Who would have thought we actually would have needed this stuff when we were in school.
Well, today, it's going to give you a whole new appreciation of why your workouts work.
Guys, 'IT'S PHYSICS, BITCH!' And it's time to put the science back in strength.
What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
'IT'S PHYSICS, BITCH!' Right, we talked about that before. A lot of guys got a laugh out
of that. And that story goes back to the time I talked about training a client.
And I always say, guys, it's physics. Everything we do is physics. And one of the guys who
is always questioning wanted to know
But Why, why? And the other guy says, 'It's physics, Bitch! Just do it!'
And that's how it came about and that's what we do. We apply science to strength because
we need to.
In order to have an appreciation of why a workout works, you have to have a basic understanding
of physics, and that's what I want to show you guys here today.
So, don't tune out thinking, 'Oh, God, physics is boring!' Guys, I hated physics in school.
I hated physics in school.
But I've got a whole new appreciation now as a Physical Therapist because it does explain
everything.
And it helps us, as I'm going to show you with the Dip today, understand why exercises
may not be as good as we thought for targeting muscles we thought they did.
Right here we look at the skeleton. We have to realize, guys, that this skeleton is what's
inside of us.
And we basically have just a series of muscles and bones, which are basically our levers,
and we have pulley systems.
Even if you look at the leg here itself, this is a perfect example of a pulley. The patellar
tendon crosses this joint, and it works as a pulley.
We're going to do a video later this week where we talk about how pulleys change the
force that we apply when we do our exercises.
But, what we have to have a basic understanding of is this one thing. Remember this one thing
to deem an exercise good or bad.
At some point, that lever that the muscle that you're targeting is controlling has to
cross the point or the force, the line of force, whatever that is.
So, if you're talking about bodyweight exercises, you're talking about the line of force which
is gravity pointing straight down.
At some point, you better form a T, perpendicular right to that line, with the lever itself,
if you want to maximize the effect of that exercise on the muscle you're targeting.
So, let's take that understanding and apply it here to a Dip and show you exactly what
I'm talking about.
We know that for a Dip, if we're trying to do this exercise for our triceps, which a
lot of guys will do, they basically come up here and they perform the exercise like this,
ok.
So, you're doing the standard Dip. Down and come up. Now. Here's the point.
The triceps, if that's the muscle in question here, is going to cross or control the forearm,
right, because it extends the elbow.
Again, the movement occurs at the joint right here, at the elbow. It extends the elbow.
So the forearm is our lever.
If we're going to have an effective exercise for the triceps, that forearm must at some
point become perpendicular to the line of force here, again, which is gravity coming
straight down.
That means that at some point our forearm has to be positioned this way; right in line,
perpendicular to that gravity.
That's not happening in a Dip. Look again. We come up here, and at the bottom, my forearm
is only, i don't know, 20 degrees from here.
Because when it's here, at the top here, it's parallel to gravity. The gravity's running
right through that arm.
There's no force. You could hang out here forever. This is not hard. You can hang out
here with no force on the triceps.
The thing is, you have to have that arm get to a position like this. It ain't gonna' happen
on this exercise.
So, it's not an ideal exercise. If you're talking about a triceps Push Down, yes. You
start in this position.
You're already perpendicular to the force. Again, with a cable, it's coming through the
line of the cable, but we'll talk about that at another time, too.
But, again, at this point, it's perpendicular. So, we do at ATHLEANX what we call a Tricep
Dip. It's an upright Dip.
And you might intuitively know, I got to change my body position to feel it a little bit more
in the triceps.
Well, this is why it works. If we come up here, the Tricep Dip, as we say, you gotta
do it upright.
So, again, we start here. Not much going on. But as we come down, you can see that the
angle is increased.
And then we come up. We're actually very upright, and then coming up to the top.
Very upright, and then coming up to the top.
Look at what happens here. Look at the angle of the forearm. It's not ideal yet. It's not
a full Maggie.
But we went from being here, which is basically again, parallel to gravity, not where it has
to be to when we go upright,
it drops back a lot of degrees here to give us more of an opposition to gravity. It puts
the force back into the triceps.
You might be saying. 'Yeah, but Jeff, I feel the exercise in my triceps when I'm doing
it.'
Yeah, you can feel it because it's a lot of weight for your triceps to handle. When you're
doing a bodyweight exercise like this,
whatever percentage triceps you're doing is definitely compensated by the fact that, it's
a lot of weight for it to move so you're going to feel it in those muscles.
But it's not an ideal exercise for the triceps unless you try to make that tweak to make
it better.
What's really happening there in the Dip is your other lever that is working more that
gets perpendicular is the humerus, the upper arm bone.
When I'm at the bottom here, the upper arm bone is 90 degrees. This is getting the direct
force of gravity.
Well, what's controlling this? My Deltoid, my front Delt is what's controlling that lever.
So, this becomes a more effective front Delt exercise when done this way. Yes, chest is
contributing as well, but front delt when you go here.
And again, when we make that transition to more upright, then we switch that around.
So, it's not the only example. There's a lot of other examples. Everything, every exercise
you do, has an example of this.
A Shoulder Raise. Is it a good exercise for the Delts? Let's think about that real quick.
The Delt is going to control the arm, right, controls, here's our lever, right here. Forget
about the forearm. This is our lever right here.
At some point, does that lever get to be perpendicular to gravity? Yes it does. Right there.
But the interesting thing is, this all kind of rolls over into the discussion of strength
curves because where does it get the hardest?
At the very end. And we know that. That's the hardest part of the exercise. It's a little
easier down here.
Easier, easier, easier. Harder, harder, harder. All the way up to the top, right.
It gets basically varying degrees of hardness as you raise it up.
If I were to change my body position and lay down on my side on the ground down here and
I have my arm against my side.
What happens now? At the top, now I'm parallel to gravity. This is no longer hard. It was
hard down here though because I'm actually right up against gravity here.
So, if you wanted to really work your Delts and get to be subjected to the hard range
of motion in the beginning,
and the hard range of motion at the end, then you would include both variations of that.
So you can start to see how having an understanding of physics actually helps us to have a better
appreciation of our workouts.
And that's what this is about guys. We don't come out here just telling you what exercises
to do. I feel like it's important for you to understand why you do them.
Because whether or not you decide to pursue a career in physical therapy, as a sports
trainer, that doesn't matter.
Having an understanding of what you're doing when you're training, allows you to get a
lot better results because you know what's going on.
You know how to tweak. Intuitively, you know how to tweak exercises. You know if you have
a little bit of a pain how to work your way around that.
Alright, so, with ATHLEANX, I like to try to coach you guys and tell you how it works
so that you have that understanding.
Hell, you can go tell your friends, and if you have to, drop the 'IT'S PHYSICS, BITCH!'
right on them too, because they'll get it.
That will stick in their head and they'll be able to get it as well. And you will have
helped them . I'm positive you will.
So, if you haven't already, you want a training program that puts that science back in strength
and educate you along the way of why you're doing what you're doing,
then head to ATHLEANX.COM. Join my team, and let me show you what it is that we do each
and every day.
In the meantime, guys, if you like the video, leave a comment below, and whether you found
it helpful.
And as always , feel free to yell, 'IT'S PHYSICS, BITCH!' Put it in the comments below.
Coming to a T-Shirt soon near you.