Learn how to build a strong foundation for your fitness journey with expert tips on proper form, gym consistency, and the value of working with a trainer. This session emphasizes how perfecting your technique reduces injury risks, enhances workout efficiency, and leads to faster results. Whether you’re a beginner or looking to refine your skills, these insights will help you maximize your efforts in the gym.

Discover the importance of holistic training, from positioning your entire body correctly during lifts to engaging your core for added benefits. With practical advice on forming gym habits, finding accountability through trainers or group classes, and understanding how small adjustments can make a big difference, this guide will set you up for long-term success.

Highlights of the Podcast

0:03 – Introduction

01:27 – Importance of Proper Form in Weight Lifting

03:31 – The Role of Form in Injury Prevention

04:37 – Full-Body Awareness During Exercises

06:58 – Establishing Gym Habits

08:08 – Benefits of Group Fitness and Specialized Classes

10:17 – Comprehensive Health Approach

12:45 – Value of Trainers

14:45 – Final Advice

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:03] So what are the things we’re gonna do? So the last two business weeks now, the last two workday weeks, I’ve said that the last two weeks of this year we’re going to do a getting ready for New Year’s. So we’ll go over, you know, coach exercise diet, a whole bunch stuff that you guys are going to get a a lead off on, some ideas and some tips on, you know, doing some New Year’s resolution stuff, but hopefully making it work. So we’ll do that the last two weeks, including the holidays like the last two actual weeks of the year. So we’ll talk about that. Will we find some training? My youngest kid in lifting and it’s fun because I’ve trained my oldest, now I’m training my youngest. And as I’m going through it, it’s one of those things where. It’s kind of fun to watch somebody who’s never lifted before. Like a little like little kids because it gives you kind of back to the whole like, yeah, I have to teach every part of this. And I’m glad I do that because like, when I talk about stuff like a lot of people who are already lifting, it’s like I’m taking people from like a 6,070% level up. And we haven’t actually discussed a lot of this stuff from the beginning point.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:27] So when you’re when you’re starting lifting and when you’ve been lifting a long time, one of the things that you need to kind of focus on is, is exactly the right form and you’re going to have to hire a trainer for this. There is there is. I have no other way of telling you that you’re going to fire a trainer. And the reason is because and I recognized this this morning with my youngest son because he was like and I was telling him, I’m teaching you form. Like that’s what you’re learning right now. Once you learn the form and you get really good at doing this exercise, then we move on to the next exercises, the next set. And he was like, he’s acquired, You have a form. And I was like, yeah. And he was like, Yeah, you just do this. And he did it. And when he did it, his hand came up here instead of back here. And I was like, You don’t even know where the proper form feels like You think that’s right. And it’s not like you’re like, I can feel it. This is where it’s supposed to be. That’s not where I supposed to be. And so a lot of times, like, I was there showing him just fibers beforehand.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:02:28] So you’re like, man. It’s the very best thing to get a trainer or a really skilled lifting partner. And this is one of those things that makes it hard. This is why it’s hard for like the boyfriend who’s been lifting for a long time to take the girlfriend who’s never worked out because she’s like, he’s such a jerk. No, he’s just correct to your forms. It’s hard. Like you’re like, I’m moving the weight. You’re not moving it, right. And that’s the biggest piece. Like. Like, where do we get the injuries? Perform like everybody who’s who’s an experienced lifter. I’m like, I asked her, like, where do we get it? It was like poor form. Like, we know the answer to that question. I mean, everybody does like, you know, if I mess up my form, I’m going to mess up my body like that, obviously. Like, if you move things wrong, you get hurt. Like it doesn’t take it doesn’t take you long on this planet to realize if you move wrong, you hurt yourself. So, you know, form is obviously the thing. However, what I don’t think people recognize is how critically important every degree in that motion is.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:03:31] And hey, when you do it, you need to stand like this to open up that range of motion, the whole like, you know, because it’s funny because like people go, you know, when you’re, when you’re posing in bodybuilding, you start from the floor up. Because if you’re going to show off your bicep, you have to show off your toes all the way to your bicep. And it’s a great thing to kind of recognized because it’s how is my entire body positioned? So when you’re doing standing alternating arm curls, you’ve got to make sure, are my feet on the ground, right? Are they the right distance apart? Are they pitched the right way? Because that’s going to affect the way your lower legs are and then your your knees and your femurs and obviously the to affect to a giant degree the way your pelvis is sitting. Well, your pelvis is your core. And if you’re doing alternating bicep curls, the secondary function of that, if that exercise is core work and that’s one of the reasons I have such a big fan, because when I designed my workouts for people, I’m like, We’re gonna do as much as we can at once. And so people like, I tell people this all the time, I’m like, You’re going to work your core when you’re doing half these exercises. And they go, okay. And they come back.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:04:37] We talked like the next time we talk and they’re like, My abs hurt, like from doing biceps or from doing back, my eye absorbs like, Well, yeah, because we’ve designed this with that in mind. So as you’re doing this, like I said, the positioning of how your body is, you’re going to be working the whole body. You have to recognize that ahead of time and you go, okay, well, how do I design this, this, this positioning to get the maximum benefit out of everything? I’m all the way up and down. And so if you’re standing, you’ve always got to remember where my legs, where my knees, where are my hips, where’s my you know how my feet pointed. Where’s my pelvis sitting? How is it, how is it articulating? Because if I you know, I call it the chicken. Look, I don’t know why I call it that. You know, hips flex a little bit, knees bent a little bit, you know, but stuck out big curve in that low back, you know, chest out, shoulders back, like head up, looking up that whole, that whole positioning when you do all your exercises. And because that’s the that’s the that’s the position you’re trying to reinforce your body to always be in because that’s the healthiest position long term like you want that lower down it curve in your back, you want to look for it, you know curve.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:05:43] O there’s that thing correct for a curve in your thoracic, you want your head up so you get that lower down at curve back in the neck, shoulders back. You know, everything pitched to this position because you want your ribs to move, right? So there’s a lot of how do you stand and how do you move this joint with, you know, from a holistic you want to use that term, holistic viewpoint. And so. It’s really easy for someone standing on this side of you to be like, This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. Move it like this. Move like that. Because it’s real hard for you to just feel. That’s why you have mirrors like this, right? I have mirrors in my gym because I can’t feel it. I’m going to see it. Me like, my shoulders are off or my head’s not pitched right or, you know, that type of thing. Or I’ve moved my elbow more and I’m supposed to, so you got to be able to see it. And so the problem is, is a lot of gyms, as great as the gym is, you don’t have a mirror by you every time you’re lifting and you definitely don’t have one when you’re doing like bench and stuff like that. So you know where your elbows don’t like isn’t too high to where your hands like. So getting a trainer to walk you through these things is going to be one of the more important pieces of starting. The other piece of getting a trainer that’s wildly important is. You the number one most important this.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:06:58] I tell this people every time I start doing a coaching group or we start like we start working on this certain body transformations. And I’m like, the most important thing about your entire workout is that you just show up for the first two, three weeks. You’re like, Well, I got emails to send them from the gym. I’m tired, take a nap at the gym, don’t care. Go lay down on a bench and take a nap. Go to the gym. Get there between time and time. Be establishing that habit is the most critical thing you can do when you’re starting. Yeah, you can go five days a week, five days a week. Since, you know, if you spend half the time sending emails, fine. Because here’s the thing. If you establish the I go to the gym and you just get to the gym, it’s a whole lot easier to establish the I don’t do emails. I lift them at the gym. Once you’re at the gym, that’s that’s well, that’s the big thing. So just make sure you get there. We can kind of build up everything else later. But the other nice thing about it is that once if you’re like, I’m going to get to the gym because I’ve got I’ve paid this trainer, I’m going to go get Tony, Ted, Susan, Jennifer, whoever it is, is at the at the gym waiting on me. I’ve got to go. This is what I’ve chosen to do. Like that helps tremendously.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:08:08] Group fitness is also fantastic because, you know, sometimes you get you get the I’m making it to the gym, but I’m not I’m not getting I’m not working out as hard as I could. It’s a little easier to work out a little harder when there’s a group there. So if you’re a cycling guy or girl person, go go to your cycling class. Like that’s that’s the thing I love about Vibe five in Frisco to be guys here in Frisco, come check out by five. Like we’ll get you like a couple weeks free that whole deal so you can come check it out and you can. It’s like I helped design that workout. I’m one of the major founders of that, so I’m a big, big fan of that one, even though that’s not what I do every day, It’s one of the best things that you can do, like and it’s like for it’s for women. No, it’s not. It’s it’s for kind of everybody. There’s flexibility function in it. There’s balance, coordination functioning, there’s strength training, there’s cardio function in it, you know, and it’s hot. And that those, you know, now we’re talking about heat shock proteins. That’s the new thing with the sun is the heat shock proteins. But it’s hot there. It’s far infrared.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:09:15] And it’s you know, this might not mean it’s horrible, but the frequency, the ceramic frequency that we have from those infrared is the the highest function for your body. Just being in that form per head for a while will help detox kidneys and help recharge the body. And you’ll feel better just going through it. And that’s the whole thing. If I if I feel better. But that’s the whole thing about working out. If you work out right, then what’s heating up happening is that you’re going to feel better all the time. And that’s why when we start looking at, you know, health care providers and this is a big, big point for me, a health care provider is someone who works improving your health care. So are they going over diet, nutrition? Are they going over the metabolic chemistry of what goes in your mouth? It’s all plantation. That’s food. That’s all of it. Are they helping with that construct, that plan? And are they putting that together to make it functional for you in your lifestyle? Are they teaching you about exercise, like how to move? Are you moving because, you know, that’s diet and exercise.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:10:17] And so if you’re not if you’re not providing diet and exercise function, how could you possibly call yourself a health care provider? Because no one argues that those are your health things. And then hormones is a big piece. Not a lot of people are trained probably in hormones and then sleep and then psychological function. So mental health, like it’s in the it’s in the word health. Mental health. So if you’re not at least helping people kind of walk down that road, whether you’re doing it yourself or whether you’re like, Hey, now that I’ve spoken to you about this 3 or 4 times, I think you should go talk to this therapist. I think as you go do these psychedelics, I think you should go talk to this guy over here about, you know, if you’re a medication person, go talk to Ted about the psychiatry stuff. Like a lot of times what will I’ll do is after I sit down and I kind of walk through some stuff with people, I’ll be like, Hey, you’re on these two meds. I don’t think you need one of them or I don’t think you need either of them. I’m going to send you to the psychiatrist. We’re going to have this conversation like a sort of a big this is happens a lot with necessaries. And news flash, I’m not a huge business or I’ve had, but we’re like, here’s here’s the, you know, chemical pathway, here’s the biochemical pathway to get that better.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:11:26] So, you know, finding that team is really important. So like I said, get yourself a trainer as part of your health care team and you’re not going to need this trainer forever. You know, probably the first six weeks. Now, if you’re training for something specific, like, you know, I have a lot of people that I team up with and they come for me for hormones and for nutrition, for supplementation and, you know, sleep. And they go to their personal trainer to get trained for their show. Right. Or that type of thing. So getting the right trainer is going to be really, really beneficial and people are like, it’s gonna be an extra thousand dollars a month forever. No, it’s gonna be actually, you know, grand or 1500, you know, or three grand being on how good of a trainer you choose to pick, you know, a month for 3 or 4 months until you, like really get it down and you’re like, All right, cool. I’ve got this. Great. Now, here’s the thing. You can do different exercises. But at the end of the day, and this is all the traders are a loser, my when I say the muscle goes one thing, it contracts, it shortens it. So like, you know, it does that. That’s what it does. The joint does that. So finding the best range of motion to do that thing and then doing it over and over and over again with resistance is how you grow muscle tissue.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:12:45] So if you want to look a certain way, there is usually 1 or 2 motions that are going to give that muscle, that definition, that look, that you’re going for it. And so there’s only going to be basically two exercises to do for that and say, well, you know, Shoulder Day has five exercises, right? It’s enter your dealt post, you’re dealt lateral dealt trap like that’s there are different muscles different parts of the muscle that you’re actually working. So that’s how we start looking at some of those things is there’s you know, there’s an exercise for that specific look. And so once you get those exercises, you’re just going to do that for a long time. And so, you know, you don’t need a trainer for for for everything. Now, once you’ve done 3 or 4 months for the stuff and you’ve done three or 4 or 5 months by yourself doing the same exercises, concentrating on forms like that, having them pop back in every once in a while will be really beneficial to, you know, hey, you’re deviating a little bit like you were. You were 100% when I first worked with you. It’s been a month. You’re 95%.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:13:47] So and bump back over here and so having having to come back in like every once in a while is a great option. But getting a solid trainer to walk you through the physical motions of the exercise will actually it’ll help you get you everywhere you want to go better. It’ll make your muscles look prettier, you know, make you get there faster and it will save you a giant amount of money on injuries. Because you left wrong and you blow your shoulder out and you go, you have a $10,000 surgery. And they had to do the recovery time and then you can’t lift. And so all your gains kind of go away. So, yeah, that’s way more costly, way more costly than sending three or 4 or 5, six grand on a trainer to make sure that to radically reduce the chances of that happening. So, you know, that’s one of the things like, you know, from training my my two kids, I can tell you that you desperately need somebody to walk you through this. If you’ve not had somebody walk you through it. Because there’s a lot of guys out there, especially all the guys, all of you guys who your high school football coach is the one who taught you to lift.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:14:45] You need to go get a trainer and walk you through it because man, as much as I love my high school football coaches. They’re not always focused on perfect form and they let a lot of shit slide. And so what ends up happening is that, you know, you thought you were doing it right for 20 years and you’re like, Why do I have shoulder surgery? Because you’ve been doing it wrong for 20 years now. That’s the deal. So get somebody who’s who really knows what they’re doing to make sure your form is good. So. All right. Well, like I said, we’re going to do like I enter the new Year the last two weeks of December so you guys can kind of get a jump on that. Anything else? Drop us comments, questions at questions at Chalmers one second or on the comments and when can go through them. It’ll be fun. Thanks for your time. You guys have a good day.

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Dr. Matt Chalmers

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only. Before taking any action based on this information you should first consult with your physician or health care provider. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions regarding a medical condition, your health, or wellness