Pick a resolution you can stick with!

Slow-motion high-intensity strength training is a perfect solution to make your 2019 healthier and stronger.

It's the most cliche topic in the fitness industry — New Year's Resolutions.

We all have the best of intentions, but there's a reason there are jokes about the people who populate the gym for the first two weeks of January.

For the most part, there's a really good reason for this. It's not because they're lazy, or unmotivated, or a bad person — it's probably because the workout they chosen wasn't right for them.

Most people open a magazine, pick whatever looks the most fun and go at it 100 percent on Jan. 1, only to burn out two weeks later and quit because of an injury, lack of time or lack of results. This leads to frustration and guilt. They think, "Oh I missed a workout, so much for that," and it's really easy to just slack off for the rest of the week, month and eventually year.

The problem with those magazine workouts is there's not a lot of science behind them. A large majority of fitness publications are there solely to sell you supplements, and the writers and editors need to have a brand new routine every issue to fit between the protein powder ads.

So the secret to keeping a resolution is pretty simple — pick something you can stick with. But if you really want to get results, that workout needs to meet a few criteria:

• Time efficient: In order to keep a resolution, you have to have the time to keep it. The No. 1 excuse for not exercising is not having enough time, so picking something you can get done in 20-30 minutes once or twice a week is imperative.
• Safety: In order to keep a resolution, you have to be able to physically do it. Getting injured not only defeats the entire purpose of exercise, but a serious injury can lay you up for a long time, making you worse off than you were before you started exercising. Make sure to pick movements that are bio-mechanically correct, and perform them with good form.
• Intensity: A lot of people give up on their resolutions because they're just not seeing the results they want. Unfortunately, a lot of people have distorted views of what they're genetically capable of accomplishing, but a lot of people also do not workout nearly hard enough to produce the results they are after. You have to give your body a really good reason to change, because it would rather just stay comfy and cozy.

It's great you've decided to make some changes for the better in 2019, but make sure those changes have meaning and purpose behind them, and chose a path that will get you there safely and efficiently.

Want to learn more about slow-motion, high-intensity strength training? Call Efficient Fitness at 425-214-2251 or email matt@efficient-fitness.com to claim your free workout today!

Discovering your strength, one anecdote at a time

The two-foot hole I found waiting for me when I got down to my sewer pipe.

A client was training with me today and relayed to me the one anecdote that I absolutely love to hear. While he was volunteering over the weekend, he was lifting things and moving them around — and noticed it was easier than usual — he was stronger.

This is music to my ears, because strength is exactly what we're going after.

Sure there are added benefits to resistance training that show their faces — fat loss, aesthetic improvements, etc. — but strength is the end goal. Strength is the singular most important currency in our physiological lives. It's the difference between the most you can do and the least you can do. In order to wake up, get out of bed and do what you want to do with any particular day, you need strength.

Every normal person that performs resistance training has stories like these. I'm not just talking about athletes who use strength training to improve their performance in their chosen sport — I'm talking about average Jills and Joes. We see improvement in performance in our daily lives, no matter what pops up.

I recently had a very similar anecdote. About a month ago, our plumbing backed up into the house, and a plumber quoted us $7,000 to fix the sewer line. Being a newly-minted small-business owner, it's not exactly the kind of cash I have on hand. Thanks to a very friendly contractor friend who said if I dug up the line myself, he would come and fix it for free, I quickly obliged.

Now I'm not exactly used to hours and hours of hard, hard labor. Despite the relative ease of digging a 15-foot long, two-foot deep ditch compared to what a lot of people do for a living, I felt fairly lucky. But I did have trepidation about how it would affect my body, especially with my history of lower back problems.

But instead of being laid up for a week, I dug the ditch and was fine. It was hard, but I was able to do it with relative ease, and able to recover with plenty of energy for the next day — twice! (Never rebury the hole until you know the problem is fixed!) Not only did I dig the ditch, but I busted up a three-foot section of a concrete walkway as well. 

Now I'm definielty not trying to brag, but what I'm trying to say, is after all this I reflected on what I had just done. I had accomplished this project with my health intact, a project that would have been out of the question three or four years ago, and I credit my 20-minute, once a week resistance exercise program for it. With stronger, thicker muscle fibers protecting my spine and joints, I was able to do this job myself, and learn a ton about sewer plumbing in the process. And the kicker is, the time commitment I had to spend to reach this level of fitness, flexibility, mobility and functionality is laughable.

If you don't have 20 minutes a week to spend improving your strength — the one factor that keeps you in total control of your independence — you need to find it. 

Become the strongest version of yourself in just 20 minutes, once or twice a week at Efficient Fitness. To book a free introductory session, call 425-214-2251 or email matt@efficient-fitness.com.

Good news: No need to do 'Cardio'

When I explain the Efficient Fitness protocol to people, a frequently asked question is "What do you do for cardio?"

"Well," I respond, "this is cardio."

Weight lifting and cardiovascular exercise have often been classified as two different activities. When people say "cardio," what they really mean is steady-state "aerobics" — like jogging in the park for an hour or hitting up the elliptical machine at the local gym.

The problem with calling it "cardio" is assuming your heart knows the difference between lifting weights or taking a jog. The simple truth is, it doesn't. Your heart doesn't have eyes, and it has no idea if you are throwing a rock or hiking a trail or performing a bench press. All it knows is your muscles are working.

Your heart's sole purpose is to deliver blood and nutrients around to your body, and most importantly for the sake of our conversation, your muscles. When you contract a muscle hard, your heart thinks "Oh my gosh, we better get pumping! That muscle needs some nutrients."

This is exactly why you can get all of the benefits of traditional steady-state aerobic exercise in a fraction of the time with properly-performed strength training. If you place an intense demand on your muscles, your heart won't have any choice but to work, and keep working for hours after your 20-30 minute workout is over.

In a comprehensive study titled "Resistance Training in Humans: A review of acute physiological responses and chronic physiological adaptations," researchers found that reaching momentary muscular fatigue during a 20-minute resistance training session produced cardiovascular improvements just as effectively or MORE effectively than traditional aerobic training. So why on Earth would you pound the pavement five days a week for an hour, if you could just work your muscles really hard for 20 minutes and then call it a week?

So if you hate running, try strength training. Fatiguing your muscles with slow-controlled movements will get your heart pumping just fine and allow you to avoid the sore knees, twisted ankles and countless hours spent exercising.

Biofit NY trainer Jay Vincent has a great post on this topic as well, and I'd encourage everyone to read his thoughts on the subject, as he dives deep into how "cardio" became popular, and the biological mechanisms behind why strength training is not only superior, but much more safe and time efficient.

No results from running? Call 425-214-2251 or email matt@efficient-fitness.com to book a complimentary session and find out why time-efficient strength training is the safest, most effective way to see results.

The perils of recreation

Though softball is a common recreational sport, it can be one of the most dangerous if you aren't properly conditioned.

There are some things I really enjoy doing in life, so much so that these activities usually come at somewhat of a cost to my overall health.

I'm not talking about smoking or eating poorly — though my occasional dietary indulgences can catch up with me if I'm not careful — I'm talking about something most adults do and consider as being healthy: recreational activities!

There's a few different activities that bring me a lot of joy. I love playing softball, I love playing golf, and I love playing basketball with friends. I was never a jock growing up, but have always possessed just enough skill to be passable at most athletic endeavors (as long as I don't have to run too fast or jump too high).

I was heavily involved in intramural sports in college, so much so that I kind of had to come to terms with my own fragility. I've had tendinitis in my elbow, sprained knees, sprained ankles, sprained shoulders, bulging discs, black eyes, smashed glasses... the list goes on.

The fact is, all these injuries I've had over the years have been a direct result of these activities, which despite finding immense joy in, I've realized the intensity, frequency and volume in which  I can participate in these activities had to change if I wanted to pursue them as I aged as well.

And to be honest, I think I've done a pretty good job! With the base of evidence-based resistance training once every 4-10 days, I've been able to stay relatively healthy in my activities, as long as I don't do TOO much, TOO often.

A few weeks ago I played in my first fastpitch softball tournament of the year. Boy was I sore afterward, but I made it through, and after a day of recovery I was back to my old self despite playing a half dozen games in two days.

I tested myself even further this past weekend, playing basketball, an intense game of wiffleball (compounded by the competitiveness of the other participants) and walked 18 holes of golf on a tough course, all in the same day. I was some kind of tired and immensely sore the next day, but my ability to bounce back after some proper rest has never been higher thanks to proper strength training, not to mention the vast benefits being stronger has on preventing injury in the first place!

For those looking to get active again, or those who are active but currently hitting a roadblock of injuries that are preventing you from the activities you love, remember — you need to weigh the benefits and risks to each activity you participate in, and the best way to mitigate those risks is to be as strong as you can possibly be.

Want to become as strong as genetically possible? Book your complimentary session at Efficient Fitness by calling 425-214-2251 or emailing matt@efficient-fitness.com and we'll show you our research-proven techniques that help you build muscle in as little as one 20-minute session per week.

Beyond muscle: What else is happening in your body when you perform strength training?

When we think of strength training, we think about building muscle. But that's just the most obvious and visible benefit. There are actually a cascade of positive health adaptations that your body makes, which start as soon as you begin your first set.

One of those benefits that scientists are learning more and more about each day are "Myokines," which Simon Shawcross over at HITUNI explains beautifully:

"Myokines are small proteins (with big health benefits) that are secreted by muscle cells during muscular contractions. 

They are signalling cells, meaning that they communicate with other cells and “tell them what to do.”

Their impact goes beyond muscle cells; some myokines enter the bloodstream and communicate with bone, fat, liver, pancreas, heart, immune and brain cells.

The first protein to be labelled as a myokine was myostatin and that was only a decade ago. The science is very new. Since then more than 100 separate myokines have been identified."

In the blogpost linked above, Shawcross examines 17 of the most well-known and well-researched myokines and discusses their positive responses when released during and after exercise. Those include increased insulin sensitivity, muscle growth, anti-inflammatory effects, reversing sarcopenia and osteoperosis, and more. In some studies, myokines have even been shown to reduce tumor growth!


Head on over to Shawcross' blog to learn more, and make sure to watch this video for a succinct explanation on the signalling power of myokines.

Choosing a weight: Heavy or light?

Both heavy weights and light weights will help you get strong, as long as you put in enough effort.

The idea that exercising one way will illicit one response and exercising another way will illicit a different response has allowed the fitness industry to play with our emotions for decades. If everyone just focused on getting a strong as they possibly could be through strength training with good form, it'd be really hard to keep filling those column inches with the latest exercise fad that promises "X" amount of inches in "Y" amount of time.

The truth is, we are all genetically predetermined at birth to respond to exercise in a certain way. Some of us grow big muscles easily, while most of us tend to see strength increases, but little in the way of increased mass.

Depending on your goals, this can either be a good thing or a bad thing — but you really shouldn't worry about it, because you don't have any control over it!

So when people ask if Efficient Fitness uses heavy weights and low reps or light weights and high reps, I ask them "Would you rather workout for 20 minutes, or two hours?"

All that really matters when you're trying to increase strength is delivering a meaningful enough level of fatigue that stimulates your muscles into making a positive adaptation. You can accomplish this both ways — you can lift a pair of pink eight-pound dumbbells over your head all day long until you pass out, but do you really want to?

Doesn't doing one one set on an overhead press machine with a challenging weight to momentary muscular fatigue for a couple minutes sound a little bit better?

Both roads lead to Rome and choosing one over the other will not determine how you respond to the exercise. Light weights don't get you "toned" and heavy weights don't make you "bulky." You'll look how you'll look, and that's strong.

So you might as well choose the protocol that gets you out of the gym quicker, so you can spend more time doing whatever it is that makes you happy, because I'm pretty sure hours and hours of daily weight lifting is not one of them!

Want to achieve your fitness goals in the safest, most time-efficient manner possible? Contact matt@efficient-fitness.com or call 425-214-2251 to book your free, introductory appointment today.

Protein and energy — How much do you need of each?

Target high-protein, nutrient-dense foods to stay full longer.

Eat less, move more — that's what they've been telling us for years, right? You're just not exercising enough, and you're eating too much! And if your really want to lose weight, it's as simply as counting calories in against calories out.

Unfortunately, our human bodies are a little more complicated than that. A calorie of sugar does not equal a calorie of beef, or a calorie of leafy green vegetables, and so on and so forth. Depending on the quality and the source of these calories, our bodies use them in thousands of different ways, each with their own cascade of hormonal and biological effects.

Also unfortunately, no one who wants to lose body fat also wants to think about dieting through the lens of the body's complex biological mechanisms. That's why I like to think of it in the simplest way possible: Protein and Energy.

We all know protein when we see it — eggs, meat, fish, fowl, etc. — these are all excellent sources of protein, containing complete essential amino acid profiles (essential meaning our body NEEDS us eat them because it CANNOT produce them itself).

Proteins are the building blocks of our body, and are not easily stored as fat or used as energy. Our muscles, organs and connective tissue are constantly rebuilding themselves with these nutrients, which is why it's so important — along with properly performed strength training — to eat enough protein. I recommend a minimum of 100 grams of protein a day for anyone, which visually is about 12 ounces of chicken breast. Your body will thank you.

On the other side of the scale is energy. Our bodies use fats and carbohydrates for energy to fuel every day activities, no matter how strenuous or not strenuous they are. You even need energy to stay alive while you sleep.

One of the main causes of obesity in the modern age is protein dilution. Basically what this means, is since your body needs to consume a certain amount of protein to stay alive, it signals you to keep eating until you reach that goal. If all you're eating are eggs, meat, fish, fowl and green vegetables, you're going to hit that protein goal and stay full and satisfied without over-consuming energy along with it.

On the other hand, if you're eating modern processed foods, you're going to have to pack in a lot more energy (fats and carbohydrates) in order to hit that protein goal your body is looking for.

To put it simply: If you put an emphasis on protein and eat real foods as close as you would find them in nature, you can eat as much as you want until you're completely stuffed — WITHOUT actually overeating! Grab a steak and enjoy.

Do you want to become the strongest possible version of yourself? Email matt@efficient-fitness.com or call 425-214-2251 to set up your free introductory appointment!