September 2025

Most, if not all of us, will experience moments or periods of self-doubt. This is perfectly natural; if you are doing something that is challenging you will inevitably ask yourself, "Can I really do this?" It is through experience and overcoming adversity that we truly learn what we are made of. Hard times make tough people, and once you face difficult circumstances you learn that you have more intestinal fortitude than you originally thought. The power of self-belief isn't innate; it is something that can be developed and strengthened over time.

Negative thoughts can be very powerful and difficult to defeat. I am often reminded of the old Henry Ford quote: "If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." The human brain is hardwired to remember negative events far more clearly than positive events, and the inevitable mistakes that occur when learning a new skill are often interpreted as negative events. I see these mistakes as positive opportunities for correction; this is why teaching and coaching must involve encouragement and positive reinforcement, while still making corrections and emphasizing accountability. Success breeds confidence, and confidence ensures continued success as long as you focus on doing the little things right. Nothing creates more confidence than doing something that you did not think was possible.

Once you finish a hard workout, shed a few pounds, or complete your first half marathon (as one Total Results recently did), that accomplishment can never be erased. If you have done something once, you can do it again. Coaches that take over losing programs often face the difficulty of getting their players to believe they can win, especially if they start the season by losing a few games. The breakthrough occurs when what they do in practice transfers into a real game scenario, which leads to a win. That first taste of success is self-perpetuating, which leads to belief in yourself. It is no different in the field of exercise.

The mind controls the body. Sure, there will be some days when you don't feel like exercising. You might be tired, stressed, and overscheduled, but don't break the commitment that you made to yourself. You cannot control most of life's circumstances, but you can always control your effort, attitude, and focus. Don't take the easy way out! Positive thinking can move mountains. When you are pushing on that movement arm and it hardly seems like it will budge, continue to give your best effort. Even when you think you cannot go on, always believe that you can. Take pride in what you are doing; you are working harder than most of the people on this planet.

Another quote from the esteemed Henry Ford: "Anyone who keeps learning stays young." Not only do we want to help you develop stronger muscles and improved conditioning, we also want to develop your ability to believe in yourself. With the proper mindset, the sky is the limit. We believe in you!

Long-term Total Results clients and regular readers of this blog know that I put very little stock into what is touted by the mainstream fitness industry. What they constitute as exercise is recreation at best, and at its worst it borders on malfeasance. When I have these discussions with people the response I often receive is, "Okay Matt, so what do you consider exercise?" In order to define something, you have to clarify what it is not. An all-inclusive definition accomplishes nothing, and according to the establishment fitness industry, just about any type of activity fits the bill. The best (and only, to date) definition of exercise comes from Ken Hutchins. He defines exercise as, "A process whereby the body performs work of a demanding nature, in accordance with muscle and joint function, in a clinically-controlled environment, within the constraints of safety, meaningfully loading the muscular structures to inroad their strength levels to stimulate a growth mechanism within minimum time." You will notice that nowhere in that definition does it say anything about aerobics, or stretching; exercise needs to be demanding (i.e. - hard), it needs to correspond with proper body function, and it needs to be controlled. It is not haphazard - it must be purposeful.

So the true essence of exercise is inroad. But what does inroad mean? A simple explanation describes it as the depth of muscular fatigue due to exercise (high-intensity weight training). Let's look a little closer. Ken gives a great explanation of inroad in Super Slow: The Ultimate Exercise Protocol. Let's say that you have a starting strength of 120 pounds, but perform a barbell curl with 70 pounds (since you are utilizing a 10/10 speed and will not have the aid of momentum). You perform several repetitions but eventually reach momentary muscular failure, meaning that your muscles' force output is now less than the weight of the barbell. This means that you have inroaded (fatigued) your strength level by 58 percent (70/120 = 58.3%). If you are using Total Results exercise protocol (and you should), this would only take between one and three minutes to achieve.

Why is this important? Much of what occurs metabolically as a result of exercise remains unknown, but we do know a few things. We know that the human body, by nature, is a logical entity. It wants to maintain homeostasis and conserve resources whenever possible (think of how difficult it is for many people to lose weight by conventional methods). We must give the body a significant reason to mobilize its resources and make physiological changes; there must be some sort of perceived threat. High intensity weight training is the threat that spurs the body into action. If we inroad the muscles deeply enough in a systemic fashion (i.e. - in a full body workout) we cross over a metabolic threshold that triggers a growth mechanism. Muscle tissue is broken down over the course of a 20 minute workout, and over the course of the next three to seven days this tissue is repaired and made stronger, along with replenishment of carbohydrate stores that were spent as a result of glycogen and ATP (adenosine triphosphate) being burned. Bear in mind that these changes can only occur in the presence of adequate nutrition, sleep, hydration, stress management, and not overdoing it with additional physical activity in the time between workouts.

How can you maximize your ability to inroad? It starts with having the correct mental approach. For the twenty minutes that you exercise, you should be 100 percent focused on your workout. Put aside all potential distractions, such as your phone, your work responsibilities, and any other of life's problems, and commit yourself completely to the task at hand. Maintain attention to detail as far as speed of movement, pace, turnarounds, and application of the squeeze technique are concerned. Be willing to pay the price; accept that for the next twenty minutes you will experience muscular discomfort, but also know that feeling is temporary. See the big picture and do not allow momentary unpleasantness to derail you from achieving something that is meaningful and lasting. After the workout you should feel fatigued but not beaten down. We want to stimulate physical improvements (which should leave you feeling tired) without grinding you into a nub. If you feel completely spent after a workout it means one of two things: you are either an Alpha subject (something that Ken refers to in his book) with superior neurological efficiency, or you are not satisfying your recovery requirements and may need to reduce your training frequency and/or volume. Most clients that exercise in the morning remark that it gives them a boost of energy that carries them for several hours into their day.

There is often a debate on exercise message boards about which is more important: form or time under load (TUL/repetitions). Ken also discusses this in Super Slow: The Ultimate Exercise Protocol. This brings to mind the assumed versus the real objective of exercise. Most people figure that they should try to complete as many repetitions as possible with as much weight as they can handle. This is incorrect; not only does this mindset lend itself to unsafe behavior and potential injury, it completely ignores the correlation between momentum and unloading of the musculature. The real objective of exercise is to systematically recruit and fatigue the muscle fibers deeply enough to stimulate an adaptive response. One should use a weight that they can safely handle at a 10/10 speed that will cause them to reach momentary muscular failure somewhere between one and three minutes of elapsed time. This time frame allows us to involve the aerobic and anaerobic metabolic pathways and recruit the greatest amount of muscle fibers. Analytically-inclined clients love to look at their progress charts to see how they are doing, but their weights and TUL only tell part of the story. I am happy to explain to them how they are progressing both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Thorough inroad is the straw that stirs the drink as far as exercise is concerned. Better form leads to a higher quality of stimulus, but it is what you do in between workouts that will have the greatest impact on the physical changes that are produced. No matter your neurological efficiency or the genetic hand you have been dealt, Total Results is the best way to maximize your physical capability. Share your experience with a friend and spread the word!