You Can’t Beat Physiology

Fitness goals and the various roads towards achieving them are frequently misunderstood, in my opinion. Often in conversation about fitness goals someone will state what they are trying to accomplish, but their idea of how to actually go about accomplishing it may be a little off. While there are many ways to reach a destination, knowing the physiology behind what you are doing is crucial to getting yourself on a more direct route. If you can understand these principles and physiological processes that contribute to eliciting the result you desire, you might be pleasantly surprised with the easy progress you see, instead of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Let’s take a look at a few examples:

1. A common one: losing/gaining weight. When considering the physiology of weight loss or gain, there is one process that rules above all: the law of thermogenesis. Thermogenesis is simply the balance between energy in and energy out, also counted in calories. If your calories in exceed calories out, your weight goes up, and if calories out exceed calories in, you lose weight. That equation is pretty simple. Another physiological gold nugget is the fact that muscle is the most metabolically demanding part of our bodies, so the more you have, the larger calorie-burning metabolic furnace you will have.

2. Getting “huge,” or relatively huge. Taking thermodynamics into consideration again, you need to be in a calorie surplus to make those muscles bigger. If you don’t have extra supplies to make more muscle, you can’t expect to get bigger. On top of that, you need to perform strength activities where you are working at 70-75+% of your 1 rep max (RM) and increase the amount of volume you are performing, or perform ultra-sets with ~50% of 1RM and go till failure to get large quantities of volume. “Volume” refers to the number of sets x number of reps x weight being used. Increased volume stimulates the physiological process of muscle hypertrophy when you are in a calorie surplus. 

3. Running/sprinting or jumping higher. This is a more interesting example, consisting of a combination of muscle and neurologic adaptions that you are trying to improve. Muscularly, you need to improve the performance of your type 2 muscle fibers, which are you power/high force producing fibers. Conversely, type 1 fibers are closer towards the endurance side of the spectrum and are meant for prolonged activity. To stimulate type 2 fiber development, you have to perform activities such as maximal effort lifts, like squats and deadlifts, working at 90+% of your 1RM to improve maximal strength. Secondly, on the neurological side of things, performing dynamic effort lifts (like squats and deadlifts) at 50-70% of your 1RM while intending to move the weight as quickly as possible improves your ability to recruit type 2 fibers quickly and all at once. Performing plyometric jumps will also improve your ability to use your passive elastic structures to absorb and transfer force, making you more “springy.”

As you can see from the above examples, each training goal requires a slightly different stimulus to get the desired physiological result. Each training modality has a different effect on your physiology and will dictate how well you are moving towards what your end goal is. A better understanding of the physiology of what is going on will make your training more efficient and less frustrating. 

If you have any questions about additional examples of how to manipulate training to affect physiology, you can leave them in the comments below! Train smart, my friends :)

Thanks for reading,

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

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Dissociation Between Your Hips and Low Back

The inability to dissociate your hip and low back movements from one another is one of the most common problems I see when walking throughout the gym. This problem is especially easy to spot if you watch a good sample size of people deadlifting. I’d like to also mention that it’s very impressive to see just how much weight some people can lift while just pulling with their low backs. In addition to deadlifting, this disassociation issue can also be seen while running, jumping, and squatting. Notice that the aforementioned movements are all extension-based.

When I refer to dissociation between your hips and low back, I’m talking about getting extension from only your hip while your back remains relatively neutral, acting isometrically. By performing activities without causing flexion and extension moments at your lumbar spine, you can reduce the amount of stress and dynamic load you place on it. Dynamic load on your spine is not an ideal scenario. 

Individuals who like to extend with both their low back and their hips to create forward propulsion when running/sprinting-or performing any of the other activities listed above-like to move into relative lumbar flexion so they can then extend through those spinal segments. This is what is considered dynamic load. For example, in the picture below, both stick figure lifters end in the same position. The one on the left was in relative flexion and used hip and lumbar extension to finish the lift, causing dynamic load, while the one on the right used hip extension and isometric action at the lumbar spine.  Those who use the movement strategy of hip and low back extension together to create movement often have complaints of back pain, due to repetitive use of their back extensors. If you are familiar with the feeling of gradually worsening tightness or discomfort of your low back when exercising, this is one of the common causes. (Please note that there can be other causes as well.) 

This inability to dissociate can arise for multiple reasons. Three of the main contributors are weak anterior core musculature, poor neuromuscular control, and tight hip flexors. 

The anterior core musculature is made up of a couple different muscles aside from the popular rectus abdominis, aka the six pack. These include the internal/external obliques and transverse abdominis. Their job, as a collaborative unit, is to increase intraabdominal pressure during movements in order to keep the spine stable. If these muscles are weak and cannot counteract the forces of your hip flexors or momentum when moving forward, you will move into extension. 

Neuromuscular control can also present as a problem. The abs, hip extensors, and back musculature can all be plenty strong, but that doesn’t mean they sequence correctly. In my opinion this is the hardest problem to fix due to the repetitive nature of movement and the amount of repetitions required to create a new movement pattern. This is where people often get frustrated when they do not see immediate results because their previous movement pattern is so ingrained into the brain that it becomes hard to change. Hard to change, but still possible. This change in movement patterning calls for a lot of repetitive tedious exercises, which aren’t physically challenging but frustrating because they come with a lot of trial and error of movement till you get it right. 

Lastly, tight hip flexors. These buggers can cause many problems, and disrupting your hip and low back dissociation is just one of them. The iliopsoas muscle of your hip flexor group attaches to the lumbar spine and inserts itself onto the femur. You can think about your pelvis as having four ropes attached to it. These four ropes consist of your anterior core musculature, hip flexors, hip extensors, and spinal erectors/back extensors. If the hip flexors are tight, they throw off the balance between these four strings, moving you into an anterior pelvic tilt. When it comes time to perform an activity that requires hip extension, like squatting, jumping, and especially running/sprinting, the hip flexor will pull your spine into more extension as your hip extends, causing extension of the back and hip at the same time.

So how do you correct some of these issues listed above?

Simply put, strengthen the anterior core muscles, practice hip extension with isometrically acting back extensors while keeping a neutral back, and lengthen the hip flexors/make them more supple.

Some good isometric anterior core exercises to try are reaching planks and shoulder tap planks shown below. While performing these, making sure to contract the glutes and abdominal musculature at the same time. 

Reaching Plank

Shoulder Tap Plank

For neuromuscular control, I like to start with a prone hip extension and then progress to a birddog. It is important to pay attention to where the extension is coming from during these exercises, feeling the spine stay relatively neutral and the motion coming from the hip. It is good to concentrate on the glute contraction when performing these exercises and not attempt to extend the leg too high towards the ceiling. People do not generally tend to have a ton of hip extension. Normal is considered ~10 degrees of extension at the hip. If you are getting more than that, you might be getting it from the low back. 

Prone Hip Extension

 

Birddog

 

To lengthen the hip flexors, I like the hip flexor bench stretch. I don’t have a fancy name for this one so if you have a better one please let me know :)

Hip Flexor Bench Stretch

Shown below is the proper way to perform this stretch. It is important to keep the abs tight to keep from going into extension of the lumbar spine. Remember to breathe as you perform this stretch as well.

When the abs are not held tight, you can fake hip extension as shown below. Most of this motion, however, is coming from the lumbar spine. Trust me, you are not impressing anyone with your stretching skills so just preform them correctly and get the desired affect even if it makes you look very inflexible. That is, after all, why you should be doing the stretch in the first place, so don’t cheat yourself.

This should be a good place to start if you have difficulty dissociating your hip and low back movement. If you have any questions about this topic feel free to leave a comment or send an email to the address listed below. 

As always, please like, comment, and share! That always is a huge help to get this information out there. 

Thanks for reading,

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

If you enjoyed this and would like to help me out please share this article! 
New posts every Sunday! 

If you are interested in other content from Weights and Stuff you can find it at:

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