June 22, 2020 • 35 mins
Bulletproof your body with this episode of Fitness Disrupted. There is a common mantra plastered all over gyms across the world: “work on your weakness until they are strengths.” Tom takes a bit of a different approach in this episode where he talks about the importance of working on your weakness until they are no longer a weaknesses - not only to make you stronger, but to help you avoid injury and magnify your strengths.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of My Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland, and this is Fitness Disrupted. Back
in high school, we had a bunch of sayings on
our Jim our workout room walls. One of them included,
(00:24):
work on your weakness until it becomes your strength. Now
I disagree with that statement in that I don't believe
you need to work on your weakness until it becomes
your strength. That sounds great, and if you want to
do that, more power to you. What I do believe,
and what I have experienced myself and with the clients
I trained over the years, is you absolutely need to
(00:49):
work on your weakness until it's no longer a weakness.
That's what matters most. So while it sounds great to
work on your weakness until it becomes your rank, what
this show is all about is why you need to
work on your weakness. You need to fix the weak
(01:09):
link as I call it. And I did that podcast
on the five Components of Fitness, and if you haven't
listened to that, go back. You need to listen to
that episode super important. And what I say in that
show is that we generally people do one maybe two.
(01:30):
What you're good at and what you were genetically predetermined
to do. And so what happens is you become imbalanced.
You don't work on the other for components, and I
actually threw in a six and it's a podcast on balance.
But you need to work on all five. And when
(01:53):
you don't, as most people don't, you create weaknesses, You
create imbalances, and when that happens, problems happen. Right, Injuries
are not necessarily inevitable. It's just we focus on the
(02:13):
rehab instead of the prehab. We don't do the work
before it's a problem, and then we end up taking
care of it after it's become an injury. And I
say it all the time. You will exercise, and you
will do some of the exercises I will talk about
in this show. But you have two choices. You will
(02:36):
either pay someone to make it you do them in
a rehabilitation facility setting, or you will do them ahead
of time to prevent the injuries, to prevent the imbalances,
and to make sure that you have no major weaknesses. Now,
(02:58):
I often talk about how many years I spent as
a personal trainer working in the gym's ten four sixteen
hours a day years and years, and what I learned
over time is one of the top reasons you go
to a trainer. It's not weight loss. I know that's
why you start, and that is one of your major goals.
(03:23):
But one of the primary things that a trainer will
do with you it's actually too They will first identify
your weakness and then they will second help to fix it.
Because here's the thing I'll talk about during the show.
If you have a weakness that becomes an injury, the
(03:43):
weight loss can't happen because you can't exercise because you
are hurt. And it can be a small injury that
prevents you from doing what you want to do, or
a major injury. But the smallest weakness can turn into
the biggest problem. And when I talk about weak links,
(04:04):
when I talk about your weaknesses, generally, what I'm speaking
about our muscle weaknesses. So just generally weak muscles in
your body or muscular imbalances. Oftentimes it's the front of
your legs versus the back of your legs that they
are not in balance. And it's actually not a fifty
(04:24):
fifty ratio by the way, your quadriceps to your hamstrings.
But we don't need to go that deep and then
finally it's an injury. So your weak links are either
injuries waiting to happen, or they have become injuries in
and of themselves. And as we age, for many people,
(04:45):
those weaknesses become injuries. And that is one of the
insidious things about human nature is when you're in your twenties,
your thirties, even your early forties, for many people, bodies good,
Body recovers quickly, body does what you wanted to do
without problem, and then problems happen, and then injuries happen.
(05:05):
So this show is all about identifying the weakness and
working on it. And just like everything else I talk about,
it won't be an hour and it won't be horrible.
But if excessive moderation applies to anything, it's this. It's
(05:25):
working on your weakness until it's no longer a weakness.
So you can do two things. By the way, I'm
going to skip ahead, so you can enjoy your quality
of life, so you can do what you want to do.
That's what's most important. Quick break, we'll be right back
talking all about why you need to work on your weakness.
(05:49):
We will be right back. So let's go back to
talking about personal trainers. Many of you probably are using one,
have used one, and I understand why weight loss and
(06:10):
vanity is a huge goal, if not the primary goal
for you to go to that trainer. And I'm not
saying personal trainers don't help with weight loss, but what
happens outside the gym is when weight loss happens. You
could have come to me twice a day, seven days
a week when I was training clients, but it's what
(06:31):
you do outside those sessions that truly determines weight loss.
So my goal with you when it comes to weight
loss when I was a trainer was to change your
behaviors outside the gym, because it is simple math. People,
If you just came to me as a trainer and
wanted to maximize your calorie burn, we're gonna go running.
(06:52):
We're gonna do something that you know, if you want
to burn the most number of calories within that session,
it's gonna be hard and it's gonna be somewhere six
hundred calories. So that simple math. If you go to
a trainer twice a week, three times a week, you're
probably burning five six calories in those sessions, so you're
(07:14):
still a couple of thousand calories short of a pound.
Now I understand you're gonna build muscle, and that is
super important, and that is tied into working on your weakness,
by the way, because a lot of what I'm going
to focus on here when it comes to weakness is
muscular imbalances and weaknesses because that's where injuries happen. Now,
your weakness maybe your cardio, and that is also tied
(07:36):
into it. But here's how it's intricately tied into it.
If your knees hurt, you can't do your cardio, you
can't lose weight. So that is why I say that
a great strength and conditioning coach, a great personal trainer,
has to start with working on your weaknesses, identifying them
(07:58):
and working on them. And that is why the first session,
at least the first session you do with a personal trainer,
there should be no exercise. It should be sitting down
and discussing your goals, your injuries, your medications at least
an hour, because then the trainer can start to figure out, hey,
(08:23):
what do I need to work on with this individual person.
And let me say this. I had a professor who said,
and I love this line, if you want to know
what your weakness is just ask your competition, and that
applies to generally the younger crowd, the twenties, thirties, forties
I was talking about because as you get older, the
(08:47):
weakness is tied into an injury. The weakness is tied
into pain. And when I would have clients come to
me for the first time, they would often say, I
have a bad fill in the blank. I have a
bad back, I have bad knees, I have bad hips,
I have bad shoulders. And my question to myself was,
(09:10):
what does that mean? What is what do they mean
by bad? Obviously pain most of the time, but why
is it bad? That is what a trainer should identify
and start to fix. I understand some of you don't
have trainers here, say Tom, why you keep talking about
trainers just because that is a really important part of this,
(09:31):
because so many people go to trainers because they're having pain,
because they want to know how to do things correctly,
and the trainers don't. It's just all about vanity and
and pushing it too hard, so often, way too hard,
and listen. Once there's an injury, the body has a
(09:52):
tough time depending on where that injury occurs, and especially
as we age. You want to avoid those injuries at
all costs. All right, And here's the other really insidious
thing about weaknesses, And many of you are going to
have the aha moment when it comes to this. You
may start out with saying, oh, I have bad knees.
My knees hurt all the time. And then what happens
(10:15):
is your body adjusts. It adjusts twenty four hours a day.
Everything you do. You're not even aware ninety percent of
the time what your body is doing to stop your
knees from hurting. The way you get dressed, the way
you walk, the way you get up and out and
down out of a chair. But what happens is it's
(10:39):
not using your muscles in the most functional way. You're adjusting.
You're adapting, and you're gonna have compensatory issues. So what
happens You go, oh, my knees used to really hurt.
You know what, Now my knees don't hurt, but my
hips or my lower back that's an issue. And so
it just moves all around your body. So the goal
(11:02):
is to strengthen from head to toe. If you've listened
to my other podcasts, this is why target toning all
of those kind of specific. I'm going to attack this area.
Every single person needs to be strong from head to toe.
We all have quote unquote problem areas. But as I
(11:26):
talked about another episode, you can't tell your body where
to remove fat deposits from. So that is the overarching
theme of this show is if you have a weak link,
nothing else matters. We are only as strong as our weakness,
weakest link. It's all those cliches, but they are so true,
(11:48):
never more true when it comes to your body. People
or more will have lower back pain in their lifetime,
and it's getting worse and worse because we're sitting more
more and we're moving less and less. And when that
back hurts, you start doing less and less and less.
(12:10):
And as I will end the show by talking about,
inactivity is the absolute worst thing for your weakness. But
that's what happens. Your back hurts, so you move less,
so you do less, so your weakness becomes weaker and
weaker and weaker. And that's where so many people are.
(12:34):
And that's why when I was training clients and when
I identified the weakness and when we fixed that weakness,
that was so much more rewarding to me then weight
loss weight loss is rewarding and people, oh my gosh,
I lost thirty pounds, twenty pounds, whatever it was, that's awesome.
But if you lose weight and still can't do what
(12:57):
you want to do, and there are many people like that,
you know, you can be skinny and really weak. So sure,
weight loss is always a goal, and we want to
be our healthy weight, but we want to bullet proof
our bodies. I love that term. Bullet proof your body.
And the best part of working on your weakness it
(13:19):
doesn't take a lot. So my new book, The micro
Workout Plan, the five Minute Workouts, one of the huge
goals of those workouts is to fix your weak link.
I have specific workouts called here. You know, it just
(13:40):
flows perfectly into it. Lower back our X, shoulder are X,
and knees are X. Why because those are three major
parts of the body where people would come to me
and still do to this day and say, Tom, I
have a bad lower back, tom I have add shoulders
(14:01):
or tom My knees hurt. I have bad knees. So
when I defend my book against people who say five
minutes that's not enough, not enough for what I always
end up just asking questions when people say things like that,
it's not enough, not enough for what to fix your
(14:24):
weak link? Five minutes isn't enough to get a really
great core workout in five minutes, isn't enough to work
on flexibility, one of the five components of fitness. Absolutely,
And if you've listened to any of my other podcasts,
you know that I'm all about good news great news.
The great news is you don't have to do a
(14:45):
heck of a lot to fix the weakness. To fix
the weakness, my book, The Micro Workout Plan, not only
has the workouts in it what I'm I mean, I'm
excited about those for people, but I'm also really proud
of the clients I put in there. It starts, the
(15:07):
entire book starts with one. The first chapter is one
client and all of the weaknesses he fixed because he
loved racket sports, because there was no way he wasn't
going to play his tennis and play his squash. Shoulder surgeries,
knee surgeries, elbows, that it wasn't gonna stop him. But
(15:31):
he needed to work on his weaknesses, and he did,
and it took time. But if you looked at his
surgery history, you'd say there's no way this guy can
do it. And not only did he do it, and
this is another reason I start the book with this story.
Not only did he fix his weak links, not only
was he able to play the sports, he is crushing it.
(15:55):
In his sixties. He is a top nationally ranked tennis
and squash player. And that is one of the major
themes of Fitness Disrupted is that I can't stand the
negative news. You being told that you can't feel good,
(16:15):
that you can't fix your issues, that it's genetics, that
you are doomed to have the pain. No, you're not.
You just haven't figured out what you need to do,
and then you just haven't given it time. And my
entire thirty years training clients is a testament to that,
(16:39):
and that's why I would say two clients, just show up,
just show up, and we'll fix it. So it's excessive
moderation and it's focusing on what is your limiting factor.
So if you're a young person, you're gonna have to
maybe ask your cop attition or be totally honest, what
(17:02):
do you not do? And most people know, you know,
oh it's flex I never stretch, or I never do
core exercises, or guys here we go. You don't do
leg exercises because you want that huge upper body, the
party pump workout. I used to call it arms chest,
all good, but you need to do your leg day.
(17:24):
You need to do your leg day because what happens
is what I referenced earlier. You don't do your leg day,
You do your vanity upper body, arms, shoulders, abs, chest, back,
all that stuff, and then one day you you really
blew out your knee, and then you can't do your cardio,
and then the weight starts to creep up on you.
(17:47):
So you have to work on it ideally before it
becomes an issue. But I don't want you to be,
you know, depressed if it already is, because it is
for so many people fixable, fixable. And three of the
top areas four issues are what I just said, lower back, shoulders,
(18:11):
and knees. Lower back again, so many people throughout their lives.
If there's ever a perfect time to do five minutes
for a body part, it's lower back strengthened planks stretches.
You do a set of of of you know, one
plank thirty seconds, sixty seconds, any football reath stretch. Then
(18:33):
you do some more core strengthening and then you stretch
five minutes five minutes. So many of you guys and
and women listening who have back issues. It was one
of my favorite things for clients to have issues with
because I knew that we could make it so much
better that they were most likely ridiculously weak there and
(18:54):
tight and we had to fix it. Shoulders, same thing.
So let me just quickly, you know, quick break, and
then when we come back, I'm gonna give you an
issue I had that I had to deal with way
back when before it became an issue, and I did,
and then one I couldn't and had to deal with
after the fact after it became an injury. Final break,
(19:15):
and we will be right back talking all about working
on your weakness. We'll be back. So I hope you
are hopeful when you listen to all my shows, but
especially this one. I once had a gentleman walk into
(19:38):
my gym when I owned a gym short amount of time.
Never wanted to own a gym. I did it. I
wanted to experience everything, and it was everything I knew
I didn't want. I didn't want to be sitting at
a desk and you know, uh, not for me, but
I did it, and gentlemen walked in and to this day,
he was a little bit older, definitely angry, almost felt
(20:01):
like his wife maybe sent him in or his doctor.
I really sensed that he was. He was definitely not
happy to be there. So he's asking about membership and
he said, what can you do for me or something
to that effect, and I said, well, wellness where this
is all about wellness? And he said what's wellness? And
(20:23):
I said, you know, it's to me the lack of disease,
of pain, about feeling good and about the ability to
do whatever you want to do physically whenever you want
to do it. And again, that's how I'm going to
bring this all together, because that's what it's all about.
(20:43):
In the end, it truly is. It's about quality of life.
And he was I think I had about a n
closing rate. And that was one thing I did love
about a gym was selling memberships because I like, sin
for X amount of dollars, here's I can change your life.
(21:04):
You just have to walk through those doors. You just
show up, walk through those doors, and we're gonna figure
out what you want to do, what you enjoy. Group
fitness classes, strength training, whatever it is, yoga, pilates, I
have it at all, So we're gonna figure that out
for you. And I loved There's one thing I did
love about a gym was just selling health. That was exciting.
(21:25):
Everything else not so fun. But it is about wellness
and it's about quality of life. So back to you
younger people who may not have issues. When I was
younger and uh, really training hard for iron Man's and marathons,
I've talked about this before, I got this crazy pain
(21:46):
in my right glue would radiate down my leg. One
doctor friend of mine just said, out, you've got siatica,
and I'm like, yeah, I'm thirty, doesn't sound right. Something else.
Long story short, spoke with another amazing sports doctor and
she said, um, most likely you got weak but you
gotta strengthen those glutes and pure formist muscle that is
(22:07):
within the glute deep sciatic nerve is front behind, sometimes
through and that weakness. My glute weakness was the issue
because I had massive pain. If you've ever had this,
many of you have. You're sitting for a long period
of time, you get in a car, long drive, you're
on a plane. Ouch, literally a pain in the butt.
(22:29):
I did squats, single legs, squats, ball squats against the wall,
step ups, unilateral exercises, and not only to strengthen the glutes,
but I needed to do more strengthening back then. And
by the way, skipping away ahead. But for those of
you I have yet to do the show on does
(22:50):
strength training improved performance, runners, triathletes, whatever your sport. Yeah,
and you know what the number one right way it
does is it it fixes that weak link because if
you're hurt, you can't train. And I'll get into all
the studies on running efficiency and all those things, but again,
at the end of the day, it's about being injury free.
If you're injured, you can't train. If you have a
weak link, you can't train. So those really high performers
(23:13):
who are listening, you need to work on your weak
link because a it's going to affect your performance as
far as competition, and then be you're gonna get injured
and you won't be able to train. And for those
of you who couldn't care less about that stuff, it's
about feeling good about being injury free. So when you sit,
(23:33):
you're not in pain, and so when you want to
go play with your kids, or your grandkids. Your body
will do everything you wanted to do pain free. And
if you want to go play golf or tennis, or
or travel or in the garden, then you fix those
weak links. And this is not a strength issue. But
(23:56):
this is totally related. And I've told this story before,
but it res nates with me, has always stuck out
with me. Was in Hawaii many years ago for a
race and found a whale watch for my wife and
I and it was volunteer, but it was a once
a year incredible opportunity to volunteer to count whales, to
(24:17):
sit on this bluff at the top of this amazing hill,
look down at the water with the head of the
whatever ocean you know, whale guy will leave it at
that in Hawaii amazing. And a bunch of us just
showed up early in the morning and at the bottom
(24:38):
of this very steep path to the top of this cliff,
and there were a handful of people who couldn't make
it for cardiovascular reasons and strength reasons, and that stuck
out with me. I was just starting my you know,
really getting into the fitness career at that point, and
(24:58):
I thought, this is something I always remember because they
missed the opportunity that was absolutely incredible, hours upon hours
of watching whales breach and listening to this incredible expert
talk about it. So that's something we don't talk about.
You know. That's not you're sick or disease or injured,
(25:19):
but missing out on life's experiences. So we work on
our weaknesses so we can enjoy life, whether that is
pain free or again being able to experience everything we
want and not having any physical limitations that will keep
us from getting there. And as we wrap this up,
(25:41):
I'll say it one more time because it is so
true and powerful and and prevalent. Inactivity is the worst
thing for our bodies. And if there's there's many things
that drive me completely nuts, obviously it's why I'm doing
this show. When it comes to the information you are
given on a daily basis, it's those studies on what's
(26:04):
too much exercise. Now, I get it, we want to
figure out optimal dose. But the number of people who
are getting too much exercise, don't worry about it. Don't
worry about it. We are not dying. The number one
cause of death is not too much exercise. It's heart disease.
(26:28):
So that is not an issue that the population has
to worry about. And even that that small, very minute
percentage that does have to worry about it, they know
and they're generally gonna get hurt and and you know
overtrained UH syndrome, overtraining syndrome and things like that. So
(26:50):
that's the insidious nature of the weakness. That small weakness
gets magnified into a bigger weakness. It becomes a compensatory
issue as well, most likely, and you move less and less,
you get weaker and weaker, and your pain increases and increases.
So no, this the solutions are progressive strength training. So
(27:14):
often when it be when it's about your lower back.
What I talked about, planks, stretching, abdominal exercises that are
super basic. You just have to do them frequently, and
they don't have to be nor should they be thirty minutes,
sixty minutes shoulders. So that is my other issue. So
(27:35):
I had the pure formant issue, fixed it, fixed it,
and it was bad. I was running so much back
in the day. Not for me. There's a lot of
iron Man's, a lot of marathons, ultra marathons that glute hurt.
It no longer hurt when I did the work, and
I gave it time. So you gotta do the basics,
and you gotta give it time, and you have to progress.
(27:56):
If you have major lower body issues, you're not going
to be doing heavy squats full range of motion right away,
but a really qualified strength and conditioning coach is going
to progress you. And you can also do it on
your own shoulders. For me, only injury I truly ever
had was high school football dislocated shoulder, and that is
(28:17):
a great example of once that shoulder goes, it's never
gonna be perfect. So I do my shoulder exercises to
make my shoulder joint, the most mobile joint in the body,
as strong as possible because it's the most mobile and
because I had that pre existing issue, and the exercises
(28:38):
internal external rotation. Again in my book, and I'm sorry
it feels like I'm pitching the book, but that's what
all my stuff is connected, and it's all connected into
you having the best body. Do you have to buy it?
Absolutely not. But if you need guidance and you need
motivation on top of this, that's another resource for you.
But it's a five minute routine for shoulders and let
(29:00):
me say this. I was on a TV show pitching
my book Beat the Gym, Different book way back when.
And I'm not going to say the name of the
very well known TV person who interviewed me, not a
fitness person, but you get the pre interview, and one
thing I gave them a tip was start every workout
(29:21):
with one exercise you don't like, and generally speaking, that
is a work on your weakness exercise. So for me,
it's the internal external rotation for my shoulders. Listen, I
still want to do my bicep curls and my tricep exercises,
and my abdominals and my core the vanity stuff. I
still do all that stuff, just not as much because
(29:43):
I have more work on your weakness things as I
get older. But I start every workout for the most part,
with shoulder exercise. If I don't start it, I'm gonna
do it. I'll do a different one rather but three
minutes maybe tops five minutes, depending and then I'm done.
So that is one of these. Oh, by the way,
(30:04):
she said this interviewer, she said that was the dumbest
thing she'd ever heard. She wasn't going to do it. Okay,
you don't have to. It's good advice, but you don't
have to do it. So that's it. Here's your homework.
So the first show I'm giving you a homework. Figure
out your major weakness. Is it back pain? Is it shoulders?
(30:26):
What's what's keeping you from sleeping well at night? Is
that it's shoulders. You wake up that shoulder pain, then
you need to do those internal external rotation exercises most likely,
and maybe a couple of others. So your homework is
to figure out what your major weaknesses and to spend
a couple of minutes, not an hour, not seven days
a week, start every workout with that one or two
(30:51):
exercises to start to fix that weak link. To fix
that weakness. And if you don't work out, if you
don't go to the gym, if you don't do a
half hour or an hour at home, even better, you're
gonna do with three to five minutes a couple of
times a week to fix that weak link. So identify
what it is. If you're older, you know exactly what
(31:12):
it is, it's that pain. If you're younger, be honest,
and you're younger people that don't have issues yet, but
maybe you're starting to feel things you know that maybe
you should be doing something more in the you know again,
lower body, core, cardio, whatever it is, whatever you're not doing.
(31:34):
If you do it when you're younger, you will be
so far ahead of the game, so far ahead of
the game. So you either start your workout with that
one or two most three exercises pretty much to fix
those weak links or primary weak link, or you do
it throughout the day because you don't have to do
a half hour or an hour, or do it even
(31:55):
in succession. You can bring that resist to span anywhere
if you're traveling, if you want to do it outside,
tied around a tree, a fence post, get your weak
link fixed. All right, This is all about quality of life.
(32:18):
And yes, we are visual people. We want to look great,
we want to be our healthy weight. But neither of
those things can happen if we're hurt. Neither of those
things can happen, especially later in life, if we can't
move the way we we want to and we were
meant to. And I will say it one final time,
(32:43):
Minutes matter. Minutes matter when it comes to fixing your
weak links and your weak links. When you are pain free,
there's no greater feeling in the world, and unfortunately human
nature is such that those clients over the years, they
would forget. It's amazing human nation where we we. If
(33:05):
we didn't forget pain, it's a whole another show, right.
But I would have clients come to me and we
would make incredible changes in their pain and weak wink department,
and I would have to kind of remind them of
it because wait, forge and that's a good thing. But
get to that point, because you can. And I don't
(33:28):
care if you're seventy forty. We all have them. We
want to be honest about them, and we want to
spend just enough time a couple of minutes several times
a week to fix them. And I always want you
to know that wherever you think you are, wherever you
(33:51):
think you're stuck, you never are. You can make incredible change.
I've seen it too many times to know that's not
the case that you can't change. And when you put
the time in, when you believe in yourself, incredible things
will happen. Thank you so much for listening. I am
(34:14):
Tom Holland if you could rate the show, it would
greatly greatly appreciate it. If you want to leave comments
and ken where you listen. That would be great as well.
Love to hear from you. Tom h Fit is both
my Twitter and my Instagram. Please subscribe to the show
so you don't miss an episode and if you want
to reach right out to me, uh see more about
(34:35):
me as well. There is website Fitness disrupted dot com.
How easy is that again? I want you to believe
that you can change, no matter where you are now,
no matter if you're in pain or how much you
are in you can make incredible, incredible change. Thank you
for listening. I am Tom Holland. This is Bitness Disrupted.
(34:59):
Believe in yourself. Yeah. Fitness Disrupted is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of My Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland, and this is Fitness Disrupted. Back
in high school, we had a bunch of sayings on
our Jim our workout room walls. One of them included,
(00:24):
work on your weakness until it becomes your strength. Now
I disagree with that statement in that I don't believe
you need to work on your weakness until it becomes
your strength. That sounds great, and if you want to
do that, more power to you. What I do believe,
and what I have experienced myself and with the clients
I trained over the years, is you absolutely need to
(00:49):
work on your weakness until it's no longer a weakness.
That's what matters most. So while it sounds great to
work on your weakness until it becomes your rank, what
this show is all about is why you need to
work on your weakness. You need to fix the weak
(01:09):
link as I call it. And I did that podcast
on the five Components of Fitness, and if you haven't
listened to that, go back. You need to listen to
that episode super important. And what I say in that
show is that we generally people do one maybe two.
(01:30):
What you're good at and what you were genetically predetermined
to do. And so what happens is you become imbalanced.
You don't work on the other for components, and I
actually threw in a six and it's a podcast on balance.
But you need to work on all five. And when
(01:53):
you don't, as most people don't, you create weaknesses, You
create imbalances, and when that happens, problems happen. Right, Injuries
are not necessarily inevitable. It's just we focus on the
(02:13):
rehab instead of the prehab. We don't do the work
before it's a problem, and then we end up taking
care of it after it's become an injury. And I
say it all the time. You will exercise, and you
will do some of the exercises I will talk about
in this show. But you have two choices. You will
(02:36):
either pay someone to make it you do them in
a rehabilitation facility setting, or you will do them ahead
of time to prevent the injuries, to prevent the imbalances,
and to make sure that you have no major weaknesses. Now,
(02:58):
I often talk about how many years I spent as
a personal trainer working in the gym's ten four sixteen
hours a day years and years, and what I learned
over time is one of the top reasons you go
to a trainer. It's not weight loss. I know that's
why you start, and that is one of your major goals.
(03:23):
But one of the primary things that a trainer will
do with you it's actually too They will first identify
your weakness and then they will second help to fix it.
Because here's the thing I'll talk about during the show.
If you have a weakness that becomes an injury, the
(03:43):
weight loss can't happen because you can't exercise because you
are hurt. And it can be a small injury that
prevents you from doing what you want to do, or
a major injury. But the smallest weakness can turn into
the biggest problem. And when I talk about weak links,
(04:04):
when I talk about your weaknesses, generally, what I'm speaking
about our muscle weaknesses. So just generally weak muscles in
your body or muscular imbalances. Oftentimes it's the front of
your legs versus the back of your legs that they
are not in balance. And it's actually not a fifty
(04:24):
fifty ratio by the way, your quadriceps to your hamstrings.
But we don't need to go that deep and then
finally it's an injury. So your weak links are either
injuries waiting to happen, or they have become injuries in
and of themselves. And as we age, for many people,
(04:45):
those weaknesses become injuries. And that is one of the
insidious things about human nature is when you're in your twenties,
your thirties, even your early forties, for many people, bodies good,
Body recovers quickly, body does what you wanted to do
without problem, and then problems happen, and then injuries happen.
(05:05):
So this show is all about identifying the weakness and
working on it. And just like everything else I talk about,
it won't be an hour and it won't be horrible.
But if excessive moderation applies to anything, it's this. It's
(05:25):
working on your weakness until it's no longer a weakness.
So you can do two things. By the way, I'm
going to skip ahead, so you can enjoy your quality
of life, so you can do what you want to do.
That's what's most important. Quick break, we'll be right back
talking all about why you need to work on your weakness.
(05:49):
We will be right back. So let's go back to
talking about personal trainers. Many of you probably are using one,
have used one, and I understand why weight loss and
(06:10):
vanity is a huge goal, if not the primary goal
for you to go to that trainer. And I'm not
saying personal trainers don't help with weight loss, but what
happens outside the gym is when weight loss happens. You
could have come to me twice a day, seven days
a week when I was training clients, but it's what
(06:31):
you do outside those sessions that truly determines weight loss.
So my goal with you when it comes to weight
loss when I was a trainer was to change your
behaviors outside the gym, because it is simple math. People,
If you just came to me as a trainer and
wanted to maximize your calorie burn, we're gonna go running.
(06:52):
We're gonna do something that you know, if you want
to burn the most number of calories within that session,
it's gonna be hard and it's gonna be somewhere six
hundred calories. So that simple math. If you go to
a trainer twice a week, three times a week, you're
probably burning five six calories in those sessions, so you're
(07:14):
still a couple of thousand calories short of a pound.
Now I understand you're gonna build muscle, and that is
super important, and that is tied into working on your weakness,
by the way, because a lot of what I'm going
to focus on here when it comes to weakness is
muscular imbalances and weaknesses because that's where injuries happen. Now,
your weakness maybe your cardio, and that is also tied
(07:36):
into it. But here's how it's intricately tied into it.
If your knees hurt, you can't do your cardio, you
can't lose weight. So that is why I say that
a great strength and conditioning coach, a great personal trainer,
has to start with working on your weaknesses, identifying them
(07:58):
and working on them. And that is why the first session,
at least the first session you do with a personal trainer,
there should be no exercise. It should be sitting down
and discussing your goals, your injuries, your medications at least
an hour, because then the trainer can start to figure out, hey,
(08:23):
what do I need to work on with this individual person.
And let me say this. I had a professor who said,
and I love this line, if you want to know
what your weakness is just ask your competition, and that
applies to generally the younger crowd, the twenties, thirties, forties
I was talking about because as you get older, the
(08:47):
weakness is tied into an injury. The weakness is tied
into pain. And when I would have clients come to
me for the first time, they would often say, I
have a bad fill in the blank. I have a
bad back, I have bad knees, I have bad hips,
I have bad shoulders. And my question to myself was,
(09:10):
what does that mean? What is what do they mean
by bad? Obviously pain most of the time, but why
is it bad? That is what a trainer should identify
and start to fix. I understand some of you don't
have trainers here, say Tom, why you keep talking about
trainers just because that is a really important part of this,
(09:31):
because so many people go to trainers because they're having pain,
because they want to know how to do things correctly,
and the trainers don't. It's just all about vanity and
and pushing it too hard, so often, way too hard,
and listen. Once there's an injury, the body has a
(09:52):
tough time depending on where that injury occurs, and especially
as we age. You want to avoid those injuries at
all costs. All right, And here's the other really insidious
thing about weaknesses, And many of you are going to
have the aha moment when it comes to this. You
may start out with saying, oh, I have bad knees.
My knees hurt all the time. And then what happens
(10:15):
is your body adjusts. It adjusts twenty four hours a day.
Everything you do. You're not even aware ninety percent of
the time what your body is doing to stop your
knees from hurting. The way you get dressed, the way
you walk, the way you get up and out and
down out of a chair. But what happens is it's
(10:39):
not using your muscles in the most functional way. You're adjusting.
You're adapting, and you're gonna have compensatory issues. So what
happens You go, oh, my knees used to really hurt.
You know what, Now my knees don't hurt, but my
hips or my lower back that's an issue. And so
it just moves all around your body. So the goal
(11:02):
is to strengthen from head to toe. If you've listened
to my other podcasts, this is why target toning all
of those kind of specific. I'm going to attack this area.
Every single person needs to be strong from head to toe.
We all have quote unquote problem areas. But as I
(11:26):
talked about another episode, you can't tell your body where
to remove fat deposits from. So that is the overarching
theme of this show is if you have a weak link,
nothing else matters. We are only as strong as our weakness,
weakest link. It's all those cliches, but they are so true,
(11:48):
never more true when it comes to your body. People
or more will have lower back pain in their lifetime,
and it's getting worse and worse because we're sitting more
more and we're moving less and less. And when that
back hurts, you start doing less and less and less.
(12:10):
And as I will end the show by talking about,
inactivity is the absolute worst thing for your weakness. But
that's what happens. Your back hurts, so you move less,
so you do less, so your weakness becomes weaker and
weaker and weaker. And that's where so many people are.
(12:34):
And that's why when I was training clients and when
I identified the weakness and when we fixed that weakness,
that was so much more rewarding to me then weight
loss weight loss is rewarding and people, oh my gosh,
I lost thirty pounds, twenty pounds, whatever it was, that's awesome.
But if you lose weight and still can't do what
(12:57):
you want to do, and there are many people like that,
you know, you can be skinny and really weak. So sure,
weight loss is always a goal, and we want to
be our healthy weight, but we want to bullet proof
our bodies. I love that term. Bullet proof your body.
And the best part of working on your weakness it
(13:19):
doesn't take a lot. So my new book, The micro
Workout Plan, the five Minute Workouts, one of the huge
goals of those workouts is to fix your weak link.
I have specific workouts called here. You know, it just
(13:40):
flows perfectly into it. Lower back our X, shoulder are X,
and knees are X. Why because those are three major
parts of the body where people would come to me
and still do to this day and say, Tom, I
have a bad lower back, tom I have add shoulders
(14:01):
or tom My knees hurt. I have bad knees. So
when I defend my book against people who say five
minutes that's not enough, not enough for what I always
end up just asking questions when people say things like that,
it's not enough, not enough for what to fix your
(14:24):
weak link? Five minutes isn't enough to get a really
great core workout in five minutes, isn't enough to work
on flexibility, one of the five components of fitness. Absolutely,
And if you've listened to any of my other podcasts,
you know that I'm all about good news great news.
The great news is you don't have to do a
(14:45):
heck of a lot to fix the weakness. To fix
the weakness, my book, The Micro Workout Plan, not only
has the workouts in it what I'm I mean, I'm
excited about those for people, but I'm also really proud
of the clients I put in there. It starts, the
(15:07):
entire book starts with one. The first chapter is one
client and all of the weaknesses he fixed because he
loved racket sports, because there was no way he wasn't
going to play his tennis and play his squash. Shoulder surgeries,
knee surgeries, elbows, that it wasn't gonna stop him. But
(15:31):
he needed to work on his weaknesses, and he did,
and it took time. But if you looked at his
surgery history, you'd say there's no way this guy can
do it. And not only did he do it, and
this is another reason I start the book with this story.
Not only did he fix his weak links, not only
was he able to play the sports, he is crushing it.
(15:55):
In his sixties. He is a top nationally ranked tennis
and squash player. And that is one of the major
themes of Fitness Disrupted is that I can't stand the
negative news. You being told that you can't feel good,
(16:15):
that you can't fix your issues, that it's genetics, that
you are doomed to have the pain. No, you're not.
You just haven't figured out what you need to do,
and then you just haven't given it time. And my
entire thirty years training clients is a testament to that,
(16:39):
and that's why I would say two clients, just show up,
just show up, and we'll fix it. So it's excessive
moderation and it's focusing on what is your limiting factor.
So if you're a young person, you're gonna have to
maybe ask your cop attition or be totally honest, what
(17:02):
do you not do? And most people know, you know,
oh it's flex I never stretch, or I never do
core exercises, or guys here we go. You don't do
leg exercises because you want that huge upper body, the
party pump workout. I used to call it arms chest,
all good, but you need to do your leg day.
(17:24):
You need to do your leg day because what happens
is what I referenced earlier. You don't do your leg day,
You do your vanity upper body, arms, shoulders, abs, chest, back,
all that stuff, and then one day you you really
blew out your knee, and then you can't do your cardio,
and then the weight starts to creep up on you.
(17:47):
So you have to work on it ideally before it
becomes an issue. But I don't want you to be,
you know, depressed if it already is, because it is
for so many people fixable, fixable. And three of the
top areas four issues are what I just said, lower back, shoulders,
(18:11):
and knees. Lower back again, so many people throughout their lives.
If there's ever a perfect time to do five minutes
for a body part, it's lower back strengthened planks stretches.
You do a set of of of you know, one
plank thirty seconds, sixty seconds, any football reath stretch. Then
(18:33):
you do some more core strengthening and then you stretch
five minutes five minutes. So many of you guys and
and women listening who have back issues. It was one
of my favorite things for clients to have issues with
because I knew that we could make it so much
better that they were most likely ridiculously weak there and
(18:54):
tight and we had to fix it. Shoulders, same thing.
So let me just quickly, you know, quick break, and
then when we come back, I'm gonna give you an
issue I had that I had to deal with way
back when before it became an issue, and I did,
and then one I couldn't and had to deal with
after the fact after it became an injury. Final break,
(19:15):
and we will be right back talking all about working
on your weakness. We'll be back. So I hope you
are hopeful when you listen to all my shows, but
especially this one. I once had a gentleman walk into
(19:38):
my gym when I owned a gym short amount of time.
Never wanted to own a gym. I did it. I
wanted to experience everything, and it was everything I knew
I didn't want. I didn't want to be sitting at
a desk and you know, uh, not for me, but
I did it, and gentlemen walked in and to this day,
he was a little bit older, definitely angry, almost felt
(20:01):
like his wife maybe sent him in or his doctor.
I really sensed that he was. He was definitely not
happy to be there. So he's asking about membership and
he said, what can you do for me or something
to that effect, and I said, well, wellness where this
is all about wellness? And he said what's wellness? And
(20:23):
I said, you know, it's to me the lack of disease,
of pain, about feeling good and about the ability to
do whatever you want to do physically whenever you want
to do it. And again, that's how I'm going to
bring this all together, because that's what it's all about.
(20:43):
In the end, it truly is. It's about quality of life.
And he was I think I had about a n
closing rate. And that was one thing I did love
about a gym was selling memberships because I like, sin
for X amount of dollars, here's I can change your life.
(21:04):
You just have to walk through those doors. You just
show up, walk through those doors, and we're gonna figure
out what you want to do, what you enjoy. Group
fitness classes, strength training, whatever it is, yoga, pilates, I
have it at all, So we're gonna figure that out
for you. And I loved There's one thing I did
love about a gym was just selling health. That was exciting.
(21:25):
Everything else not so fun. But it is about wellness
and it's about quality of life. So back to you
younger people who may not have issues. When I was
younger and uh, really training hard for iron Man's and marathons,
I've talked about this before, I got this crazy pain
(21:46):
in my right glue would radiate down my leg. One
doctor friend of mine just said, out, you've got siatica,
and I'm like, yeah, I'm thirty, doesn't sound right. Something else.
Long story short, spoke with another amazing sports doctor and
she said, um, most likely you got weak but you
gotta strengthen those glutes and pure formist muscle that is
(22:07):
within the glute deep sciatic nerve is front behind, sometimes
through and that weakness. My glute weakness was the issue
because I had massive pain. If you've ever had this,
many of you have. You're sitting for a long period
of time, you get in a car, long drive, you're
on a plane. Ouch, literally a pain in the butt.
(22:29):
I did squats, single legs, squats, ball squats against the wall,
step ups, unilateral exercises, and not only to strengthen the glutes,
but I needed to do more strengthening back then. And
by the way, skipping away ahead. But for those of
you I have yet to do the show on does
(22:50):
strength training improved performance, runners, triathletes, whatever your sport. Yeah,
and you know what the number one right way it
does is it it fixes that weak link because if
you're hurt, you can't train. And I'll get into all
the studies on running efficiency and all those things, but again,
at the end of the day, it's about being injury free.
If you're injured, you can't train. If you have a
weak link, you can't train. So those really high performers
(23:13):
who are listening, you need to work on your weak
link because a it's going to affect your performance as
far as competition, and then be you're gonna get injured
and you won't be able to train. And for those
of you who couldn't care less about that stuff, it's
about feeling good about being injury free. So when you sit,
(23:33):
you're not in pain, and so when you want to
go play with your kids, or your grandkids. Your body
will do everything you wanted to do pain free. And
if you want to go play golf or tennis, or
or travel or in the garden, then you fix those
weak links. And this is not a strength issue. But
(23:56):
this is totally related. And I've told this story before,
but it res nates with me, has always stuck out
with me. Was in Hawaii many years ago for a
race and found a whale watch for my wife and
I and it was volunteer, but it was a once
a year incredible opportunity to volunteer to count whales, to
(24:17):
sit on this bluff at the top of this amazing hill,
look down at the water with the head of the
whatever ocean you know, whale guy will leave it at
that in Hawaii amazing. And a bunch of us just
showed up early in the morning and at the bottom
(24:38):
of this very steep path to the top of this cliff,
and there were a handful of people who couldn't make
it for cardiovascular reasons and strength reasons, and that stuck
out with me. I was just starting my you know,
really getting into the fitness career at that point, and
(24:58):
I thought, this is something I always remember because they
missed the opportunity that was absolutely incredible, hours upon hours
of watching whales breach and listening to this incredible expert
talk about it. So that's something we don't talk about.
You know. That's not you're sick or disease or injured,
(25:19):
but missing out on life's experiences. So we work on
our weaknesses so we can enjoy life, whether that is
pain free or again being able to experience everything we
want and not having any physical limitations that will keep
us from getting there. And as we wrap this up,
(25:41):
I'll say it one more time because it is so
true and powerful and and prevalent. Inactivity is the worst
thing for our bodies. And if there's there's many things
that drive me completely nuts, obviously it's why I'm doing
this show. When it comes to the information you are
given on a daily basis, it's those studies on what's
(26:04):
too much exercise. Now, I get it, we want to
figure out optimal dose. But the number of people who
are getting too much exercise, don't worry about it. Don't
worry about it. We are not dying. The number one
cause of death is not too much exercise. It's heart disease.
(26:28):
So that is not an issue that the population has
to worry about. And even that that small, very minute
percentage that does have to worry about it, they know
and they're generally gonna get hurt and and you know
overtrained UH syndrome, overtraining syndrome and things like that. So
(26:50):
that's the insidious nature of the weakness. That small weakness
gets magnified into a bigger weakness. It becomes a compensatory
issue as well, most likely, and you move less and less,
you get weaker and weaker, and your pain increases and increases.
So no, this the solutions are progressive strength training. So
(27:14):
often when it be when it's about your lower back.
What I talked about, planks, stretching, abdominal exercises that are
super basic. You just have to do them frequently, and
they don't have to be nor should they be thirty minutes,
sixty minutes shoulders. So that is my other issue. So
(27:35):
I had the pure formant issue, fixed it, fixed it,
and it was bad. I was running so much back
in the day. Not for me. There's a lot of
iron Man's, a lot of marathons, ultra marathons that glute hurt.
It no longer hurt when I did the work, and
I gave it time. So you gotta do the basics,
and you gotta give it time, and you have to progress.
(27:56):
If you have major lower body issues, you're not going
to be doing heavy squats full range of motion right away,
but a really qualified strength and conditioning coach is going
to progress you. And you can also do it on
your own shoulders. For me, only injury I truly ever
had was high school football dislocated shoulder, and that is
(28:17):
a great example of once that shoulder goes, it's never
gonna be perfect. So I do my shoulder exercises to
make my shoulder joint, the most mobile joint in the body,
as strong as possible because it's the most mobile and
because I had that pre existing issue, and the exercises
(28:38):
internal external rotation. Again in my book, and I'm sorry
it feels like I'm pitching the book, but that's what
all my stuff is connected, and it's all connected into
you having the best body. Do you have to buy it?
Absolutely not. But if you need guidance and you need
motivation on top of this, that's another resource for you.
But it's a five minute routine for shoulders and let
(29:00):
me say this. I was on a TV show pitching
my book Beat the Gym, Different book way back when.
And I'm not going to say the name of the
very well known TV person who interviewed me, not a
fitness person, but you get the pre interview, and one
thing I gave them a tip was start every workout
(29:21):
with one exercise you don't like, and generally speaking, that
is a work on your weakness exercise. So for me,
it's the internal external rotation for my shoulders. Listen, I
still want to do my bicep curls and my tricep exercises,
and my abdominals and my core the vanity stuff. I
still do all that stuff, just not as much because
(29:43):
I have more work on your weakness things as I
get older. But I start every workout for the most part,
with shoulder exercise. If I don't start it, I'm gonna
do it. I'll do a different one rather but three
minutes maybe tops five minutes, depending and then I'm done.
So that is one of these. Oh, by the way,
(30:04):
she said this interviewer, she said that was the dumbest
thing she'd ever heard. She wasn't going to do it. Okay,
you don't have to. It's good advice, but you don't
have to do it. So that's it. Here's your homework.
So the first show I'm giving you a homework. Figure
out your major weakness. Is it back pain? Is it shoulders?
(30:26):
What's what's keeping you from sleeping well at night? Is
that it's shoulders. You wake up that shoulder pain, then
you need to do those internal external rotation exercises most likely,
and maybe a couple of others. So your homework is
to figure out what your major weaknesses and to spend
a couple of minutes, not an hour, not seven days
a week, start every workout with that one or two
(30:51):
exercises to start to fix that weak link. To fix
that weakness. And if you don't work out, if you
don't go to the gym, if you don't do a
half hour or an hour at home, even better, you're
gonna do with three to five minutes a couple of
times a week to fix that weak link. So identify
what it is. If you're older, you know exactly what
(31:12):
it is, it's that pain. If you're younger, be honest,
and you're younger people that don't have issues yet, but
maybe you're starting to feel things you know that maybe
you should be doing something more in the you know again,
lower body, core, cardio, whatever it is, whatever you're not doing.
(31:34):
If you do it when you're younger, you will be
so far ahead of the game, so far ahead of
the game. So you either start your workout with that
one or two most three exercises pretty much to fix
those weak links or primary weak link, or you do
it throughout the day because you don't have to do
a half hour or an hour, or do it even
(31:55):
in succession. You can bring that resist to span anywhere
if you're traveling, if you want to do it outside,
tied around a tree, a fence post, get your weak
link fixed. All right, This is all about quality of life.
(32:18):
And yes, we are visual people. We want to look great,
we want to be our healthy weight. But neither of
those things can happen if we're hurt. Neither of those
things can happen, especially later in life, if we can't
move the way we we want to and we were
meant to. And I will say it one final time,
(32:43):
Minutes matter. Minutes matter when it comes to fixing your
weak links and your weak links. When you are pain free,
there's no greater feeling in the world, and unfortunately human
nature is such that those clients over the years, they
would forget. It's amazing human nation where we we. If
(33:05):
we didn't forget pain, it's a whole another show, right.
But I would have clients come to me and we
would make incredible changes in their pain and weak wink department,
and I would have to kind of remind them of
it because wait, forge and that's a good thing. But
get to that point, because you can. And I don't
(33:28):
care if you're seventy forty. We all have them. We
want to be honest about them, and we want to
spend just enough time a couple of minutes several times
a week to fix them. And I always want you
to know that wherever you think you are, wherever you
(33:51):
think you're stuck, you never are. You can make incredible change.
I've seen it too many times to know that's not
the case that you can't change. And when you put
the time in, when you believe in yourself, incredible things
will happen. Thank you so much for listening. I am
(34:14):
Tom Holland if you could rate the show, it would
greatly greatly appreciate it. If you want to leave comments
and ken where you listen. That would be great as well.
Love to hear from you. Tom h Fit is both
my Twitter and my Instagram. Please subscribe to the show
so you don't miss an episode and if you want
to reach right out to me, uh see more about
(34:35):
me as well. There is website Fitness disrupted dot com.
How easy is that again? I want you to believe
that you can change, no matter where you are now,
no matter if you're in pain or how much you
are in you can make incredible, incredible change. Thank you
for listening. I am Tom Holland. This is Bitness Disrupted.
(34:59):
Believe in yourself. Yeah. Fitness Disrupted is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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