Preconceived Ideas About Exercise

I am often hesitant to tell people that I meet exactly what it is that I do for a living. That is not because I am embarrassed about my work; in fact, it is quite the opposite. I am proud of everything that we have accomplished at Total Results over the past 23 years and I believe wholeheartedly in our philosophy and everything that we stand for. The reason I say this is because discussing exercise with most people can be a tricky proposition. For one thing, many people hold their exercise ideals as tightly as they do with their views on religion and politics. Most individuals have been grossly misinformed by what they see in gyms and in the media, and as a result they have virtually no idea how proper weight training works in terms of how physical improvements are made. Talking to people about this subject and helping them to understand can be like running into a brick wall. Some people are willing to learn, and those individuals often eventually become Total Results clients. Others hold onto their preconceived notions about exercise and cannot make the intellectual leap to the next level.

"More exercise must be better." This mantra is usually touted by people who don't like to work intensely. They would much rather perform more exercises and spend more time in the gym (much of it spent socializing) then work with the requisite effort and focus that will bring optimal results. One of our clients, who has been working with us for several years, recently had a conversation with a friend of his who is a bodybuilder. Our client, who is tall and very lean, was told by his friend that if he wanted to add more muscle he just needed to "add more weight" to what he was lifting. Yes, there are people out there that still think this way. They believe that if some is good, more is better. You can see how this could develop into a slippery slope very quickly. At what point is it enough? One's safety can very easily become compromised with too heavy of a mechanical load, and overuse injury and overtraining can quickly happen with too high a volume of training as well as training too often.

"You have to train fast to be fast." This is still the foundation of the Olympic lifting crowd, and unfortunately it is still pervasive in organized team sports at the high school, college, and professional levels. These individuals mistakenly believe that in order to train the fast-twitch muscle fibers (which have the greatest capacity for power, explosiveness, and growth), you must lift weights fast. This is pure nonsense, and it is a display of ignorance because they likely have never heard of the size principle of recruitment. This means that when a mechanical load is placed on the body, muscle fibers are recruited in sequential order based on size. Slow-twitch fibers are recruited first, followed by intermediate-twitch fibers, and then fast-twitch fibers. You cannot go out of order! Fast twitch fibers are only recruited if the intensity of effort exhausts the slow-twitch and intermediate-twitch fibers first. Lifting weights in an explosive fashion only increases the risk of injury.

"Split routines are the way to go." Don't go by what you read in fitness magazines or bodybuilding forums. Most people that spend time in these forums (even in high-intensity forums) have entirely too much time on their hands, and their views are severely misguided. Split routines, in which you divide your workouts up each week based on training certain body parts, are a surefire way to grind your progress to a halt by overtraining. Your body is more than just a collection of parts. It functions as a unit, and should be trained as such; that is why we perform whole-body workouts at Total Results. If you train with the proper amount of focus and effort, one or two workouts per week consisting of five to seven exercises will stimulate optimal gains while not tapping out your body's fragile recovery ability.

"20 minutes can't possibly be enough." You are paying for results, not simply just trying to rack up as much time in the gym as possible. The human body is resistant to change; it wants to maintain the status quo as much as it can. You must give the body a very good reason to adapt, and that is where intensity of effort becomes critical. The body perceives a high-intensity weight training workout (particularly when you use a slow speed of movement and go to muscular failure) as an existential threat, so it must mobilize its resources to make physical improvements to guard against this "threat." If you are working with the proper amount of effort, a 20 minute workout is not simply something we can get away with, it becomes a necessity to keep the workout brief. Your genetics play a significant role in determining what type of visual physical improvements you make from Total Results workouts, but regardless of your genetics you can become stronger, better conditioned, more resistant to injury, and more fit if you put forth the effort on a consistent basis.

Exercise must be purposeful, not haphazard or instinctive. It's not about trends or fads, or what happens to be currently popular. Most people are not particularly sophisticated when it comes to understanding exercise. The media must carry much of the blame for this, but the individual should also bear responsibility. The correct information is out there, it just takes effort to uncover it. The Total Results exercise philosophy is built on tried and true principles that go back over a half century. Time is the most precious commodity that we have; don't waste it by pursuing ineffective mediums. Choose Total Results.