Recent Blog Posts
Exercise, Strength Training
February 4, 2010
I recently was asked to write a paper for the NSCA Hot Topic series, and decided to address one of the most controversial subjects in the fitness field: namely, are full squats bad for your knees? As I detailed in the article, the answer is no, deep squats do not pose increased risk of injury to the knees *provided* you have no existing knee issues. Without question, deep squats may be contraindicated for those with knee pathology depending on the extent of the injury (it should be noted that any exercise may contraindicated because of injury). If you fall into this category, a qualified physician specializing in sports medicine should be able to assess what you can and can’t do. Otherwise, squat depth should not be an issue from an injury perspective. In fact, the deeper range of the squat is actually protective of many of the knee structures!
Assuming you have healthy knee function, what you should in fact consider with respect to squat depth are your goals. Deep squats have relevance to various sports, as well as many activities of daily living. These are powerful reasons why you would be well served by squatting as low as possible, at least on some of your sets. What’s more, glute involvement increases the lower you go in a squat. This means that if you want to maximize the development of your butt, then deep squats are highly beneficial. On the other hand, quadriceps development is greatest squatting to parallel. So if you are most concerned with developing your frontal thighs, deep squats might not be a necessity.
The bottom line is, don’t be afraid to squat low as long as you don’t have any existing knee problems. Make a decision based on your goals, not fear of injury. If you’re interested in reading about the science on the topic, you can check out my Hot Topic article at the link below.
The Biomechanics of Squat Depth
Stay Fit!
Brad
Exercise, Strength Training
February 2, 2010
In previous blog posts, I’ve addressed the importance of resistance training in reducing body fat and maintaining weight loss. You may remember that this was a hot topic over the summer in my rebuttal to the Time Magazine article on whether exercise is beneficial for losing weight. Now comes yet more evidence to back up these claims.
In a study published in the prestigious journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, a research group led by Jennifer Bea evaluated the effects of strength training on 122 postmenopausal women over the course of a 6-year period. All of the women had been previously sedentary. At the beginning of the study, 65 of the women were placed in an exercise program consisting of various strength training training exercises including squats and presses. A year into the study, 32 of the remaining non-exercisers were placed on the exercise program, leaving 25 of the women to serve as controls who did not exercise throughout the entire period studied. What was the outcome? As you may have guessed, strength training had a positive effect on weight management. Specifically, both exercise frequency and the amount of weight lifted were inversely associated with weight gain (i.e. those who exercised more and lifted more had lower body weights). On the whole, those who lifted were significantly leaner than those who didn’t.
For anyone who has read this blog, these results should not come as a surprise. The metabolic benefits attributed to lifting weights have been well documented. Not only is there a significant caloric cost associated with strength training (provided rest intervals are limited and sets are sufficiently challenging), but it also increases excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (i.e. the “afterburn”) so that calorie burning continues for up to 38 hours or more after a workout. Further, muscle itself is a metabolically active tissue that serves to keep your metabolism stoked round the clock. By increasing muscle development, strength training indirectly promotes better weight management.
Bottom line: An exercise program aimed at weight loss should always have a strength training component. While aerobic exercise certainly will help to expedite fat loss, nothing replaces lifting weights for enhancing fat burning and, more importantly, keeping the weight off over the long term. Lift to lose!
Stay Fit!
Brad
Reference:
Bea JW, Cussler EC, Going SB, Blew RM, Metcalfe LL, Lohman TG. Resistance Training Predicts Six-Year Body Composition Change in Postmenopausal Women. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2009 Dec 14.
Exercise
January 9, 2010
Those familiar with my teachings know that I’m a big proponent of establishing a mind-to-muscle connection when performing resistance exercise. I’ve gone into extensive detail in my books on exactly how to incorporate mind-to-muscle training during the course of a workout. Now, a recent study published in the prestigious Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research shows just how effective the technique can be. Using a technique called EMG that measures the electrical activity of muscles during exercise, researchers found that focusing on latissimus dorsi (i.e. a large back muscle) significantly increased its activity during performance of the lat pulldown. This has major implications if you’re trying to optimize body composition.
Understand that strength training is not simply the act of lifting a weight from Point A to Point B. Rather, you must concentrate on the target muscle(s) that you’re working and channel your efforts into making those muscles exert the required force to execute the lift. Otherwise, secondary muscle movers are bound to dominate during performance, reducing activity of the target muscle.
Now this doesn’t mean you’ll isolate the target muscles — complete muscular isolation is a near impossibility during traditional strength training. But you will maximize the work performed by the intended muscles, thus optimizing their development. If you don’t already use the technique, I urge you to give it a try. No doubt it will improve your results — guaranteed.
Stay Fit!
Brad
Snyder BJ, Leech JR. Voluntary increase in latissimus dorsi muscle activity during the lat pull-down following expert instruction. J Strength Cond Res. 2009 Nov;23(8):2204-9.
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Exercise
January 5, 2010
You’ve no doubt seen them. Fast-talking pitchmen hawking “must have” products over the airwaves. The ads used to be relegated to late-night TV, but now they’re on morning, noon, and evening. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry that keeps getting bigger — which is unfortunate for you, the consumer.
As reported by the New York Post, Consumer Reports recently issued a scathing indictment of products sold through infomercials. In a nutshell, they found that most are simply junk. This is particularly true of fitness equipment, which are notorious for making exorbitant claims that have no basis in reality. Not all infomercial-based fitness products are bad, mind you, but the good ones are few and far between.
Understand that infomercials rely on impulse purchases. The producers of the infomercials craft the ad to make you feel as though you need the product now. Before and after photos are used to suggest amazing weight loss and muscle development (read the fine print to see that “results are not typical” — and usually have nothing to do with the product). Celebrity endorsements often help to lend credibility (the celebrities are well-paid for their endorsement and what does an actor really know about fitness, anyway?). The ads invariably culminate by making an “irresistible” offer, throwing in freebies that you have no use for and sometimes cost additional shipping. And then of course there’s the ubiquitous “money back guarantee.” Great, no risk, right? Think again. Not only is it a major hassle to return a product, the consumer also is responsible for return shipping costs. Moreover, by the time you figure out that the unit is crap, the money back guarantee has expired.
My advice is to stay clear purchasing any fitness product you see on TV without checking it out first. Jot down the name of the product and do a search on the internet. Read unbiased reviews (I’m in the process of adding more “As Seen on TV” reviews to my site, Lookgreatnaked.com). See if any complaints are lodged against the company selling the product or the product itself. And if everything checks out and you still want to purchase the unit, evaluate your options. A trick used by many infomercial companies is to keep the price of the unit modest and then charge outlandish shipping fees that are far in excess of actual costs. Instead of purchasing direct, you might be able to get it in a store or through a reputable e-tailer such as Amazon.com. Bottom line: Be an educated fitness consumer and you won’t get burned by hucksters looking to make a quick buck.
Stay Fit!
Brad
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Exercise
January 1, 2010
Happy New Year!
Yep, another year has come and gone. And with the turn of the new year, I’m sure many of you have made a resolution to get into shape and/or lose weight. If so, great! Deciding to do something is the easy part. Unfortunately, the majority who make fitness-related resolutions stop working out within a few months. So how do you go about ensuring that you don’t become a fitness statistic? Set goals!
Those who’ve read my books know that I’m a huge proponent of setting goals as part of an exercise program. In fact, it’s the first thing you should do before ever setting foot in the gym. Setting goals is the best way to stay focused on why you’re expending all that sweat and effort. It helps to maintain motivation over the long haul, and has proven to increase exercise adherence.
Here’s a short course on making sure your goals are up to speed. With respect to setting goals, I advocate the SMART acronym. Namely, goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Break down long term goals into shorter term goals of four to six weeks. Once you accomplish your short-term goals, set new short- term goals. And once you accomplish the long-term goal, set a new long-term goal and again break it down into shorter-term goals. Finally, make sure you write down your goals. Committing goals to paper makes them more tangible, and has been shown to promote a greater sense of obligation to follow through and accomplish them.
Stay Fit!
Brad
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Exercise
November 17, 2009
I’m often asked about whether the workouts at chain gyms such as Curves and Shapes for Women are comparable to traditional exercise regimens. The answer in a word: no. Here’s the scoop…
The Curves and Shapes for Women programs use something called hydraulic machines as the primary training modality. The biggest problem with these types of machines is that they don’t have an ‘eccentric’ component. This means on the ‘lowering phase’, there is no muscular resistance of the agonist muscle. Why is this an issue? Well, the eccentric component has been shown to be vitally important to muscle development. During eccentric activities, there is greater force applied to the muscles and a heightened stimulus to fast twitch fibers—those most conducive towards development. Translation: By eliminating the eccentric component, you end up missing out on more than half the benefit of the exercise and results suffer accordingly.
Moreover, there is no variety in this type of a program. Understand that your muscles are comprised of many thousands of threadlike fibers. When you perform, say, a flat chest press, you will work a large number of the fibers in your pectoral muscles, but not all of them. Only by adding in moves like incline presses, flyes, cable crossovers, etc., will you tap into every fiber of the muscle, thereby promoting complete muscular development. Remember, variety is the spice of exercise; the more you switch around your workout and incorporate different movements into your regimen, the better your results.
Finally, although machines certainly can have a place in a training regimen, they don’t compare to free weights and cables as far as transfer of skills to everyday tasks. With machines, you can only move the stack in one direction. Thus, there is little need to stabilize the movement. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case if you go to pick up a package or move a piece of furniture. Free weights and cables, on the other hand, require that you maintain balance in all planes of movements, allowing for greater functional transfer.
In a nutshell, I’m a proponent of anything that gets people off the couch and into the gym and that includes gyms such as Curves and Shapes for Women. But it’s important to understand that this type of workout won’t be as productive as if you’d used a traditional weight training protocol. A combination of free weights, machines and cables will always be your best bet if your goal is to get into shape.
Stay Fit!
Brad
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Exercise
October 18, 2009
The New York Times had an excellent article about the importance (or lack thereof) with “cooling down” after exercise (and it’s good to see a publication that consistently gets it’s fact right on exercise). For years, I’ve discussed this topic in my Facts and Fallacies of Fitness seminars. And the fact is, there is scant research supporting the necessity of the post-workout cool down.
As pointed out in the Times article, one of the primary theories behind cooling down is to reduce lactic acid buildup and thus post-exercise muscle soreness. Unfortunately, the idea that lactic acid causes muscle soreness has no credence. Zilch! For those interested in the specifics of post-exercise muscle soreness, see my article Understanding Exercise-Induced Muscle Soreness. Bottom line is that cooling down won’t have any effect on diminishing muscle soreness — it isn’t consistent with the genesis of how and why people get sore from exercise.
Now the cool down *might* have some benefit in helping to restore blood flow after very intense exercise. Blood can pool in muscles following intense training, and gradually reducing exercise intensity can potentially help to restore circulation throughout the body. However, as Dr. Paul Thompson notes in the Times article, the vast majority of people don’t just plop down on the couch as soon as their workout ends. Rather, they walk around for at least a little while, providing the same effect as cooling down. Only a few minutes of light activity should be necessary to produce desired benefits.
Certainly there is nothing inherently wrong with cooling down after exercise, but there is a cost: namely, it takes time. And time is one of our most precious commodities. Most people want to finish their workout as efficiently as possible, and the cool down is a good place to trim unnecessary time from your routine.
Stay Fit!
Brad
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Exercise
October 12, 2009
Wanted to let everyone know that I’ve added new videos to my YouTube channel. You can view them at the following link: Exercise Video Demonstrations
Enjoy!
Brad
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Exercise
October 8, 2009
Exercising during pregnancy is one of the most important things a woman can do, not only for her own body and mind, but also for the the health of the fetus. Staying fit while pregnant has been shown to confer an array of benefits, including improved functional capacity, enhanced mood, reduced incidence of lower back, easier labor, and the prevention of disease states such as maternal hypertension and preeclampsia. Moreover, babies born to women who exercise throughout term tend to be leaner and are more neurodevelopmentally advanced (i.e. have better cognitive function) by the age of five.
I recently did an interview with the Canadian Press on the topic that was picked up by news outlets across Canada. You can read the article at the following link: The Do’s, Don’ts of Exercise During Pregnancy. Hopefully it will open some eyes and stress the importance of maternal exercise.
Stay Fit!
Brad
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Exercise
October 4, 2009
I’m extremely pleased to announce that my new book, Women’s Home Workout Bible, has just been released! The book is in full color, with over 160 exercises and a dozen different workout routines. If you work out at home, this is without question the ultimate guide for optimizing your fitness results. I guarantee you’ll find it to be the most thorough book on the subject. Amazon.com is currently offering the book at a significant discount. You can read more about it at the link below:
Women’s Home Workout Bible
Stay Fit!
Brad
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