The importance of range of motion and proper form over heavy weights. Targeting individual muscle groups each day and prefers using dumbbells and cables over bars to avoid joint issues and ensure balanced strength development. The need for muscle exhaustion rather than adhering to specific sets and reps. Also highlights the significance of understanding muscle tone, injury prevention, and the role of mitochondrial health in overall fitness and recovery.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:50 – The muscles actual range of motion

02:29 – The flexor versus extensor group

03:57 – To use a functional group you’re going to have

05:02 – The imbalance is even worse

06:30 – The same workout that I’ve been doing for two years

09:27 – The exact focus range of motion

10:25 – The ability to rebuild

11:58 – The mitochondrial work done

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:03] They? We’re going to talk a lot about working out. Everybody has kind of their own thing, on how they like to do it. I’m a big fan of focusing on an individual muscle group per day. So, like, I’m a back to chest a that’s a thing. I also really like time and attention. So the the philosophy that I have for all lifting is, range of motion is paramount. Form is paramount. Weight is irrelevant compared to those two things. That’s how big of a difference important to make. When we’re talking about injury, we’re talking about shaking the muscle. We talk about focused energy. We talk about weakness, injury prevention. That’s really kind of where a lot of it is. So you want to take the muscle. You want to find the muscles actual range of motion. And you want to go a perfect range of motion and resist it through its full range. We see a lot of people who are cutting range of motion and, you know, like 60% or 70%. That’s especially like when we’re doing squats. We’re not going deep enough. That’s why I think you’re where that ends up doing is it leaves, area for weakness and weakness translates into injury. So, for instance, if you’re just going down parallel and not going to grass and all the way down, then you’ve got half of your range of motion, half of your knee bend, that’s going to be weak.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:26] And when it’s weak, if you go into that position, so you parallelize where you’re you end if you ever, you know, go down 10% lower than that, your musculature can’t handle that force. And so you’re not going to be able to be strong as much as you should be in that functional range. And so you’re going to have injuries and things like that. It’s also going to shorten the way the muscle looks. It’s also going to change the way the tone is. And muscles of two things that strengthening of tone strength is how are they can pull it in when given time. Tone is how hard they’re pulling all the time. Tone issues end up with. So plantar fasciitis, carpal tunnel, frozen shoulder, scoliosis. Those are all tone issues. Easy to fix. But they’re neurologic in nature. They’re tone issues. Mostly because there’s a flexor dominated functions. And when you fall asleep at night or flexor group, say, six taught, your extensor group shuts down because your frontal lobe shuts down. Which is also why we call it the balls at night in the fetal position. That has a lot to do with healing and rehab as well. So make sure you, if you understand that sympathetic person, that the functionality of the flexor versus extensor group, where the brain function locates that it’ll help with time.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:37] So you don’t get surgery for carpal tunnel, get finger rubber bands and strengthen the extensors. But so one of the things we’ll do, like for chest day, my favorite thing to do is I’ll go and I’ll warm up, like, I’ll do 60, like, 60 pound miles, and I’ll do, I’ll go slow, but I’ll go like 60s of time on retention. And then I’ll go up to my workout weight, which I think when to go up a little bit. Today you do 95 on dumbbells and I’ll do I. My goal is somewhere between 90 and 100 and 20s. Percent, so I’ll do about seven reps. Try to get to about two minutes that actually, you know. Under pressure. So I just move constantly, move and go really slow. Tentative. For about two minutes. You’re out. Seven reps. Out. I do 3 or 4 sets of that. And then I’ll move into, same way, like a so like today we’re going to try for 95 usually use nine is we’re going to go a little bit and I’ll do three sets of 21. I’ll just rip them out. And so we’ll do that and then we’ll move over to flies. oh. The it’s dumbbell bench. I never use bars. Not for squats, not for legs, not for back, not for anything. I never use bars. The reason I don’t use bars is because you have two legs and two arms. And if you put a bar across it until your body, it won’t. You want to use a functional group you’re going to have.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:00] You’re gonna have all sorts of issues. So first of all, the natural range of motion of the shoulder is here. The pec muscle attaches into the humerus and brings it forward and across the chest. You cannot do that with a bar. Which is why if you see people who do a lot of bench press, the oh, I’ve done bench press for 25 years. How are your shoulders? They’re messed up. Yeah. You’re asking your shoulder to do something that is not physiologically appropriate for that joint, and you’re doing it under tremendous load. It’s going to damage the joint. Cables and dumbbells are the only way to do it safely. Single leg squats are the only way I’ll do squats, because I. If the problem is, if I have a weak left ankle or a weak right knee, then you do a double leg squat. Your body will shunt the force away from those weak joints, making everything around them stronger, not improving the strength of those weak joints. And so, by contrast, if everything around it gets stronger and it doesn’t in the weak part, doesn’t give you stronger it in relation, it gets weaker. So if this is a two and this is a three and you work out this is a two, this goes before the the imbalance is even worse. And so we see more issues with vehicles happiness.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:07] If you actually do single leg squats your body has no choice but to strengthen the hip, the ankle, the knee, the low back. Yes. I joined, the functional movement of the entire chain. It increases purpose at home. So where your body is in space, coordination, balance, the whole deal. So I highly recommend that you guys break those up and start doing individual legs. Individual arms go away from the bars. But so then what we’re going to do like today, as mentioned, we’ll do the dumbbell bench. Time and attention. They’ll go over and do, 47 pound flies, cable flies and we’ll do, four sets of 21 on that. And I try to do them in a tight group. So I’ll get that all done. All ten sets in about. 45 minutes ish. Hour ish. Then I go into apps. My avatar is typically, I’ll take two dumbbells to 20 fives, and I’ll come up and over the head, allow a bench to come up and over the head and come back down for, center rectus. Then we’ll do lateral crunches with, pec deck with a, with a cable system. And then we’ll go over, we’ll do hanging abs. I’ll do two sets of 40 on those. And then I have 5 pound ankle weights strapped to my ankles for that. That was an interesting addition. So, and that’s basically the workout I do. Pretty much the same workout that I’ve been doing for two years. Because, again, the way that I look at it is that muscles do one thing.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:39] They contract and they approximate joints. And so if you’re doing bicep curls, if you really, really, really want to focus on exactly what it is, range of motion. So down up and curl then back down, you know, just do that in that elbow and really close down with the shoulders moved onto the elbows. Move. The only thing that moves the joint you’re exercising. So in biceps case the elbow is the only one that moves. When I see my shoulder start rolling forward or dipping down, that’s when I’ll drive the weight down and keep going until I’m exhausted. The other thing is, I don’t care about I’ve said this a bunch, I don’t. Sets and reps don’t matter. To me, what matters is, is the muscle exhaustion when I get that. So if I do, if I’m at 15 reps and that’s how far I was going to go, and I’m not like, I feel like I got more in me, I will always do a couple more, if I get done with the workout, I’m like, oh, I do four sets of 15 and I get even if it’s the I did, oh, I did forces a 17. Can you do ten more? Can you do 15 more doing like get them because the goal isn’t to. I got four sets of 15. The goal is to I exhausted the muscle tissue to the point where it couldn’t do anything else. I was completely wasted. Muscle was when I left the gym. Which is also why I like to split things up into individual days. So Monday I do legs, Tuesday I do, I do chest, Wednesday back, Thursday do shoulders, final two arms and Saturday I’ll do chest again. And every day I do abs.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:10] Core work. So that’s basically how I do mine. I know a lot of people are like, oh, well, I’ve had variety in my lift. That’s cool. Variety is awesome. As long as you’re in the gym and lifting, you’re going to knock it out. But I would stress that you really, really, really focus on form. I don’t care how you’re doing, if you’re doing hammer curls or preacher curls or, you know, resistant curls or, you know, whatever you’re doing, really, really, really focus on the form and go slow and kind of really focus on the contraction muscle. One of the things I tell my, my son when we’re lifting is you want to lift with the muscle, not with the joint. And I realize how silly that sounds, but you should feel as you contract the muscle. You should feel the weight go through the muscle. And that’s something a really difficult to kind of express here, but that’s what you’re trying to do. A lot of people will swing weights and they’ll use momentum. And that’s killing your guys. That’s great for your ego. Oh, look, I got ten. I got ten reps for 45. Okay. If you want to look good while you’re in the gym, knock it out. That’s cool. Do your thing. But if you really want to focus on the musketeer, drop your weight. The only thing that moves no movement. You don’t swing back and forth. You know, kick around. You don’t arc up. It’s just the exact focus range of motion.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:29] Exact perfect form. And if you gotta drop your weight down, good. So do 6 or 7 with your X weight. Then drop down 5 or 10 pounds. Do your 5 or 6. The idea that I try to get people to do is exhaust the muscle. Don’t try to get x amount with x amount of weight. Exhaust the muscle if you have to do more effective less. It doesn’t matter when you leave the gym, you should be completely exhausted. Like that muscle should be done. I always tell people I don’t care if you lift really heavy or really light. If when you get done with leg day, you can walk downstairs. You did it wrong. I think everybody who’s who’s lifted heart knows what I’m talking about with that. Like we used to, like when we got done working arms, we had to literally sit and wait about 15 minutes at the gym before we could drive humps or arms. We just put. They just wouldn’t work. Now, if you’re going to get to this point, one of the things we got to talk about is how the point of diminishing returns. And so what that is, is that at a certain point, you break yourself down for units, but your body only has the ability to rebuild. Three. You’ve done more damage than you can do.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:28] But this is where we talk about is your testosterone where supposedly is your is your, are your is your nutrition where it’s supposed to raise your, you know, are you using your macro set right? Are you, you know, are you still in a fat burning state or you, you know, do you have enough, you know, sugar for your blood, like that old thing? Are you getting good sleep? You can get hydration. Is your nutrition level high enough? Is your inflammation level pulled down enough so all those things factor in? But remember, the harder you workout, the closer you get to that point of diminishing returns, the more maintenance chemicals you’re gonna have to have more B vitamins, the more you know Coke. You tend to make atps that you actually function move. You know, the more wear and tear you can put on it. If you’ve done that for a long time, I would I would highly recommend getting checked out for mitochondrial dysfunction and resetting your mitochondrial function. So that will help with reactive active stress, which I report all the time that causes heart attacks and strokes and cancer. It also decreases the amount of energy you have, the ability your body has to utilize fat as a fuel source.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:33] So if you’ve not read or done anything about mitochondrial dysfunction, I’ll probably do one on that tomorrow. Just so we know what’s going on. There’s a bunch of peptides I like to use for that. Once you get the body cleaned up. So we’ll talk about that tomorrow. That’s a great idea. But that would be the other thing I would look at for that point of diminishing returns. Pretty much everybody that we’ve looked into has needed to do it to some degree. Some people did a really bad and some people are gonna need a little bit, but everybody needs the mitochondrial work done, because that’s where all the energy in the body comes from. And unfortunately, that’s where a lot of arterial plucking cancers, heart attack strokes, brain issues, neurodegenerative diseases like dementia, they come from that, that source. So we’ve talked about reactive action of stress a lot. We’ve talked about oxidative stress a lot. So that’s that’s really a big player. so we’ll talk about that tomorrow. that’ll be fun. But if you guys have any other questions is up questions at Chalmers Wellness. Com or drop them in the comments down below and we’ll get you go. Thanks for your time.

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