-: So momentum's not evil.
There's a lot of way that this can help us out.
Like I said, it could take an unfavorable
resistance profile and make it more favorable.
It can serve as a way for us to have a variety
of resistance profiles with very minimal equipment,
or not even moving, just using the same exercise,
but doing it with a different intent, a different tempo.
And it can create specific neurological functions,
which we'll get into in the program design course,
looking at how we can use the overcoming inertia
and momentum to change whether or not
we're trying to train our brain
to focus more on fast twitch or slow twitch
recruitment for those type of movements
or those type of activities, which could be a good
way of training the nervous system, not just for athletes,
but even for just general population.
You need to be able amplify certain neurological
qualities during certain blocks of training
so that they maintain a certain amount of intensity
and efficiency, so that they're always optimal
in being able to stimulate their tissue for whatever
training goal that you may happen to have.
How can momentum have an unfavorable effect on our training,
or take away from what we're trying to get from training?
Well, we talked about, it can affect the resistance profile,
so we can get to the point where we make that
resistance profile unfavorable, not just favorable.
And we can essentially de-load the muscle
to where we're getting zero tension, or zero stimulus.
So if we use too much momentum in the wrong application,
we could basically take a good exercise
and make it worthless because we're not getting tension
where we want it, or we're not getting tension through
enough of the range, or now we've changed it so that now
this exercise has the same resistance profile
as the other exercise that I was doing, because the tempo
has altered the resistance profile of that exercise.
We could also get that increase of injury if we don't
control the eccentric, right, so if we don't control that
deceleration, we put ourselves at greater risk of
soft tissue injury or compromising joint integrity.
And then it can make proper execution difficult.
So, the faster we move weights, the more challenging
it becomes neurologically, because you're having to
lengthen and contract things.
You're having to relax muscles and contract muscles
at a greater rate, so the nervous system is having to fire
at a higher frequency to be able
to do those more dynamic movements.
So if you start moving too fast, and you haven't quite
mastered your execution yet, what can happen is,
all of a sudden, now you start to see breaks in execution
at a load where you shouldn't be seeing breaks yet,
simply because you're moving a little too fast
for what you can control, for what you can move at
and still keep the tension in the muscle that you want to.
So essentially, the execution goes from being
targeted to tissue, to now it's like, okay,
now it's just focused on moving weight through space.
Which sometimes, that may be the goal
that you happen to have.
But if we're going for a metabolic response,
or if we're going for a hypertrophy response,
it's gonna be as fast as we can go,
maybe with still the ability to maintain proper execution
if that fits the needs that we need in terms of the
resistance profile that we want
from the exercise and the training stimulus.
So, here's a question I get asked a lot.
Alright, if this momentum thing is so important,
and controlling that is so important,
how come we can have all these bodybuilders
that build so much muscle using a tremendous amount
of momentum-based training?
And the reality is that, if you look at using a lot of
substances and you do a lot of one type of training,
which most bodybuilders I would say,
especially bodybuilders that are using anabolics,
tend to over-abuse metabolic training,
where they're just working
more and more and more and more and more.
And the reason that they can accomplish some of that effect
is that, if you just keep working,
you will eventually get some sort of biochemical fatigue.
You will eventually get to a state of fatigue,
where you're getting some metabolic work in, right?
The problem is, that ends up being the only stimulus
that they ever really get, so that creates a situation
where they're plateauing, they're getting a lot of
inflammation, the joints and everything get beat up.
And it tends to have bad outcomes on their health,
and you'll see their digestion gets really bad,
and a lot of health factors, a lot of health markers,
go into the tank.
They might look good, but they feel like crap
because they're only able to achieve this one type of
stimulus in their training, because they're either using
just tons and tons of exercises and super sets
in combination with way too much momentum.
So they're basically, they're able to accomplish one goal
by simply working longer and harder to accomplish that.
Now, if you apply the appropriate execution,
the appropriate type of repetitions and loading
and all of those things, you can achieve a metabolic
stimulus much easier, and you can achieve lots of other
stimuluses as well, because you can control
how much tension and where that tension is.
So you don't necessarily have to just do more
to get any sort of result, because eventually,
there becomes a point where you just can't do anymore,
and you get to the point where, now, you're essentially
over-training in an attempt
to get result from that training.
So, the last two things that I'm gonna cover
on the physics portion, is just this concept that gravity
is the thing that allows us to keep constant tension.
So, if there were no gravity, the second you started
moving away, it would just float away.
So, if you're on the moon, there's a little bit of gravity
on the moon, but if you're on the moon and you went to
deadlift, the bar would just keep flying up.
You're like, well, okay.
Overcoming the inertia would be the only work that you did,
and that would still be very, very little.
So, because gravity is constantly pulling things back to
earth, right, it's got that magnetic pull,
that is what prevents us from creating just momentum,
and then that momentum just goes, you know,
forever and ever and ever.
So, gravity is always basically trying to accelerate things
back down, so there's always this thing pushing stuff
back down, counteracting that momentum to a degree.
So, if we look at exercises, we have to be one.
Thankful for that, for constant tension.
So, in terms of lifting, it's important to understand that
if we're going with gravity, we have the opposite effect.
And that's why there's that difference between
concentric and eccentric.
And then if we look at things that don't move in the plane
of gravity, then we're gonna have a different effect.
So if you look at lifting something vertically
versus throwing something horizontally,
the effect, like your ability to generate momentum,
is gonna be drastically easier doing something horizontally,
not moving against gravity, versus going against gravity.
So just keep that in mind
if you're doing any athletic performance.
Just understand that that is the component,
in case you ever decide to go train on the moon
or a spaceship or something.
The last concept is this acceleration versus velocity.
And this is, rather than understanding the scientific
concepts, I more want you to understand the concept
of doing this in a rep.
So there is a difference between lifting a weight
and the weight is moving at a fast speed,
versus trying to get that weight to move faster
the entire time, or at a certain point.
So there will be certain exercises where,
at a certain point, I will say, at this point,
you should start trying to accelerate the weight,
trying to move it faster.
So, acceleration is a powerful tool,
and that's gonna be different than velocity,
whereas velocity is just basically, the simple way to look
at it is, how fast things are moving.
But acceleration is, like, how much we're actually
trying to increase the rate at which that is moving.
So if something is moving, so if you're in a car,
and you're driving on a flat road,
and you let off the accelerator, you coast.
That momentum, that velocity just kind of maintains
constant, it slows down a little from friction,
but otherwise it maintains constant.
But you have an accelerator.
What that accelerator is doing, is it's trying to
continually push you to go faster, faster, faster, right?
And so that's an important concept in terms of us training,
is, sometimes we're gonna try and overcome inertia,
and then just, that weight moves faster,
and then other times, our goal is gonna be like, alright,
well maybe we don't try and explode from the beginning,
but once it starts moving, we're trying to increase the
intensity of our contraction and accelerate that weight
because either the resistance profile is heaviest
actually at the end range, so if I'm doing something like
that dumbbell lateral raise that I talked about,
there is a difference between me exploding out
and letting the momentum take me there, versus going
controlled and then trying to accelerate into it.
That would be a third variation, a third,
essentially a way of doing that exercise that made it
function like a completely different resistance profile.