Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about the importance of muscle burn...   Amy Hudson and Brian Cygan explain why that feeling of your muscles burning is exactly what you want to feel every time you go to the gym. Learn why muscle burn is one of the best indications that you’re exercising at the right intensity and without it, you won’t get the fitness results you’re looking for. The intensity of an exercise is crucial to achieving the fitness results you want, and the feeling of muscle burn is a positive indication of that intensity. Effective exercise is simply a stimulus, where you stress the body in order for it to change for the better. Effective strength training needs to be intense enough to serve as that stimulus. Labored breathing, muscle burning, and a little discomfort are necessary elements of that kind of exercise. If you’re not experiencing some level of discomfort when exercising you are just going through the motions and aren’t putting in enough effort to see any real results. The fast-twitch muscle fibers are the ones that burn during exercise and they are the main focus of high-intensity exercise. The reason they burn is because they utilize the anaerobic subsystem of metabolism. Fast-twitch muscle fibers store sugar in the form of glycogen, and that’s what is consumed when exercising at an adequate intensity level. Muscle burn is a sign that you’re really tapping into the stored energy of your muscles, which is a good thing and you need to do to get stronger. Some people have more fast-twitch muscles than others and some muscle groups have more fast-twitch muscle fibers than others. Our natural response to the sensation of muscle burn is to be worried, but it’s okay to keep pushing through. The burn sensation is different from pain. As muscles fatigue near the end of a set, that’s when coaching and encouragement are vital. The brain is a prediction machine, and we have to intentionally override the survival mechanisms that tell us to stop exercising and preserve some energy in order to achieve the greatest results. People often look to muscle soreness as an indication that the workout was effective, but it doesn’t actually correlate to results later on. Muscle burn doesn’t necessarily lead to muscle soreness afterward. Eccentric training doesn’t burn as much as basic strength training, but it does produce more soreness later on. Delayed onset muscle soreness occurs more at the beginning of a new program and tends to reduce over time. The Exerbotics equipment gives Strength Coach clients an important advantage but showing progress over time instead of relying on sensations like muscle soreness. If your exercise isn’t delivering any changes to your body, then it’s not intense enough.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about life-changing advice and details about pre-diabetes...   Amy and Brian break down the science behind pre-diabetes and how strength training is the most efficient and effective way to escape the negative feedback loop of insulin resistance, systemic inflammation, and weight gain. If you or someone you know has been diagnosed as pre-diabetic, this information could change your life. Approximately 1 in 3 Americans are pre-diabetic, which increases their risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, and most people don’t even realize they are at risk. Pre-diabetes also increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, problems with vision, and amputation later on in life. There are two leading factors to pre-diabetes: exercise and nutrition. As we lose muscle as we age, we develop insulin resistance which exacerbates the problem. High blood sugar levels over time lead to the wearing out of the body’s ability to even produce insulin. The good news is that pre-diabetes is a very modifiable condition that can be positively affected by exercise and proper nutrition. When we condition our muscles, we improve insulin sensitivity. Fast twitch muscle fibers store sugar in the form of glycogen, which removes it from the bloodstream. When muscles resist the effect of insulin, the insulin remains in the bloodstream at elevated levels and leads to systemic inflammation. Systemic inflammation is the root cause of all the health issues mentioned. Unlike acute inflammation, you don’t feel systemic inflammation except for the symptoms of the diseases and the effects of aging. The most important lifestyle recommendations are to start eating a whole food diet, eliminate high carbohydrates and refined sugars, and then begin strength training. A1C is the measurement of how saturated your red blood cells have become over a 90 day period. Whole food and whole effort strength training are how to keep that number in the safe range. Only strength training can target the fast twitch muscle fibers which are directly related to A1C levels in your body. People can experience tremendous improvements in their A1C levels over a short period of time just by implementing a strength training program in their life. If your doctor has diagnosed you as pre-diabetic, they are going to recommend exercise, and whole effort strength training is your best bet. Research shows that losing the first 5% of your body weight confers the majority of the health benefits, which is good because that means it’s easier to see results in a short period of time. Diabetes predisposes you to weight gain, but the reverse is also true. Elevated insulin levels, weight gain, and insulin resistance act on each other, which leads to a dangerous feedback loop. The best way to break the cycle is smart and brief strength training sessions.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about the Exercise Coach's strong business model...   Amy and Jesse Hudson explore the reasons the Exercise Coach saw phenomenal growth over the past 18 months while other fitness brands struggled to stay open. Learn about the key differences in the business model that make the Exercise Coach a great franchise to open, and why the community of franchisees that support one another is the secret ingredient to franchise success. Jesse is the National Franchise Director for the Exercise Coach. His job is to work with franchise candidates and educating them on what it means to open an Exercise Coach location and recruiting quality business owners to help continue the company’s growth. The last year was notoriously difficult for the fitness industry. Jesse had the opportunity to write an article last year detailing the growth of the Exercise Coach during the Covid pandemic in a national franchise journal. The number one factor that Jesse identified of the Exercise Coach brand was the one-to-one service delivery. Coach-led exercise environments have shown that they deliver excellent results, and this operating model has proven to be very resilient over the last year and really set the Exercise Coach apart from the traditional gyms. Even during restrictions, the Exercise Coach was able to train and cater to the same number of clients. The fact that it’s a personal training brand that doesn’t need as many clients in a single room has kept the Exercise Coach as a very desirable option for franchisee candidates. One thing that franchise candidates notice when they go through the process is the strength of the culture of the company. Without a good relationship between the franchisee and the franchisor, the brand suffers but people saw that Exercise Coach was a brand that went above and beyond to support franchisees. In franchise evaluation, there is a process called validation where you independently verify the information you’re receiving. This was another major factor in the growth of the Exercise Coach as existing franchisees felt well taken care of. The third component of the Exercise Coach’s strong growth is the franchise owners themselves. For most franchise owners, it’s their first time in business and 2020 was a time where many people questioned their decisions. When you go through a crisis, you can’t be certain what’s going to happen but Exercise Coach franchisees really came together to help offer each other advice and support on how to deal with the challenges over the past year. As unfortunate as it is to go through something like the pandemic, in some ways, it does reveal the strength or the weakness in a brand, and we can definitely say that the pandemic revealed a lot of strength within the Exercise Coach. The Exercise Coach is positioned for even greater growth in 2021. There are currently over 120 locations operating right now, with an additional 100 territories coming in the US. The long-term development goal is to open 50-60 territories each year going forward. There is a wave coming. People want to get in shape and spend money on themselves and their families again. The Exercise Coach continues to be one of the strongest fitness franchises in the industry and many investors are recognizing that. The high-tech and completely personalized approach is the future of fitness, and more people and investors are realizing that and coming on board. It’s much easier to walk into a system already in place and run with it, opening a franchise is a great way to start. Jesse believes that the Exercise Coach is going to be the best in fitness over the next three to five years.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about misconceptions about machines and if free weights or machines are better...   Amy and Brian settle the age-old debate of which one is better: free weights or machines? Learn about some common misconceptions about machines that prevent people from getting the fitness results they want in the timeframe they want, and why free weights can lead to reduced strength gains and a higher risk of injury. Spoiler alert: You’re not going to find any free weights at any of the Exercise Coach locations and for good reason. There is a significant strength training advantage to using machines over free weights and it has to do with the purpose of exercise. The results we want from exercise are muscle and neurological adaptations, and that happens when we expose the body to the right type of muscle loading for the right length of time. You can get those results from free weights, but they come with tradeoffs, whereas machines minimize what you need to learn so you can focus on what matters most. Your body doesn’t know or care if you’re lifting a dumbbell, or you’re working on a weight machine, or an isokinetic high tech strength machine, lifting a bag of dirt, or bodyweight exercises. It all has to do with muscle activation and fatigue. The Exercise Coach uses machines because it helps people focus and feel confident in what they are doing without having to worry about the risk of injury. Using a machine will position yourself specifically to do that exercise. You won’t have to worry about the variables and skills associated with using free weights. Machine weights create an on-ramp for anyone to begin exercising and democratize high-intensity strength training. Research shows that high intensity strength training is safe for anyone and targets what matters most, which is age-related skeletal muscle loss. When we effectively and optimally work our muscles, every system of the body gets better as well. Using biomechanically correct machines is the easiest way to introduce people to high-intensity strength training. Many of the conventional exercise methods don’t make it possible for the vast majority of people to safely and confidently engage with high level strength training. One of the objections that people will bring up against using machines has to do with stabilizer muscles, but it’s actually an argument against free weights. The requirement of balancing free weights prevents you from actually applying the optimal stimulus to your muscles. Every muscle in the body can act as a stabilizer muscle. Machines can help you target those muscles directly, instead of relying on free weight exercises to hit them as a side effect. There is no such thing as muscles specific to “real world” applications. There are just muscles, and research shows that strength gains generated from machines do transfer to other types of activities. At the College of New Jersey, researchers found that people using Exerbotics machines developed strength that transferred to free weight and calisthenic exercises as well. The reverse is not always true. There is a lot of skill involved in moving free weights around, that it doesn’t necessarily transfer to other areas of life. Strength Coach clients often report back that they have noticed that everyday activities like carrying the groceries or golfing get so much easier, which are great examples of how strength changes everything. People don’t want to spend a lot of time at the gym and they don’t have to. With a science-based approach to strength training, people can get the results that matter most to them in brief and safe training sessions.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about how you can use more effort in less time...   Amy and Brian go into the science behind eccentric overload and why this little-understood movement is responsible for the incredible gains in strength Exercise Coach clients experience in their first six sessions. Find out what eccentric overload is and how to optimize your exercise so you can use more effort in less time, and see greater results. Eccentric training is well understood by research labs and high-level coaches but it’s not the most common idea for your average exerciser. It’s built into the unique way that makes Exerbotics so effective. Eccentric is simply a muscle contraction. All your muscles ever do is generate force by either contracting or detracting, and an eccentric motion is when you are attempting to shorten your muscles but the load is so great that your muscles actually lengthen. A good example is the bicep curl. When you bend your elbow to lift the dumbbell, that is the concentric portion of the muscle action. When you lower the weight is the eccentric portion. The trouble is that bicep curls are not a great eccentric training exercise. Research shows that we get better fitness results when we overload and meaningfully tax our eccentric strength. This is difficult to do with traditional exercises but is built into how the Exerbotics machine functions. There is a mechanical mismatch with gravity-based exercises. You can only lower what you first lifted, which means you can never fully optimize the exercise for the eccentric portion of the movement. You need 40% more resistance in order to effectively work your muscles eccentrically, and it’s even greater as your muscles fatigue. We need a way to apply an appropriate resistance eccentrically if we are going to tap into the benefits of eccentric training. Exerbotics is a connected strength training technology that adapts to each user’s ability and strength in concentric and eccentric movements. This allows Exercise Coach clients to give more effort in less time by capitalizing on every second of every rep. With an increase in the quality of the exercise stimulus, comes a decrease in the time spent to get results. Research shows that you are going to get strength gains that are twice as good when you can perform effective eccentric overload. You can also gain benefits to hypertrophy in shorter periods of time compared to traditional methods. Eccentric training also increases flexibility because of the increased extensibility of the muscles involved. The benefits also extend to the metabolic systems of the body. Recent research has shown improvements in cholesterol profile and a general reduction in systemic inflammation in the body. When we perform effective eccentric training we get the fitness results we want in less time, and while feeling less demanding. Eccentric training uses fewer muscle fibers but they are generating more force, which makes it a super stimulus for those muscles. The most basic exercises and protocols are automatically built into the programs of the Exercise Coach. In only six sessions at The Exercise Coach, over 7000 women saw a 33% increase in overall strength. Compare that to traditional exercises, where it can take over a year to achieve the same results.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about the science and principles behind strength training...   Brian and Amy explore the scientific research that shows that strength training is the ultimate exercise for combatting the aging process, getting into the best shape of your life, and how those principles are applied to every workout session at the Exercise Coach. Over the past few months, Brian has been working on the Strength Changes Everything Scientific Support Paper. It has hundreds of scientific resources and is designed to help people dive deeper into the science of strength training. Sarcopenia, the age related loss of strength and muscle, can be prevented and reversed. An effective intervention must target fast-twitch muscle fibers, as sarcopenia selectively affects those cells. Decades of research have led to methods that are motivating and effective for people at all fitness levels. Brian co-wrote the support paper with Dr. James Fisher, Matt Essex, and Jeremy Bourgeois. The paper is structured by introducing readers to sarcopenia and its impact on muscle loss in aging, and on society at large. When we perform science-based strength training, it changes every system of the body for the better. It also fundamentally changes what is required to get fit and healthy in less time. This paper is for anyone that wants to feel inspired and motivated by what is possible with strength training. If you’ve experienced the effects of aging, this paper will show you that you are not disqualified from being in the best shape of your life. The research continues to show that strength training is the best way to combat the aging process. This foundation will help coaches take their conviction and confidence for what they do to the next level. The paper is scientific but still approachable for the average person. It is the encapsulation of years of scientific research that will help you understand the philosophy of strength training and how the Exercise Coach puts it into practice.   Link: exercisecoach.com exercisecoach.com/scientificsupport     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about the benefits of strength training in a fun manner...   In the midst of preparing for the upcoming National Exercise Coach Conference, Brian and Amy play a game of trying to name as many benefits of strength as they possibly can without repeating themselves. As you would expect of something as important to your long-term health and performance as strength training, the ensuing list is ridiculously long and comprehensive. With the National Exercise Coach Conference approaching rapidly, Amy came up with a game to play on the podcast while Brian is busy getting preparations underway. The rules are simple: Take turns naming a specific benefit of strength training until someone gets stumped. The first batch of short and long-term benefits to strength training include: increased bone density, improved metabolism, decreased gastrointestinal transit time, decreased systemic inflammation, enhanced flexibility, improved cognition and brain function, increased level of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, lower blood pressure, increased longevity, and decreased disease risk. Diseases that have a reduced risk are: Alzheimer’s and dementia, stroke, type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, and autoimmune diseases. Further benefits of strength training include: increased vertical jump, an easier time getting off the floor and going up the stairs, increased sarcomerogenesis, increased energy, mitochondrial biogenesis, decreased joint pain, improved body image and self-confidence, improved spinal ability, improved cardiovascular health and function, enhanced joint mobility, it helps facilitate and maintain fat loss, it reduces serum insulin levels and improves insulin sensitivity, improved postprandial blood sugar, anti-aging effects, improved circulation, improved muscle density, the release of healthy muscle derived hormones, destressing, a lower resting heart rate, greater endurance, improved mood, better sleep, increased HDL, reversing sarcopenia, overall improvements in general performance in all areas of life. This gigantic list of health benefits is the reason there is the quote: “If there was a pill that contained all the benefits of exercise it would be the most widely prescribed pill in the world.”   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about what is accepted versus what is truth...   In part 2 of this interview, Brian Cygan and Dr. James Fisher discuss the science of strength and why the accepted wisdom of exercise may actually be causing more harm than good. Learn how many exercises you really need during a session, why “cardio” exercises aren’t necessary if you use the right level of effort, and how to keep yourself from getting injured by reducing the range of motion while still getting the fitness results you desire. Beyond the minimum exercise dose, you can add as many exercises as you see fit. There is a balance though. If you add too many exercises it can start to impact the frequency of which you can train. As you increase the number of exercises in one workout, you lengthen the time it takes to recover, so there’s a tradeoff. Recent studies have shown that volume is more important than frequency as well. There is an inverse relationship between someone’s ability to work hard and the length of a workout. Eight exercises seems like the optimal number for clients to be able to give their whole effort for as many exercises as they can. The accepted wisdom regarding the strength and endurance continuum is that to build strength you need a heavy load and fewer reps, and for endurance you use a lighter load and more repetitions. Studies have shown that it doesn’t particularly matter. If your strength increases your endurance also increases. As long as you use a high degree of effort you will get the optimal results. 45 seconds of time under tension is usually enough time to achieve the majority of muscle fiber recruitment if you’re using a high level of effort. Some of this depends on the person and their preference because of the perceptual and comfort differences. Longer times under load are associated with higher degrees of discomfort and negative perceptual responses. Across a broad population, this is going to have a negative impact on motivation and compliance. In order to really optimize strength training, we need to start looking at the individual perceptual response and how that impacts the motivation to stick with a program and give a whole effort during exercise. A common mistake many trainers make is recommending older people use lighter weights and increasing the number of reps they do. This often results in the person feeling sore for days and with little motivation to return to the gym. Working with a moderate load to enhance strength and muscular endurance is better. Bone mineral density is a key variable, especially in females and older adults, and we know that it only improves with impact or heavier loads. With a light weight, we run the risk of not improving bone mineral density which can result in a higher risk of injury. A number of studies show that supervision enhances results and the better the supervision, the better the results. One of the key factors with proper supervision is that they promote and enforce good technique. This serves to keep the correct muscles under tension and prevent other muscles from getting injured. If someone is getting injured in the gym, something about the technique went wrong. Supervision can help you avoid those sorts of injuries. Research seems to indicate that we can actually limit the range of motions for many exercises and still see strength increases throughout the range. Injuries typically occur at the extremes of the range of motion of an exercise, so by eliminating those ranges, you reduce the risk of injury and you can still improve strength. With most exercises, it’s not an acute injury that causes problems, it’s the wear and tear over time that creates injuries. For an adult client, the extreme ranges of motion are not helpful, and they can get the fitness results they want with a safer range. If you’re not currently doing any exercise, the best thing you can do is strength training. By doing that you will see cardiovascular improvements at the same time. High intensity training has been shown to improve the cardio-respiratory system within a matter of weeks of starting resistance training. If someone is already a cardio athlete, adding strength training may not improve their performance drastically, but there still will be other health benefits. The idea that you need to do cardio to see cardiovascular benefits and strength training to improve strength is a bit outdated. Strength training with high levels of effort has been shown to stimulate both adaptations. Even cycling, when taken to the highest level of effort, can stimulate similar levels of adaptations to lifting weights. This is why modality doesn’t matter as much as the level of effort involved. Optimal results mean safe as possible, sustainable, with maximum results and minimum time required. This is why so many trainers have landed on strength training as the most effective option. As you get older, strength training becomes a weight loss method, a way to avoid getting injured or sick, and a lifestyle of longevity.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about the science of strength and how it may affect your fitness plans and goals...   Brian Cygan and Dr. James Fisher break down the science of strength and discuss what the proper level of resistance during training is, the threshold for the effort that you need to achieve to see results, and why some exercises are best avoided if you want to see optimal fitness benefits. Fisher is an exercise scientist in the UK and was a personal trainer for a number of years before becoming a researcher. His area of research was mainly lower back pain and lower back strength and has recently been looking into the perceptual responses to resistance training. He advocates a framework of evidence-based resistance training. One of the first papers published was focused on guiding trainers and trainees on what the research supports and how to exercise the most effectively. In total, Dr. Fisher, in collaboration with researchers from around the world, has published over 100 papers. The part he enjoys the most is the fact that once one paper is published, the research always raises new questions to explore. There is a mountain of evidence that supports the health benefits of resistance training. Ultimately, all the benefits combine and stronger people have a reduced risk of all-cause mortality. In layman’s terms, the stronger you are, the harder you are to kill. The goal of most people with resistance exercise is to have a biological age that is lower than your chronological age. We want to live longer and be able to function as if we were much younger. Resistance training resets the biological clock, sometimes by decades. Studies on older males using resistance training showed they had similar cellular characteristics as men in their 20’s. The first thing you need to understand is that the key is the tension of the muscle doing the work, not just moving an external load. The evidence supports the finding that effort is key, which is where most people go wrong as they fear the hard work. Whole effort is one of the guiding principles of the Exercise Coach. The intensity of effort really matters to trigger the results we are looking for from exercise. There is also a threshold of a near maximal effort to trigger a response from the body. If people are working at a lower intensity, the volume becomes a key factor. If we train to a higher level of effort, the volume becomes unnecessary. For the average person, optimal results can be achieved with two 30 minute-or-less workouts per week. For bodybuilders, there are some questions around doing more training in order to maximize muscle growth, but for most people, they want the functionality of strength and not an increase in size. To get a whole body benefit, the minimum dose of training performed is only three exercises: an upper body pressing exercise (bench press), an upper body pulling exercise (seated row), and a lower body pressing exercise (leg press). Those can be complemented with additional multi-joint movements for other areas of the body that need work. Even under lockdown, people can see positive benefits from doing simple exercises like pushups and lunges. Squats are a unique exercise because it has a high degree of coordination and skill. You can become “stronger” at the squat without really seeing results in other areas because you are just becoming better at moving the weight up and down. This is why the leg press is a more beneficial lower body pressing exercise.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about why supervision is key to effective workouts...   When it comes to fitness results, the key to rapid, positive changes is having a coach who  can give you the accountability and motivation you need to work harder and more effectively while still being safe. Brian Cygan and Amy Hudson discuss why supervision is the key to effective strength training, and how when that’s combined with the digital feedback at the Exercise Coach, you can achieve the fitness results you’ve always wanted.   It’s been said that the most forgotten variable in strength training is supervision. There is plenty of research that verifies the personal health benefits of strength training but we need to remember that the vast majority of those studies are supervised. The researchers are effectively acting as personal trainers who are supervising and providing motivation and guidance. Other studies have shown that supervised strength training leads to greater strength increases than unsupervised training. The smaller the coach’s class size, the greater the effect. When researchers looked at supervised strength training with seniors, they found that when the supervision stops the results diminish or regress, even if the participant continues in a program on their own. The supervision of strength training is the key to making it effective. At the Exercise Coach, the coaches are present to make a difference in three areas: safety, effectiveness, and efficiency. When we talk about safety we are referring to not only keeping a session injury-free, but also that workouts can be continued over the long-term. A qualified professional is going to be watching the form and techniques used while also choosing the right loads and machines for the task. Your workouts should be designed for you and your body, focusing on your current levels of fitness, strength, and ability. The effectiveness of an exercise session is determined by the level of stimulus being applied to the body. Effort levels are of paramount importance and supervision provided by a personal trainer has to bring about higher levels of effort than an individual could manage on their own. Studies have shown that people are capable of producing more force and working harder when someone is present and giving them verbal encouragement and accountability. Digital feedback from the exercise machines, when combined with supervision, further increases a person’s ability to produce force. In order for strength training to be effective, you have to pay close attention to form and technique. This is something that a trainer can provide more effectively than someone exercising on their own. Many people fail to achieve the fitness results they are looking for from exercise because they are unable to exercise at the right intensity. It’s also possible to work at too high of an intensity and get injured. A coach helps you achieve the optimal intensity for your body. The Exercise Coach creates plans that are personalized and optimal for each individual. When it comes to efficiency, clients never have to wonder which muscles to exercise or what to do next. The coaches get everything set up according to plan. This allows the client to focus on their form and their goal and makes it possible to deliver those results with a 20-minute workout. When you work harder, it decreases the time it takes to see improvements in your fitness, which is why we optimize every second of every workout. A trainer’s supervision means that you are going to work harder, but the encouragement of a good team will make it enjoyable.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about isolation vs compound exercises...   Amy and Brian explore the question “Should you pre-exhaust your muscles with isolation exercises before taking on compound movements?” Find out why the idea of the pre-exhaustion sequence is actually hurting your fitness progress and why putting compound exercises at the very beginning of your exercise program is the key to getting the most results in the shortest amount of time. Pre-exhaustion is the idea that performing an isolation exercise prior to a compound exercise is more effective in training that particular muscle. This is mainly due to the experience and burn involved. Research out of the UK looked at pre-exhaustion to see if it had a positive effect on the fitness results of a group of athletes and they found that there was no significant difference. Pre-exhaustion training provides no greater benefit when compared with other exercise programs that involve more rest between sets or by a program that prioritises compound movements over isolation movements. This supports the approach of the Exercise Coach where you perform big movements first. Doing movements that involve a lot of muscle mass generates a greater hormonal result for the body which leads to better systemic results. By starting off with the larger, more difficult movements first you get the additional hormonal benefit which will make the following isolation movements a bit easier. Compound movements being performed early in the workout without isolation movements in front of them also allows the Exercise Coach to get better fitness data on their clients. You tend to get better results on exercises that you prioritize earlier in a workout.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about the right movements and how they may give you more time...   Discover the secret to amplifying your total-body fitness results while also spending less time at the gym. Find out why multi-joint movements can have a serious positive impact on your strength and physical fitness while taking less time to perform, as well as which exercise is the most effective movement in The Exercise Coach program. The aim of The Exercise Coach is to design workouts that are total body focused, safe, and effective while also maximizing workout motivation and consistent adherence. All exercise can be broken down into two kinds of human movements. These are multi-joint movements, also known as compound movements, and single-joint movements, also known as isolation movements. Chin-ups are the classic example of a compound movement whereas a bicep curl is an isolation movement. No matter how you move, it will always fall into one of those two categories. The Exercise Coach prioritizes compound movements due to their effectiveness and efficiency. They give you more of the results you want from an exercise program in the shortest amount of time possible. Researchers studied the effects of compound movements and found significant differences when compared to isolation movements because of their hormonal effects on the body. The leg press is perhaps the most important exercise within The Exercise Coach fitness program because of the way it delivers a total-body systemic effect. The Exercise Coach allows you to maximize results and minimize time, while providing safe and comfortable exercises to perform, which is why so many clients are able to stick to the program for the long term. Adding in compound movements to your exercise program releases a hormonal effect that will amplify the results you are looking for in other areas of the body.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn the truth about stretching before and after exercise...   Before you jump into your next exercise session, learn why what you’ve been told about stretching is completely wrong and how it can actually increase the odds of you getting injured. Brian and Amy explore some common myths regarding stretching before and after exercise and discuss whether or not stretching is a necessary component of strength training. Do you need to stretch before you work out? There are a lot of prevailing myths around stretching and exercise and people are usually coming at this from one of two angles, either to prevent injury or to increase performance. In terms of preventing injuries, stretching has been shown in a number of studies to have no impact on the likelihood of injury. Even with uncontrolled environments like a sport, stretching doesn’t seem to have an effect on the odds of getting injured. There is a difference between stretching and a dynamic warm up, which is something that can be beneficial before physical activity. In strength training, the key to preventing injuries is to control the forces that the body is exposed to. Clients in the Exercise Coach undergo no intentional stretching before exercising. Static stretching before an activity does not reduce the odds of an injury, but it does have a negative impact on performance. Over a hundred studies showed that static stretching reduced the strength of the muscle by at least 5%. Stretching is like loading a muscle so it makes sense that it would reduce the muscular capacity. When it comes to stretching after a workout, there are a couple of things that people believe. The first is to reduce muscle soreness. The trouble is soreness is not a good indicator of whether or not you performed an effective workout and not everybody gets sore after strength training. Several studies showed that stretching, before or after exercise, has no impact on delayed muscle soreness. To actually prevent muscle soreness one of the best things you can do is get your body into motion sooner. It can take delayed muscle a couple days to set in, so getting in your next workout can prevent that. A common myth regarding strength training is that it will make your muscles tight or inflexible. It’s not the case that muscles lose flexibility as they get bigger, so the idea of stretching to prevent tightness is based on a false assumption. Resistance training has been shown to actually improve flexibility, not reduce it. It’s very common, especially people who have experienced the effects of aging, that when they start to engage in a safe and effective strength training program that they will start to move better too. The best way to gain flexibility is through the safe and controlled exercises available at the Exercise Coach. When we perform strength training, especially eccentric training, our bodies produce new proteins that contribute to making our muscles more flexible, which doesn’t happen with static stretching. The main takeaways regarding stretching is that you don’t need to do it to prevent injuries before exercise and it’s not necessary to prevent soreness or stiffness. It’s okay to stretch to relax, but it’s not a necessary component of a strength training program.   Links: exercisecoach.com   This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about oxygen intake and masks...   Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not wearing a mask during exercise is a safe thing to do. Amy and Brian breakdown the studies and science behind wearing a mask and oxygen intake, and reveal why The Exercise Coach program makes wearing a mask a minor detail in the pursuit of fitness results. Covid has made wearing a mask much more common but a lot of people are wondering if it’s okay to wear a mask while exercising. At the beginning of the pandemic the Exercise Coach committed to following the various guidelines, and that includes requiring masks. Generally speaking, wearing a mask is not going to hamper your workout. A good example would be how athletes have been using altitude training masks to increase physical performance for years. They don’t strictly simulate being at a higher elevation, but they do increase the effectiveness of your lungs and breathing capacity. At ground level, we get all the oxygen we need to perform optimally. When we feel wiped out and exhausted from exercise, it’s not due to a lack of oxygen. Even with a surgical mask, you have more than enough oxygen. Studies have been completed that show there isn’t an impact on physical performance when wearing a surgical mask. They looked at the effect on blood pressure, heart rate during exercise, oxygen saturation, and carbon dioxide levels. If you have a chronic lung disease talk to your healthcare provider before performing exercise while wearing a mask. For healthy people, wearing a mask during exercise is not harmful. The Exercise Coach has seen thousands of clients over the past year and they are still getting results despite the mask. Many of the clients are actually surprised at how little impact a mask actually has. The fact that the program is brief and the studios are kept cool and well ventilated makes the workout experience quite enjoyable, even with a mask on. The workouts are still intense and effective, and since they emphasize the lowering portion of the training they net better results than traditional strength training while reducing the requirement for your body’s cardiorespiratory output to increase. Eccentric training produces more force and gets you more benefits. An emphasis on the lowering portion is an advanced training technique, yet it’s more comfortable.   Links: exercisecoach.com   This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about how smart scales can be important to your fitness journey...   Brian and Amy discuss the pros and cons of a smart scale and how using one properly can help you stay motivated and on track to hit your fitness goals. You will also learn how to avoid one of the most common mistakes people make with a smart scale that can derail them in the first few weeks of their fitness journey. What is a smart scale and how are they different? The major difference is the measurement of body composition and the connectivity of the associated apps. These kinds of scales allow you to more accurately track your relevant fitness metrics, and what gets tracked gets improved. Smart scales use a technology that has been around for decades called bioelectrical impedance. When you step on the scale it sends a small current through your body and can use the speed of the result to measure various body composition metrics. Getting the measurement of body composition regularly is a great way to see progress. When pursuing a fitness program, it’s important to track more than just bodyweight because of the increase in muscle mass and reduction of body fat. One issue that occasionally comes up when someone first starts using a smart scale is that you might notice that your body fat is going up, even though you may be losing weight and gaining muscle. This is because the measurement is based on the hydration within your body and that’s one of the first things someone sheds when beginning an exercise program. If you’re starting a new fitness habit, the first couple of weeks of smart scale measurements may be a bit misleading. It’s important to realize that the results will be more consistent and reliable over time. Smart scales are intended to be used at the same time each day. Hydration levels fluctuate throughout the day so using them at the same time will give you more consistent measurements. It’s also important to get more data points and measure your weight more often. When you get into a rhythm of measuring with a smart scale you can get enough data to say something meaningful about the trend over time. The pattern tends to look like a sawtooth on the day-to-day scale but over time you will be able to see the overall trend. All physiological changes tend to follow the same pattern. When it comes to which scale to purchase the app that comes along with it is very important. Accuracy and reliability are what you should be looking for. Knowing how much lean mass you have in your body is powerful information to know and a good indicator that your fitness and health are moving in the right direction. Maintaining optimal health and fitness is a journey, and a smart scale is a great tool that tells us we are moving in the right direction. They can also be a tool to fuel your motivation and assure you that the investment you are making is actually propelling towards the health and fitness you’re after.   Links: exercisecoach.com Six Tips to Make Your Scale a Super-Tool | Exercise Coach: exercisecoach.com/6-tips-to-make-your-scale-a-weight-loss-and-wellness-super-tool   This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about how strength training can help people with osteoporosis...   Learn why strength training is the foundation to rebuilding bone strength and bone density and why osteoporosis isn’t a permanent sentence. Amy and Brian break down the research around bone density and strength training, what exercises you should do to strengthen the most vulnerable parts of your body, and what exercises you should avoid completely.  Many people are recommended to engage in weight bearing exercise to help deal with the effects of osteoporosis. Osteoporosis and osteopenia affect millions of people of which 80% are women. Research indicates that as many as 1 in 4 women over the age of 65 have low mineral content in their spine or femur. Just moving around isn’t going to cut it in terms of reversing osteoporosis. People can be very active and still suffer from osteoporosis. You need to exercise in more meaningful ways to deal with osteoporosis and this means proper strength training. Strength training improves every system of the body for the better, and this includes the skeletal system. The goal of this kind of strength training isn’t to increase bone mineral density; the aim is to prevent future fractures. When you look at it that way, strength is the lead domino in that it improves strength, balance, and bone density. Sarcopenia also weakens the bones as well as the muscles as we age, so aiming for strength first will also address osteoporosis. Strength also acts as a shock absorber in the case where you experience a high impact force. There are two schools of thought on how strength training affects bone density. The first says that the results are sight specific and load dependent. The second says that it’s due to hormonal factors. Other research shows that your bones will not get stronger without sufficient loads. We need the bones attached to the muscles to be loaded in order for our bodies to send signals to the bones to get stronger. We need to perform exercise that directly loads the bones we want to strengthen, as well as perform exercise that creates the metabolic stimulus that elicits a full spectrum release of miocines. Building stronger bones takes time - up to multiple years to really turn around bone loss - which is often more time than it takes to see other health and fitness results. This is a path we have to travel in order to apply the level of muscle loading we need to grow stronger bones. Bone strength is a marathon, not a sprint. The very first step to improving bone strength is to begin a safe, effective strength training program. There are a few exercises that should be prioritized to strengthen bones, typically movements that address the hips, legs, and lower back. For anyone with osteoporosis, they should avoid overhead pressing movements and twisting movements.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about the optimal amount of exercise...   One of the most common questions we get at the Exercise Coach is “Is exercising twice a week really often enough?” Listen in as Brian Cygan and Amy Hudson explore why whole effort exercise twice a week is not only enough, it’s the optimal amount you need to achieve the best fitness results for your body in the shortest amount of time possible. Exercising twice a week is more than enough. In fact, exercising more often can actually be counterproductive. The most important thing you can do as you age is addressing the health of your fast-twitch muscle fibres. To stimulate and improve the quality of your fast-twitch muscle fibres the exercise needs to be intense and brief. When we work our muscles in this way it forces adaptations, which are the end results that we are seeking from an exercise program. The flipside of this intense exercise is that you need to give your body enough time to fully recover and super-compensate, which takes at least 48 hours. All the results we want from exercise, like increased muscle mass, strength, neurological efficiency, and improved insulin sensitivity, are not actually caused directly by exercising. Our bodies produce the results we want once we’ve achieved adequate recovery. If you exercise more frequently than twice a week, all we are doing is interrupting and disrupting the body’s innate ability to produce the very results we want. Overtraining can cause people to stall out and even go backward in terms of their fitness improvements. We should be able to measure the results of any exercise program, which is why this idea is built into every program at the Exercise Coach. If you’re not seeing results from your exercise routine, question whether your exercise is intense enough and whether or not you are giving your body enough time and resources to recover properly. During a workout, you are depleting the stored energy in your muscles so that they will build themselves back up over time. Your recovery time is just as important as your workouts. The consumption of your muscle’s fuel is a major metabolic signal that triggers these kinds of transformations. The answer to getting the best possible results is almost never just exercising more. The key is combining whole effort exercise and whole food nutrition to get all the results we want.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about muscle vs fat while on the road to improved health...   Brian Cygan and Amy Hudson break down the age-old question of whether muscle really weighs more than fat and why the number on the scale can be very misleading when you’re trying to improve your health and fitness. When many people start a strength training program, they look at their body composition and may wonder whether muscle is heavier than fat. The accurate answer is that muscle is more dense than fat. When people say that muscle weighs more than fat, what’s really being communicated is that muscle is more dense so it takes up less space within the body. Body fat is more voluminous. This is why you get a better change in body composition and physical health when you lose body fat as opposed to a combination of fat and muscle. The ideal approach to weight loss is to do what it takes to maximize fat loss, and the only way to do that is to combine whole food nutrition and whole effort exercise; science-based and intense strength training. If you don’t do strength training when combined with whole food nutrition, you will lose weight from both body fat and muscle mass. This can result in a slower metabolism and actually regaining the weight in the future. If you lose five pounds of body fat, you may not see a difference on the scale but still see a considerable improvement in body composition. You can lose more of your body mass overall even without losing a pound on the scale. The scale may not change over the course of the year but you will still feel stronger and have more energy and stamina. Get rid of the preconceived notions of what number on your scale means you’re healthy, and instead focus on adding strength, losing body fat, and feeling great.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about the benefits of doing the right workout...   Amy Hudson and Brian Cygan reveal the truth behind the fitness industry and why you don’t need to spend hours at the gym every week in order to stay fit and healthy. Learn the science behind the 20-minute workout and how you can achieve optimal health benefits by doing the right workout, for the right length of time, just twice a week. Is 20 minutes long enough to have a great workout? Simply put, absolutely. The training at the Exercise Coach is targeting the root cause of usual aging which is the age-related loss of muscle mass, also known as sarcopenia. Research shows that sarcopenia is a function of the loss of and weakening of fast-twitch muscle fibers. Loss of fast-twitch muscle fibers directly correlates to a weakening metabolism, weaker bones, less energy, and worse health as we age. In order to reverse the usual aging process and restore muscle mass you need to do exercises that are focused on building fast-twitch muscle fibers. This means the exercise needs to be intense enough to recruit those muscle fibers. The ideal exercise to target those muscle fibers is science-based strength training. When we work our muscles in exactly the right manner to actually use our fast-twitch muscle fibers, it’s intense and therefore needs to be brief. That’s why the workout at The Exercise Coach is only 20 minutes. The 20-minute workout is not the bare minimum you can get away with, it’s actually the specific length of time you need to optimally recruit, stimulate, and fatigue the right muscle fibers. One researcher looked at a number of studies on exercise programs and concluded that all that was necessary to get the majority of the benefits that people want from a health and fitness standpoint was to perform a strength training workout for about 20 mins no more than twice per week. The best workout with the most health benefits is the one that is necessarily brief. The higher the intensity of the workout, the less time you need to spend doing that workout. No amount of exercise, in volume or minutes, can bring about the most important results from a fitness endeavor that people are after. The key is to work at the right intensity level and engage the fast-twitch muscle fibers to reverse the aging process and restore optimal health and fitness.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about the truth to losing belly fat...   Six-pack abs are what most people think of when they think fitness goals, but how hard is it really to get that washboard stomach and lose the stubborn belly fat? Brian and Amy bust the most common myths around losing belly fat and talk about the incredible results that Exercise Coach clients can get, including reducing their belly fat, by joining the Metabolic Comeback Challenge.  A common goal for many people is to lose weight, specifically belly fat. There are two motivations that drive this goal, the first is achieving an improvement to their figure and the second is that excess belly fat is an indication that their health is not improving. Belly fat, also known as central adiposity, is a health issue and a real risk factor. One study showed that each 10cm increase in belly fat in women increased their risk of death from any cause by 8%, for men it was 12%. We know that belly fat is linked to insulin resistance and systemic inflammation, and those things working together worsen overall health. Belly fat is both a sign and a symptom of those problems. Before we learn the best ways to lose belly fat, we need to learn what doesn’t work. For example, the myth of spot reduction where you exercise particular areas of the body to lose body fat in those areas, is not how it works. The truth is the first area that you put on fat will be the last area you lose it. For men, that’s often the abdomen, and for women, that’s usually the hips and thighs. Doing exercises to shrink your stomach is not going to change this reality. When people start to lose body fat, they will notice the results in reverse. In order to actually lose belly fat, you have to combine whole effort exercise with whole food nutrition. It has nothing to do with crunches or sit ups, or even cardio. Combining strength training with sensible whole food nutrition is the best approach to losing belly fat because it results in focused weight loss, where you are only losing body fat instead of both fat and muscle at the same time. This also translates into the best shape for your body as well. At the Exercise Coach, we see people losing significant amounts of body fat, typically 5%, from a focused program of 30 days of whole effort exercise and whole food nutrition. The first 5% of weight loss that people experience in an exercise program delivers the majority of the metabolic benefits. Within one or two months, nearly everyone can experience results that are life-changing from a health standpoint. Most people will see belly fat reduction within the first 30 days of the Metabolic Comeback Challenge. Seeing a flattening of the stomach will depend on the starting point of each individual but the important thing to keep in mind is the progress you’re making. You need to persevere in order to see those results. It may be that you just need to put in another 30 to 60 days to lose that belly fat and reach your body composition goals. It doesn’t take exercising everyday or joint-punishing cardio to transform your body and hormonal health. Smart strength training and whole food nutrition is all you need to fundamentally change your life.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about preventing the ill effects of aging...   Is it safe for seniors to perform high intensity strength training? The question is actually “is it safe for them not to?” Brian Cygan and Amy Hudson discuss the science behind strength training and why high intensity, whole effort exercise is one of the best ways to prevent the ill effects of aging, even if you are afraid of your joint pain or heart issues holding you back. A number of people are curious whether strength training is an appropriate exercise for them, especially as they get older. But the real question we should be asking is whether it’s safe for seniors to avoid strength training. The science indicates that there are a number of mortality benefits associated with strength training, and individuals who don’t engage in strength training over the long term are at a higher risk of premature death. For people in their 60’s, strength training has cognitive benefits, blood pressure and blood sugar benefits, and even bone density benefits. There are two levels of safety at the Exercise Coach, orthopedic safety and cardiovascular safety. Researchers have concluded that high intensity strength training, when done correctly, is safe for people into their 90’s. The benefits of performing strength training outweigh the risks of not doing so. Even older people with osteoporosis can benefit from strength training. High intensity strength training is safe and addresses directly the most important markers of healthy aging. From a cardiovascular standpoint, high intensity strength training has a positive influence on resting blood pressure. It’s common for Exercise Coach clients with high blood pressure to see their blood pressure normalize. Another study compared the impact of strength training versus traditional cardio in cardiovascular rehab. A large proportion of the people performing the cardio exercise as part of their rehabilitation experienced some kind of angina or chest pain, whereas the people in the strength training didn’t experience any. The slow and controlled nature of the exercises performed at the Exercise Coach is the key to making them safe for anyone to do. It’s possible to increase the intensity of the exercise without increasing undue stress on your joints or your bones with this method. The environment of the Exercise Coach is about as good as it gets from a Covid-19 perspective since it offers private sessions in a studio with a small number of people. Sarcopenia is the age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and is really the root of a number of issues related to aging. It’s similar to the effects of muscle atrophy after an injury, and is linked to a number of the diseases of aging that we are most concerned about. The most effective way to combat sarcopenia is to engage in a meaningful strength training program. The data shows that whole effort exercise can reverse decades of muscle loss in a matter of 10 to 12 weeks. The more deconditioned somebody is when they start, the more profound the results they will see in a short period of time.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about getting toned and lean, rather than bulky...   Brian Cygan and Amy Hudson break down the science of strength training and discuss why you don’t have to worry about getting bulky from exercise, and why strength training is the most effective way to get that toned, lean body you always wanted. Will two 20-minute workouts a week help someone get toned? According to the scientific definition, toneness refers to the level of tension in a muscle at rest, but most people refer to being toned as being lean. In that regard, strength training will absolutely help you get leaner and build firm muscles. One misconception about toning is around spot reduction. Often, when people talk about toning their body they are talking about making a particular area of their body leaner by targeting it with exercise, but that isn’t how the process works. Effective strength training is about getting whole body results that impact your metabolism and decrease body fat throughout the whole body. Toning is the result of lean muscle tissue being added in the body with a decrease in the amount of body fat that may be hiding. To get the toning results you want, the best way is to combine good whole food nutrition and whole effort exercise. Will strength training at the Exercise Coach result in big, bulky muscles? People want better muscles, not necessarily bigger muscles and lucky for them, the majority of people won’t build large muscles even if they try. Genes and the expression of myostatin limits the amount of muscle mass that will grow. The longer a muscle is, the bigger and thicker that it will grow. Most bodybuilders that you see have muscles that are naturally predisposed to growing larger. This means that most people, especially women,  don’t have to worry about getting too bulky. Strength training is the most important thing you can do for health, longevity, quality of life, and reducing body fat. Whole effort strength training is the best way to achieve the best body leanness, definition, or tone that you can. “Biologically speaking, to be able to survive an encounter with a lion that wants to eat you, you need a body that is lean enough to be fast and strong enough that it has the endurance to run away. This describes the state that our bodies want to be in. There isn’t any evolutionary benefit to growing large muscles because it takes a lot of energy and resources to maintain them. Our bodies are better off with building stronger and better muscles, while not necessarily getting bigger in the process. Amy reads a testimonial from a 73 year old woman sharing how she has seen improved muscle definition and tone from her time and sessions at the Exercise Coach. Today, more than ever, we need to maintain our physical and mental health for our overall well-being. The workouts at the Exercise Coach change everything for the clients that enjoy them.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about exercise for athletes vs the average person...   Is strength training enough for longevity and quality of life? That’s the question Brian and Dr. James Fisher explore in the final episode of the What About Cardio? series. Learn about the difference between how athletes and the average person train and why achieving high levels of sports performance and everyday fitness are not accomplished the same way. Can strength training and whole food nutrition be enough to transform someone’s fitness results? Where does cardio fit into fitness and sports performance? Fitness is about our body’s ability to perform a physical task, whether that’s moving a weight or speed or flexibility. Cardiovascular fitness is our body’s ability to move oxygen around the body efficiently, and one of the major benefits of cardio is an increased rate of recovery from exercise. Intensity is key. If you want to perform at a higher level in a sport, long duration and low intensity will not achieve the results you desire. Even with a long duration, low intensity sport, a greater intensity is required to increase performance. There was a study that was published in the late 90’s that showed that the best way to become better at a sport is to practice the sport. A lot of the exercise and training that athletes do to become better at their sport is actually superficial. Specificity of movement is vital. Fisher trains athletes for the positions they are going to play, and the best way to get better at a certain sport is to do exactly that. Resistance training can be a great supplement as a way to prevent injury, but it won’t do much to directly improve someone’s sport performance. The average person shouldn’t be looking to sports training to help prevent the aging process. There are a couple of things to remember: when you are looking at a high level athlete on television, they are genetically gifted. They probably achieved what they have relatively early on in life and with less training than the average person. The second thing to remember is that they are paid to do that and have a short career. The best athletes have a short shelf life. The average career in the NFL is less than 7 years. Are you willing to do all the training and exercise that they put themselves through to perform at that level? Brief, intense strength training can improve cardiovascular fitness. A study by a group of Spanish authors showed a 10% increase in cardiorespiratory fitness over 12 weeks with a program of strength training. If you’re already a Tour de France cyclist, adding resistance training isn’t going to do much to improve your performance. It all depends on who you are. Resistance training can definitely improve our health, improve our cardiovascular fitness, and improve our longevity and quality of life.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about staying strong as you age...   In part 2 of this series with Dr. James Fisher, Brian and James discuss the downsides of cardio and why so many people can’t seem to resist binging after cardio exercise. Learn why cardio is important and useful when done right, and how it can lead to even worse health outcomes if not done properly. While improving heart health is great, it’s not everyone’s goal when exercising or doing cardio. Weight loss is another major focus and cardio can certainly help accomplish that. When doing cardio and exercising at a low enough intensity we are using our aerobic energy system, and that’s reliant on our fat stores as energy. So it’s easy to think that if you do cardio you will burn fat, but the reality is that anything that raises our energy expenditure and increases our metabolism is beneficial for fat loss. Building muscle is great for maintaining a higher metabolism and burning more fat. With a low-intensity exercise, we see an increase in our stress hormones, as well as a fluctuation in our leptin and ghrelin levels. These are the hormones responsible for hunger and they regulate how our body replenishes and restores calories. When we do higher resistance training we don’t get the same hunger response. The big problem is that going for a long run or bike ride may feel great, but the following hunger response may undo all the work you just did. More movement and more steps in a day is a good place to start, but if you go out and start running, cycling, or swimming you are going to swim against the tide and your body will start to resist your efforts. Increasing muscle mass is about increasing the quality of our body composition, and that itself is increasing our metabolism. If you look at the bigger picture, cardio alone doesn’t lay the foundation for long-term weight loss. Studies generally show that the weight loss that occurs from cardio and a caloric reduction is 50% muscle, which is probably the worst possible outcome, especially as we age. Whereas if we perform resistance training and pay attention to protein intake the weight loss is almost exclusively fat. When people say they want to lose weight, they mean they want to lose fat. We need to do something that allows us to hang on to the muscle we’ve got. Starting with resistance training, and then nutrition, with cardio as a tertiary thought is the best method to achieve fat loss and optimal long term health. If we do what it takes to protect our muscle with proper nutrition and strength training, the weight that we lose leads to a better body composition since fat takes up so much space on the body. Start with resistance training and nutrition, then add cardio if you feel like it. When we think of older adults we think of frailty, despite the fact that they are often lean. The reason they are frail is because they are not carrying a high proportion of muscle mass. If we do resistance training and focus on maintaining as much muscle mass as we can when we age, we are setting ourselves up to be lean and functional as we age instead of merely frail. An epoc is Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption, it’s also known as the afterburn effect. When performing high effort exercise our heart rate is elevated for a time after the exercise is complete but with low-intensity exercise, there is almost no after-effect. The energy expenditure from prolonged low effort exercise is about the same as interval training or resistance training a third of the duration. A 20-minute high-intensity workout has the same energy expenditure as a 1-hour run.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about strength training versus traditional cardio...   Dr. James Fisher answers the question once and for all, do we really need to do exercises like running, cycling, and swimming to improve our cardio? Find out the truth about cardio exercises and cardiovascular health and why you should get off the treadmill and start doing resistance training right now. The fundamental question is “What is cardio?” Even people who have seen the results of the 20-minute routines delivered by the Exercise Coach still wonder what place cardio has in physical fitness. Historically people have perceived exercise to be going for a run or what we think of as traditional cardio. Usually this takes the form of long duration and low intensity and focuses on aerobic energy production. The accepted wisdom is that cardio is just activities like running and cycling, but the truth is that any activity can become cardio exercise if done at the correct intensity. Cardio also raises the idea that we need to perform prolonged exercise to get the result, but that’s not necessarily the case. The trouble is that duration doesn’t necessarily translate to improved fitness. Someone going for a 4-hour walk isn’t going to see the results they would see from an activity with a higher intensity level. Cardio activities like running, cycling, or swimming improve our heart health because of the sustained elevation of the heart rate. While that’s true and that process also makes the heart and muscles more efficient, but it’s really the act of having the heart rate elevated for an extended period of time that brings those results and it’s not reserved for traditional cardio exercises. It is possible to be fit while still having an unhealthy heart due to lifestyle choices. Studies have shown that it is better to be fit and fat, than unfit. People who are overweight and exercise have better health outcomes than people with a normal Body Mass Index who don’t exercise at all. Exercises that we perform that are a high enough intensity and frequency can more than counteract any of the other lifestyle risk factors. There is growing evidence that shows that effective exercise alone and improving fitness is powerfully prophylactic in terms of health and longevity. Even if you no longer see visible fitness increases from your exercise, you are still catalysing positive changes at a cellular level and prolonging and improving the quality of your life. Traditional cardio exercises are not necessary to become healthy. Strength training exercises have similar results to traditional cardio training with similar cardiovascular health benefits. It also comes with less risk of chronic joint pain. Don’t feel tied to an exercise modality. Studies have shown that people have seen increases in cardiovascular health and efficiency with only a simple 12-week strength training program. Resistance training is the superior choice because, in addition to the cardiovascular benefits, you also improve strength, bone density, and muscle mass. Improved muscle quality is a jackpot outcome because it has a ripple effect that leads to all of the systems of the body getting better when we optimize the health of our muscles.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about how this smart workout program can work for anyone!   Brian and Amy discuss the cutting edge technology that powers the Exercise Coach and makes it possible to deliver the world’s smartest 20-minute workout. Learn the secret to maximizing fitness results in the shortest time possible and how the Exerbotics technology makes exercise more fun and effective, while being more efficient at the same time. There are three things that make the workouts stand out at the Exercise Coach: the workouts are based on the best science, use the best technology, and are delivered by a network of professionals. “The best science” refers to the current understanding of strength, based on research that has demonstrated strength and muscle mass are the primary biomarkers for aging. Losing strength and muscle mass due to aging leads to experiencing the diseases of aging and metabolic decline. Science-based strength training can reverse decades of muscle loss in just a few short months. Focusing on exercises that build muscle contributes to a long, active, and healthy life. Exerbotics is the cutting-edge technology that powers the signature program that Exercise Coach offers. Exerbotics quantifies exercise and helps people understand the exercise that really matters. It also customizes exercise and adapts to any body, making it just right for every fitness level. It also optimizes results in the shortest amount of time and is really the foundation for the 20-minute workout. When someone becomes an Exercise Coach client, their first step is an assessment of their strength levels. This becomes the base for the exercise program and Exerbotics continues to measure and calibrate the effort they put out during exercise. Measuring effort is what matters the most since the current science of strength shows that whole effort is what triggers the results we want to get from exercise. Since the system adapts to the person, it becomes possible for anyone to do. With Exerbotics, the Exercise Coach can provide clients with extremely tailored exercise prescriptions. This ability-based approach makes the program challenging enough to get results, yet is something anybody can handle. Maximizing results while minimizing the time required wouldn't be possible without Exerbotics. There are three possible modes of resistance training: isotonic, isometric, and accommodating resistance. Accommodating resistance is the opposite of isotonic resistance, Exerbotic software controls the speed of the movement so that the muscle loading can adjust in real time through the exercise. An individual’s strength isn’t static and fluctuates throughout an exercise. It varies during a movement as the angles of your joints change. With conventional resistance we run into sticking points and the exercise needs to be tailored to the weakest point in the movement, which prevents the muscles from being fully engaged. Accommodating resistance makes it easier to deeply fatigue muscles in a much shorter time. Exerbotics delivers effective eccentric muscle loading as a part of every exercise that someone does. Strength varies during eccentric and concentric movements as well, which means that people can miss out on powerful muscle benefits when using conventional strength training. Strength varies as muscles fatigue, and conventional resistance doesn’t accommodate this change and limits how efficiently we can deeply fatigue our muscles. Exerbotics also makes exercise safer. The Exercise Coach has run millions of exercise sets with people who have run the gamut of physical fitness. Exerbotics controls the load with real time feedback based on the exerciser. The digital biofeedback makes it easier to see what you need to do in terms of effort, and this makes it easier to dig deeper than you thought you could in order to work the muscle groups that you’re trying to work. Real time feedback is a gamechanger for motivating effort and getting people results. When athletes are provided with digital feedback that quantifies their effort, it’s been shown to increase their motivation, competitiveness, mood, and performance. The Exercise Coach uses the data from every workout to ensure that more work is progressively applied to each workout to keep up with the client’s increasing strength capabilities. Coaches are another key component. Coaches help clients stay motivated and achieve more than they would otherwise. They also provide accountability and keep clients on track each day. Coaches provide clients the confidence and encouragement they need to give it their all during a workout. They also bring a passion for education and dispelling myths about fitness that people may have believed for years. There are five characteristics of a stand-out Exercise Coach. The first is commitment and experience using the Exerbotics equipment themselves for their own training. The second is empathy and the ability to anticipate the needs of a client. The third is energy, since coaches need to bring energy and positivity to the client’s training session. The fourth is professionalism and being respectful, kind, and taking their job seriously. The fifth is instructional skill and being able to deliver the best exercise experience for each client.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about quality over quantity!   Learn about why systemic inflammation is known as the silent killer, why inflammation creates a vicious cycle that very few people escape as they get older, and how you can be one of the few who do. Brian Cygan and Amy Hudson reveal why muscle quality matters more than movement quantity and how strength training for 20 minutes at a time will transform your life, no matter how old you are. Muscle quality matters more than movement quantity. Standard workouts and guidelines in fitness are responsible for more than 85% of people getting frustrated and staying on the sidelines. The Exercise Coach is maniacal about getting people off the sidelines and getting them results in a fraction of the time. Science shows that the ideal form of exercise is strength training, which is safe, efficient, and focused on whole body results. James Timmins, a researcher from the UK, has made the point that no long-term study demonstrates that an inactive individual will become healthier simply by becoming more active. On the contrary, brief, whole effort exercise has been shown to improve outcomes. Whole effort exercise is work that completely fatigues a muscle group in anywhere from 40 to 120 seconds of work instead of hours. Research supports the finding that time and distance are irrelevant exercise metrics. Enhanced muscle tissue and the process that brings about this adaptation is really the key to driving positive fitness and wellness outcomes, not the time you devote to activity. It’s not about spending more time exercising, it’s about applying the guide of work that generates the adaptation, which can be done in a very short period of time. It takes about 20 minutes to get a total body effect. For people who want to lose weight, strength training is still the best bet. A study showed that a simple high intensity protocol amounting to 15 minutes of work each week substantially improved insulin sensitivity. This sensitivity is central to controlling weight. Insulin is a hormone that primarily tells cells in the body to store energy as body fat. The higher the levels of insulin in your body the stronger the signal is to store body fat. Starting at the age of 30 as we begin to experience age-related muscle loss, our muscles become more resistant to insulin. As this cycle worsens with age, the problem only becomes exacerbated and measuring insulin sensitivity is a key indicator for health. Making your muscles more sensitive to insulin is the most important thing you can do to put your body in the hormonal state necessary to lose body fat. Exercise that develops your muscle tissue is the most effective way to do that. Focus on muscle strength and muscle health for hormonal results, instead of the traditional cardio regime. The other issue the majority of people deal with is inflammation, also known as the secret killer. Inflammation is seen as the root of a number of other ailments. Muscle quality has also been shown to positively impact systemic inflammation. Systemic inflammation is more than what happens when you sprain your ankle. Local inflammation is what happens when you get hurt, systemic inflammation is something that you can’t see and exists in every cell in your body.   Links: exercisecoach.com   Extremely short duration high intensity interval training substantially improves insulin action in young healthy males - https://bmcendocrdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6823-9-3   Strength training improves muscle quality and insulin sensitivity in Hispanic older adults with type 2 diabetes - https://www.medsci.org/v04p0019.htm     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about starting and sticking with the right exercise program!   Brian and Amy dig into the top five reasons why people can’t begin or stick with the average fitness program and why those barriers don’t exist over at the Exercise Coach. Learn what’s holding you back from making strength training a regular part of your life and why the Exercise Coach paradigm may be right for you no matter how old you are or what fitness level you bring to the table. Nearly 85% of the population is not engaging in meaning and regular exercise. Conventional exercise guidelines have failed for most people. Some of the main obstacles preventing people from doing what they need to do are having the time and being concerned with safety. Many people live with some sort of pain so they want to avoid exercise that they believe will exacerbate their condition, this is especially true for people over the age of 40. Roughly 1 in 2 adults are afflicted by a musculoskeletal condition and when it comes to conventional fitness it may not be a good option for those people. The Exercise Coach approach takes this into account and tailors the exercise to the person’s unique situation. Meeting people where they are is the core of the Exercise Coach and without that first step, they may never make fitness a part of their life. The top 5 reasons that people don’t start or stick with exercising begin with not having enough time. 42% of people say they don’t have enough time, the next biggest reason is a lack of motivation. A lack of motivation is understandable when you consider why someone would want to pursue the traditional exercise path that hasn’t given them the results they want. The third biggest reason is that some people just don’t like exercise. For many clients of the Exercise Coach, this belief is often flipped on its head as people achieve results and transform their bodies. The fourth biggest reason is work getting in the way. Committing to multiple hours a week to a fitness program can be daunting, which is why the Exercise Coach approach is so revolutionary. The fifth most common reason for people avoiding exercise is that they “feel” too old. 41 is the average that most Americans feel too old to exercise. Some people even believe that they need to get in shape before working out. The irony of not feeling like you belong in an exercise facility is that the older you get the more important exercise and strength training becomes for your longevity. 63% of people believe that their habit of not exercising enough will shorten their lifespan. People know they need to exercise and by not doing anything, they are adding to their stress and shame. Almost everyone can identify with one of those barriers, even if you enjoy exercise you can probably see people in your life that fall into those categories. Fitness hasn’t done much to remove those barriers over the past five decades but the Exercise Coach is working to make fitness available to everybody. The data and tracking that Exercise Coach provides to its clients is crucial to their success. Seeing progress is a huge component of maintaining motivation. Not seeing results fast enough can be very demotivating and this prevents people from sticking with an exercise program. This is why having a guide and coach to help you reach those results is so important. A bad experience exercising or an increase in pain can also be an obstacle that prevents people from staying with their program. You will be hard-pressed to find another business that cares more about your fitness results than Exercise Coach. Compare exercising to brushing your teeth. Exercising is a healthy long-term habit that changes your health trajectory for the better. Amy plays a client testimonial from Brenda and how the Exercise Coach completely changed her mindset around exercise and how the program overcame her obstacles. In terms of the fitness industry, the Exercise Coach is a very private and intimate program involving one-on-one coaching instead of the more common group activity that you would find in a gym. It’s mainly about coaching and understanding what each individual needs to achieve their fitness goals.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about our optimal exercise program...   Brian and Amy break down some of the most common misconceptions around exercise and reveal how Exercise Coach clients are getting maximal results from only a couple 20-minute workouts each week. Learn the three most important aspects of exercise and why you need to think about exercise completely differently if you want to achieve the health and fitness results you want. The manner in which we exercise really matters because what’s at stake is significant. Exercise is a strategy that people can use to improve their quality of life, so how you go about doing it matters. Many people avoid the gym because they are worried about getting hurt. This makes sticking with an exercise program especially challenging, which is where the Exercise Coach comes in. Effective personal strength training fundamentally changes what’s required to get the results people want from exercise. It changes every system of the body for the better. There are a lot of different ways to exercise, but at the Exercise Coach they’ve found that the evidence shows the superior method to be strength training. Exercise is a means to an end, not an end in itself. We need to think about what results we are trying to achieve and tailor the exercise to bring about those changes. You can exercise for health, fitness, or sports performance and they each have some overlap but are different ways to get the results you are trying to achieve. It’s important to understand what you are trying to do during a workout. Counting reps or total time moving aren’t very helpful. The real point of exercise is actually to stimulate the body’s natural ability to adapt to stress. When we exercise, there is an exercise effect that takes place which is often confused for the results of training. The results that we actually seek from exercise are adaptations produced by our bodies in response to the challenge of exercise. If we don’t exercise the way that’s appropriate for our goal, we may put in a lot of work and still not get the results that we want. The optimal exercise approach focuses on safety, effectiveness, and efficiency. This is the best way to compare the different approaches and figure out what’s appropriate for you. Exercise is nothing more than a stressor and only serves as a stimulus if it is sufficiently intense. We become stronger and fitter if the stressor is enough to force an adaptation. The stressor doesn’t produce the result, the body does when you give it the rest and nutrition it needs to accomplish that. The average amount of time it takes for your body to recover and become stronger is a couple of days which is why the Exercise Coach employs intense periods of exercise a couple of times a week. The frequency that we need to perform high intensity exercise is less when the intensity itself is higher. Muscle is the window to the rest of the body. Growing stronger makes the rest of your body more effective as well. The Exercise Coach approach is to get the maximal results in the shortest length of time. There is an inverse relationship between intensity and duration of exercise. The level of intensity required to create adaptations is high but doesn’t require much time. Studies have shown that a single set of exercises at the right level of intensity is more effective than multiple sets. Exercising intensely for 20 minutes is sufficient to achieve results. The conventional wisdom of needing to exercise more doesn’t bear out. Why not spend as little time as possible to get the best results you are looking for? Optimizing exercise allows you to enjoy more of the good things in life. Safety is essential for exercise. Many exercises can be fun but if the focus is on results, it’s better to avoid the risk. The biggest key to making exercise safe is being in control of the forces that are applied to the body. The key to reducing force in strength training is using slow controlled movements instead of explosive movements. There is research that shows high intensity strength training is safe even for people with elevated blood pressure or other cardiovascular issues, and it even has beneficial health effects. Strength Training at the Exercise Coach is a great way to engage in exercise and improve your health even if you have orthopedic or cardiovascular concerns. Amy describes the story of an Exercise Coach client that lost 62 lbs in six months and achieved excellent health improvements in all areas of their life. The Exercise Coach can help you no matter where your current fitness level is. The coaches are very good at meeting people where they are and tailoring the program to the person’s situation.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about our origin story...   Brian Cygan and Amy Hudson reveal the origin story of the Exercise Coach and the one book that completely changed the trajectory of Brian’s life by transforming his understanding of what strength training can do in your life and how quickly you can see results. Find out how the Exercise Coach is changing lives 20 minutes at a time. The goal of the Strength Changes Everything podcast is to inspire and empower people to live life at their full physical potential. Simply put: strength changes everything. Effective personal strength training fundamentally changes everything about your body for the better. It also changes the requirements to get all of the health and fitness results that matter most to you. If you want to look better and feel better then this podcast is for you, especially if you’re over 40 and started experiencing the effects of the aging process, even if you’re not excited or interested in going to the gym. Brian is also going to discuss the Exercise Coach which is the application of the principles that flow out of the Strength Changes Everything philosophy. Brian has been in the fitness industry for the past 20 years and in the process has become pretty passionate about a few things, mainly the science and business of fitness and getting the value of fitness knowledge into the world. As a former athlete, Brian became very interested in the science of strength training which led to him going to school for kinesiology. The classical science aspects of his degree made sense to Brian, but his education left him with a lot of questions on the application of strength training. On the last day of his schooling, a classmate gave Brian a book to read called A Rational Approach to Strength Training, and just by reading the first few chapters, it transformed Brian’s understanding of exercise. Brian learned an approach to exercise that was very different from the approach that he had been exposed to in school or as an athlete. The new approach can be summed up in three things: the science says that exercise should be brief, intense, and infrequent. Brian tells the story of how he worked with a basketball player and helped him put on over 20 pounds of muscle over the course of 12 weeks while only exercising once a week for 20 minutes to get those results. Brian’s newfound approach caused a bit of conflict with the department he was working in and eventually, Brian decided to leave to find somewhere else he could apply those principles. He found a fitness studio that specialized in the application of those principles and after working there for a year found that he was extremely passionate about helping people of all ages and fitness levels. That was also around the time that Brian discovered his entrepreneurial spirit and when he and his wife co-founded a business called the Exercise Coach. Brian partnered up with another company called Exerbotics to launch the franchise. The technology they provided allowed them to standardize the approach and customize the plan more deeply for anyone that wanted to participate. Brian now has hundreds of locations of the Exercise Coach all over the country with plans to open more over the coming years. Amy’s story started off by being introduced to Brian many years ago in the Chicago area. She had recently given birth to her second child and was trying to get back to her pre-baby weight and found herself spending hours each week exercising in the only way that she knew which were long runs. Brian invited Amy and her husband to try out the Exercise Coach program and within six months, she noticed an incredible shift in her body composition. For the first time in her life, she felt athletic and capable. At the same time, they learned about the nutrition aspects of fitness and started making healthier choices. She got so excited about healthy eating that Amy started a blog on the topic. Once Amy started learning about the profound health and longevity benefits of strength training she realized that it’s truly a transformative thing and can change the trajectory of someone’s health for their lifetime. Right before the birth of her third daughter Amy and her husband moved to Minneapolis and decided to open their own Exercise Coach. The first five episodes of the podcast are meant to be the foundational overview of the Strength Changes Everything philosophy. We’re going to cover why not all exercise is the same, why people aren’t exercising and the obstacles people face in their fitness journey, the scientific paradigm that underlies the philosophy, the problem of people’s loss of health and fitness and they age, and what can be accomplished by a 20-minute workout once a week.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about your energy systems and how effective strength training is in how they work...   Brian recently had a friend come into the Exercise Coach and he was shocked to find how quickly his heart rate went up after only 60 seconds of properly calibrated strength training exercise, despite being an avid runner. Discover how the three energy systems of the body work, and why high-intensity strength training is definitively the best way to renovate your muscles, heart, and lungs at the same time and combat type 2 diabetes and the most common age-related diseases people suffer from today.  Brian had the opportunity to introduce a friend to the program at the Exercise Coach recently who was an avid runner, and he was quickly surprised at how effectively the program got his heart rate up despite his extensive cardiovascular training. Your heart and your lungs are pumps that respond to the demands being placed on your muscles at any given moment. Aerobic exercise is usually associated with a high heart rate, but that’s not the only time the aerobic energy system is engaged. In relative terms, the most aerobic thing you can do is sit and do nothing. There are three energy-producing systems in the body, and the aerobic oxidative system uses oxygen to produce energy. When we sit and do nothing, the aerobic oxidative system produces nearly 100% of the energy the body needs! When we start to do something more demanding, energy production shifts to become more anaerobic which is why strength training drives that sort of increased heart rate response. The more demand on the muscles, the greater the cardiovascular response. Many new clients have never experienced that kind of workout before getting started with the Exercise Coach. Strength training is the best kind of exercise you can do for diabetes. Out-of-control blood sugar leads to out-of-control inflammation, which is the root cause of all the major diseases associated with aging. As we age and lose muscle, our body becomes resistant to the effects of the hormone insulin. Insulin is a storage hormone that removes glucose from the bloodstream and insulin resistance becomes a real problem. Without being able to remove blood sugar from the bloodstream, due to our muscles diminishing over time, our insulin levels rise and that causes problems in addition to the issues caused by elevated blood sugar. The Strength Training at the Exercise Coach targets muscles that store sugar as glycogen. It renovates your body’s ability to store glycogen and reverses insulin resistance. This puts the body into a much better metabolic state and makes it easier to lose weight and transform your health. Stronger muscles equal stronger health. Type 2 muscle fibers are only used when they encounter demands that are greater than usual. Taking a walk or jogging won’t activate the type 2 muscle fibers in your body but strength training will. Your muscles get better at storing the glycogen they need to perform the demanding work required for strength training. That type of work needs the heart and lungs to increase their output to support what is happening metabolically. When you feel like you’re breathing hard after an intense exertion, that indicates that you’re doing the kind of work needed to renovate your type 2 muscle fibers. Strength training and whole food nutrition are the best things you can do to ward off the risks of type 2 diabetes and other age related diseases. Runners often find that there is missing muscle mass in their body when they go to the Exercise Coach and that the program allows them to perform at an even higher level.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about myths involving fitness...   Brian and Amy explore a couple of articles talking about the impacts of weight loss vs. exercise on longevity, and discuss the myths surrounding losing weight and achieving optimal physical health. Learn why focusing on losing weight is the wrong goal, and why a proper strength training program is the best way to maintain fitness as we age.  There is a ton of information regarding health and fitness out there, and sometimes the info conflicts, so discerning the truth can be challenging. A recent article published in the New York Times essentially claimed that exercise is more important than weight loss for longevity. The behavior of exercising matters more statistically than losing weight, but that could be narrowed down to having a higher fitness level is more important than weight loss. Activity has its limitations related to weight loss and increasing longevity. Intentional exercise is a means to an end. The goal of which is to change the systems of the body for the better. Muscle quality is one of the #1 predictors of mortality. The exercise and muscle mass itself doesn’t increase your longevity, but they are correlated to the physiological effects that are. Weight loss is hard. It has to be combined with nutritional changes, and if your goal is to be thinner, the optimal path is to combine exercise that maximizes muscle health and proper whole foods nutrition. However, when it comes to overall health, there are positive changes outside of weight loss. The research looked at overweight and obese individuals with health problems, and they found that poeple that exercised effectively saw great results, whether or not they lost any weight. Exercising and improving the related biomarkers leads to better longevity, even more than people that simply lose weight by dieting. Blood pressure, cholesterol, and insulin resistance are the measures that truly indicate someone’s health and overall longevity, far more than their weight. There are a number of ways to lose weight that are extremely unhealthy. Cutting calories without strength training is one of the worst ways you can lose weight. Another study involved 81 sedentary overweight women and putting them into a walking program. At the end of 12 weeks, a few women had lost some body fat, but 55 of them had actually gained weight. Just moving your body will not cause weight loss, nor will it improve the systems of the body. In terms of exercise for anyone over the age of 30, we need to target the optimization of muscle mass and strength through exercise. Sarcopenia is the root cause of the deterioration of fitness as we age. Compared against each other, exercise is considerably more beneficial than simple weight loss. In some studies, weight loss had no improvement on mortality risk at all. Activity and weight loss are not enough. Even if you’ve had trouble losing weight in the past, you can make a huge difference in your health by starting an effective strength training program.   Links: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about dose-response and what it means for your fitness...   Learn how a little-known principle in exercise determines whether you get the fitness results you are looking for, or you just spend some time moving weights up and down at the gym. Find out why the dose-response to exercise is what you should really be paying attention to, and how it can guide you to easier fitness gains in a shorter amount of time. More exercise is not necessarily better. The dose-response relationship applies not only to medication and stressors but also to exercise. It describes the magnitude of the response the body has in response to a stressor, in this case exercise and the response is the result that we are looking for. Your body is what produces the results and adaptations that you want, not the exercise. If the stress is of sufficient intensity or quality, you will get the response that you want. Just going through the motions of exercise won’t necessarily produce an adaptive response in the body. You also need to give the body enough time and resources to produce the response you are looking for. Exercising too often is actually preventing your body from adapting and growing. This is how athletes experience overtraining. The adaptations occur after the exercise session is complete, and only if the stimulus is of a high enough intensity and quality. Exercise is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Just putting in time exercising isn’t necessarily a good thing. A lot of what passes for exercise is just enjoyable activity, and it won’t trigger adaptations or reverse the effects of aging. Exercise impacts every system of the body. For every single exercise session, you should be able to measure the improvements in fitness level. This is a key component of the program at the Exercise Coach. When you don’t see improvements between sessions, it means one of two things. Either you need to increase the intensity of the exercise, or increase the amount of rest and recovery between sessions. Your dose-response is very individualized. The amount of stimulus you need to generate an adaptation will vary. At the Exercise Coach, client’s individual abilities are measured and programs are designed to be just the right fit for them. At the end of the day, the right intensity for one is different from the right intensity for another.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about how strength training should complement dieting for weight loss...   Dr. James Fisher answers the question “Why does muscle really matter for weight loss?” Find out why muscle mass should be a vital component of your weight loss strategy and why dieting without strength training is a recipe for long term disaster for your body.  There is a direct connection between your body’s muscle mass and its metabolic effectiveness, the ability to lose fat and keep it off, and your overall health. Why does muscle matter for weight loss? Muscle is metabolic reactive and consumes calories just by existing. You will burn a larger number of calories on a daily basis by having more muscle mass than someone with less. Instead of thinking about weight loss, we should think of it as fat loss because we don’t want to lose just any kind of weight, we want to improve body composition. Focusing on weight loss can be discouraging when people lose less weight than they hoped without taking into account gains in muscle mass. Without strength training, any weight you lose with dieting or activity will not be as much fat as you could lose by incorporating strength training into your routine. Anyone who goes on a calorie reduction plan to lose weight will end up with about 50% of the weight loss occurring within their muscle mass, which is an absolute tragedy. We want to hang on to as much muscle mass as we can as we age. Diet and cardio without strength training exacerbate the loss of metabolically valuable muscle tissue. Protein is a great calorie to consume as it’s thermogenic and used to absorb some of the protein you take in. Government nutrition guidelines should be adjusted to account for this. Maintaining your muscle mass has the additional benefit of preventing and reducing injuries so you can continue enjoying aerobic activities as you age. Weight loss without strength training results in frailty. In the older population, people who are lean are generally weak and have poor mobility. The best thing to do is to focus on strength training to build muscle and improve quality of life along the way. If you increase the amount of muscle mass you have, you will burn more calories by default. Muscle also stores glucose, which will help you with insulin-related conditions like Diabetes.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about effective exercise for your lower back and what can surprisingly make lower back pain worse...   In part two of the interview with Dr. James Fisher, we explore what it takes to actually strengthen the lower back and why exercises like the deadlift are not effective in targeting your lower back muscles. Find out how some people can experience significant lower back strength gain in as little as ten weeks with only 15 total minutes of muscle tension (60 to 90 seconds per week!) and why stretching without strength training can actually make your lower back pain worse. The lower back is a notoriously difficult to train muscle group, which is why so many people are walking around with weak lower backs that are easy to injure and irritate. Fisher did some research with professional athletes to measure the effectiveness of certain exercises in strengthening the lower back and found that exercises that didn’t isolate the lower back didn’t make a major impact. However, lower back isolating exercises had a greater impact over more general exercises like the deadlift. The lower back needs an isolation exercise and preferably one that doesn’t also load the gluteal muscles. These exercises are best done with lower back specific pieces of equipment. In terms of overall strength, people who do lumbar exercises see significant increases in strength. Dr. Fisher has seen lumbar strength increases as high as 200% over the course of ten weeks, as well as improved lifestyle function, with a training frequency of once per week. Lower back exercises are typically just one set and roughly 90 seconds of muscle tension. The lumbar muscles are an example of how you can use your muscles and still lose them due to the deleterious effects of aging. You need to use specific muscle fibers in a specific manner in order to build the strength in your lower back. Stretching can be taken too far if you are not also strengthening the muscles involved. Making your spine and back more mobile without making it stronger can make things worse for you in the long run. Things like yoga should be supplemental to a proper strength training regime. Lower back pain often restricts range of motion, but there are still opportunities to train the muscle group without a full extension. You can start small and expand the range as you get stronger. People with lower back pain also tend to be cautious about moving their lower back, especially during exercise. This is why lower back machines that control the range of motion are effective. They maintain safety and stability while loading the muscles properly. In terms of age, lower back exercises are suited to pretty much everyone in society except for certain individuals; ex. If you’re pregnant, a small child, or have an injured spine. Once you’ve ruled out those conditions, you can safely and confidently strengthen the lower back. The more we know about our body, the more we know how to fix it. Helping identify the source of lower back pain, as well as what isn’t the issue, is all part of the journey of alleviating pain and improving quality of life.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.

Join us for this replay from the archives to learn more about solving the problems causing lower back pain...   Brian Cygan and Dr. James Fisher discuss the origins of lower back pain and why the vast majority of Americans will experience some form of lower back pain in their lives. Learn about the root cause of lower back pain and why most treatments only deal with the symptoms and the pain instead of solving the problem, which often leads to even worse issues down the road. Fisher is an academic and researcher in the UK. He’s published research on muscular strengthening as well as lower back pain. Lower back pain is a constant issue for a large swath of society. According to his study, somewhere between 70% and 90% of people will experience lower back pain in their lives. Lower back pain can be extremely debilitating to a person’s lifestyle and sleep patterns, and can have a major impact on their mental health as well. There is also an enormous cost to society in terms of productivity. At the Strength Coach, we’ve found that strengthening is an important strategy to improving the quality of life of someone experiencing lower back pain. Chronic lower back is when it occurs for longer than three months. At that point it’s important to seek medical guidance from a physiotherapist or general practitioner. About 10% to 15% of people experiencing chronic lower back pain have a specific reason for it like nerve issues or a slipped disc. The remaining 85% to 90% have what’s referred to as non-specific back pain which reduces the ability to mitigate the pain. For many of those people, the solution is often some form of painkiller or passive treatment like stretching and massage. The theories about the existence of non-specific lower back pain have to do with our evolution from quadrupeds in the past. The muscles around the lower back don’t tend to get much direct exercise and there seems to be a correlation between non-specific lower back pain and weak or atrophied lumbar muscles. The muscles that are more intrinsic to the spine over time, as we live a normal life, can atrophy as a result of not using them in a specific and demanding enough way. For most people, their gluteal muscles and hamstrings are very developed and do a lot of the work that the muscles in the lower back should do, and this can result in those lower back muscles becoming weaker, misfiring, and causing pain. With non-specific back pain, strengthening the muscles in the lower back should be the foundational approach to prevent future episodes of lower back pain. Specific lower back exercises are important for everyone in society to maintain their strength and muscle mass in that region and avoid the onset of lower back pain. Once something negative has happened, the road to recovery gets longer. Your lower back is central to everything you do. Without good control of your central muscles, you cannot throw or catch or jump or move well. From there it’s a downward spiral into the realm of disability. An imbalance between ab strength and lower back muscle strength can be part of the problem. We want all of the muscles surrounding the core of the body to be trained effectively, and it’s the lower back muscles that tend to be forgotten. The weak link is usually the lumbar muscles, and this can lead to a negative feedback process, where someone avoids exercising those muscles even more to avoid the pain resulting in greater muscle atrophy. We have other societal factors that are also contributing to the lower back pain that so many people experience as part of their lives.   Link: exercisecoach.com     This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.