ARPwave: Revolutionizing Injury Rehabilitation in Austin, TX

Genetics and Athletic Performance

Have you been stuck at a 4.7 second 40 yard dash? Or unable to jump higher than 26 inches? If you're an athlete who isn't getting results in training, it's tempting to blame it on your genes.  But just how much of athletic success is related to genetics?  Well, according to Dr. Michael Yessis, Ph.D., the answer is 30%.¹  He believes that 30% of athletic potential is genetic, while 70% depends on environmental factors like training and nutrition.  This still seems like a lot, but we have to explore further.

Say you are an aspiring sprinter and your genetic makeup dictates that you'll have 50% fast-twitch and 50% slow twitch muscle fiber composition (fast twitch muscle fibers make more powerful muscles that use energy quickly, whereas slow twitch fibers fire more slowly but have better endurance). Well, an elite Olympic sprinter may have an advantage and be born with a 75% fast-twitch composition. That's 25% more, which is definitely helpful. However, since genetics only account for 30% of success, the difference in genetic makeup of 25% only accounts for a 7.5% difference in performance (30% of 25%).

Is this enough to prevent you from setting a world record? Okay, it is. But if that world record holder is running a 9.5 second 100-meter dash, you should be able to run a 10.2. That is still a respectable time, but you can only reach that time if you reach your genetic potential. That is where the other 70% comes in.

A majority of athletes never reach their genetic potential. If you are one of these athletes, your lack of progress can only come down to a few things. The first major factor: you haven't trained long enough at an appropriate level. The second major factor: you haven't eaten or slept enough to support your training.

Now when I was an aspiring hockey player, I thought I was doing all of the right things. I trained really hard with a sports guru who was doing all of this exciting sports-specific training with me, but I never got better. I have since learned that all we were really doing was conditioning. And that part of it worked; I could compete and train all day long. But I never really improved as an athlete until I discovered the underlying principles of successful training.

To reach your genetic potential, you have to master the foundation of movement. That means being able to lengthen your muscles to absorb force in position, and to be able to do so many times at high velocity. Any training directed elsewhere is not only a waste of time, it can actually prevent you from reaching your potential.  (Of course there is also training time spent on your sports skills or team strategy practices, which is okay.  We're talking about the time spent training for performance.)  The stronger this foundation, the more speed, power, and skill you can build upon it -- and the higher you can climb towards your genetic ceiling.

 

References:

1- Build a Better Athlete, Dr. Michael Yessis.  2006: Equilibrium Books, Terra Haute, Indiana

ACL Rehabilitation Program

Here is one recent example of the results we're able to get with athletes recovering from ACL injuries.  Using the ARPwave system, we have completely changed the process of ACL rehabilitation. As you'll see from this video that chronicles our process, the techniques we use are real game-changers. Recovering from surgery after a complete ACL tear takes 6-9 months when using the most aggressive methods of traditional physical therapy. By changing priorities and placing the neurological component first, we have been able to cut recovery time in half! Check out the video to see just how we achieve these impressive
results.

 

The Down Side of Breathing

 

Sound harsh?  Well, it's true.  Breathing wrong can literally kill you.  Of course you won't die of the incorrect breathing itself, instead it will be from the symptoms that accumulate from long periods of poor breathing.  Over a lifetime, poor breathing impairs the function of all organs of the human body and can lead to things like asthma, heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer.  Here's the connection:

 

Most people actually breathe too much.  And the problem is that overbreathing causes us to get rid of too much CO2.  WHAT? DON'T WE WANT TO GET RID OF CO2?!?  Conventional wisdom does say that CO2 is nothing more than a waste product, but the actual science says otherwise.  CO2 has many positive effects on the human body when present in the appropriate amounts.  Among other things, it causes:

-Vasodilation [dilating blood vessels to increase blood flow to all of the body's organs]

-Increased oxygen delivery [oxygen in the blood requires the presence of CO2 in order to be released into tissues]

-Nerve stabilization [relaxes muscles and causes less psychological anxiety]

-Decrease glucose permeability in fat cells [making it more difficult for your body to store excess fat]

 

To see how these effects add up, consider this comparison.  The healthy person at rest breathes 5 liters of air per minute and has a CO2 concentration of about 6% in his blood.  In contrast, the average heart disease patient breathes 15 liters of air per minute at rest and has 4% CO2 blood concentration.  Decreased CO2 correlates very strongly with heart disease, and similar relationships exist between CO2 and numerous other modern diseases. 

 

So, how can you raise your CO2 levels to reap the health benefits mentioned above?  The first and most impactful tip I recommend is to exclusively nasal breathe during exercise.  That means literally no mouth breathing whatsoever.  At first you may have to tape your mouth shut during exercise or hold a sip of water or vegetable oil (olive oil, canola, grapeseed, etc.) in your mouth to ensure that it stays closed. 

 

Mouth breathing has numerous damaging effects, including blowing off too much CO2 on the exhale and bypassing the nose's air filtering mechanisms on the inhale.  It also stimulates your stress response (sympathetic nervous system).  If you're used to mouth breathing during exercise, you may notice increased difficulty in training and reduction in your stamina as you start to use new breathing muscles.  This, however, will pass.  And ultimately you will reach higher levels of performance when breathing through your nose than through your mouth. 

 

For those who are interested, here are some references.

Two references for normal breathing parameters:

Guyton AC, Physiology of the human body, 6-th ed., 1984, Suanders College Publ., Philadelphia.

McArdle W.D., Katch F.I., Katch V.L., Essentials of exercise physiology (2-nd edition); Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins, London 2000.

And for breathing parameters in sick people:

Dimopoulou I, Tsintzas OK, Alivizatos PA, Tzelepis GE. Pattern of breathing during progressive exercise in chronic heart failure. Int J Cardiol. 2001 Dec; 81(2-3): 117-121

Travers J, Dudgeon DJ, Amjadi K, McBride I, Dillon K, Laveneziana P, Ofir D, Webb KA, O'Donnell DE. Mechanisms of exertional dyspnea in patients with cancer. J Appl Physiol 2008 Jan; 104(1): p.57-66.

Tantucci C, Scionti L, Bottini P, Dottorini ML, Puxeddu E, Casucci G, Sorbini CA. Influence of autonomic neuropathy of different severities on the hypercapnic drive to breathing in diabetic patients. Chest. 1997 Jul; 112(1): 145-153.

 

Another great resource is John Douillard's book, Body, Mind, and Sport.  Chapter 10 in particular focuses on the mechanics of breathing during exercise.   And more excellent breathing information can be found at www.normalbreathing.com.

One Way to Lower Seniors' Risk of Falling

As we learn more about neuroscience and the plasticity of the human brain, it becomes clear how our brains are constantly adapting to our experiences.  The brain has limited real estate, and pathways that fire often are given priority.  When pathways don't fire often, their space is actually given to others that do.  How is this relevant to seniors?  Well, the longer certain pathways are reinforced, the more ingrained they become. 

 

Every part of the human body maps to a certain part of the brain.  Like all other "brain maps," the real estate in this part of the brain is competitive.  That means if part of the body doesn't get stimulation, the corresponding part of the brain will atrophy.  During a lifetime of wearing shoes with thick, protective soles, the amount of stimulation to a person's feet is diminished.  In fact, shoes decrease that amount of stimulation so much that the part of the brain that maps to the feet will get smaller.  When that happens, a person literally has less control of his legs because his brain cannot as effectively identify where in space his feet are. 

 

So, what is the solution?  Fortunately we know that, even in old age, the human brain can still change and adapt.  That means more stimulation to the feet will cause that part of the brain to grow, and as that part of the brain grows control of the feet and legs improves.  The beauty of this strategy is that it's so simple.  Any stimulation to the feet will help, whether it be a foot reflexology massage, using the ARP, or just simply walking barefoot. 

 

A similar situation can occur in case of injury when an injured limb is immobilized in a cast or brace.  The human brain is so adaptable that brain areas mapping to the immobilized body part can change in as little as 4-8 weeks.  Fortunately, the ARPwave System allows us to safely create appropriate stimulation to reconnect the brain and injured limb, allowing better coordination and dramatically reducing the risk of re-injury.

Aging Gracefully

 

 

With the limited movement, postural distortion, and chronic pain that often accompany old age, it's easy to see why people put so much stock in the notion that aging itself is the cause of physical degeneration.  In his book, Somatics, Thomas Hanna offers a contrary view.  "As we grow older, our bodies - and our lives - should continue to improve, right up until the very end."  

 Like me, he is deeply disturbed by the widely held beliefs that human beings naturally become crippled as they age and that we will naturally require walkers, canes, and wheelchairs to get around.  

A very important distinction: when problems occur, they are not because of the accumulation of age itself.  The extra years simply allowed more time for the causes of physical degeneration to accumulate, like stressful living and traumatic injuries.  

We know, for example, that stress can activate reflexes that cause muscular contraction.  A 65 year old who has spent 30 additional stressful years on the job than his younger counterpart has had enormous opportunities to experience events that caused him to contract his muscles.  The end result: the picture at the top of this post.  

Fortunately, all of this can be undone with proper training.

NHL Stanley Cup Shout Out to ARPwave

 

Tim Thomas, the goaltender for the 2011 Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins, also won the Vezina Trophy as the league's top goaltender.  In his acceptance speech from June 23, 2011, he gives a special thank-you to the team at ARPwave who helped him recover from serious hip surgery and bring his game to a level higher than what he previously thought was possible.  In the video below, his speech starts at the 4:24 mark, and the ARPwave mention is at 5:23.

 

 

Can Stress Affect Movement?

 

 

 

The answer is a resounding, Yes!  Efficient movement is a rhythmic dance between opposing muscles.  As one muscle shortens to create movement at a joint, the muscle on the opposite side of that joint must lengthen to enable the movement to occur.  In fact, the ability of muscles to lengthen is often the limiting factor in a person's range of motion, velocity, and ability to move without pain.  

 

The good news is that we're all born with muscles that know how to lengthen to enable movement to occur.  Watch a toddler squat, and you'll see his knee extensors (quads) and hip extensors (glutes and hamstrings) lengthen enough to allow him to sit in that position comfortably with minimal energy expenditure.  What, you may wonder, could possibly interfere with our innate ability to lengthen our muscles?  One culprit is chronic stress.

 

We've all heard how chronic stress can lead to numerous diseases, and I'd like to bring our awareness to another effect of chronic stress: muscular tension.  As we experience different types of events (relationship, work, or financial stress, rushing to meet a deadline, etc.) that cause stress, our bodies respond with a withdrawal reflex.  It's the same thing that causes you to rapidly pull your hand away from the hot stove you accidentally touched, and it can occur in greater or lesser degrees corresponding to the severity of the stressor.  No matter the cause, this reflex always causes muscular tension throughout the body.  

 

To see the mechanics of this response, imagine Rachel is driving home from work.  She's excited to finally have some time to herself after a long day, and is listening to her favorite song as her mind wanders.  Suddenly, another car cuts right in front of her.  She feels a surge of adrenaline through her body.  In addition, within 0.014 seconds of her perception of the car, the muscles of her jaw begin to tighten.  At 0.35 seconds her eyes and brow contract to scrunch her face, followed by her neck and trapezius muscles contracting to raise her shoulders and bring her head forward.  At 0.06 seconds, her biceps contract to bend her elbows.  Then her abdominals pull down her rib cage, shortening her breath, her knees bend and move inwards, and by 0.08 second her feet roll in while her toes lift upward.  This response pulls her body into a flexed and crouched position, offering protection similar to that of the fetal position.  

 

If Rachel experiences this near-instantaneous tension in the above muscles and consciously relaxes them after a moment, then she can shake it off and go about her day.  If she does nothing to alleviate this excess tension and these muscles stay tight, even at a low level, they will adopt a new, shorter resting length.  Her muscles are now stuck short and cannot facilitate movement as efficiently as they could at their natural length.  And when her stress becomes chronic, so too does the muscular tension.  And the problem continues to get worse.

 

This muscular shortening illustrates one of the major reasons proper training is necessary: to undue the negative consequences of our modern lifestyles.  Proper training in this case will lengthen Rachel's muscles back to their natural length so that she can move efficiently and without pain, which can ward off all types of ailments as she ages.

What We Do Is Always Affecting Us

 

What we do in each moment is a stimulus that affects what we're capable of doing in the following moment.  Of course the effect is cumulative as well, so the habits we establish over weeks, months, and years can empower or prevent us from living how we desire to live.  This premise has important ramifications in the area of rehabilitation, because it shows how our movement and activity patterns can lead to injury and decreased physical function or how they can lead us to greater health and ability to perform. 

 

Let's look at one example related to the position in which we can hold our body.  Assume you are on a baseball/softball team and you're standing in the dugout.  If you are leaning against the wall, the wall does some of the work of holding you up, so you are using only a fraction of the muscles that you would otherwise have to use.  Bracing or leaning like that signals your brain that it only has to support a fraction of the muscles it would otherwise have to support.  Your brain, in turn, stimulates your organs to produce less energy and remove less waste to support that lower level of muscular activity.  Now, late in the game, you get called on to pinch hit.  You go to the plate, take a swing, and start to run to first base.  Half way there, you pull up in pain, unable to run.  Because your brain had signaled your organs that they could get by working at a lower level, they were not making enough ATP (muscle energy source) to fuel your hamstring to eccentrically elongate.  When you started to run, it pulled. 

 

Even something as simple as standing correctly, using muscular support rather than leaning or bracing, has a strong impact on your physiology because it stimulates your body to work at the level necessary to support all of your muscles to do their jobs.  When your muscles stabilize correctly, you are also avoiding large amounts of strain on your connective tissues and are much less likely to be injured. 

 

Another example of how our habits can affect our performance comes from a recent New York Times article highlighting the work of a Mayo Clinic doctor named James Levine.   He did a study on inactivity in which he monitored intake of food, metabolic rate, and internal state.  Within just 24 hours of forced inactivity, insulin effectiveness dropped significantly.  The same amount of insulin that maintained healthy blood sugar levels after a day of being active was 40% less effective after a day of zero activity. 

 

What does that mean?  Well, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society tracked the health of 123,000 Americans from 1992-2006.  He found that those people who sat six hours per day had a 30% higher death rate than those who sat three hours per day.  One of the major reasons that human beings require proper training is to reverse the effects of our lifestyle.  Sitting, slouching, and reclining all signal our body to work in a terribly inefficient way, and we have to get enough of the correct signal in to counteract those stimuli.

 

In the previous two examples, it is clear how incorrect use of our bodies stimulates us to lose function and perform at lower levels.  Proper exercise stimulates our muscles to work to prevent injury and stimulates the rest of our physiology to work to support that level of activity.  This concept is so important that we have to be vigilant in maintaining proper function by being aware of how we're moving at all times and doing some exercise DAILY. 

 

Even though it probably comes as no surprise to anyone that regular exercise promotes health in a variety of ways, hopefully this article created some insight on the reasons why.

 

 

Flexibility, Stretching, and Injury

We've all been taught that we should stretch to prevent injury, right?  Would you be surprised to know that stretching can actually cause injury?  Well, it can.  Here's how:

 

Inside of each one of our muscles is a nervous system receptor called a muscle spindle.  It's sort of like a slinky that can be stretched and compressed.  As our muscles change length, the muscle spindle signals our nervous system to let it know what's going on.  If the muscle is getting near what our nervous system perceives to be the maximal length, then a neurological reflex is going to cause that muscle to tighten.  This protective mechanism is called the stretch reflex, and it is designed to prevent our muscles from pulling and tearing. 

 

What this means is that when you stretch a muscle to its maximal length, its fibers tighten.  Stretching a muscle in this state is like trying to stretch a towel beyond its maximal length.  It just won't happen.  As you strain to get extra range of motion, the stretch in your tissues actually comes from your tendons and ligaments.  Doing this repetitively sets you up for injury by weakening these extremely important connective tissues.  In fact, I believe that the popularity of stretching is in large part responsible for the epidemic of tendon and ligament injuries that exists among our athletes today.

 

Even though stretching is dangerous, I still agree that it is beneficial to increase your flexibility and range of motion.  The key to increasing a muscle's length is to get it to relax.  The stretch reflex discussed above is always still present, a relaxed muscle will just be able to lengthen further before its stretch reflex is activated because that muscle will have more slack in it.

 

The two best techniques I can think of to put this knowledge to use are contract-relax stretching and extreme isometrics. 

Could Surgery Be a Placebo?

We have all heard of the placebo effect occuring with pills and other medicines, and according to a 2002 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine it may even apply to surgery too.  Performed at the Baylor School of Medicine in conjunction with the VA Hospital of Houston, this study involved patients with osteoarthritis of the knee who had moderately-severe pain and had been recommended surgery to reverse their symptoms. 

 

The patients were divided into three groups.  The first received the standard arthroscopic debridement surgery, a procedure that shaves rough cartilage, removes loose debris, and trims and smooths any damaged sections of the meniscus.  The second group received a flushing procedure known as lavage, which involves flushing several liters of fluid through the knee joint to remove any inflammation causing agents.  The third group received a placebo procedure, where the surgeon made incisions on the skin and manipulated the knee as if he was actually performing the operation.  Patients in all groups were cared for the same way after surgery, spending the night in the hospital and following the same rehabilitation program.

 

All of the participants were tracked for two years post-surgery.  During that time, there was no difference in outcome among any of the three groups.  None.  Several of the recipients of the placebo surgery even made dramatic recoveries, returning from the sidelines to basketball games with grandchildren and hikes on steep and unstable terrain. 

 

What can we learn from this study?  I'll suggest three things.  First of all, surgery is often overprescribed and unnecessary.  In some cases, it's required and beneficial; we must remember, however, that with the associated risks and trauma to the body it is always a last resort.  The second point I'd like to emphasize is the power of proper training and therapy.  After reading this study, I believe that part of the reason the placebo group fared so well is that they went through a progressive strengthening and recovery program after the surgery.  As they went through therapy, the members of this group learned to use their muscles correctly to stabilize their knees.  This work is aimed at the root cause of the problem, which is always a more effective approach in the long run.

 

Finally, this study emphasizes the power of the human mind.  When our mind believes in something strongly enough, it makes the object of belief happen.  The members of the placebo group believed that their surgery would make them better, and it did.  This teaches us how useful it can be to visualize our healed state when doing therapy, to see our successful outcome when training, and even to feel the satisfied energy of accomplishment on the way to give a presentation.

 

If you or someone close to you is considering surgery, I hope this article will motivate you to exhaust all other options beforehand.  In our clinic we see the lingering effects of old surgeries as well as the trauma of new ones, and that makes the surgeries that we're able to prevent even more rewarding.

Lessons from Our Cells

In his book, The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton draws on his experience as a cell biologist to create an elegant framework for understanding our lives and our health. Among the many lessons in his book, I'm emphasizing one in particular. Human beings, like each of the 50 trillion cells from which we are made, are never stagnant; we always move either into growth or into protection.

His particular experiments involved cloned stem cells in a petri dish. They exhibited two survival mechanisms. In the presence of nutrients, they opened themselves to their environment and brought those nutrients inside as part of a growth response. In the presence of toxins, they closed themselves off and moved away as part of a protection response. The cells' growth and protection structures were totally different from each other, and they could only be in one mode or the other at any one time.

Humans, too, can exist in either a growth state or a protection state. When we are mobilized against stress, our sympathetic nervous system literally takes our energy away from growth and repair processes. Only when we are relaxed does our parasympathetic nervous system direct the processes that lead to growth.

So why, you may wonder, must we always be in either of these states and not just stay neutral? The answer is that just to remain alive, our body has to build hundreds of billions of new cells each day to replace those that die. So a certain amount of growth is necessary just to maintain life. Additionally, growth-oriented processes like digestion are required to produce the energy that we require to move, think, breathe, etc.

Moving one step further, a natural conclusion is that we are always somewhere on the spectrum between growth and protection. Everything that we do moves us in one direction or the other. And our body is always responding to every stimulus that we encounter, including our thoughts, our movements (including the position in which we hold our bodies), our interactions, our food, our breath, etc. Whether you look at this spectrum as growth-protection, parasympathetic-sympathetic, anabolic-catabolic, health-illness, or life-death, be aware of the importance of each and every thing that you do and think. Every moment is an opportunity to move along this spectrum in the direction of your choice.

Emotions, Exercise, and The Stress Response

A 1981 study demonstrates the effect that our mental-emotional state can have on the outcome of exercise. Previous studies found, for instance, that anger and fear both raise heart rate and blood pressure while at rest, but didn't show what happened during exercise.

The study itself involved college-level acting students, who would be relatively comfortable accessing different emotional states and displaying them in public. They accessed different states through visualization. The mind-body connection's power is clearly seen: in all cases the visualization produced physical changes. Before beginning their exercise, the subjects all had elevated heart rate and blood pressure levels while experiencing anger, fear, and happiness. Their heart rate and blood pressure were lower in both relaxed and sad states. All of the test subjects then did the same exercise sequence (stair-climbing) in each of the emotional states.

There are a few interesting observations corresponding with different emotions, and they are relevant to our ability to access sympathetic and parasympathetic states. (Quick review: sympathetic is the fight or flight response to stress that mobilizes our body for immediate action, and parasympathetic is the relaxation response in which our body recovers, repairs, and regenerates). Performing the exercise sequence in a relaxed state, the subjects saw an increase in heart rate and blood pressure that seemed relatively appropriate for exercise. We do need an increase in both of these markers, after all, to get blood to our working muscles. In fearful, angry, and happy states, heart rate and blood pressure rose much higher, indicating an exaggerated sympathetic state. In a sad state the subjects actually had too little increase in heart rate and blood pressure, indicating an overly parasympathetic state in which they could not mobilize their energy stores at all.

The takeaway here is that there is an optimal level of emotional-intellectual stimulation during exercise. If we want the long-term health benefits of exercise, then we should use our training as an opportunity to learn to handle more and more stimulation without having to dip into our sympathetic reserves. Under real stress, our bodies release adrenaline and other stress hormones to help us deal with the situation at hand. And when we have genuinely stressful situations, that is a good thing. The problem is that most people in our society are dipping into their adrenaline stores too often, which is the cause of chronic stress-related diseases. Proper training can actually help them learn to stay more relaxed and only go to their sympathetic reserves when absolutely necessary, which will have a dramatic effect on long-term health.

Looking at Two Popular Training Systems: P90X and CrossFit

In my last post, we discussed evidence from neuroscience and how it points to the importance of both consistency and specificity in training. Because of how important these principles are, you'd think they would be incorporated into all successful training regimens. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.

Let's look at two of today's popular training programs, CrossFit and P90X. CrossFit has become extremely popular in recent years. And with good reason -- it gets some results. People who do CrossFit put on muscle and burn fat in a relatively short period of time. As a training regimen, however, it lacks specificity in terms of training body position. Position is the foundation of human movement, and, almost without exception, CrossFit has people training out of position.

For example, CrossFit'ers routinely perform high repetition olympic lifting movements like the clean, which can be seen in this video. Observe how far forward of vertical the athlete's knees travel. This position trains the body to be very quad dominant at the expense of hamstring development, which leads the body to produce compensation patterns. And these compensation patterns are the reason most people who do CrossFit suffer some type of injury within the first few months.

A major issue with P90X can be seen in its tagline, "Muscle Confusion!" If you're confusing your muscles by constantly mixing up your training, then it's pretty clear you lack consistency. In effective training your nervous system receives one stimulus repeatedly, and your body lays down some myelin (a fat-based substance that insulates your nerve pathways) to improve the efficiency of the neurological pathways that are being used. That's how movement patterns form, and to prevent injury proper training must stimulate the body consistently to develop proper movement patterns.

Though I have my preference, I'll never argue that there is only one correct way to train. What is absolutely necessary is following underlying principles that must be present to make training effective. That means we must train to be strong enough to handle the forces of life. If we don't, our body responds with inflammation and our health, mobility, and quality of life are jeopardized.

Training technique itself must emphasize position and velocity. Position ensures we use the correct muscles to do their intended jobs, and velocity ensures we activate the appropriate reflex arcs in our nervous system that teach our muscles to stay long, absorb force, and keep us healthy and active. These principles are the foundation of our training program, so please get in touch through my web site if you'd like to learn more.

Neuroscience and Training

I've been reading Dr. Joe Dispenza's book, Evolve Your Brain, and in this book he writes about a neuroscience experiment done by Alvaro Pascual-Leone. The experiment compares the effects on the brain of four different activities: practicing a consistent piano sequence every day for a week, playing the piano in random patterns every day for a week, visualizing (without actually touching a piano) playing a consistent piano sequence every day for a week, and doing nothing related to the piano whatsoever.

The group of people who practiced the same piano sequence daily showed development in new areas of the brain; they literally added a new, functional neural network. The group who visualized themselves playing the same sequence every day demonstrated the same, positive neurological adaptations. The groups who played random piano sequences every day showed the same results as the group who played no piano at all: no new neurological development whatsoever.

So, what are the ramifications of this study? First, since visualization created the exact same neurological development as actually practicing the piano, we see that visualization techniques are tremendously valuable. Second, the concepts of consistency and specificity become incredibly important in training.

The group that randomly practiced the piano put in the same amount of effort as the groups that practiced the same sequence over and over again (whether on a physical piano or in their minds), but achieved none of the results. Many athletes who lift chest one day, do cardio the second day, arms the third day, hot yoga the fourth day, and legs the fifth day see the same pattern: effort in the gym does not translate to results on the field, court, ice, etc. Consistency of stimulation, we see, is required to create adaptation in the nervous system. And since we know the nervous system controls all of our movement, consistency is an absolute necessity for effective training.

Let's look at training to sprint, for example. Effective training requires consistently activating the neurological patterns that create the powerful movements of a sprinting stride. One possible way of training is to simply go out on the track and sprint. If this sprinting is done correctly (position) and maximally (velocity), that can work. As every track athlete knows, however, it can be difficult to maintain maximal velocity for longer than 2-3 runs of 100 meters. That means anywhere from 20-40 seconds of proper neurological programming.

What if, instead, there was a tool that allowed you to get 300 continuous seconds of that exact same neurological programming, consistently, in every workout? Fortunately this tool exists -- it's called the extreme isometric. And when done according to our specifications, this technique improves sprinting in exactly the same way as repeatedly practicing a piano sequence improves the ability to play the piano: it consistently programs the same pattern into the body so that the new pattern takes hold.

The other major takeaway from this experiment, visualization, also plays in to our system. When you participate in extreme isometrics with us, we instruct you to visualize your outcome for the duration of the exercise. When your brain sees the end, it can take you there. And the ability to see the end from the beginning is what empowers us to do great things.

How to Really Burn Fat

Everyone knows that to lose weight it is necessary to burn calories. And that's absolutely true. Simple Physics really: if you take in fewer calories than you burn, your body will be forced to tap into its fat stores to make up that deficit. As long as that deficit isn't so great that it causes other negative things to happen, the equation holds true.

So, to use up some of our fat we need to burn a lot of calories during our workout, right? Since it consumes a lot of calories, it sure sounds like cardio is a great way to do this. Well, let's find out:

For this example, you're a 200 pound man in really good shape, so you run 10 miles. Over that 10 miles, you'll burn 1300 calories (try your own calculation here) -- that's a lot! Then, over the next 2-3 hours, your metabolic rate will be elevated as you recover. This point is the key.

Assume your normal metabolic rate (what your body needs just to get through its day) is 100 calories per hour. For the next 3 hours after the run, this will increase to 300 calories per hour. So, after burning 1300 calories running, you've burned an additional 600 calories (200 extra for 3 hours), for a grand total of 1900. Good job!

Let's now check in with your friend, Ike. Ike doesn't really like to run, so he comes into the ARP clinic to do UltraFit. Most of his workout consists of holding some lunge and squat positions for several minutes, and occasionally moving some weights really fast. He claims he's working hard, but even though he somehow has a good physique, you don't buy it. In fact, during his time in the gym he may only burn 200 calories. Yikes!

But, when the body is stimulated correctly (high load and high velocity), the metabolic rate is altered more dramatically and for a longer period in recovery. So, instead of burning more calories for 3 hours after, Ike is going to burn more calories for 8 hours after. And instead of burning an extra 200 calories per hour, Ike is going to burn an extra 400 calories per hour.

And that is where the magic happens: In addition to the 200 calories during the workout, Ike is going to burn 400 extra calories per hour for 8 hours. That is 200 calories during the workout plus 3200 calories during recovery, for a grand total of 3400 calories.

In light of Ike's example, those 1900 calories you burned during the run and subsequent recovery don't sound quite as impressive. As I'm sure my wonderful readers have caught on by now, the point is to expand your focus. It matters not how many calories you burn during your workout, instead it matters how many calories your workout stimulates you to burn during an entire day.

Hopefully this example sheds some light on the riddle of why so many of the treadmill users have a little extra flab on their bodies, while a larger portion of the nice physiques are in other parts of the gym. To see a few examples of UltraFit training, check out our YouTube page.