Are your workouts working out?

Ever feel like you’re spending hours at the gym every week and not seeing the results you want? 

Congrats, you're not alone!   Good news first.  You probably aren’t setting yourself up for success.  Focus is maybe the most underrated tool every single person can access whenever they want.  And it’s the best tool there is to make the same workouts you’re already doing more effective.  Easy right?  Ok, maybe not all the time.   What has surprised many of my clients is finding out there is actual research that demonstrates if you simply THINK about a muscle firing, while you’re firing that muscle, you will be able to move more weight!  I know, it sounds far fetched.  But the mind muscle connection is a real one.  I won’t get too far down the rabbit hole of anatomy and science here but if you take a second to think about it, this shouldn’t really be surprising.   

“Strength” in its most literal sense is your body’s capacity to simultaneously activate all the muscles necessary to accomplish a specific movement.  Muscle size certainly does play a role.  But your muscles, as they exist right now, are made of fibers.  Your maximum strength can only be accessed if you’re recruiting ALL of those fibers.  Your body is one efficient masterpiece.  If you are picking up a 5# weight and you’re used to picking up 100# weights do you think your body will be using ALL of the fibers it has access to?   Definitely not.  That would be an enormous waste of energy.  Not useful as an evolutionary trait.  What the body needs is a reason to fire all those fibers.  

Yes, theoretically, the easiest way is to simply lift more weight and “force” the body to respond to a stimulus to activate all the fibers that comprise it.  However, this runs into a HUGE problem when you start to use compound or functional movements.  While wildly beneficial (and I highly recommend doing them) those types of movements require many different muscles to turn on and fire in a very specific sequence.  Each muscle in these movements serves a unique purpose that cannot be replicated by another muscle.  That’s why true strength is so difficult to achieve (now you can queue your visual of Arnold).  Professionals spend years honing specific movement patterns then building very specific strength of each muscle involved to maximally complete something specific.   That’s why the best baseball players, swimmers, and weight lifters all look very different.  Their muscles are highly trained in different ways.  

Let's leave the specificity discussion for another time.  How does this relate to focus and your current workouts?  Good question.  I like to define “Focus” as the removal of all other distractions.  Think back to anything you’ve ever felt proud of doing well.  What were the circumstances around that?  Do you remember thinking about your next meal?  Do you remember thinking about your girlfriend, boyfriend, children, spouse?  Do you remember thinking about what you were wearing?  I’m willing to bet the answer is a unanimous no.  You were only focused on the one thing you set out to do.  The best part of the human body is also the worst; it will only adapt to the forces you expose it to.  If you are constantly distracted and putting in ½ effort your body will only adapt to what you accomplish at ½ effort.  If you constantly expose it to focused, intentional effort guess what…that’s what it’s going to start adapting to!   This does NOT mean more weights every time.  The reason multiple professions are built around exercise and its the subject of hundreds of thousands of research studies is that it’s more complicated than that.  

My take-away point today is to do a quick check of “how” you’re working out first before diving into “what” you are doing for a workout.  The best designed workout in the world won’t help if you aren’t giving it your full attention!

Demystifying Program Design

Program design can be tricky but it doesn’t have to be.  To get a measurable amount of actual strength gain you need to hit between 10-30 sets a week.  Yes, 30 is a lot.  You likely won’t run into that range unless you’re in exceptionally good shape, have very specific workout goals, and have a lot of free time.  So lets assume 10 sets is the target for most people.  Three sets of an exercise that hits a muscle group 3 days a week gives you 9 total sets…so one of those days toss in an extra set and you’re good to go.  Example, if you want to target your quads you can try to isolate them with a split squat movement or a leg extension.  Even if you set it up to be 3 sets of 10 (which is a traditional beginner series) you’d see notable strength gains if you would not have been able to complete an 11th or 12th rep during each of those sets. 

One thing you have to take into account is that number 10 comes from a high RPE (rating of perceived exertion) challenge.  You won’t get the strength effect if you’re leaving a lot of reps in the tank each set.  If you complete a set of 10 but you could have done 15, your quad isn’t going to get stronger.  You have to be stressing your system for all 10 sets.  Otherwise you’ll need to add more sets or change your set structure to more reps or pick a different exercise where you can exert yourself more forcefully.  Given the high strain of these required 10 sets make sure you’re warmed up property before you start counting towards the 10.   

The huge number of variables to consider when making a fully program can be intimidating but keep this one at the top of your list and you’ll start to see clear progress in 4-6 weeks.   So, give it a shot!  Shoot me a message if you get stuck along the way.

When is dry needling appropriate?

Stim current about to be applied to a needle in the left lumbar multifidi

Answer:  For a huge number of conditions.  Maybe a better question would be when is dry needling NOT appropriate.   

When thinking about if dry needling could be useful for you it’s necessary to know what it’s often used for. The goal of dry needling is to create a very controlled local trauma to an area not getting good blood flow.  These areas often manifest as muscle knots, trigger points, or other pain generators.  The currency of healing is blood flow…there is no second currency.   You have many important biochemicals in your body relating to the exact science of how tissue is healed but none of them can get to the damaged tissue without blood flow!  Surgeons can’t perform surgery if they can’t get to the hospital!  All exercises, modalities, prayers, seances, (whatever you’ve got going on) are considered to be physically successful if they bring blood flow effectively to an area.   

So, if you have an acute injury, surgery, post intensive lift, or any condition where the body already has a natural high flow of blood to an area you are unlikely to benefit from this aspect of dry needling.   In a similar vein if you’re already successful getting blood flow to an area with massage, hot pack, etc. you likely won’t see an appreciable benefit from dry needling for this specific function.    

Enter the second major benefit; turning on/retraining a malfunctioning/nonfunctioning muscle.  This is maybe the best tool physical therapists have in their toolbox for this specific problem.  It’s the only modality that gets below the skin (electrical current the exception, but even this is not specific).  There are some extraordinary therapists out there who can use their hands to do some amazing things.  But they are limited by having to push through the skin, fascial layers and any superficial muscles before they can impact any deeper muscle tissue.  Often times simply getting the needle into the right area is all you need before the muscle ‘wakes up’ and starts responding to targeted exercise.  

Once you have the muscle turned on and well supplied with blood put it to work!   All good dry needling sessions are followed by use of the muscle in question.  Doesn’t have to be heavy lifting, but you’ve now got blood flow and a very awake muscle primed for movement.