going to burn way more calories and you are working your abs. So proper ab exercises are disguised. They don’t look b exercises, they look like leg, shoulder, back, chest, core exercises all at once.

 

And that’s the proper way to train your abs, it’s training them to build a skill to coordinating with all of these muscles and other muscles of your body. When you isolate them on the floor or just hanging and lifting your legs that’s not how they ever function in life. So you are actually making your ab muscles dumber. In other words you are training them to not work, not coordinate, not synchronize with other muscles of your body.

 

Not only it is ineffective of burning fat, you are making your back for higher risk for injury when you are doing sit-ups, crunches, leg lifts bicycles. So when you train with this functional exercises where weight is moving across your body, imagine you took a dumbbell and you bend over, you stood in a lunge position and you rowed that’s a great core exercise.

 

So those exercise which work your core indirectly, actually works on them in way that was designed for them for life. you are actually training them to be better skilled. So when you exercise for abs, shoulders, or whatever body parts you want to keep in mind that there is a high skilled key component to movement. Exercise in a gym, outside or in home isn’t just a toll to work that muscle.

 

When you move your body your body is leaning that movement. If you do the movements that don’t help you move in life you are actually making your body worse at moving life. and that’s what we do at body solutions, we teach, how to look at movement from skill perspective not for isolating muscles for looking better. It is about moving your body more efficiently more effectively.

 

I challenge you to refrain from how you train your core and get away from exercises that isolate these muscles (abs,core etc). Because you do not want to isolate, because when you move in life you do not isolate nay single muscle. They all moving at the same time helping your body coordinate in function. So one thing that I want to offer you, if you have any questions I want to shoot video on how to train your core, it is an exercising video.

 

Workouts to get abs

 

These are the exercises that don’t look like core exercises but they are. Every one of these exercises that you see engages your core to many different directions and trains you to be better in life. I hope you have this new insight on how to train your core and help me share this with other people. This is such a epidemic, I do not know if you have it noticed 9 out of 10 American will suffer from back pain enough to take you out from work.

 

That’s 90% of you watching this at some point of your life you will have back pain, not just some achenes that you have when you wake up back pain like I can’t do life. That’s a serious problem and some of that comes from this, improper ways of training your core, some comes from posture, some of it comes from sitting too much but this? You are in gym trying to do ab exercises there is a pretty large component to that.

 

I hope you have found this video helpful, I am here to answer any of your questions.

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Side Laterals

Another common exercise that I see done improperly in gym Side Laterals for your shoulders. Most commonly you will see people hold the dumbbells kinda do this, maybe rock a bit or maybe they are very strict with their form and there is no rocking. But if you notice the motion of holding the dumbbell serving this motion. I also have a shoulder model in my hand.

 

This is the right shoulder, this is the shoulder blade, the cubical, the shoulder now, when you do a common Side Lateral rise like this especially with the elbow bent, it can present you with 2 problems. 1 with the elbow being forward, you can see it is moving in front of my body little bit the shoulder joint comes up. You can see in the shoulder joint 2 groups, when you go in that position those two groups are like lumps, they kind of smashes into this bone called the acromion.

 

If you turn your thumb down and lift your arm up high as you can, that’s about it. If I lift my thumb up or keep this neutral and lift my arm behind me, all the way. So here, thumb down, that’s it, basically the bones are touching each other and crushing. So when you are doing a typical Side Lateral raise the movement pattern that you are doing it's actually crushing your shoulder.

 

Now in between this two bones, whenever I do this the rotator cuff, bicep tendons bursitis so if you reputedly do this movement you get bursitis because you are basically smashing those soft tissues. Another problem was doing is the elbows bent, when you have a weight in your hand with the elbow bent, not only the weight wants to do this to your arm it also wants to do this to your arm.

 

Two forces acting through your shoulder, one wants to add duck or bring your arm down and another one wants to rotate. So just like bending elbow with the weight now you are stressing the rotator cuff, the external rotator work very hard to prevent your shoulder from internally rotating. So now its already working very hard to stabilizing the joint. The main function of the rotator cuff is to prevent this guy from doing that.

 

If you are doing this, working on delts your rotator muscles doing this to prevent this sliding up and that’s what the deltoids wants to do. Connects from here to here and slide up the joints when it contracts the rotator cuff passing down here, it's like a tug of war. They hopefully tie and nothing moves just rotates. By placing the elbow bent you already taxing the external rotators that much more that if they fatigue doing this, again this going to happen and much more severely.

 

Now the way around that is do it in a modified way and I am going to show you that! I am going to give a side view so that you can see. You are going to have your elbow straight. You are going to lean forward and shrug up. The reason for shrugging up is that you are moving the other bone acromion out of the way, it is already tilting up. Lock your triceps this way your elbows won’t be bent and you won't have the rotation force through the shoulder.

 

And the reason we are going through this motion, this is as high as your shoulder can go. The full contraction of the shoulder. So in this motion you are avoiding 2 things the rotation as your elbow is straight. Also by going behind you and shrug up. By shrugging up you get this bone higher so it is out of the way. When you go behind slightly you get this bone out of the way so it does not crush this bone. Click Here To Access A System For Safe Exercise Programming Made Easy  It is a modified technique to keep your shoulder much safer, healthier so that you can train much longer. Read here: Kinesio Tape for Shoulder Stability

 

Lunges

 

Do you do lunges in your workout, if you do you would be surprised to find that 99.9% chance that you are may be doing it in a way that is harmful for your body. So in this video I am going to share with you how to properly do a lunge which may actually improve your body’s health and not destroy it.

 

In gyms, in fitness magazines, in workout DVDs you will commonly see people doing lunges with holding a weight in hands or not, having your legs split like this and you are basically lunging with your upper body up and down. Very common, we see that all the time. Let’s talk about the forces or the mechanics or forces of what’s happening in your knees, in your hips when you lunge with this type of techniques.

 

How do Lunges work

 

Basically with being your upper body upright. One, it is really not functional. If you ever think about it if you had to lunge in life like you have to pick up something off the floor, can you actually reach the floor with your body being up right? Try that right now, you will find out you can’t. Because if you are to pick up a bag, a box or something on the floor through a lunge, you are going to have to lean forward to get that object. You cannot reach it while your body is straight up and down.

 

This one is not functional. In 2, let’s analyze what is happening in the knee and hip muscles. We have drew some lines here A, which is a knee joint. B, which is the Hip joint and C represents the center of mass which is kind of like the center weight of your body, the averages of all the places where the center weighted.

 

It is very important to recognize this dotted line as you can see the center of mass of your body goes roughly through B, which is your hip joint. What does this do? Well the hip muscles are things like your hamstrings, your glutes, butt muscles, hip muscles that are the muscles which put efforts in the hip joint.

 

And then you have muscles in your knee, like your thigh muscles, quadriceps in fronts. So if you lunge in a upright position, if you look at the distance between the A joint and this dotted line, that distance is very large. Whereas there is no distance between B and this dotted line because your center mass is going through that joint.

 

Now in physics what it does it, because of the line of the weight of your body center mass is going through the hip joint that means the hip muscles don’t have to work that hard. Because there is no distance, another way to settle this there is no what called torque on the hip joint as much. Where the distance between A and center mass is very high.
Which means it places tremendous amount of stress on your front thigh muscles also known as quadriceps. What is the significance of this?

 

Interestingly because your hamstring muscles do not work under this scenario much and your quadriceps muscles do all the work. Imagine inside of your knee a tug of war happening all the time.

 

When we get up from the chair, when we run, when we do things the hamstring muscles are at the one side of the tug of war, the quadriceps muscles are on the other side of tug of war. Ideally it should almost be a tie. If one side wins and other side loses, the knot the center of this tug war moves. And when you do lunges in this technique you quadriceps wins and your knee joint (5 bone on top of the lower leg bone and femur on top of the tibia, it sort of joint. Your femur and tibia and it’s kind of like this.)

 

So normally this joint should just spin, you do want this joint to slide like this. If the joints just spins you have a natural pivot if it slides you have a lot of friction. Friction also known as wear and tear of your joints accelerates the breakdown of the cartilages also known as arthritis. As you are lunging in this upright position quads win, all of your body weight and if you have weights in your hands all of that crushing down on your knee, possible thousands of pounds of pressure. And you have that when you rub your knee joint together with every repetition.

 

So this scenario creates accelerated knee arthritis, this is a great example of working out should be healthy for you but with improper technique it is destructive for your body. Sure you will get pretty looking muscles, your quads are pretty as they are developed. But you are doing in a way that is breaking down your body.

 

How do we fix this? Well you lunge with a different technique.

 

In this drawing if you have noticed this person with my ultra-high artistic skills are illustrating that your body actually leans forward. The beauty of this, this is very functional. You go and lift up a bag or box you have to lean forward, imagine a technique if you draw a straight line from your chest, your chest should kinda go through the knee.

 

Let’s analyze what this is doing, now your center of mass moves forward, so distance between A and this dotted line is smaller. That is saying that the quads work less hard and now you have distance with B which is your hip and this dotted line. That means the muscles on the other side, like the butt muscles, hamstrings they are working now.
So now you have some sort of tie within that tug of war that is happening inside of your knee.

 

So that you get much more of natural role and no sliding in the knee. So the benefit of this not only this is more functional, this is how you are going to move in life. this is the way to strengthen your muscles in way that does not destroy your knee.

 

You are not getting that rubbing, did you think about it when you work out there is a key component to movement. Imagine you are doing gymnastics, you are learning to swim, if you are throwing a football, in almost all sport activates if you are shooting a free throw there is a concern over proper technique and mere muscular movement.

 

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Wall Squats

Yes. I know this is shocking. You see this ALL the TIME in gyms, on TV, and in magazines. What you just saw was direct science on the mechanics of this common movement.

Fitness trainers do not get into the details:

 

However in fitness the global technique recommendations they do not really get into the finer finer details of movement. And that’s sort of my passion is educating you on how this finer details of movement can make the difference in a healthy body versus a damaged body. There is a difference between looking healthy, having lean muscles, low body fat percentage but you should get that in either technique right?

 

You can lunge this way, eat healthy and get a lean muscular body. The only difference is in this way your body will last a lot longer. In 10 years from now, 20 years from now even 5 years from now you are not going to have knee pain. You are not going to need replacements. This type of techniques is actually healthy for you while this is destructive.

 

I encourage you once you have this awareness, look around if you ever go into a commercial gym, watching fitness video or might be looking through a magazine you will find that this is the educated technique that are spreading in the world. This is simply from the fact that they are not analyzing movement at deeper level.

 

That sort of our passion is to teach people that this finer details of movements can completely change to unhealthy to healthy or healthy to unhealthy exercise.

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Welcome to bodysolutions, where total bodyfitness is directed by physical therapist.

What is this fitness exercise called power clean?

 

I am Rich Polar, head trainer here at bodysolutions and today we are talking about a high level exercise called the power clean. The reason we call it the power clean because it is quick, it involves multiple joints, multiple planes.

 

I am going to demonstrate it to you real quick just to show you how complex this exercise is. I am going to grab the bar here, drive my hips, shrug my shoulders and catch it. I am sure you have seen a lot of exercises like this, may be on TV or may be in your local gym.

 

I am sort of grab this here, drive my hips up and I am going to shrug and catch, is very fast. Just look at that exercise, you can see that you know I have to have good strength in my lower body and upper body. My hips have to be my hips have to be balanced. But there are lots of coaches out there and individuals who part take in the power clean and they are not ready for it.

 

And what does it causes their balance and risks injury. What I am trying to get to here as at bodysolutions we take you through a ranking system. It is called body readiness ranking system and we make sure that you are prepared to do a high level exercise like the power clean.

Read More: Hip Biomechanics

 

Power Clean is a great for athletes

 

So for an athlete, it would be awesome for an athlete to do a power clean because quick ballistic motion. For general population if you are trying to burn a lot of calories, it is multiple joints but don’t draw the gun too quick. Because what happens is that if you are not ready for it, it is going to increase your risk for injury so I encourage all of you out there to maybe come in here and see what level you are.

 

Maybe this way we can coach you and take you through our programming and this way once you get to that level 5, we will be rolling. And you will see how efficient you have become and also safer. So I encourage you to stop by and check this out.

 

Read More: Sample work out plan

Without knowing bio mechanics of our hip muscles , without knowing how our hip works we fitness trainers or gym goers can make mistakes. We might even consider hip muscle pain as good where something could be very wrong!

 

Bio Mechanics of Hip Muscles

 

In this video we will go over the bio mechanics of the hips and how we can apply torque, labor to the hip to vary the resistance for you to understand how positioning can greatly change the muscles of the hip and how they were.

 

Let’s start with some open chance, simpler understanding movements. For example I have a resistance band here. I am just going to step into so if I have the resistance all the way at my ankle. And I step out with one foot, that’s a pretty long lever. The axis of rotation of my hip joint right here all the way where the resistance is at my ankles.

 

Let’s just say this band is 5 pounds of resistance so I can simply make my hip muscles work half as hard by placing the band half way up placing the band on the knees. I just basically reduced the resistance by half. Because the level arm just got decreased by half. I can decrease it even more by coming up to mid thigh.

 

So if we are to use simple math, we were 4 meters down, then 2 meters and now 1. I just cut the resistant by 75%. That’s how it works so another example of that if you are to do side plank. Either you can do plank on the side it works on your hip abductor muscle but if you bend your knees on the floor and plank you just reduced the lever by half for the hip muscles in that exercise.

 

This is to understand how distance is changing where to resistance is applied or changing the pivot point reduce the resistance significantly.

 

Now we will talk about some common exercises and how they affect hip muscles.

One of them will be the squat, so how you squat down can strongly change if it is emphasizing the hips or emphasizing the quad or knee. It is little bit hard to understand but from a side view..

 

When you do a squat there are 2 axis of rotations mainly, the hip joint and the knee joint, these are the 2 joints moving. Because in ultra-ideal word your spin should be moving. Technically if its moving it is another pivot point. Lets just assume that. If you look at my hip joint and knee joint, I will do squat and I will emphasize on shifting my body weight or sticking my butt out, make my body weight go forward.

 

If I have my chest this far forward you might be thinking where is the lever arm, where is the axis rotation? The axis rotation is the hip joint. For every milometer I bend forward my centre of gravity or in other words my entire weight of the torso plus if you have weight on your shoulder, your arms then the average place of centre of that resistance is probably going to be around here in my core.

Mechanics and hip muscles exercises

 

I took the average mass of here and here the distance would be around here and if I draw a vertical line here, the distance of my hip, that’s the lever. However you can see I can change that lever. If I lean forward even more, I just made the lever even more further away from the hip joint. If I straight up my body I just decreased that lever to the hip joint. By bring my weight right over to the hip joint I can almost make it where my hip muscles are.

 

If I lean excessively forward I maximize the lever the distance of the resistance to the hip joint and I make the hip joint work much harder. And by leaning back like this as my centre of mass is directly on the hip joint or slightly anterior to it, now the knee have to work harder, that’s the other axis. So by leaning back I am increasing the lever to the knee and decreasing the lever to the hip.

 

When I lean forward the opposite is true, I now just changed the centre of mass going forward, now I have longer lever to my hip joint. But rather to knee I just moved the lever closer to the knee and that lever is smaller. So you see if you see any kind of squatting or lunging by having my weight up and down like this the hip muscles does not have to work this hard.

 

Because the centre of mass going pretty close to the hip joint, and when I forward like this now the hip muscle kick in. but by conversing by leaning forward my centre of mass closer to the knee so the lever is smaller. So the quad does not have to work as much. By coming back here my centre of mass much further from the knee, much longer lever the quad has to work harder.

 

So how your body is positioned dictates what muscles what muscles you are emphasizing. In an ideal world it’s a balance of both. So a technical squat, going down your chest is sort of over your knees, the centre of mass is possibly mid-way through your hip through the thigh. So there is a equal amount of contraction between the quads and hip or the hamstring complex.

 

And you want that ideal ratio, having your upper body too upright and going down you are emphasizing too much quad and not enough hamstring and hip muscles. Not only you have improper development, you also have admirable forces going through the knee essentially when the quads contract too much and the hamstrings do not.

 

Then your knee joint instead of just pivoting it also wants to slide inside the knee. Because the quadriceps is pulling it into it, in other words the femur wants to slide this way on top of the tibia. So sliding in the knee is like rubbing up cartilages in the knee with every reputation. With every repetition there is lot of weight, resistance being put through the knee. So if you keep grind the knee down with every repetition its going to accelerate joint break down.

 

Again that is not something you will feel that day, that month, year but years of improper body techniques will tear down the knee and they won’t know until its too late.

Wall slide squat can give you a knee pain and do not work on hip muscles

 

This is why we do not do a wall slide squat, when you have your feet here and you go down your centre of mass which is right here over your hip joint because you are leaning back. What that means is whenever you got resistance going through the pivot point there is no resistance essentially on that joint. So in other words by leaning against the wall my gluts and my hamstrings don’t really have to work.

 

I can just woggle my hamstrings right now they are not contracted at all. That is because the resistance is just going through the pivot point. Like standing right in the middle of the seesaw, no resistance. So the hip muscles do not work hardly at all, you core can actually not work as you are leaning against the wall.

 

And it is very admirable for your body to not have the hip and core work together with your thigh. One thing this doses is maximizing the lever of the knee because my resistance centre mass going through here, so this whole distance here is a lever arm for the knee. So my quads are working very hard.

 

The problem with this exercise is that when you have all quad and no hamstring, my knee joint really wants to slide. Infect as I am doing this there is friction of sliding in my knee joints. Again that promotes rapid ante arthritis. There is a lot of force on your quads, your body weight going down through the knee joint and with ever rep its sliding inside.

 

Its pushing on, its sliding the cartilage rubbing together with every repetition. And that is a pro knee arthritis exercise. And also you are not burning nearly as many calories as just staying a squat position like this. Because your gluts, hamstring, your back, your core everything is shut down. Not only you are burning probably 60-70% less calories, you are also accelerating the knee arthritis, you are also training your body to move in a very admirable, non-functional way of motor programming.

 

Your brain contract the muscle in way that doesn’t happen in life, so it is really important to understand the levers the bio techniques of the hips and how they applied to exercises. And how to train those movements those muscles to contract in a way that burns more calories. For most of your clients.

 

For athletes, it is really important to know how to maximize their force output by minimizing lever again backwards from your fat loss clients. For fat loss clients you want to maximize the lever and make them work as much as possible with the least amount of resistance.

 

Backwards for athletes you just wana push them the most amount of weights with least amount of efforts that’s why you need to understand the bio mechanics of lever arms so you can control the resistance placement in relative to their goals. And lastly in wall squats I typically see, it is really important to understand that you want normal contraction balance of hamstring and quads.

 

Get that activation, the balance so the knee does not get rapidly de generated from abnormal forces.