[00:00:00] Carl Lanore: [00:00:00] welcome back to another episode of super human radio. Today is November 4th, 2020. Uh, the day after election day, we got to take your mind off of all the election activity with some really positive information about resistance training. Um, in fact, in anticipation of the show, people are posting things like this on Facebook.

[00:00:24] This book will change your life. Awesome that you got professor Doug on the show and many more, just like that. We're going to be talking about the physics of, uh, of resistance exercise and, uh, how you can become more efficient at building muscle and put yourself at a lot less risk before we do any of that.

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[00:02:12] Use the code SHR 10, save 10% off. And that's all of my babbling right now. Now I'm going to share the screen with three, two other people. And that is Ron Penna. Uh, you've heard Ron's name mentioned a lot because there's often, um, Let's say nutritional wisdom, Marie, that I learned from Ron. And I always say, Ron Penna always says this.

[00:02:35] And then of course, many of you are here and know about Doug Brignoli. How are you doing Doug? How are you doing

[00:02:41] Doug Brignole: [00:02:41] good run. How are you, Carl? Well,

[00:02:43] Carl Lanore: [00:02:43] great. I'm doing great. So we all want to maximize our efforts in the gym. No one wants to go into the gym and work hard and have no rewards, no new muscle, no new strength.

[00:02:56] But the flip side of that is that most of us probably are doing exactly that [00:03:00] because we're just following what we see on an Instagram models page. And so on very, very little thought is given to leverages and physical aspects of gravity and how they affect the actuation and activity of a muscle. I don't think anyone has done is dump as much of a deep dive as Doug

[00:03:21] Doug. First of all, give us some of your pedigree. You've been to mr. USA. You've been a mr. America and mr.

[00:03:27] Doug Brignole: [00:03:27] What else? Mr. California? Uh, mr. California in 1982. Um, my division when and mr. America, 1983 division winning mr. Universe, 1983, uh, Northwestern America in 1991. Um, and then most recently last November, um, the AAU has researched resurfaced and, and I won the, uh, the masters division and the overall universe last November at the age of 59.

[00:03:54] Carl Lanore: [00:03:54] Wow. That's impressive. So how old are you now, Doug? 60 just turned 60. [00:04:00] Okay. All right. And now, so Ron and I, we talk a lot about a lot of stuff. I often wish we taped our conversations on the phone because I think they're so fascinated and I think other people would as well. And he started telling me about your book and he's like, Carl.

[00:04:13] Now I know Ron, Ron likes to lift heavy. Um, he does a variety of different things that both, uh, confirm metabolic conditioning, as well as strength. And he said to me, we've been doing it all wrong. Talk about that conversation, Ron, what was the epiphany you had when you started to, first of all, when you started to read this book, did you read it and go, nah, this can't work.

[00:04:41] Ron Penna: [00:04:41] Yeah. I mean, I think people split into two camps on that. They're either challenged by it and thinking, wow, wait a minute. Am I messing this up? Or they're threatened by it. And when I read it, I realized, you know, I think a lot of people have tried to apply to physics before. Um, but usually they're more academics.

[00:04:59] And, and the interesting thing [00:05:00] about this book is you have a guy who's wasted a tremendous part of his life in a agenda. Uh, so he really knew what he was talking about. Then he takes physics and marries the two. And, you know, he admits all the things, what he used to train for years and the changes that he made.

[00:05:15] So it makes a lot of intellectual sense. Um, but then when you apply some of the things there, certain exercises in the book immediately that you will do the way he trains triceps, the way he trains mid trapezius. And you're like, Oh

[00:05:26] Doug Brignole: [00:05:26] my God, I, this,

[00:05:27] Ron Penna: [00:05:27] I haven't felt anything like this. Then you start becoming a believer and then.

[00:05:31] Over the next few days, as you have a weird delayed onset muscle soreness, you're like, something's very strange here.

[00:05:37] Doug Brignole: [00:05:37] Um,

[00:05:38] Ron Penna: [00:05:38] and, and then, so it just, it just builds on it. Yeah. And I think there's people that take the time to make that exploration and then people don't. Um, and I bought the book for several people.

[00:05:46] I may fall into those two camps. People, no, they don't really get it or they don't really try. Got it. Uh, because I guess they're not looking to learn new things and that other people are like, wait,

[00:05:56] Carl Lanore: [00:05:56] could this be possible? I don't

[00:05:58] Ron Penna: [00:05:58] think anyone reads it and says, Oh, this is the [00:06:00] answer. It's just a challenging, challenging book.

[00:06:03] And, um, so it it's it's genius.

[00:06:05] Doug Brignole: [00:06:05] Thank you. Or I'm so making so much, yeah,

[00:06:08] Carl Lanore: [00:06:08] that'd be flux. Let's set the table here for a second. Cause we're going to have a lot of people who are going to listen to this interview and they're going to dismiss it because of this phenomenon that we just talked about that to uniquely human construct.

[00:06:21] And that is when you've been doing something wrong long enough, you're more resistant to changing even when you find something right to change with. And that's because you've made this investment and it's hard for you to say, I just wasted five years of my life doing it this way, when I should have been doing it that way, the ego has a big role in why people may look at your book and go, nah, this, this can't work.

[00:06:44] I'm not even going to try it.

[00:06:46] Doug Brignole: [00:06:46] Right. Well, you know, you know, the ponder, the term cognitive bias, right. You know, that the, we tend, we tend as humans to seek, uh, confirmation of our beliefs. And so when we are [00:07:00] confronted with something that refutes our beliefs, we tend to, um, try subconsciously to find a reason to discredit it.

[00:07:09] So, um, and, and this is more true if you've been teaching those beliefs. Right, because then not only do you have, you know, the, the, the, the, the bad feeling of having done it wrong for so long, but also possibly the guilt of having exposed other people to these and most trainers bank on the, the marketing of their credibility, right?

[00:07:36] Most trainers want you to convince their, we all want to convince our clients. That they're in good hands that we know what we're doing. Right. So the idea that you've been doing that for 10 years or 20 years, but you didn't know what you were doing now, what I always do, because I, you know, it's very important for us to understand that we are all on the same page.

[00:07:57] We all want to do what, right. [00:08:00] We all think we're doing what's right. Right. So the people who are doing it, quote, unquote, wrong. Are not doing it wrong maliciously, they're doing it wrong because they were informed by people. They trust it. There's nothing wrong with trusting people. Right. We go to fitness certifications, we read books, you know, we go to seminars and, and, and if, uh, if, if, if you know, a bodybuilder has a magnificent physique and he's speaking to us, we think that's proof in the pudding.

[00:08:28] Right? We think that's evidence of truth. Right. And what I say is it's not evidence of a lie. But it is evidence of a partial truth, right? If you put 30% effort into something, eventually you'll have something big. Right. But you've also 70% of your effort along the way. So let

[00:08:48] Carl Lanore: [00:08:48] let's jump right into this and let's go right for.

[00:08:52] The sacrificial cow, let's go for the squat because as soon as you tell somebody, there's a [00:09:00] better way to build leg strength and muscularity than the squat, they dismiss you immediately because the squat is the King of all lifts. Now that may be true if you're a power lifter, and you're trying to prove that you can squat 1300 pounds.

[00:09:15] But if you're, if you're a gym rat who wants to see changes in your physique, You know, from weeks and months that you train the squat may not be the best. Talk about the squat. First of all.

[00:09:29] Doug Brignole: [00:09:29] Well, the first thing I'll say is that, you know, we, we like to use barometers of arts. We like to use, uh, something that gives us, uh, what might be considered a concrete indication of how well we're doing, right?

[00:09:42] So when your squat weight goes up from three 15 to three 25 or whatever, You think you're getting confirmation that you're on the right track, right? Where you are on the right track to something. Right. But if your objective is to build your quadriceps and your glutes, that isn't necessarily a good [00:10:00] barometer to use.

[00:10:01] All right. So, um, the problem with what I teach is that, um, it requires when we're talking physics, we're talking trigonometry, right? We're talking some math, right? So if you really want to quantify your progress, But in, in a measurement of strains, uh, then you'd have to do a little bit of math. Right. But what I say in my book is you don't need to know trigonometry.

[00:10:24] All you need to know is what's more than in what the less than right. What kind of lever angle gives you less percentage of the load and what Lambert will gives you more percentage of the load. And once you know that, then you can start favoring the physics that gives you the greater percentage of the load.

[00:10:40] So to get down to brass tacks with squat, The first question that people have to ask themselves is this it's a compound movement. I'm working quads and glutes. Yes. You're working erector spinae, because something's keeping your spine from folding forward. Right. Swell, but it's working isometrically, but the [00:11:00] Mo the primary objective when we're doing squats is to work hip extension muscles and the extension muscles.

[00:11:05] So the first question people have to ask themselves is, okay, pretend you're the knee extension muscles, right. Over there somewhere. The hip extension and muscles are working simultaneously. What I, as the group of knee extension muscles know that that group of muscles is working simultaneously, not necessarily.

[00:11:25] And if I didn't know what I'd benefit from it, the answer is no we're doing our own thing. I'm extending the knee. That group of muscles over there is extending the hip. They're doing their thing. They might be getting some benefit. I might be getting some benefit, but their benefit doesn't help me. And my benefit doesn't help them now.

[00:11:43] Yes, there's coordination involved in a squad. So part of lifting heavy squad is being able to coordinate the movement, but separate from that, the stimulation that the quadriceps are getting is not being enhanced by the stimulation that the hip extension, the glutes adductors hamstrings might be getting.

[00:12:00] [00:11:59] So that's the first question is we have to first agree that the simultaneous activation of two muscles has no innate benefits to each. Right. So, yes, you're spending more time in your energy.

[00:12:13] Carl Lanore: [00:12:13] Really? People, people say, Oh, isolation exercises suck. But every muscle is working on its own and every movement.

[00:12:21] So technically every muscle is isolated in its job.

[00:12:24] Doug Brignole: [00:12:24] Yeah. Every, every muscle is doing what it's done does it's doing its job. That's number one. So on, on that point, we have to ask ourselves, during the squat, the knee extension muscles are extending the knee. Are they extending the knee as well as the knees can be extended.

[00:12:40] Are the quarters working as well as the quarters and the, and the answer to that requires knowing what constitutes great muscle stimulation, right? Part of it is range of motion. Part of is early phase loading. Part of it is efficiency, which has to do with the ratio between how much weight you're using and how much a load the muscle [00:13:00] was getting.

[00:13:01] Right. So, um, the glutes. Um, our, our extending the femur down and the quadrant or extending the tip be up. Right. So when you're talking about levers, right, and the lower leg is the lever of the quadricep and the femur, the upper thigh bone is the lever of the glutes and the hip extension muscles. When you look at that and you say, okay, show, we know that a pendulum is neutral when it's hanging straight down.

[00:13:29] We know that it's neutral when it's over it's pivot. Right. That's why support beings and buildings are vertical. Right. Right. We know that once it breaks vertical, it starts to get heavier. It gets heaviest when it meets the perpendicular position with gravity, right. Technically that's called the widest moment arm.

[00:13:47] The is distance between the pivot and the end of the lever. That's why that's heaviest. Right. So, um, when you're talking about this, Thing it's it's percentages of effort. [00:14:00] Right? So any limb that we're using is going to load it's corresponding muscle with the most possible effort. It can, when that limb is perpendicular to gravity, right.

[00:14:11] When we're using freeway, semi's horizontal. Right. Right. When you're doing a squat, you start off with your upper leg and your lower leg, your upper leg and your lower leg, both vertical. So they're both neutral, right? Right. As you start to descend into your squat, those two limbs, those two levers start to enter various degrees of perpendicular with gravity.

[00:14:36] Right. But the lower leg only goes to about 30 degrees from that neutral position. It doesn't even reach a 45 degree angle. Certainly not horizontal. Right. So it's, unless you're, unless you want

[00:14:48] Carl Lanore: [00:14:48] anchor, unless your ankles just broke, then if your ankle.

[00:14:54] Doug Brignole: [00:14:54] Yeah. I mean, aside from that, there's just no way that you could basically do a sissy [00:15:00] squat.

[00:15:00] Right. That's what it would require when you do a stitch squad, your lower leg goes nearly horizontal. There's no way you could do assist with 315 pounds on your bat. Right? Right. So. That's the reason why you can do 350 in pounds is because you're only getting on your quads. About 30% of that. Now the upper leg bone, the fever does get horizontal.

[00:15:21] So technically it is a 100% lever, but there's two things that nine to five resistance. One is the, is the angle of the lever relative to resistance gravity in this case. And the other is the length of the lever, right? Well, you might be thinking, well, the femur has to get longer or shorter. Well, what happens is when you're squatting, what happens is that you're, you, you get it to this position right here.

[00:15:44] Right now, this angle right here is what's loading the quadricep with about 30% of what it could be loading in with, but it's also, but it's also reducing the femur lanes. This is called the secondary lever [00:16:00] to the primary lever of which operating discourteous muscle over here. Right. So you know that when you're doing, let's say a dumbbell press.

[00:16:08] As long as that weight stays over your elbows, you're dealing with a lever that's only the length of your upper arm, but if you open your elbows, you lengthen the lever, right. You nine to five, the resistance more. That's why you can't fly with as much weight as you can prep. Right. But if you bring them in inside the rabble, you're actually shortening this lever, which of course reduces the magnification and allows you to use more weight.

[00:16:33] Well, that's, what's happening on a squat. You're actually reducing the femur lanes. And therefore reducing the magnification of the load that the glutes could be getting. Right. So you've got a compromise mechanical thing happening for the quadriceps. Would that lower leg? I think you have a compromised mechanical thing happening with the reduction of the femur length for the gluteus.

[00:16:55] And the reason why this is happening is precisely because you're trying to work both muscles at the [00:17:00] same time with only one single direction of resistance. If you were to separate those two muscles, You could apply perpendicular resistance to both the femur and the lower leg lever. Right. And, and, and the activation of the quadricep over there and the activation of the gluteus over there wouldn't be any less.

[00:17:18] In fact, it would be more than the activation that's happening simultaneously during a squat. So how do you, that's just the mechanical.

[00:17:26] Carl Lanore: [00:17:26] So how do you feel about the leg extension as, as a quadricep movement?

[00:17:31] Doug Brignole: [00:17:31] Well, Well, the leg extension is basically the same thing as a skull crusher, right? It is applying the resistance to the end of the lever.

[00:17:40] And then you're loading that tricep with a loaded lever. That's what a leg extension is. The reason why leg extensions sometimes don't feel comfortable is because our, our knees are not parallel to each other. Right. Our femurs are actually externally rotated, which is why most people's [00:18:00] heels are closer than their toes are when they look down.

[00:18:02] Right. That's why, I mean, some people are pitching tote, of course, but most of us have slightly extra FEMA rotated femurs. And that means that the access of both knees are also slightly outward, which means that if we were to extend our knees, naturally, they would go slightly to the outside. But the leg extension forces you to go right.

[00:18:23] Right. So it's forcing your knee to move in a way that, and by the way, I have a client whose toes are so far out, we can't ski. If he were to ski, he would rip his legs apart. Right. He cannot hold his feet together, parallel to each other, right. Someone like that could never do a leg extension. Their knee accesses are so turned out that it would be very uncomfortable to, to follow a straightforward path.

[00:18:49] Not to mention the fact that sometimes the pivot on the machine is not placed in the right place. Sometimes it's a little too high. Sometimes it's a little too low. It shouldn't be right alongside your knee joint often, if not [00:19:00] exceptionally a leg extension, would it be fun if you could have a likely extension that followed your pathway is cables or whatever, it was more freeze, nothing wrong.

[00:19:10] Carl Lanore: [00:19:10] Almost free floating. Yeah. Right.

[00:19:13] Doug Brignole: [00:19:13] So what do you, let me, let me just check. Let me just, I'm sorry. Let me just touch on one more thing about the spot. Um, so there's, there's, there's two aspects that we have to, we have to look at the mechanical aspect of what's actually happening to the lovers, right? And then there's the neurological aspect and the neurological aspect is that.

[00:19:33] That we have a mechanism in our body called reciprocal innervation. Sometimes it's called reciprocal inhibition and, and basically what it tells the opposing muscle for shut off while this muscle over here is working. So when you're doing curls and your biceps are being activated, your central nervous system is sending what's called the relaxation synapse.

[00:19:55] For your triceps to prevent it from simultaneously contracting, which would [00:20:00] interfere with the functioning of the bicep. Right? Right. Well, you can't tell that's happening with your curls. It is happening, but you can't tell, but when you're doing a compound movement, like the squat where you're trying to get simultaneous activation of different joints, you have to ask yourself, are some of these influencing negatively the other well hip extension.

[00:20:23] Which is the gluteus and the HIPAA yeah. Doctors. And to some degree, the hamstring is opposite hip flection. So when you actually activate the hip extension muscles, you D activate the hip flection muscle, right? One of those hip flection muscles is the rectus femoris, which is one of the four quadricep muscles is being deactivated.

[00:20:47] While you're trying to get maximum stimulation for your quadriceps. That's the muscle right in the Senate, very County, one of the

[00:20:55] Carl Lanore: [00:20:55] former that sounds very kind of productive.

[00:20:59] Doug Brignole: [00:20:59] You've [00:21:00] got 25% loss benefit instantly just because it's being shut off. I mean, they've actually done EMG studies on that and they've actually discovered that the, the activation of the rectus femoris is almost non-existent during squats.

[00:21:17] Right. So that's significant. Right. And then what's happening too. Is that the activation of the hamstring as a participant in hip extension is also being deactivated by the activation of the quadriceps, right. Quadris opposite of hamstring. So that means hip extension is also being compromised in a way, because one of its participants can't play.

[00:21:41] Right. So here we are doing this exercise with a lot of weight. And again, getting back to the mechanical thing, it's a lot of weight because we're compromising the mechanics. We're forced to use a lot of weight in order to get the same amount of load that we could get with another exercise that had better mechanics.

[00:21:58] Um, and so while you're [00:22:00] struggling with all of this weight and the spinal compression of having that weight pushing down on your spine, Which by the way is ridiculous because it's a very indirect way of loading a target muscle. The why involve the spine to load the quadriceps. Why involved the spine?

[00:22:16] It's like trying to involve your spine to load your triceps. It's like, it's not necessary. Right? You're getting spinal component. You're going to the activation of the rectus, femoris, the activation of the hamstring and forced to use more way than you'd have to use if you separated these two movements.

[00:22:29] So yeah, it's a Holy grail, but you know, when you, when you break it down, you say. God, I've been beating myself up for nothing. Can you get muscles with squats? Yes, but for a very high price.

[00:22:41] Carl Lanore: [00:22:41] So what is the replacement? Yeah, go ahead. I was going to ask you what the replacement.

[00:22:45] Ron Penna: [00:22:45] So this is what he does to replace it.

[00:22:47] Imagine a movement that you only see see women doing in the gym and that's what his purported yeah.

[00:22:52] Doug Brignole: [00:22:52] Play squats,

[00:22:54] Ron Penna: [00:22:54] basically cable squats. You take a free motion, the machine, you know, the kind that has the arms that can

[00:22:59] Carl Lanore: [00:22:59] not [00:23:00] just sit down, but also

[00:23:00] Ron Penna: [00:23:00] in and out. Yeah. You basically have them all the way down, very pretty narrow, like, you know, shoulder width apart, you grab your, um, uh, your cables and you basically do a squat and then you can do, uh, kind of, uh, you can, you can squat normally, as you would think, or you

[00:23:14] Carl Lanore: [00:23:14] can do kind of a sissy squat and back into

[00:23:16] Doug Brignole: [00:23:16] really load the quads.

[00:23:18] You

[00:23:18] Ron Penna: [00:23:18] actually do lean back, which is perfectly suited for the cables. It does. You can actually do a sissy squat that doesn't

[00:23:25] Doug Brignole: [00:23:25] feel awkward at all,

[00:23:27] Ron Penna: [00:23:27] but the next

[00:23:28] Doug Brignole: [00:23:28] day.

[00:23:29] Ron Penna: [00:23:29] You will see. Oh my gosh. That was really a complete, you don't have the problem with the rectus femoris, you know, being cut off or shut off, shut down because of the circle envision.

[00:23:37] Um, so it, it, it feels like nothing. I've actually had to modify my, uh, weight stack to be able to tolerate more. And you can do high rep stuff very easily, but if you want to go super heavy, you need, some people might need more weight. Most people can use the full stack, but, or I say the stack, we planning for them, but when need to do it, it will change your mind about quadricep loading and.

[00:24:00] [00:24:00] It's one of those things, like, you know, I'm doing it and I'm feeling guilty as I'm doing this

[00:24:05] Doug Brignole: [00:24:05] whim exercise. Yeah. You know, the quadricep is in fact the track accepts of the leg. Yeah. It is exactly the same mechanism as the tricep. And you would never think to yourself, I'm going to work, go work triceps today, but I'm not going to enter a perpendicular resistance with a cable.

[00:24:22] And with dumbbells, I'm just going to use a mostly parallel forearm. You know, it's like trying to build your triceps with only parallel bar. It's unfortunate, right? It's not even sensible. Right. You know, you're going to get better workout if you use dumbbells that cross gravity for them across cross gravity or cable push down because the cable can cross your forum.

[00:24:42] You know, those a better tax deductions. And that's exactly the mentality we should use for quotes.

[00:24:48] Ron Penna: [00:24:48] Yeah. You know, just to, to just

[00:24:49] Doug Brignole: [00:24:49] stay with that,

[00:24:50] Ron Penna: [00:24:50] Carl and everybody's done rope push downs or cable push downs, right.

[00:24:53] Doug Brignole: [00:24:53] Something feels a little off.

[00:24:55] Ron Penna: [00:24:55] And essentially what it is, is in order for the, for the line of resistance to be right, the cable would have to kind of go [00:25:00] through your

[00:25:00] Doug Brignole: [00:25:00] head behind you.

[00:25:02] Ron Penna: [00:25:02] So you're not a way to use again, the free motion.

[00:25:06] Carl Lanore: [00:25:06] Uh, you'll have to see that the

[00:25:06] Ron Penna: [00:25:06] pictures in the book, but essentially you turn around backwards. If you will. And

[00:25:11] Doug Brignole: [00:25:11] the, um,

[00:25:12] Ron Penna: [00:25:12] pulleys are about a 45 degree angle behind you. And you're actually doing kind of like a skull crusher, but your air more comfortable position, your triceps and close to your side of the body, right?

[00:25:22] It's unilateral you're training with both times, you're training the resistance separately in each arm, and you're effectively doing a push down this way, seated.

[00:25:30] Doug Brignole: [00:25:30] Um,

[00:25:31] Ron Penna: [00:25:31] and when you do it the first time, it, it it's a perfect, uh, angle of resistance because. It's loaded all the way through it's heavier, loaded, where it needs to be retried stronger and a little bit less negative where it's weaker

[00:25:43] Carl Lanore: [00:25:43] that

[00:25:44] Ron Penna: [00:25:44] exercise alone for the person who just wants really bottom line results.

[00:25:48] If you do a set of a cable push downs, that way, two things. One thing I also noticed, for some reason, I can do any exercise in the gym. I don't have any injuries. The only thing that ever bothered me a little bit scope

[00:25:59] Doug Brignole: [00:25:59] crushers, they did [00:26:00] bother

[00:26:00] Ron Penna: [00:26:00] my tricep attachments. Sometimes

[00:26:01] Doug Brignole: [00:26:01] where's this. I train it's super heavy and because the angle is resistance.

[00:26:06] Ron Penna: [00:26:06] Perfect. It's truly one of those things. You've never seen it. You've never seen anyone in the gym do it. It's completely weird. I shouldn't wear work. Doug. I don't know if you just thought your way through that

[00:26:15] Doug Brignole: [00:26:15] or, yeah, maybe there's some, the thing of this is that in, in the book, I explained that we have, um, all our skeletal muscles have a property where they're stronger in the beginning of the range of merchant and weaker and the end of the range of motion.

[00:26:27] Right. And there's lots of research about this, right? So this is, what's sort of interesting, is that everything that's in my book is out there already. Right. But it's out there in a million different places, right? Nobody put it into one book. Right. So we know that muscles operate better when they're more elongated and that as those actin filaments slide over each other, they basically run out of room to contract.

[00:26:51] They lose contractile force. So that means that the strength curve of every skeletal muscle is that it's stronger than the beginning. Weaker, heard the end. [00:27:00] And the obvious thing to do would be to match the resistance curve of the exercise, to the strength of the muscle, so that you have more resistance while you're stronger.

[00:27:09] And you have less versus before your weaker. Right? So naturally what we seek is in this case where the tricep with the cable. We want that cable to be more perpendicular to the operating lever of the tricep in the beginning, if you're doing a cable push down in front of a pulley, it's over there, we're starting off with a parallel forearm, which basically means zero.

[00:27:30] Right, right. We're not going to get, we're not going to get to a perpendicular position with that cable until we're about two thirds of the way through the range of motion. Right. All right. So we're not loading the early phase. We're loading the late phase. Right. Which is, which is done even more so with a tricep kickback.

[00:27:46] You know, they're, you're getting zero resistance in the early phase and a hundred percent and the late phase. And do you feel it? Yes. Does it try some good activity? Yes, but it's so inconsistent with the strength curve of the muscle that you're depriving it, of the resistance [00:28:00] that most needs when it needs it, which is early.

[00:28:03] Carl Lanore: [00:28:03] You know, what's really funny. I see people doing a dumbbell kickbacks at the gym, one arm or two arm, you know, unilateral Baila and, and, and they're standing so upright that there's, yeah, there's more weight being curled when they bring it back when, and when they kick back and you're just swinging it.

[00:28:22] It's just, so the funniest thing I'm like, like lean forward,

[00:28:25] Doug Brignole: [00:28:25] you know, you gotta be,

[00:28:26] Carl Lanore: [00:28:26] the arm has to be parallel to the ground in order for that to activate the tricep muscle people. Don't get it. Yeah.

[00:28:33] Doug Brignole: [00:28:33] I have a client that's 14 years old right now. Um, which is great because obviously it's good that he's getting an early start, but it's also great for me because I get to be reminded of what happens when you introduce resistance exercise to the simplest mentality.

[00:28:50] And the simplest mentality would be move this thing from point a to point B. Right? Right. That's the objective there in the thinking I'm working a muscle. They're not thinking I'm [00:29:00] extent. I may long getting a Muslim. Shortening. They're not thinking, they're just thinking, move this from here to there. So they're oblivious to whether or not they're moving it to the same place every time or how far their elbows are.

[00:29:12] Right. So the first thing I say to him, okay. Pick a spot on the ceiling and make sure you end up in the same place every time. Okay. So now all the reps look uniform. Okay. That's the first thing. The second thing is the muscle doesn't care where the weight is. What matters is where your elbow is in the beginning and where you're up was at the end.

[00:29:27] Right. So make sure that when you're coming down your elbow, they're maximally bent that makes sure your elbows are maximally straight. Now you're going through a full range of motion, right? So the idea that somehow the muscle is just has a little counter and it doesn't care about for range of motion that just says, Hey, that was, that was a movement.

[00:29:44] It counts as a rep. That's what most people do in the gym. This person that's doing this trestle, like mostly stay ending up. They think that's just the movement itself. It's almost like the person who goes to church and praise just because the, the activity itself gives you blessings [00:30:00] benefits. Right? You have to do more than that.

[00:30:02] Carl Lanore: [00:30:02] Right. Right. I want to plug the book real quick. So, um, if you're watching or listening to the show right now, and you're interested in learning more, the book is called. The physics of resistance exercise by Doug Yolie. And if you go to SHR network.biz/build more muscle. Yeah, I, I, so I had mine this morning.

[00:30:26] It's in, I put, I put it in the car this morning, and then when I came

[00:30:29] Doug Brignole: [00:30:29] out, I was like,

[00:30:29] Carl Lanore: [00:30:29] Oh, it's such a beautiful day. I think I ride the motorcycle.

[00:30:32] Doug Brignole: [00:30:32] I just

[00:30:32] Carl Lanore: [00:30:32] went outside right before the charter that let me go out to the. Car and get my book. I walked out there. I see my motorcycle. I'm like, Oh no, I left. I left the book in the car.

[00:30:40] Yeah. The physics of resistance exercise by Doug Brown Yolie SHR network.biz/build more muscle. And you can get the book it's, you know, supplements, run out, but knowledge never does. If you get one thing, just one trick out of this book. [00:31:00] It's well worth it because that's, that's going to pay you back for years to come.

[00:31:05] We're going to take one quick commercial break. We'll be right back with more super human radio. And please, if you feel like asking questions, post them. If you're here, live on Facebook or YouTube, we'll be right back. You are listening to the superhuman channel where ripped and we're ready.

[00:31:29] Doug Brignole: [00:31:29] Oops. Wrong button.

[00:31:33] Carl Lanore: [00:31:33] Welcome back. But talking with Doug granola and Ron Penna. About a more efficient receptors shoes. Me I'm having them an allergy attack. Dammit. That happened a lot more since then.

[00:31:50] Anyway. So Ron mentioned, there are some never seen before movements in your book. Can you tell us what they are?

[00:32:02] [00:32:00] Doug Brignole: [00:32:02] Yeah. One that he was referring to is scapular retraction. So, um, The the thing that's interesting when I, you know, unveil this in the book is I say, when I'm, when people work their back muscles, like you can go into any gym and you can say, what are you working today? Let's say I'm working in my back and you'll say, okay, well specifically, can you tell me the names of those muscles?

[00:32:22] They usually say lats and rhomboids,

[00:32:26] Carl Lanore: [00:32:26] right?

[00:32:27] Doug Brignole: [00:32:27] They might say middle trapezius, but, um, they don't know exactly. What muscle the muscle names are, and they certainly don't know what those muscles do. Where do they start? Where they end origin and insertion, which the two, which tells us what that muscle does.

[00:32:43] Right? So, but if you look in anatomy chart, you'll see that the second biggest muscle on the back next to the latch is the middle trapezius. It's a huge thing. It starts at the neck. It goes all the way down, right? It takes up the most amount of space on your back. There's a couple of [00:33:00] other muscles in there that, you know, People don't know what they are.

[00:33:03] They're just bumps to most people with that thing right there. Oh, that's the infraspinatus. Well, that isn't really a back muscle. That's a shoulder rotator, but okay. It's on your back. So it looks like a back muscle and there's a Terese minor, which is small, but the biggest muscle is the middle trapezius.

[00:33:18] And so you say, okay, what are you going to do for your middle trapezius? I'm going to do rowing. All right. So, um, can you tell me what that does when you're rowing? Well, yeah, it's, it's creating this motion. It's like, well, no, let's look at an anatomy chart. You can see that they're, middle-class. Trapezius originates on the spine.

[00:33:34] He goes out to the outer edge of the shoulder blade and stops. It does not cross the shoulder joint. It does not connect to the arm. Right? So the military piece just cannot play any role whatsoever in the arm. Part of a rowing exercise because it's not pulling on the arm. So when you're rowing to the degree that you're letting your shoulders go back.

[00:33:56] Okay. That's the degree to which the middle trapezius [00:34:00] is actually working, right. It may not be working in orange emotion and it may not be working with the right direction of resistance, but a lot of people don't even do that. A lot of people just wrote with their shoulder going to one position. So of course there's almost no.

[00:34:14] Carl Lanore: [00:34:14] In fact, in fact, the most that I see most that I see don't even come to the point where their elbows are behind their back with wet. And that's when the trapezius is actually doing its job. Most of them stop.

[00:34:28] Doug Brignole: [00:34:28] That's actually wrong because the middle trapezius has nothing to do with the arm. So the fact when you're saying the middle trapezius is when the elbows go behind the back.

[00:34:36] Well, if you're putting your elbows back and it's, it's causing an incidental retraction of the scaffold. Yes, yes. But muscles always pull toward their origin. And because the middle trapezius origin is on the spine, the direction of pool would have to be in. Right or in an, in slightly back. Right. So the fact that elbows go behind you [00:35:00] when you row in itself proves that it's that part, that, that last part of the range of motion has nothing to do with your back.

[00:35:09] Right. Right. It's all rear deltoids and Terry's major. Right. Right. Because the muscles of the back don't pull in a direction where they're not positioned. Right. The muscles of the back would pull toward the spine where your arm is now leading the spine. Right. It went to it, then they wouldn't pass it.

[00:35:25] Right. Right. So when it's going over there, the lats, if the lats are participating, they actually have to let go to let that arm pass. Because if they, if they keep pulling it, it's going to come right back to the side of the torso. Right. So you're literally causing a deactivation of the lab by letting the arm go past you.

[00:35:42] Not that pulling it to the side of the torso was that good of an activation to begin with. But anyway, the point is that you realize that the best way to maximally elongate and maximally contract the middle trapezius is to roll your shoulders forward as far as possible, and then bring your shoulders back as far as [00:36:00] possible.

[00:36:01] Right? Well, I can do that without any patient of my arm. Right. Right. In fact, it is better with minimal participation of the arm and because. You know what, there's a thing that's called opposite position loading. Right. And I always say like, Fellini tower pizza over there. It was, if it was going to fall North and it was your job to keep it from happening and you had a rope it's strong enough to do it.

[00:36:24] And you're strong enough to do it on which side of the tower would you have to stand on? Right. Well, you'd have to stand on the outside of the tower, right? Because the loads on the opposite side of the lead. So whatever muscle is going to be positioned on the opposite side, Directly opposite the direction of the resistance.

[00:36:41] That's the most of it's going to be the most loaded. Well, when you have a straightforward direction of resistance on a rowing, you're not getting to the spine, you're getting to the rear deltoids. So you have to resistance. It goes that way and that way, and then you scapular attract opposite.

[00:36:58] Carl Lanore: [00:36:58] So I could see.

[00:36:59] So you get, you [00:37:00] get, you get into poli rack. You set the police about a little bit higher than your shoulders. You stepped back.

[00:37:08] Doug Brignole: [00:37:08] She had a little lower than your shoulders and that's because when you come back, your elbows are lower than your shoulders. So it's just

[00:37:15] Carl Lanore: [00:37:15] the whole move. This is the whole movement.

[00:37:16] This is it. That's it. Well, yeah.

[00:37:20] Doug Brignole: [00:37:20] And I could feel it's like, I can feel my, I can do that. You go, Holy crap. It's like, I've never felt my middle back that way. Talk about it, Ron.

[00:37:27] Carl Lanore: [00:37:27] So you, I mean, you, you you've been a  of just training. Very, very hard. And with heavy weight, this sounds like too simple.

[00:37:37] Ron Penna: [00:37:37] Yeah. And this one does feel troubling when you do it because it hits the bustle perfectly, but it

[00:37:42] Carl Lanore: [00:37:42] definitely

[00:37:42] Ron Penna: [00:37:42] just, it feels like finesse.

[00:37:43] It does not feel like, you know, a massive amount of work. Um, but it hits the middle trapezius exactly the way the fibers align. So, um, you really, ideally you want to do it on a free motion cable again, that has the up and down and, and, you know, open sideways, he sits pretty low. [00:38:00] Um,

[00:38:00] Doug Brignole: [00:38:00] And you, you do have

[00:38:01] Ron Penna: [00:38:01] a little bit more arm motion than you would think, because it's just because the way the cables are loaded, you have to, right.

[00:38:08] Doug Brignole: [00:38:08] Yeah. But that

[00:38:09] Ron Penna: [00:38:09] this movement alone, I mean, surely by the book for that. And even if you're done with that, everything else, you will have a different middle trapezius. Um, and it doesn't work as well on like your, I think you were talking on what a functional trainer, um, Carl, where he basically like pulleys are kind of preset.

[00:38:25] You can probably get it to work there, especially if your arms are a certain length, but. If you have access to the free motion, that's really the way to do it. And honestly, I have two copies of the book. I have one that I read for the

[00:38:34] Carl Lanore: [00:38:34] physics piece,

[00:38:36] Ron Penna: [00:38:36] and then I have one of the gym and

[00:38:37] Doug Brignole: [00:38:37] I'm embarrassed to tell you

[00:38:39] Ron Penna: [00:38:39] how many times I've referred to the pictures to make sure that the rides are set

[00:38:43] Doug Brignole: [00:38:43] properly, because

[00:38:44] Ron Penna: [00:38:44] just said, I would expect them to be higher, but no, they do need to be lower.

[00:38:48] So, you know, one of the things that

[00:38:51] Doug Brignole: [00:38:51] eventually you'll be, you know, some, some people say, God, you know, your book is really impractical because you know, we don't all have a free motion pulley machine. It's like, [00:39:00] look, my job isn't to tailor a workout to every single person with every single different type of asphalts.

[00:39:06] My job is to tell you what works best

[00:39:10] Carl Lanore: [00:39:10] so glad you did that.

[00:39:11] Doug Brignole: [00:39:11] Right. So, I mean, we can't ignore the fact that this works best just because you don't have a pulley machine. Right. We can't pretend we don't know what best is.

[00:39:23] Carl Lanore: [00:39:23] I never would have said this,

[00:39:24] Ron Penna: [00:39:24] but in, in, in the COVID times, if someone wanted to get one piece of equipment that you could do a

[00:39:28] Doug Brignole: [00:39:28] hell of a lot

[00:39:29] Ron Penna: [00:39:29] with, it would be a free motion pulling.

[00:39:31] So if people are going to get, you know, kettlebells and dumbbells and were trying to get power

[00:39:35] Doug Brignole: [00:39:35] rack,

[00:39:36] Ron Penna: [00:39:36] but truly, I mean, if you read this book,

[00:39:38] Doug Brignole: [00:39:38] you'll be amazed

[00:39:40] Ron Penna: [00:39:40] what one single free motion will to do. And. You

[00:39:44] Doug Brignole: [00:39:44] know, we work out, I work out at a garage gym now because the Equinox, you know, all the public gyms in Los Angeles are all closed.

[00:39:51] Right? So my training partner and I put together a fantastic home gym, it's got a free motion machine. [00:40:00] It's got dumbbells from two and a half pounds to 55 pounds, and it's got a decline bench and adjustable decline bench. Actually, we've got a, a seat also, but, and that's, I mean, we get. Every bit as good to work.

[00:40:13] The only thing that I would like to get in there, that's our next purchase. Um, we're going to try to see if we can find a pre-owned. One is a, is a multi hip machine for the glutes. But, but aside from that, I mean the cables and the dumbbells and these little benches, that's all we have. My quads are growing now, like as if I'm getting ready for a competition.

[00:40:36] Carl Lanore: [00:40:36] Wow. So Jeremy,

[00:40:38] Doug Brignole: [00:40:38] we're doing, you see the cable curls for the hamstring. Perfect, no complaints.

[00:40:44] Carl Lanore: [00:40:44] J Jeremy, uh, uh, Garmin, Ron, who you introduced me to, I'm actually going to see him very shortly for intraarticular hip injection. He says, lucky am I, I jumped online and end up in hypertrophy heaven with mr.

[00:40:57] Superhuman. Legendary Ron Penna. [00:41:00] And Doug granola, tell Doug to keep this valuable information to himself so that I can catch Ron. So he's got the same mentality as you. He doesn't want anybody to know this stuff. He, he,

[00:41:12] Ron Penna: [00:41:12] I think I've rubbed off on he's. One of those guys is always trying to help people and give good information and I've told him Jeremy, keep it to yourself.

[00:41:18] Come on.

[00:41:19] Doug Brignole: [00:41:19] It's it's it is so important for us to be humble. And to recognize that we always have more to learn. I mean, there was one quote that I read that said, uh, uh, I forgot what his name was. He was an Indian philosopher. And instead it's ironic that the people who know the most are the least confident because they're always ready to revise their beliefs.

[00:41:41] They're open to new information. The people who are most naive, the people who are most ignorant, other people are most confident, believing. They know they know the most and they are closed off to new information. So. It is important for us to stay humble and to always believe we think we've got it right based on the information we have access to this [00:42:00] appears to be truth.

[00:42:01] But if someone wants to show me a better truth and can demonstrate it, we gotta be open to it.

[00:42:06] Carl Lanore: [00:42:06] Uh, Jomo Jelani, who's a regular viewer and listener says I was introduced to Doug via Rick's he's sober, recreations channel. I just bought the paperback book and I can't wait to read it. And then Tommy D has a quick question.

[00:42:20] He says, uh, Can he do this stuff with body weight and bands and stuff. If he doesn't have a home gym?

[00:42:28] Doug Brignole: [00:42:28] Well, look, I mean, you know, I, I'm sorry for chuckling, but you know, again, getting back to what I said earlier, the first thing we have to do is identify what works best and why it works best. Right, right.

[00:42:40] In the book I say, you know, by knowing what these parameters are, the direction of resistance, the direction of anatomical motion by knowing what is first best. We can then from that figure out what might be close to, but not quite second, best third, best fourth, best fifth, best six of us. Right? [00:43:00] So the answer to the question about bands and kettlebells and chin up bars is for the degree that they come close to what we have identified as ideal, you're going to get that degree of benefit or that degree of injury risk.

[00:43:16] Right. So we can't be naive about this and pretend that it off all you got is it's some tomato soup cans and the elastic bands. Now you're going to be able to get the best possible work. I mean, it would be nice, but it's just, it's impossible. Right.

[00:43:30] Carl Lanore: [00:43:30] And if it was

[00:43:31] Doug Brignole: [00:43:31] by the way, there's an economic way of, you know, like somebody says, I work out at home and I can't afford a pulling machine when, by the way, you can, you don't have to buy a free motion machine.

[00:43:41] You can, you can set up two or three. Single adjustable pulleys that go up and down one there, one there, one there, and you can use these two for this and those two for that. And you can, you can, and, and you can get, you can get a pulley that is plate loaded for 200 [00:44:00] bucks, right? So you buy three of those and you've got three different width options, right?

[00:44:05] Right. So that's one way of doing it. And the other way of doing it is just attaching and elastic band over there and all that. So you've got the right direction of resistance, indirect, dry direction of motion. The reason assistance curve is going to be different because the last advanced to get tougher as they elongate.

[00:44:19] Right. Which is kind of opposite what the muscle does, but yeah. And at least get the motion, right. At least do what the muscle does, or the idea that you're going to replace. Let's say a scapular attraction with, you know, a one-arm dumbbell row. It's not the same movement. Right. So to the degree that it comes, semi-close, if it's 30% in the direction of the right movement, you can get about 30% of the benefit, right.

[00:44:42] Maybe, but you have to recognize that compromised equipment results in compromise benefits,

[00:44:47] Carl Lanore: [00:44:47] right? You're not going to get what you really, and not a hundred percent of what you're looking for. Um, I want to plug the book again. I also want to plug your website where we take a break. When we come back to the break, I want to talk about rear delts.

[00:44:58] I see a lot of people, training, rear [00:45:00] delts, a lot of different ways, and most of them don't have great delts. Then you see the guy or gal who's rear Delt looks like a lion. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna talk about that when we come back, though, you can go to Doug's website by going to Doug Britton. Yolie D O U G B R I G N O L d.com.

[00:45:18] And you can get the book. By using this tracking URL, SHR network.biz/build more muscle. It'll take you to the Amazon page where you can buy the book. It's a very, very worthy investment. I can promise you. We're going to take one quick commercial break. We'll be right back with more superhuman radio. Stay tuned.

[00:45:41] Doug Brignole: [00:45:41] Okay, this is

[00:45:42] Carl Lanore: [00:45:42] the superhuman channel where we use oxygen for the power of good

[00:45:55] welcome back to superhuman radio. We're talking with Doug Mineola about his book, [00:46:00] the physics of resistance exercise.

[00:46:03] Doug Brignole: [00:46:03] So.

[00:46:06] Carl Lanore: [00:46:06] I have road heavyweight. I have deadlifted heavyweight, I've done so much. And then I occasionally do, you know, I get on the pec tech and I do the reverse pec deck for my rear, my rear delts, but they just don't grow.

[00:46:21] And Ron alluded to something that you do something very good, different, something that would be counter-intuitive to make that small group of muscles pop. What is it?

[00:46:32] Ron Penna: [00:46:32] Actually, let me interrupt Carl, I'll ask you the

[00:46:36] Doug Brignole: [00:46:36] question.

[00:46:36] Ron Penna: [00:46:36] Why do you think we have to buy Delta? What motion did our ancestors need?

[00:46:40] Buster, adults for

[00:46:42] Carl Lanore: [00:46:42] climbing a rope pulling down?

[00:46:46] Ron Penna: [00:46:46] I don't know. Possibly. Okay.

[00:46:48] Carl Lanore: [00:46:48] Maybe

[00:46:49] Ron Penna: [00:46:49] what Doug says is basically pulling down lens. You've got a tree lens. You got to reach something, pull it down. Yes. Probably the most natural motion of the. Posterior Delt. And with [00:47:00] that, I'll let them take it away.

[00:47:00] Doug Brignole: [00:47:00] Yeah, it makes sense on that same note from an evolutionary standpoint that our ancestors ever have to do that.

[00:47:09] No.

[00:47:09] Ron Penna: [00:47:09] Right. I

[00:47:10] Doug Brignole: [00:47:10] mean, what in the world could they possibly have needed to do that for, right. That's not something we evolved to need to do either from a skeletal standpoint, nor from a, a muscle function standpoint. So. What I say in the book is that it's vitally important for us to understand what all good exercises have in common.

[00:47:35] Right? The objective of resistance exercise is to elongate the muscle and to contract them up against resistance. Right? So that's the base requirement that you would love, beat the muscle, and then you shorten them up though. Right? So to do that, all you have to do is find the simplest way to do it. Right.

[00:47:54] If you know that your bicep flexes your elbow, what'd you think that you needed to do a curl behind your back?

[00:48:00] [00:48:00] Carl Lanore: [00:48:00] Yeah. Right.

[00:48:01] Doug Brignole: [00:48:01] Why, why would you overcomplicate it? Right, right. The bicep, then the elbow then that as simply as you can, right. You want to contract your rear deltoid elongated and shorten it as simply as you can.

[00:48:13] Right. Right, right. We, we know that, you know, when you, when you raise your arms up, you're already entering, uh, an area of skeletal function. That is not as familiar to it as the arms down at the side. Right. So going forward and going back is much more natural for the shoulder joint than going across. So, you know, if you look at the anatomy and you say, okay, here's one scap.

[00:48:40] Yeah. Here's the other scapular right. View. The Riverdale tube does attach to the upper edge of both scapulas and it comes down and wraps around. Right there right next to the side beltway. Right? So that means that if you were to bring that insertion toward the origin, you'd be moving [00:49:00] in an upward diagonal direction and so long you would go farther forward.

[00:49:06] So if you just follow the path from the origin straight through the insertion, straight across, you realize. That has got to come from over there for this arm. We've got to come from over there for this arm. Right. So that's where the resistance should come from. Right. But you don't need to go across your bind necessarily.

[00:49:22] You just have to start right here and you go here and down at a 45 degree angle, kind of a downward V. So I use a cable that starts over there and then it starts over there and I just go down and that works the rear deltoids much more naturally in having to go across and. Just to show you. I mean, we know when someone says I'm doing rear rear deltoid butterfly machine.

[00:49:46] Well, why? Because it simulates what we used to do when the caveman days, not the caveman days, but the early bodybuilding days. Oh, we did a bent-over rear deltoid rage.

[00:49:56] Carl Lanore: [00:49:56] Right,

[00:49:58] Doug Brignole: [00:49:58] right. Movement. Why would you [00:50:00] duplicate a movement that you're not even sure is the

[00:50:01] Carl Lanore: [00:50:01] right movement. Right,

[00:50:02] Doug Brignole: [00:50:02] right. That's all you're doing when you're doing it.

[00:50:04] So, um, what you've done is you've sort of like. And you see somebody see a bodybuilder with great rear deltoids and he assumes, and Mike, maybe you assume that the reason he has good Riverdale tricks is because he does this up just size. It's like, no, I would, I would tell you that the reason he has good rear delts is because he'd gotten a lot of rear Delta stimulation from his rowing exercises when he's doing his one arm row.

[00:50:28] Right. You're getting more rear delts and he has the lap or, or what your thing is, the end result. You don't know exactly what percentage. Of that development came from gear, deltoids from growing. But I can tell you right now that just from an anatomical standpoint, the rowing motion is closer to the Napa real rear debris function.

[00:50:48] And this thing is, yeah, there's just no reason for you to do this in order to move the insertion toward the origin. You can do that with simply just by doing nuts.

[00:50:56] Ron Penna: [00:50:56] Jeremy Garmin has a good point. He says, you know, swimming is that same motion. [00:51:00] It's pulling civil water resistance. It's

[00:51:02] Carl Lanore: [00:51:02] embedding them behind you.

[00:51:03] And then behind you. Yeah.

[00:51:06] Ron Penna: [00:51:06] Yeah, exactly.

[00:51:07] Carl Lanore: [00:51:07] Yeah. Uh, it's, it's really weird. I I've done so much rowing and polling and rear rear, you know, posterior chain work and, and my rear delts, my rear delts and my biceps. Have you ever seen, um, boss rutin? Uh, the early MMA fighter, you know, I'm talking about sure. No, he's got little biceps.

[00:51:28] If you ever look at them, they're little. They look like he has little cylinders for biceps, but. When you see him throw a punchy it's the snapback is just amazing. You know, I just don't well, genetically, I guess I just don't have good.

[00:51:40] Doug Brignole: [00:51:40] Let me, let me just say, yeah, I was just saying, let's just say we can't ignore genetics.

[00:51:43] Right? So the mistake we often make is we see someone with a good body part, and we automatically assume that what they've been doing is a direct contribution to that, right? It may be, it may not be right. I mean, the, the genetics factor plays a big thing in there. So you can look at someone, you can look at [00:52:00] Tom Platz.

[00:52:01] And you can say, well, Tom Platz did squat and people will say, end of story, that's it. Tom Platz is squatted. He has the best lines in the road. All right. Well, a lot of other people have done squats and haven't gotten Tom Platt select,

[00:52:12] Carl Lanore: [00:52:12] right.

[00:52:13] Doug Brignole: [00:52:13] Todd done Scott, your curls and don't have Larry Scott arm.

[00:52:17] Carl Lanore: [00:52:17] Right.

[00:52:17] And I was gonna say, Tom Platz has unique legs that he was genetically gifted with. And he's, he's, he's squatting he's training again, and his legs have already blown back up. It's just amazing.

[00:52:28] Doug Brignole: [00:52:28] No, actually I've seen that video, but, but here's the thing is, again, I don't want to say that squats don't build the legs.

[00:52:34] Squats do work the quads, but the, but they require more weight be used because of the, of the dilution caused by that compromised mechanics. Right. Right. So yeah. It's like, like say I'm going to drive my car. From here to that point over there, five miles away. And I'm I drive on this road right here. This road happens to be very muddy, very Rocky, wet.

[00:52:55] There's all kinds of debris. You know, I'm going to get there. I'm going to be spinning my [00:53:00] tires, which means spending gasoline without traction. Right. My car is going to be beat up by the time I get there, but I will get there. And if that's the only thing you're using to determine whether or not this road was a good road,

[00:53:12] Carl Lanore: [00:53:12] right?

[00:53:13] Doug Brignole: [00:53:13] You'll say it was a good road success, but Hey, that's what. That road over there. It's dry, flat, clean. You can get to the same place with far less wasted effort or less wasted energy, far less abuse on your body.

[00:53:27] Carl Lanore: [00:53:27] Yeah, really good. So, Ron, how long have you been now employing what you are learning and continue to learn from?

[00:53:34] Uh, Doug's book, the physics of resistance exercise

[00:53:38] Doug Brignole: [00:53:38] probably

[00:53:39] Ron Penna: [00:53:39] only been five or six weeks. I, I mean, I got the book, I think five or six weeks ago, and it was like a flash of lightning and, you know, I've been. Uh, I I'm pretty much immediately on modified everything and as I gain more and more continence and played

[00:53:52] Carl Lanore: [00:53:52] with it, I've dropped

[00:53:53] Ron Penna: [00:53:53] more and more things away, but I do have

[00:53:56] Doug Brignole: [00:53:56] a lot of guilt.

[00:53:57] Ron Penna: [00:53:57] On some of the exercises I'm doing. Cause I hear Doug's [00:54:00] voice in my hair making fun of me as I'm

[00:54:01] Carl Lanore: [00:54:01] doing it.

[00:54:02] Ron Penna: [00:54:02] So, um, some of those I I've really changed. And then, you know, like one of the other things we should have talked about is injury because a good example, you know, people who have a lot of injuries, they'll just stop training something, postures we'll just stay with plus years.

[00:54:14] A lot of times people's shoulder, like the chromium gets sore. They really can't do it. You can still continue to train the way he does. His posture is not. Well, but better than you were doing it to begin with and not actually forcing that. So same with tricep, there's a bunch of things. And when you do it,

[00:54:29] Doug Brignole: [00:54:29] there's

[00:54:30] Ron Penna: [00:54:30] maybe a little bit of guilt, maybe for the Puritan mystic side of us.

[00:54:33] It's like, wait a minute. I'm actually really comfortable.

[00:54:36] Doug Brignole: [00:54:36] I'm not

[00:54:36] Ron Penna: [00:54:36] like struggling with all this extreme, uh, efforts, nervous system energy to you, or just train that muscle. So. The

[00:54:43] Doug Brignole: [00:54:43] muscle is getting hammered. You will feel it, but you feel like, wow, the rest of my,

[00:54:49] Ron Penna: [00:54:49] my central nervous system is just not that active because I'm sitting in this perfectly.

[00:54:52] Somebody figured this all out except the sitter and

[00:54:54] Doug Brignole: [00:54:54] copy it.

[00:54:56] Ron Penna: [00:54:56] Genius. I mean, it's, it's really. Uh, you know, it'll take a [00:55:00] while, but one day I just don't know how long people will say. Oh yeah. That was, you know, pre Doug and post-doc.

[00:55:06] Carl Lanore: [00:55:06] Oh yeah, that was, I

[00:55:07] Ron Penna: [00:55:07] liked that

[00:55:09] Carl Lanore: [00:55:09] PG.

[00:55:10] Doug Brignole: [00:55:10] Um, Ron, Ron, let me ask you a question. Uh, so you can start to tell Ron, uh, in the audience, I mean, Carl and the audience, uh, about inclined pressers.

[00:55:21] Ron Penna: [00:55:21] Yeah. So, I mean, incline press, I'm sure it's something you run in. We all have this whole concept. Oh. You know, upper chest. What's the best way to build up her chest. When you see him deconstruct it. It's a little embarrassing. It's embarrassing. Cause she'd be like, wait a minute.

[00:55:34] Doug Brignole: [00:55:34] This completely

[00:55:35] Ron Penna: [00:55:35] doesn't make sense.

[00:55:36] But you know, it's um, I mean, you've got guys like my go Hearn of course has built a tremendous separate chest and he he's still a spouses

[00:55:45] Doug Brignole: [00:55:45] and Arnold. Yeah,

[00:55:46] Ron Penna: [00:55:46] for sure. Yeah. It's like he was saying it is a road to get there,

[00:55:50] Doug Brignole: [00:55:50] but it's

[00:55:51] Carl Lanore: [00:55:51] not the best.

[00:55:54] Doug Brignole: [00:55:54] Let me, let me elaborate a little bit. I'm sorry. Can I elaborate on that please?

[00:56:00] [00:56:00] Um, so what Ron was was what I was hoping Ron would say is that, um, and I guess maybe he was sort of leaving it to me. Um, you know, every gym in the world, every quote, unquote, decent gym in the world has an incline press. Right for inclined bench or incline dumbbells. Right. Um, and we've all been told that that inclines work the upper chest.

[00:56:22] Right? Well, in order to deconstruct that, the first thing you have to say is, okay, all muscles pull toward the origin, right? That may sound cliche. If I give you a rope and I tie that rope to a heavy box, and I say, pull on that rope, guaranteed. That box is going to move toward you,

[00:56:39] Carl Lanore: [00:56:39] right?

[00:56:40] Doug Brignole: [00:56:40] Right. There's no way you can make that box move in any direction, other than toward you, unless another mom, a still over there or another person over there collaborates with you.

[00:56:51] Right? Right. And then maybe you're both pulling on it from a different direction and maybe it ends up somewhere in the middle, but without any assistance, you, as a muscle [00:57:00] origin have to pull your muscle insertion attached to that limb toward you. You cannot do anything else. Right. Well, right. The idea that you're going to move your arms in an upward direction, assumes that our arms are connected right in the middle between the upper and the lower pecks, but they're not, they're connected to the very top of the pack, right?

[00:57:22] So when you go straight forward, you're already moving toward the upper pecs, the P the fibers that are highest on the sternum. And when you move your arm up like this, your clavicle actually shifts. Um, so you're still moving toward the clinic, your fibers, right? When you're going over your chin, you're moving toward your chin.

[00:57:40] You're moving toward your neck. There's no Petro fibers above the arm line. Right? Right. So you're not moving toward any petrol origins when you're doing an inclined press. So w you know, we've all, I mean, I confess we've all been so brainwashed into believing that that is the way to work the upper chest.

[00:57:58] And yet [00:58:00] intuitively you know, That if I told you flex your chest, flex your upper chest right now in a way that you can feel it flexing, you're going to go like this. You're not going to go like this. Right. You know, Oh, this is where that

[00:58:16] Carl Lanore: [00:58:16] muscle contract I'm going to go. I'm going to go a little further down towards my solar plexus.

[00:58:22] I'm not even going to go up here.

[00:58:25] Doug Brignole: [00:58:25] And the reason you're going to do that, the reason you're going to do that is because. The, the biggest percentage into the muscle fibers are in the center of your sternum, which is slightly lower than the shoulder joint, which is slightly a decline angle. So when you do a slight decline press, you're moving toward the greatest percentage of muscle fibers.

[00:58:43] Carl Lanore: [00:58:43] Wow.

[00:58:45] Doug Brignole: [00:58:45] We don't, we don't even do a flat dumbbell press anymore. We do only a slight decline dumbbell press. And when you do it and your elbows go, cause you're on a decline angle, you're able to go up and back. You can feel a Petro stretch. That you cannot feel any [00:59:00] other way.

[00:59:00] Carl Lanore: [00:59:00] And I was always,

[00:59:01] Doug Brignole: [00:59:01] you can feel,

[00:59:03] Carl Lanore: [00:59:03] I was always so much stronger

[00:59:04] Doug Brignole: [00:59:04] in the decline

[00:59:05] Carl Lanore: [00:59:05] and I think everybody will tell you that they can always press more in a decline than they can in a flat

[00:59:11] Doug Brignole: [00:59:11] position.

[00:59:12] It's just that it's inconvenient to get into, right. It's not a comfortable, you know, it, well, what we do is we put a, you know, a step step on each side of the thing. We put our weight there. So once you could lie back, then you take that one and you take this one, you do your press, you put it back on the step.

[00:59:27] If you don't have that, you think you've either got to bring them back with you, right. Or that you have to sit up with them or dump them on the floor and maybe your gym. You know, frowns upon you dumping weight, you know? So this, this inconvenience tells people I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna

[00:59:42] Carl Lanore: [00:59:42] have fun.

[00:59:43] Doug Brignole: [00:59:43] Right.

[00:59:44] But it's what the pecks do undeniably. It's what the facts do. So do you ignore what the pecs do? Just because it's not convenient.

[00:59:54] Carl Lanore: [00:59:54] That's fascinating.

[00:59:55] Doug Brignole: [00:59:55] I mean, it's, it's a little bit of a mind bender, right? I mean, for people that have been, I mean, [01:00:00] it's, it's hard to grasp. The fact that all of these people that we've admired for so many years, we've seen in the muscle magazines doing incline presses.

[01:00:12] But let me tell you, first of all, that most of the muscle, uh, the, the magazines, like I used to write for men's fitness magazine and they would tell me what they wanted me to write about. You don't say, what do you want to write about? Well, we want you to write an article about an all cable worker. We want you to write an article about.

[01:00:28] You know, it's like, and if you want to be in the, in the magazine, you do it. And if you don't have a nice day,

[01:00:33] Carl Lanore: [01:00:33] right, right.

[01:00:34] Doug Brignole: [01:00:34] You know, so it's not even that, even that part of it is truthful, but, but a lot of the people, even if you were given the opportunity to do their own choice, choosing of the topic, how do you work your chest?

[01:00:44] Well, I do in client process and I have good upper pecks. Well, yeah, but you don't only do a Propex. I mean, you're not only doing cleanse. Right? You do inclines you to flash in your declines. You do this, you do that. And then the end result is this right. No, no. What percentage of what you did contributed more or [01:01:00] less?

[01:01:00] Carl Lanore: [01:01:00] What about volume? So, um, volume, you know, early on, when I first started lifting, I did the five by five program and I got very, very strong over a number of years with that. But then I started reading about German loading patterns and volume, and I thought, well, I got to do this too. Is, is volume really that important in building a bigger muscle, not necessarily stronger, but a bigger muscle.

[01:01:26] Doug Brignole: [01:01:26] Yes. Um, this is a complicated subject because it's not mechanics anymore. It's physiology. Right, right. So, um, uh, you know, Mike Menser, we needed the heavy duty thing, uh, in collaboration with Arthur Jones. Um, you know, they were trying to say, why do anything more than you need to do? Right. Right. So work the muscle as much as you can in this fuse that's in, as you can and be done with it.

[01:01:54] And that way you'll have, you know, spent the least amount of unnecessary effort. [01:02:00] Um that's okay. But it ignores an important thing. And that is that you're assuming that if I can double the intensity, I can have half the number of sets. Right. But that's not actually. Feasible because of the physiology.

[01:02:21] Right? First of all, let's just say you want to go from 10 sets to five sets, right? Well, the chances are you probably can't double the intensity of the effort you were using before. Right? You're probably using 80, 90% effort before. Anyway, so the extra 10% effort isn't going to let you get away with eliminating 50% of your sets, right?

[01:02:41] That's one thing, the other thing gets into this, you know, aspect of. What they call proximity to failure. Right? So the question becomes how productive is training to failure versus multiple steps that are not to failure. [01:03:00] Okay. So, um, this brings up the next question, which is what makes a muscle grow, right?

[01:03:07] So, um, a lot of people do a lot of super sets and breakdown sets and pre exhaust sets. And. And they do that with the emotional belief that the more pumped, the more burned they get, the more growth. Well, there's no evidence to suggest that fatigue is the primary contributor to muscle growth. Right? In fact, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that fatigue doesn't lead to muscle growth because all you have to do is look at endurance athletes and say, well, they experienced maximum fatigue.

[01:03:38] They're not massive. Right. Right. So what, what, there's some grub, wonderful articles by a guy named Chris Beardsley, B E a R D S L E Y. He's a exercise physiologist out of the, out of the UK. Uh, you should Google him and read his articles on training to failure. And basically what he says is, you know, they've done studies that have suggested that [01:04:00] you can make a muscle grow the same with high weight, low reps and high reps, low weight.

[01:04:07] But that's an incomplete story, right? In other words, if you do one set of high weight, low reps, and you measure somehow how much stimulation that caused and growth had produced, and you did one set of high reps, low weight to failure, and you measure how much stimulation that produced. Yes. One set, one set gives you about the same amount of growth, but the question is, can you do multiple sets of high rep?

[01:04:36] Just a failure. No, once you do one or two sets of higher-ups of failure, you're spent, right. You do one set of six up for failure. You can still do four or five, six more sets of six reps to failure. Right. Right. Because you didn't have the luck that got the production and you didn't have the systemic, does the stomach stress.

[01:04:54] Right. Right. So now you say what's, what's better click sets of [01:05:00] six reps to failure. Versus however many, one or two sets you can do to failure of high reps. So right away you realize volume matters, right. It factors into the equation, right. But training to failure or intensity plays into volume. In other words, the more you train to failure, the less volume you can do.

[01:05:23] Right. So the question is how do you balance, right? So these articles by Chris Beardsley suggest. That recruitment muscle recruitment fiber recruitment is kind of the key to muscle growth, right? So you get high fiber recruitment. We need to do a, a low weight, high reps tech to failure, but then you're spent right on a, on a heavyweight low rep set.

[01:05:48] You get high fiber recruitment, high percentage fiber recruitment from the very first rep over there, you didn't get it until the muscle was. Toward the end of the set that's when all the fibers [01:06:00] started kicking it. Cause they had to, but over here, because of the percentage of effort, you get high fiber recruitment from the beginning.

[01:06:07] So you get that on the second rep and you get it on the third rep and you get it on the fourth rep over there, you know, it's less so you're, you're going to, but then again, you also can't jump into your heavyweight right away. Right? So what I recommend is. I usually do between eight sets and 10 sets per muscle group.

[01:06:26] And I start off with high reps, low weight, but I use a much lesser percentage of effort because I need to warm the muscle up. I basically just produce the muscle to get it to the point where I can train it heavy with 95% effort without injuring it and without injuring the joint. So I do, let's say I might start off with my first set of maybe 50 reps.

[01:06:49] Certainly never less than 30 reps. And then I add weight and I add weight and I add weight. And every time I go, my subsequent set, I increased the percentage of effort. So I might start off with [01:07:00] 60% effort, 70% effort, 80% effort, 85, 90 and 92 to 95, 97, you know, until I've done, you know, my, my most percentage effort on my final set or two.

[01:07:12] Right. But I've got some volume in there too. So I've gotten volume and I've gotten proximity to failure. And I've gotten intensity. So that seems to be the key is to balance fatigue with volume.

[01:07:24] Carl Lanore: [01:07:24] Yeah. I kinda adapted to that over the years. I'm sure you have as well, Ron, because I mean, you're, you're very tuned into the way your body train, you know, how your body feels when you train.

[01:07:36] I liked that

[01:07:37] Doug Brignole: [01:07:37] approach.

[01:07:37] Carl Lanore: [01:07:37] I like that approach to where it gets. I keep getting the, the intensity and the, and the movement increases. And then what that last set, I generally want to go to failure as best as possible. Yeah.

[01:07:49] Doug Brignole: [01:07:49] Right. That makes good sense. And there's no, there's no shame in starting. Like we, we, we started by the way, speaking of triceps, um, I liked that tricep cable exercise, but [01:08:00] I actually prefer a very decline angle, dumbbell skull crusher, because my elbows are so close to my son.

[01:08:07] It's almost like doing an upside down, push down.

[01:08:10] Carl Lanore: [01:08:10] I used to do that with that. Interesting.

[01:08:14] Ron Penna: [01:08:14] Yeah, because there's something unusual about doing the free motion in terms of it doesn't stress, the tricep attachment. Anyway, I'll have to

[01:08:22] Doug Brignole: [01:08:22] try getting back to what you said earlier about the skull crushers, hurting your elbow.

[01:08:27] The farther, I've noticed the farther away from my sides and my arm on my arms are the more you feed it on the elbows, sort of, even if you go higher, higher, more and more and more elbow discomfort, right? The lower your elbows go, the less Alper discomfort you feel. Right. So Matt makes sense. That's the natural position for the arm to be.

[01:08:44] And so you might as well extend with your arm close to your side of your body. With the resistance that comes from the opposite side.

[01:08:50] Ron Penna: [01:08:50] That's interesting.

[01:08:51] Doug Brignole: [01:08:51] So I do decline and we start our less than we did them. Last night, we started with five pounds for 50 reps, [01:09:00] seven and a half pounds in each hand. 40 reps, 30 reps, 20 reps, 15 reps, 12 reps, 10 reps, eight reps, six reps, six reps.

[01:09:08] That's how we progressed through that. And you talked about the Cambridge bar. The problem with the Cambridge bar is it's certainly better than a straight bar, right? Because it's really hard to turn your hands this way without letting your elbows go out. Right? So you want your elbows to go in, and then when you do that, your Palm turns inward, right?

[01:09:24] So at the very least, at the very least your Palm should be parallel to each other, but even better is turning them toward you run. I encourage you to try that. Turn your Palm toward you. When you're in the down position and as you come up, you can rotate them a little bit. But when you come down here, you notice if you do this, your apples kind of go out, even though you're using a Pearl, you're still doing this and your elbows just come nice in him.

[01:09:51] And it feels very, very natural.

[01:09:54] Carl Lanore: [01:09:54] Could you, could you just finish with the Palm out of Palm in the same position instead of pronating? Cause [01:10:00] I've always

[01:10:00] Doug Brignole: [01:10:00] thought that

[01:10:01] Carl Lanore: [01:10:01] that would hit the tricep more completely along the whole muscle. If your Palm, if your

[01:10:05] Doug Brignole: [01:10:05] hand is more natural, it's just a more natural. I mean, we were not built like this.

[01:10:09] We were built like this, right? Right. You curl like this, right. You should extend the same way. Right? Right. Exactly. I mean, we're parked, our palms were facing more forward than they are. Yeah, exactly.

[01:10:19] Carl Lanore: [01:10:19] Right. Interesting. Yeah. But I evolved to doing the, a cambered bar skull crushes on a decline. I found that it was much more comfortable for me.

[01:10:29] So I, I,

[01:10:31] Doug Brignole: [01:10:31] um, the other thing that I talk about in my book is that whenever possible it's better to use. Uh, it, each arm has its own resistance. Right? In other words, in the book, I compare two bicyclists riding side-by-side on their individual bike versus a tandem bicycle with two people sharing the same instrument.

[01:10:54] Right. And what we find is that muscles respond better when they're working [01:11:00] with their own resistance. Now they look better when they're working. What's that

[01:11:06] Carl Lanore: [01:11:06] unilateral work. You're you're a proponent of more unilateral work.

[01:11:10] Doug Brignole: [01:11:10] Well, yes. Now let's talk about that work for just a second, you know, um, unilateral, um, means that each arm is doing its own thing.

[01:11:21] Oh, all right. So let's just say that I'm going to do a curl. I'm going to go like this and like this right arm, left arm. That's called unilateral. Right.

[01:11:31] Carl Lanore: [01:11:31] Okay.

[01:11:31] Doug Brignole: [01:11:31] If I do this. It's bilateral. That is also, you know, that's the whole point. It's unilateral simultaneous, ah, versus unilateral alternate

[01:11:42] Carl Lanore: [01:11:42] India. Okay.

[01:11:43] Okay. Right.

[01:11:44] Doug Brignole: [01:11:44] But, but they're all, they're independent. And so I say unilateral should mean independent, right? When we say bilateral, what it should mean is sharing an instrument. And the reason for that is because the strength difference between [01:12:00] unilateral and bilateral is big when you're sharing an instrument.

[01:12:02] You can use much more weight and when, and, and, and, and so when you're talking unilateral, bilateral, what should be, you should be referring to is whether or not there's any independence or sharing of an instrument versus timing, right? Otherwise you're saying, Oh, because you're doing them this way versus this way, the timing difference, designates it as a completely different type of movement.

[01:12:28] No. Unilateral is unilateral doesn't matter. The timing, right? Bilateral should mean sharing an instrument.

[01:12:37] Carl Lanore: [01:12:37] Geronda completely against the unilateral movements. I think I heard one time that he got mad at people who did, he said you can't build muscles with dumbbell curls. You know, you gotta be both arms, have to be working on the same bar.

[01:12:49] Did you ever hear that? That he, he thought that

[01:12:53] Doug Brignole: [01:12:53] I had not heard that, but let me just sell it to you. There is science. That, that, that tells us that [01:13:00] something exists called bilateral deficit bilateral deficit. You could look that up basically means that if both arms or both legs are working at the same time that each side is going to have about a 5%, maybe 8% weakness factor as compared to doing it separately.

[01:13:19] If you take a pair of 30 pound dumbbells, And you try to curl them simultaneously. It'll be harder than doing an alternating bilateral deficit is kicking in. Right? Right. So when you're using a barbell, if you're using a barbell curl, now you've completely mixed it because you say, okay, well, I know what alternating 30 pound dumbbells feels like.

[01:13:41] I know what simultaneous 30 pound dumbbells feels like, how come I can do 70 or 80 pound curls? Didn't didn't the previous dumbbell exercise already establish what the strength capacity of my bicep was. Did my strength capacity suddenly increases that way I can do a [01:14:00] 70 or an 80 pound barbell curl. No, there's a physics aspect involved there.

[01:14:05] That's what's helping you use more weight. It's not that the bicep is, is being loaded more. You've already proven that your bicep has a strength capacity of X. Right. So, you know, whenever we can do more weight, we always have to ask ourselves, did we really just load that muscle more? Right? Or did we somehow get some assistance?

[01:14:24] Carl Lanore: [01:14:24] Right. Ron, do you have anything you want to contribute? Um, we're getting close to the end of the interview and I want to plug the book again for people who are watching or listening. Uh, you can go to. SHR network.biz/build more muscle to get the physics of resistance exercise by Doug bronchiole. Uh, did we miss anything that you

[01:14:44] Doug Brignole: [01:14:44] wanted to touch on?

[01:14:47] Ron Penna: [01:14:47] Uh, there's about 740 things on my list, but we'll have I'll, I'll just pick

[01:14:52] Doug Brignole: [01:14:52] that up. Yeah. As, as Carl was saying that I thought to myself, well, I mean, we couldn't possibly synopsize the book

[01:14:57] Carl Lanore: [01:14:57] in and out, and that's what, I just wanna inspire people to buy it. [01:15:00] I just wanna inspire people to buy it. That's what good.

[01:15:02] Wrong.

[01:15:03] Doug Brignole: [01:15:03] Yes. He, he does an

[01:15:05] Ron Penna: [01:15:05] interesting analysis of which muscles get injured and which ones don't. For example, you notice. People tear bicep quite often.

[01:15:11] Doug Brignole: [01:15:11] Um,

[01:15:12] Ron Penna: [01:15:12] but not so much to tricep. They

[01:15:13] Doug Brignole: [01:15:13] tear hamsters.

[01:15:14] Carl Lanore: [01:15:14] Oh, I told my tricep to what's the law. What's the, what's the,

[01:15:21] Ron Penna: [01:15:21] yeah. And he talks about how basically, which muscles are at a mechanical disadvantage all the time, your triceps, your quadriceps, et cetera. Uh, whereas the ones that essentially fold where, you know, you've got your hamstring, your biceps, et cetera, they're much more risky. And obviously how you load it. For example, a preacher curls, putting the majority of the strength.

[01:15:41] Require it at the beginning of the motion, which is the exact opposite of what you want. And so when you start thinking about that, that's when you start understanding the principles now, your engine, okay. I went now what the risk reward ratio is of different exercises and,

[01:15:55] Doug Brignole: [01:15:55] uh,

[01:15:55] Ron Penna: [01:15:55] that that's something that, you know, I mean, everybody has to think about it.

[01:15:58] So

[01:15:59] Doug Brignole: [01:15:59] let me, um, let me [01:16:00] just, yeah, elaborate a little bit on that. It, cause you said mechanical disadvantage and Carl probably goes, what is that? And everybody would say, what is that? Right. Well, mechanical advantage basically. Um, refers to whether or not a muscle is able to pull on its limb perpendicularly or not.

[01:16:16] Okay. So I have this model that I use right here. Right. So I imagine that this is your elbow. This is your forum right here, right? So this is your bicep. When my bicep can pull on the forearm perpendicularly to it, that's called a mechanical advantage. I mean, 100% of this effort is being used in the same in direction.

[01:16:38] I want this limb to go

[01:16:39] Carl Lanore: [01:16:39] right.

[01:16:40] Doug Brignole: [01:16:40] Okay. But if I put my arm on a table like this, now I'm pulling on this forearm almost parallel to it. Right. That means that even though I'm pulling here, I don't want the, the, the, the, the goal or the bar to go this way. That's the only way I can pull. I want him to go this way.

[01:16:55] Right. Which means, which means that about 90% of my effort [01:17:00] is going to be used. Unproductively going in. And only 10% of it. Is helping this go up right? As this elbow bends, the percentage starts to change. Right. So it's true. I said earlier that all muscles are stronger when there are elongated and we hear when they're shorter.

[01:17:17] So therefore we should select exercises that provide more resistance at the beginning then at the end. Okay. The problem is that if we were looking at a tricep muscle right here, this phase of muscle connects to this forearm to the, to this part of the forearm and it never. It's able to port perpendicularly on it.

[01:17:36] It's always pulling over the parallel to it. Right? That means it means the tricep is always at a mechanical disadvantage. So go ahead and load up the tricep in the early phase because the mechanical advantage disadvantage doesn't change. But when you're talking about a BICE tip, you have to factor that in you have an automatic magnifier by the mechanical advantage that occurs when you're up with straight.

[01:17:59] So when you're doing [01:18:00] a preacher curl, you've got mechanical disadvantage and load. That's why, when you're doing a standing curl, you've got a neutral forearm, but that's okay because you've got mechanical disadvantage magnifying it. Right? Right. So when you combine those two magnifiers, that's what people tear their bicep on preacher curls, because you have two magnifiers happening at the same time.

[01:18:21] Right? And you're unaware of it. Right? It's got, you have to factor that in. So that's what, when Ron says, you know, it's a mind bender, you know, there's all these things that are happening simultaneously, right? You gotta say, where's my forearm. Where's the direction of resistance? Is it gravity? Or is it cable?

[01:18:37] Right? What angle is my bicep pulling on my forum? You have to think about all of these things at the same time. Am I moving my limp toward the origin of that muscle? So, you know, for those of us that are kind of nerdy and we'd like to kind of like, you know, challenge ourselves, It's interesting and fun.

[01:18:52] But for people who say, look, this is too complicated for me. I'm not going to get your book. That's okay. The first 16 chapters [01:19:00] explaining what I think is simple language, how mechanics and physics work, but then the last chapters from chapters 18 through 25, those are the body parts chapters. Just go to the body part chapters and say, what's the best exercise.

[01:19:12] What's the second best. What's the third best next body part, the next body part. So, but it is interesting when you think about the physics. Of all of this and you can't, and then it's like, most people have realized for years that a preacher Barbara Cole is very difficult. They're very difficult at the bottom.

[01:19:29] Now, you know what mechanical disadvantage

[01:19:31] Ron Penna: [01:19:31] and done. I think you said something important. You can read the book on two levels, so you can read it as the nerdy,

[01:19:37] Carl Lanore: [01:19:37] um,

[01:19:38] Ron Penna: [01:19:38] thought provoking, fascinating understanding of how this stuff works. And there are principles that almost seem antagonistic to each other. So you have to, okay, well, where's the lever arm with

[01:19:47] Doug Brignole: [01:19:47] an angle of resistance.

[01:19:49] Ron Penna: [01:19:49] But you can very easily look at the pictures and say, okay, there is a kind of train this way. Not that way aspect. He doesn't dumb it down. So, you know, uh, you, you understand why he's not just saying, [01:20:00] believe me,

[01:20:00] Doug Brignole: [01:20:00] but

[01:20:01] Ron Penna: [01:20:01] for some people they're going to read it at a different level, which is, you know, I'm going to try it.

[01:20:04] And it works at that level because when you try the exercises, you will know if you've been training any amount of time. It just feels differently. And as I said that the delayed onset muscle soreness also reaffirms

[01:20:14] Doug Brignole: [01:20:14] it. Uh,

[01:20:15] Ron Penna: [01:20:15] it's just,

[01:20:17] Doug Brignole: [01:20:17] and there's 900 images, right? Yeah. Literally 900 images. So there's lots of examples and visuals to explain with arrows and, you know, showing, you know, what the text is describing.

[01:20:29] It's very easy to see what the text is describing.

[01:20:33] Carl Lanore: [01:20:33] The, uh, Tricep and bicep tear. I had two different occasions. Well, both a result of not taking time off when I developed an overuse tendonitis, both of them. When, when you get tendonitis and you don't take off and you don't let it heal, it turns into something called tendinosis.

[01:20:56] And this is a, have you ever made [01:21:00] spaghetti squash? Yeah. Okay. So you know how, when you take the fork and you just go like that, that's what you tended to become like. So you tended as this beautiful cable of soft tissue, and then all of a sudden it starts to unravel. And so you don't have the strength any longer.

[01:21:16] So I tore, I detached this tricep that way. And I tore this bicep doing heavy, bent over rows. Uh, uh, but I, I was suffering from tendinitis in both cases. So that that's a message to those of you who think you can train through, uh, the pain it ends up.

[01:21:34] Doug Brignole: [01:21:34] But, but let me, let me also say that, you know, that is, you know, tendonitis is virtually non-existent.

[01:21:41] When you do MCAT biomechanically, correct. Moving. Oh, I'm sure.

[01:21:44] Carl Lanore: [01:21:44] I'm sure. I, I saw, I got,

[01:21:46] Doug Brignole: [01:21:46] I got

[01:21:46] Carl Lanore: [01:21:46] tendinitis in this bow and this elbow from doing heavy dumbbell pullovers. And I, you know, I remember the first time that I got that

[01:21:58] Doug Brignole: [01:21:58] stretch and I felt it [01:22:00] right in that elbow,

[01:22:00] Carl Lanore: [01:22:00] right at the end where they, the tricep and attaches right behind the elbow there.

[01:22:06] And, but I kept doing them anyway for weeks. And it just got worse and worse and worse. And so I was, um,

[01:22:14] Doug Brignole: [01:22:14] you know, what body does my body does talk to us. We're often not listening.

[01:22:20] Carl Lanore: [01:22:20] I was ignoring it. I was like,

[01:22:21] Doug Brignole: [01:22:21] yeah. I mean, I encourage everyone. Who's listening. Next time. You're doing a rowing exercise. Ask yourself how much am I feeling this in the rear deltoids?

[01:22:33] Yeah. Most of us deny that we're feeling it in the rear deltoids, but if you ask yourself and you pay attention to go, yeah, I actually I'm feeling it in my rear deltoids more than anywhere else. Right. But we're not supposed to be, it's not supposed to be rear Delta next. So we ignore it and we think it's our own unique, Oh, we just got to our own unique rear deltoid issue.

[01:22:54] That's why I'm feeling it. No everyone's going to because whatever muscle is positioned, opposite [01:23:00] resistance will be the most loaded. Where do you want it to be or not? And it's positioned most opposite resistance,

[01:23:04] Carl Lanore: [01:23:04] right? Yeah, it's interesting. Again, one more time. The book is called the physics of resistance exercise by Doug Bertolli.

[01:23:14] And if you go to SHR network.biz/build wall muscle, you'll get a copy of it. It's a beautiful book. It's actually a, it's a coffee table book. You could put this on your coffee table. It's beautiful. You see, Ron is holding it up right there.

[01:23:25] Ron Penna: [01:23:25] Thank you

[01:23:26] Doug Brignole: [01:23:26] so much. I am hoping. That on the second edition, we can make it bigger with color photos and bigger photos.

[01:23:34] Oh

[01:23:34] Carl Lanore: [01:23:34] nice.

[01:23:35] Doug Brignole: [01:23:35] Um, because, because I admit the photos are a little smaller than they're black and white, you know, when the original photos were in color. Um, and so, but you know, the carpet printing has to balance out the cost of the book. Right? So, uh, so we did it, but if, if, if, if it comes out to be a, you know, a bestseller.

[01:23:52] Then the second edition will have color photos, bigger photos, and maybe even a hard cover cover, and will truly be a coffee table book.

[01:23:59] Carl Lanore: [01:23:59] Yeah, there you go. [01:24:00] Uh, thank you both for being on the show today, Ron. Thank you for arranging this. Thank you so much,

[01:24:05] Doug Brignole: [01:24:05] Ron. Thank you for this. I appreciate it.

[01:24:07] Ron Penna: [01:24:07] It's a pleasure.

[01:24:08] I really appreciate you writing the book.

[01:24:10] Doug Brignole: [01:24:10] Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

[01:24:12] Carl Lanore: [01:24:12] Ron hates to be on podcasts. As long as I've known him, he hates to be on podcasts. When he said to me,

[01:24:18] Doug Brignole: [01:24:18] get Doug granola

[01:24:19] Carl Lanore: [01:24:19] on and I'll come on too. I was like, okay, I got to get Doug on because this has to be real. Cause Ron, does it ever want to be on anybody's podcast at all?

[01:24:27] Ever?

[01:24:28] Doug Brignole: [01:24:28] Well, let me, let me just say that Ron's participation in this thing magnified the benefit of it. I think the comfort, the three-way conversation is significantly better. In a two-way conversation would have been.

[01:24:39] Carl Lanore: [01:24:39] Yeah. Well, and Ron is so serious about his training. He's so methodical about it. He's like he he's, he, he thinks about everything and I mean, he looks like a Donna he's strong as hell, and he's never injured knock on wood.

[01:24:55] Uh, and so, you know, like I'm, I'm like, well, Ron is behind this. [01:25:00] Okay. I gotta, I gotta learn more. So this is, this has been a great show and I thank you both for being here today.

[01:25:05] Doug Brignole: [01:25:05] Thank you very much. Okay.

[01:25:07] Carl Lanore: [01:25:07] And that's it for today. We have a show tomorrow. I don't know what it is. I haven't looked at the schedule yet, but hopefully you'll tune in.

[01:25:12] Please share the show.

[01:25:14] Doug Brignole: [01:25:14] Help a lot. People

[01:25:15] Carl Lanore: [01:25:15] build more muscle. We'll see you tomorrow.