Strength Changes Everything

We are replaying one of our most popular episodes for you this week!   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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We are replaying one of our most popular episodes for you this week!   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.

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.