Archive: Around Town

A personal training client recently commented during a session, "I really have to think about what I am doing." Ironically, this is probably what people hate the most about quality strength exercises. For the most part, making strength training part of your lifestyle requires a "mindless" fitness routine. Similar to this idea, Brian Wansink, Nutrition PhD and author of Mindless Eating, says, "The best diet is the diet you don't know you're on." Weight machines provide a mindlessness to strength training in that all you have to do is sit down and move a lever arm; i.e. no-brainer. However, fitness equipment manufacturers have removed the true value of strength training by making their machines "foolproof."

The true value of strength training is to holistically challenge the nervous system and the complete muscular system made up of stabilizing muscles, neutralizing muscles, and prime moving muscles. For some bodybuilding reason, equipment manufacturers decided that the prime movers of a movement were the only muscles that mattered. If a new gym opened in town and all you see is an open room lined with dumbbells, medicine balls, and other free weights, would you join? In other words, if there was no farm of weightlifting machines and cardio machines, would you still be able to join?

This is the point in the column when I offer you the red pill or the blue pill (Matrix, 1999): "You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland...and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I'm offering is the truth, nothing more"-Morpheus.

One example is a seated chest press machine versus a standard dumbbell bench press (similar movement patterns). A typical seated chest press isolates the prime movers (front shoulder, chest, tricep) by keeping the movement in a strict fixed plane. A dumbbell chest press allows for a one arm three dimensional multi-planar pushing motion that forces shoulder stabilizers to hold the arm in place, neutralizing muscles to keep the joint safe, and the prime moving muscles to do most of the work. This whole shoulder movement during the bench press also activates the core musculature more than the seated machine.

The machine seated chest press is certainly mindless in that someone does not have to think about what they are doing; but is it the best tool for your strength training? If you ever watch a beginning weightlifter do a dumbbell bench press, they resemble a newborn foal, challenging the proprioception, balance, and control. This is a good thing, not a bad thing as the fitness world and textbooks tell you. More thinking has to be done to control a "free" weight but the nervous system learns the movement quickly. The body and its muscles will adapt and be better for it in the long run.

There is also an important mindless aspect to free weight and bodyweight exercises: all the involved muscles activate without you having to think about it. It is a trendy personal trainer practice to cue clients to activate core musculature by "drawing in" or "tightening" the abs. Gray Cook, PT, notes that a proper weight-training exercise should mindlessly activate the reflexive core musculature and not have to be told to do it.

So, did you take the red pill or the blue pill? Gyms are inevitably designed so people don't have to think, but as Morpheus taught, "I am trying to free your mind, Neo, but I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it" (Matrix, 1999). Stay strong.

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