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Aug 11 •
🧨 Are Activation Exercises Pointless?
Let me guess. Underactive or lazy glutes. A thousand clamshells. Rotator cuff doesn’t ‘fire’? Banded external rotation times one hundred. Certain lexicon on social media creates the impression that muscles are sort of like light switches - you flip it on, it works. You flip it off, it doesn’t. While the metal circuitry of electrical systems is somewhat resemblant of our vast internal neural circuits, it is not the case of ‘on’ or ‘off’. Our nervous system is far less binary than that - every time you stand up, your glutes don’t fire 100%. They contract just enough to match the load of your bodyweight - if you were to perform a one rep max squat, then it would be closer to 100%. The intensity of power produced by a muscle is a spectrum, sort of like a dimmer switch which depends on the number and size of motor units recruited for the job (depending on the job). When you perform an exercise with the purpose of ‘activation’ in mind, it’s more of a brain and neurological thing as opposed to the muscle itself - when used properly, they can shift neuromuscular attention to the ‘lazy’ muscle and enhance motor awareness of it. Activation drills aren’t pointless - just overprescribed and misunderstood. But the thing is, muscles can’t really be ‘lazy’ or ‘asleep’ - the dimmer switch is turned to 0% only when your nervous system has shut down, for example if a nerve has been damaged or severed. So why have you been told that your glutes, or any other muscle for that matter, isn’t 'firing properly' during life or certain exercises? Well, for starters, in order for a muscle to 'fire' (or recruit motor neurones and contract) it needs to have leverage. For example, if you are beginning a squat with a hyperextended spine and an uncontrolled anterior pelvic tilt, your glutes are pre-lengthened to the point of losing mechanical advantage. So first point to address would be your positioning. The second would be the exercise set-up itself - change stance width. Change the resistance profile (go from free-weight to a machine). Change leverage - swap the arm in which you hold a dumbbell in, try a safety bar, try a front-rack squat. Chances are, your glutes are not ‘turned off’ - they are just missing optimal set up to work to their full capacity.
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18d •
🙆 Myofascial Release - Can You Actually Release Fascia?
Fascia is basically tensile, connective tissue containing all of our musculature in a giant web. Instead of having 600 muscles, we have 1 muscle in 600 myofascial pockets. It’s certainly an interesting way of looking at the body as one interconnected structure where nothing can move in isolation. Point is, fascia is a thing - it’s not a money-making pseudo-concept created by homeopaths. And it can certainly get too stiff, distorted, dehydrated, or ridden with painful trigger points or ‘knots’ as people tend to call them. However, when we talk about ‘myo-fascial’ release it becomes a bit of a misnomer seeing as fascia is extremely strong and stiff — you'd need >900 kg of force to make significant permanent change in its length or structure. Unlike muscle, which one can passively lengthen (stretch), fascia is non-contractile, collagen-rich, and designed for tensile strength and stability. So… do we actually need to ‘release’ it or (god forbid) stretch it? With things like trigger point release, foam rolling and any kind of manual pressure is more to achieve an inhibitory response within the painful region, be it fascia or muscle. However, what we can do with fascia is: - Redistribute interstitial fluid (fluid in and around the fascia) and rehydrate it. - Improve gliding properties - the human body is comprised of layers and layers of ‘stuff’, creating anatomical fascia-muscle-fascia sandwiches. The layers can get a bit stuck together, which can restrict and inhibit movement. So generally… it’s not about mashing your IT band as hard as possible and expecting your knee to stop hurting because it somehow ‘releases’. We cannot structurally change fascia much. But what we can do is change certain properties of it to facilitate relief and therefore simply alter your perception of pain... have fun stretching!
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Aug 18 •
💥 Should You Choose Low Impact Exercise?
‘Don’t run, the impact will ruin your joints.’ People are always skeptical of any kind of impact-based activity such as jumping or running, and for good reason. Jogging can put up to 2.5 times your bodyweight through your legs and feet (numbers vary depending on the reliability of your information source, running form and footwear). For faster running or sprinting, the vertical ground reaction force can increase up to 4–5 times body weight, especially with forefoot striking or harder surfaces. That’s a load of impact! But is that necessarily terrible for us? And will your joints crumble the second your Nikes hit the ground? Well, ‘impact’ as a concept can only be detrimental if your body isn’t prepared to deal with it. For example, arthritic joints which are already compromised have been shown to degrade even faster when pit against compressive forces - running with knee osteoarthritis may not be the best idea. However, if your joints are in decent shape to begin with and your impact-based training is progressed properly (probably the main takeaway!), it can stimulate joint tissue adaptation and neuromuscular enhancement. We’re talking tendon stiffness and bone remodelling, as well - both of which are quite beneficial. The key here is slow progression over time - along with the encouragement of proper landing mechanics and auxiliary strength training, for example taking the effort to train your calves and tibialis anterior if you are a runner. In fact, majority of runners and power athletes will likely find that plyometrics (when applied appropriately…) will ameliorate their performance, rather than hinder it. While low-impact training (cycling, swimming, rowing) is of course fantastic and can deliver a great cardiovascular and muscular stimulus, it does not promote bone remodelling to the same extent as higher-impact modalities. So if you have no pre-existing joint or skeletal disorders, impact-based training may serve you better than you think.
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Aug 4 •
🫓 Can You Actually Target Visceral Fat?
Good fat, bad fat. Brown fat? White fat? Fat fat? Once again thanks to many a social media guru, most people have loosely heard that our adipose tissue (fat) can be categorised into three groups (white fat, brown fat and beige fat) in three locations (subcutaneous, visceral and ectopic). Visceral fat is fat surrounding internal organs. We kind of intuitively know that’s not great - visceral fat secretes a bunch of pro-inflammatory cytokines and messes with insulin signalling. There’s actually a linear relationship between visceral fat, accelerated aging and insulin resistance. Of course, people love to market this. Lemon and ginger first thing in the morning will torch your visceral fat, following up with some HIIT and a cold plunge. A lot of the ‘methods’ around aren’t necessarily complete rubbish, but the thing is - if an overweight individual with lots of visceral fat simply begins to LOSE WEIGHT, visceral fat will often go first. It’s highly metabolically active, has plenty of blood vessels and β-adrenergic receptors, making it more responsive to breakdown - plus, our body doesn’t really want it there anyway. In fact, although moderate to vigorous intensity exercise is always helpful (not just for fat loss), there is substantial evidence for diet-only visceral fat reduction as it is HIGHLY RESPONSIVE to a negative energy balance. A lower-carb diet has been shown to promote a marginally greater fat oxidation in some cases, but no matter what - if you initiate fat loss through creating a calorie deficit, guess what? Your visceral fat will go, as well. There are some bizarre claims out there - especially circulating around conventionally used holistic and herbalist ingredients such as lemon, apple cider vinegar, turmeric and pepper. But there has been NO scientifically proven food, herb, remedy or particular exercise regime (aside from exercise itself) that SPECIFICALLY ‘torches’ visceral fat. Stay safe, stay sane, and don’t drink too much lemon water. Causes dental erosion over time.
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Jul 28 •
🔟 Why 10k Steps Per Day is a Myth
Sitting is the new smoking. Move, move, move - your Apple Watch is forever reminding you to close your movement rings. We get a rewarding digital buzz for every stair climbed, every activity logged, every calorie burnt (fun fact - most fitness trackers have a 20-25% margin of error when tracking calories). This is how our ancestors lived, right? Constantly on the go, clocking in mile after mile. With the rise in popularity of ancestral movement, everybody has suddenly becomes obsessed with speculating about how ancestors moved and lived. Unfortunately, a lot of it is speculation. Members of the Hadza tribe (one of the few last hunter-gatherer tribes left on the planet, commonly used as a model for ancestral activity patterns) DO tend to have a relatively high step count. However, there is no such thing as structured exercise in their lives. They don’t fixate on getting their steps in, or do cardio - their activity comes in spontaneous, intermittent bursts throughout the day and largely consists of daily tasks (fishing, hunting, foraging, digging). Actually, it will come as a big surprise to many that the Hadza spend around 9.9 hours per day in sedentary postures, but these don't include being chair-bound. They squat, kneel, and sit on the ground - all positions that require postural muscle engagement and multi-joint mobility. ALL the movement they do is functional, versus the 40-minute functional fitness class an average office worker partakes in. It’s not so much sitting that isn’t great for us, but sitting in the default 21st century posture of a cooked shrimp - chair, laptop, slumped. Invest in your set-up. Maybe a backless chair. Ergonomic chairs, maybe a backless one if you train your core sufficiently. Computer at a proper height. Movement breaks every 45 minutes or so - and not just to walk; squat, bend, twist, pinch your shoulder blades and go through motion at every joint. ‘Steps’ are a valuable measure of activity, but also just an expenditure currency - if you’ve spent your entire day not moving only then to attack 12k steps in one go, your joints may not feel particularly great despite the calories burnt.
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