The Importance of Range of Motion

This week I have learned a very valuable lesson in the gym that I would like to share with all of you. The importance of Range Of Motion (ROM).

I've been in my bulk phase for about a month and a half now and always made sure my weight has been going up. Although I am getting stronger and the weight is going up, I can tell I have been pushing it too much because my range of motion during the exercises has drastically decreased. I've been trying to add more weight each time than I should, resulting in shorter reps, which in turn, works less muscle. Now I will share with you what range of motion is and all the benefits of it that I learned and experienced this week!

What is ROM?:

Range of motion is the distance a lever travels while attached to a fixed point. In physiology, range of motion is the distance your limbs move in the joints. Full range of motion during a workout exercise means you are fully contracting the muscles and fully detracting or stretching the muscles. A good example of full range of motion on flat bench press means that you start with the arms straight, but not locked, lowering the bar down until it almost touches or does touch your chest, and then pushing it up until your arms are straight again.

Shoulder Range of Motion

Fig. 1 Range of Motion in Your Joints. Robin Severy-Pfauntz, 2012 at www.aspenclub.com.

Why you should use full range of motion:

Using full range of motions has many benefits to take advantage of.

The first advantage is you are more efficient with building muscle! You're using precious time at the gym, so why only work half of the muscle when you can work the entire muscle? Full range of motion brings the muscle from fully stretched to completely contracted which breaks down the entire length of the muscle. Using half your range of motion will only break down half of the muscle. What a waste!

Another benefit is you are actively stretching your muscle while working them. You are putting a lot of time into building your muscles, so why make yourself stiff and inflexible when you can use full range of motion and stay flexible? Extending the muscles through full range of motion is keeping them stretched and the new muscle is evenly distributed instead of lumped up in spots creating masses of tight muscle.

When even those benefits aren't enough, there's more! Only working with half range of motion not only builds small lumps of tight muscles that are inflexible and uneven, but it also looks bad! Stretching out the muscles through full range of motions builds every part of the muscle giving you a more natural and lean strong look instead of awkward looking lumpy biceps.

The last benefit I will talk about (there's still many more) is that you will be stronger! Even if you don't care about building muscle or your looks and you just want to be strong, range of motion does make you stronger! Most of the strength exercises like dead lifts and squats require full range of motion for you to get the bar where you want it. If you only workout with half the range of motion, you will be stronger in certain points in the repetition of the strength exercise instead of equal, making you forced to use lower weight because of the weak points you could have worked before with full range of motion.

My challenge to YOU!:

Drop some plates. Take some weight off. A lot of weight. Even build your way up to max from absolutely zero weight. Make sure you are using full range of motion. You will notice a huge difference. In the end, you will end up with less weight than you could lift before, but you will be getting one hell of a better workout. You will feel the difficulty increase instantly. Just remember this is a good thing!

When doing flat bench press, touch the bar to your chest. If you're doing leg press, kiss your knees. During squats, butt below the knees. Bicep curls, arm fully extended, stretching the bicep, and then make the weights touch your shoulders.

Best of luck to everyone! I know I will be taking a huge advantage of these benefits by dropping some of my weight and getting a better workout with full range of motion.

Blog question:

Was there a time when you found a way to make your workout harder, in turn making it more beneficial? If so, what was the change you made?

Energy

I have observed over the past few days that "energy" is very abstract to people. Some think it is a spiritual presence and others think it's when you get enough sleep. I will tell you what energy really is, although the previous statement is still true because energy is in many different forms.

I call this "Attention Energy" (chi)

Fig. 1 Energy Field. Article on www.psychicbutsane.com (2009).

The first side to energy is your attention to it. This energy is found when you put attention on parts of your body. When someone is getting angry or scared, their energy goes straight to their head. You can hear their voice rise in pitch and their upper body moves more and their expressions are strong and constantly changing. This is not healthy because it is hysteric or frantic and not grounded or sturdy. To properly react to situations and events, we have to be grounded. To ground yourself, you have to open your throat and breathe as deep as possible and focus your attention on your feet. Think about how your feet feel when they touch the ground. Visualize your weight pressing your feet into the ground. Picture your breath going into your bellybutton. As Elliott Hulse would say, "breathe into your balls". This takes all the energy in your body and pushes it down into your body and you will be grounded. You can think and act appropriately. You will become smarter and stronger. Your energy will spread out from head to feet instead of concentrated in your head.

Calorie Energy to do Work

Fig. 2 Essential Human Requirements. Article in Teacher Resources at www.tomatoesphere.org.

The next side to energy is the method of consuming food (calories) and burning those calories to do "work". "Burning" the calories means you are transferring the energy from the food you ate into heat which escapes into the atmosphere. There are all kinds of scientific measurements to describe energy and work, none of which I will explain because they can all be found in any physics text book. I'm here to talk about the concept of calories. There is no such thing as "empty calories". Calories are calories and that is it. The only thing that separates good foods from bad foods is the act of converting it into energy. 400 calories of brown rice is better for you than 400 calories of skittles because brown rice has complex sugars (carbohydrates), proteins, and nutrients. This means your body can repair tissue with some of the energy and also convert it into energy slowly over time.Skittles are all sugar and will convert to energy instantly so the energy is used up right away. Nothing else comes out of skittles.

My personal experience:

This past weekend was a big experience for me regarding calorie energy. Before I went away for vacation this weekend, I was lifting at the gym and on my diet of 3,500 rich dense complex calories. I was setting personal records for my heaviest lifts. Over the course of the weekend, I went to a very exhausting all-day metal concert without much food to eat. After that, I was only eating two small meals a day. I felt weak. When I got back in the gym, I was lifting significantly lighter weights and struggling to keep them up. I had poor muscle endurance and I was burn out after the first five sets. At this point I could physically feel the lack of energy from my lack of eating. To fix this issue, I ate as much food today as I could stuff in me. To my surprise, I ate more food than I could any day before my vacation which proved to me that I was bone dry on calories. I feel so much better and ready to get back in the gym.

Mental Energy or Effort

Fig. 3 Mental Perks of School and Work. Article from www.sheknows.com by Michele Borboa.

The last type of energy is in your brain waves. This is also associated with time and effort. Mental energy is the amount of effort you can put into a tasks under the stress of time. We do not have enough mental energy to be the best at everything we do, therefor we have to prioritize our lives so that we can put the most mental energy into the things we want to go the farthest in. The biggest focus points for many people with their mental energy is usually family and work.Add in a hobby and a craft which you love more than anything into the mix. Any more than that and you won't have the mental energy to do your best at everything and your performance will suffer. It is important that we focus on the more important things.

I hope this was a quick simple breakdown of the different kinds of energies to focus on and some good tips about them. I did not cover everything by any means or else this blog would be a series of books. There is a lot to energy and I hope you will all look deeper into them because it will help benefit your lives like it has mine!

Blog question:

What is one commitment you will make to improve the efficiency of your energy to become a stronger better YOU?

Other links:

What is chi?

Wiki Calorie

Physics Energy

Lack of sleep and the Brain

Increasing Mental Energy

Corrective Gym Time Training

If you are a sport athlete, you will notice that many coaches and personal trainers will work you during practice to get better at your sport, but then you'll go to the gym and repeat the same exercises (pattern overload). The logic behind this is that if you train yourself through repetitive motions and then lift with those same repetitive motions with heavy weight, you will become really good at it. This may be true, but at the same time everything else suffers. You are creating further imbalance in your muscle structure which, in the long run, is ruining your posture and moving your bones out of place in your joints from imbalanced tension on them.

How I have been effected by this:

I have been dealing with this situation regarding my ankles and Achilles tendon. The repetitive pushing off of my toes and flexing my Achilles tendon over six years of running has caused it to become very tight. I have been to see a doctor to specializes in the feet and legs of athletes. He grabbed hold of my foot for one moment and tried stretching the tendons in my lower calf muscles and right away said "this is way too tight". I have been stretching the muscles, but not nearly to the degree in which I was working them. To fix the problem and get rid of my ankle pain, I have to stretch and roll it 3-5 times a day for several months. This is quite the process, but in the long run, I will feel much better and the pain will be gone so I can continue my long runs.

I have three videos for you guys from my favorite workout YouTuber, Elliott Hulse, where he talks about pattern overload, fixing it in the gym, and stretches to improve posture. 

Pattern overload and how to fix it at the gym:

Fig. 1 How to Fix Soulder Pain for Athletes by strengthcamp (Elliot Hulse) on www.youtube.com.

Improve your posture:

Fig. 2 Stretches to Improve Posture by strengthcamp ( Elliot Hulse) on www.youtube.com.

So, the basics of fixing pattern overload is by strengthening the muscles on the opposite plane as the ones that are strong from the overload. As a runner, my hip-flexors are very tight which causes my butt to be pulled in when standing up. This is causing an unbalance when I am trying to stand up straight and giving me some lower back pain. To fix this, I am stretching my hip-flexors and strengthening my abductors to pull my butt out more until my spine is straight. So far I have noticed a tremendous improvement.

The main point:

If you are doing a sport that requires repeating motions over and over, when you are at the gym, only strengthen the opposite muscles you don't use in those repeating motions. You will feel better and you will perform better too! Do extra stretching every day on those muscles that you use the most. Stretching them 3-5 times a day is good (unless you're having some severe pain or they are injured. In this case, don't stretch and see a doctor first).

Blog Question:

Are you involved in sports? If so, which sport and what are the repetitive motions you face every day?

Before Chest, Check Your Shoulders

Today I realized that I have been hurting my shoulders while lifting without even knowing it. I will share with you what I have been doing wrong and how properly hold your shoulders when pressing or squeezing your chest.

The chest muscles (especially on men) are one of the most over-trained muscles along with biceps and abs. This is because they are the most aesthetically pleasing to see so we build it a lot. On a lot of people I have worked with, they couldn't push themselves hard with some chest exercises (cable flys, bench press, and overhead press) because they were experiencing shoulder pain. Most of the time they said the shoulder pain was initially caused from something else, but why was the exercises hurting the joint when it's just a muscular contraction in the chest? My answer is improper form with the placement of the shoulders.

Fig. 1 Secret for a Huge Chest - Shoulder Packing by Scooby1961 on www.youtube.com.

I've been watching Scooby's videos on YouTube for a very long time and he explains a lot of things that people don't usually go into great detail about. In this video he explains why it is important when doing chest exercises to have your shoulders down and back. Also, I can't help but believe a man with that kind of chest development!

The wrong way:

It is very common for people to shrug their shoulders up when bench pressing. I used to do this too because I thought it targeted my upper pectoral, but instead it was just putting massive amounts of stress onto my shoulder joints.When your shoulders are shrugged and up by your ears, the pressure on your arm is pushing the ball of the joint out of the socket and straining all the tendons in the shoulders. And to top it all off, it doesn't even target the upper pectorals!

The right way:

The proper way to lock your shoulders when doing any chest exercise is down and back. Not only does this give you better leverage and increase your strength (as explained in Scooby's video with a model figure), but when your shoulders are down, the weight is not pushing your arm out of the socket, it is instead transferring the weight into your lats and and upper back, capable of handling much more weight than your shoulder joints. This also decreases the amount of movement that happens in the socket. It may feel a little weird at first, but pretty soon it will become second nature to keep your shoulders down and back while working the chest.

I hope this has saved some people from making the same mistake as I have. I've noticed that I am able to push my chest a lot further and feel a lot less tension in my shoulder during and after my isolated chest workouts. Just remember, down and back! Not only does it feel safer, more secure, and more isolated on the chest, but it also looks better!

Blog Question:

With many things, there is no "wrong" and "right", but when it comes to form, there is definitely "not good" and "best". When is a time you learned that you have been doing an exercise with different form than the exercise intended?

To Win You Must Fail

Today's motivation is about how we fail and get knocked down in attempt to meet our goals, but through patients and hard work we eventually reach those goals and exceed further.

There are going to be days when you get huge gains towards your goal and then there are going to be days when you don't move or even move back. We will all get "on and off the train" to our success, but it is the people that continue to get back on that reach their long term goals and keep them.

Just the other day I was doing dead lifts as part of my workout and I have seen videos of people my size or slightly heavier lifting 550 pounds! I automatically set my goal really high and to my surprise I could barely get in six repetitions of 160 pounds. It hurt my back and I got frustrated and quit. Later, I went back on to look at those videos again and I learned a lot. I learned how important dead lifts are and how to maintain proper form so you don't strain your back. A few days later I tried the dead lift again and maxed at 200 pounds. Still not even half of 550, but I won't let that get to my head! Once a week I am maxing it now in hopes to maybe, just maybe, lift 550 pounds one day.

So it has been pretty clear in some of my lasts posts, I get a lot of my inspiration from Elliott Hulse. Here's a video he just put out talking about failing to win.

Fig. 1 Fail First by strengthcamp on www.youtube.com (Elliott Hulse)

Of course this is not how you should train every day. Most people will find their limits once every two weeks and see their progress. The type of failure you should hit every workout is "I can't do another rep" instead of "I can't even lift this once". But Elliott Hulse has a lot to say about about overcoming the fear to fail. You must be courageous! Make yourself fail so that you know what goal is next and then reach that goal no matter what by training!

Fig. 2 Rocky Balboa's Inspirational Speech, uploaded by Vimal Kumar on www.youtube.com

Sylvester Stallone as Rocky made a great inspirational speech in one of his movies about life hitting you harder than anything else and that it doesn't matter how hard you hit back, it matters how hard you get him and keep moving. He said:

"Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit, it's about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not be pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that!" - Rocky Balboa (2006)

So keep getting back up. You can fall down, but don't let yourself stay there. Every failure is a new goal for you to work towards achieving.

Blog Question:
When have you set a goal way too high for yourself, but still achieved it over time through hard work? How long did it take? How impossible did it seem when you first tried it?

Healthy Eating Means Eat Fruit, Right?

On many health charts or diagrams, fruits and vegetables are often used to show “good health” while meats and starches are used for “bad health”. (See highlighted paragraph for simplified answer.)

Fig. 1 Four Healthy Foods to Never Eat. Image from www.healthandfitnessnow.info.

Fig. 2 Healthy-Foods. Image from www.goeshealth.com.

Fig. 3 Healthy Foods for Healthy Skin. Image from www.thenewyoulifestyle.com.

So, according to these pictures, if the majority of my diet is fruit, that makes me healthy. The first picture shows a bunch of home-made fruit juices, as if they are healthy drinks, better than soda or even water? The second picture shows a woman trying to pick which foods to eat. Notice that one dish is a pie covered in fruit while on the "healthy" side, there is just a plate full of fruit? The last picture is the most frustrating for me to look at because it seems as if the only thing this damn girl eats is fruits and she's skinny like a model with a measuring tape over her belly and smiling like a little devil. So if I only eat fruit, I'll have a body like that?

In my eyes, fruit only brings three good things, two of them being completely situational. The best benefit to fruit is that the citrus fruits (oranges, lemons, grapes) all provide antioxidants which boosts our immune system. The second benefit, which is completely situational, is the use I had for fruit sugars and honey sugars while doing sports – a little bit before a workout to fill the body’s fast-acting energy reserves for burst sprinting and a little bit after a workout to refill those reserves of quick-energy (sugar). The third benefit, and not as necessary since we have supplements now, is for Vitamin C which is Ascorbic acid that helps repair tissues in the body.

Well, there are some benefits to fruit, so why is it bad?

Whole fruit is not bad. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), children should have one cup of fruit a day, and adults should have 2 cups of fruit a day. This is a very small amount. This ensures you get all the benefits from fruit without the harms of fruit.

So tell me what these harms are already!

Although the sugar in fruits is natural and better for you than white sugar, it is still sugar. Most fruits (varies between them) are 40-55% fructose (Dubost Joy, nutritionist, YouBeauty.com). That means about half of that apple you are eating is sugar, and just about the entire other half is water. Fruit juices are so over processed that you miss out on the big vitamin benefits from eating fruit and the sugar is much more concentrated! Some “healthy” orange juices have as much sugar as an equal serving of ginger ale! Even raisins can do as much damage as an equal serving of jelly beans (Reinagel Monica, Nutrition Diva, 2010).

 

Don’t make the same mistake I did by drinking an entire liter bottle of fruit juice every two days thinking that you’re getting tons of healthy vitamins and minerals. After learning that those excessive amounts of fruit juice can cause Type 2 Diabetes, I stopped immediately.

So the “real deal” with fruit is eat about two cups of whole fruit a day. If you really like fruit, have three or four cups of it, but do not eat half a diet or pound down gallons of fruit juice thinking that it will make you healthy. Have a controlled amount and enjoy it! Have a little extra on your cheat days, but just be wary of how it is affecting your body.

That’s all everyone! Remember, you can do whatever the hell you want! I am just here to educate you with what I learn about healthier life styles! Fruit is very healthy in small portions!

Blog Question:

Have you ever eaten massive quantities of a food thinking it was good for you and then finding out it is not healthy in that quantity at all?

Links about fruits:
Vitamin C
Is Fruit Good For You?
What CDC has to say about it!
Sugar while Working Out
Fruit Sugar Contents vs. White Sugar

My Interesting Perspective on Eating

Lately, I have become a big fan of the saying “you are what you eat”. I've taken this idea even further. We all know our bodies need a balanced healthy diet of natural foods, so just take this idea with a grain of salt, or not-so-literally. Think about the phrase “you are what you eat”. The next time you ask yourself “is this food healthy for me?” think about this instead – “do I want to look like this food?”

If you want to lose weight, think about foods that resemble “fat”: big spongy loaves of bread, spongy pasta, and fat juicy fruits. Eat skinny vegetables, like asparagus, celery, or carrots. Eat light weight meats, like turkey or fish; they are light weight because those animals need to be thin to cut through water or fly.

If you are bulking, like me, you want to grow big dense muscles and taller, so eat foods that resemble just that. Lots of beef because cows are big and strong and broccoli looks like trees, so why not have some broccoli.

Pick an animal that you wish your body was more like and think like that animal. This will also help shape your conscious vision of yourself and you will naturally grow towards your goals.

Again, this is just a different way of thinking, a new perspective. Obviously you don’t want to eat sticks if you want to look like a stick or rocks if you want to look like a rock. I think this simplifies how “healthy” a food is by comparing the way it looks to what we want to become.

Fig. 1 Eat Your Way To a Healthier Life. Image from www.kissmyveggies.com

Introduction

The Purpose Of This Blog:

The sole purpose of this blog is to share my studies and experiences with growing to becoming a healthier and stronger human being.  All my life I have been a “hard-gainer” when it comes to putting on weight and building muscle because of the extreme cardio from running for so long. In the last four weeks, I have put on 12 pounds of muscle with my lifting and eating routines. I will be continuing this until I have hit my goals and tracking my experiences on here along with everything I learn from studying.

I will be posting motivational speeches from myself and others, my experiences and lessons learned along the road to my own health goals, condensed and simple recaps of my readings, and of course, answering any questions people send me.

I am not a professional body builder, nor am I a professional physician, coach, or athlete, but I have extreme goals set for myself to become the strongest version of myself in which I will be learning from the professionals and sharing it with all of you. I am in the same situation as many of the people reading this blog, so we are all going through the same things together.

Quick Background:

My name is Kyle, and I am 20 years old. I have been running for six years (since freshman year of high school), four of which were just about every single day with only breaks between seasons to fully recover. I participated in cross country and track & field, but cross country was what I put all my heart in to. My love for running developed because I had the greatest high school cross country coaches I could have ever asked for. Since out of high school, I've been enrolled in college. I will be obtaining my Associate’s degree this year. I have lowered my amount of running to spend more time bulking in the gym. I am four weeks in to bulking, and here I am, beginning my first blog.

Health & Fitness Experiences:

-          Ran cross country and track & field all four years of high school.

-          Majority of my training has been spent as a long-distance runner.

-          Was on and off training for a year and a half after high school.

-          Realized I wanted to put on weight and began body building.

-          In the fifth week of bulking right now.

Achievements:

-          18:29 5k

-          129:24 half marathon

-          160 pound bench

-          450 pound leg press

-          142 – 154 pounds (body weight gains)

Goals:

-          Read about health and fitness every day and share what I’ve learned.

-          Bulk up to 165-170 pounds and then cut to 160 pounds of pure lean muscle.

-          Run a marathon.

-          Break 18 minutes in 5k run.

-          Flat bench over 200 pounds.

-          Dead lift over 500 pounds.

-          Leg press over 600 pounds.

-          Share health and fitness with others!