Welcome to the InForm Fitness Podcast series REWIND, a listen back to the classic interviews we’ve had with the high intensity gurus & master trainers… names like Martin Gibala, Bill DeSimone, Simon Shawcross, Jay Vincent, Ryan Hall & Doug McGuff.

This is the 3rd of 3 parts with veteran competitive bodybuilder, “biomechanics” expert, author and public speaker Doug Brignole. On his website Doug describes himself as “Bodybuilder on the outside & science nerd on the inside.”

In part 3, Doug & Adam talk about Balance & Core training, intensity, reciprocal innervation. Enjoy!

For more info about Doug Brignole:

www.dougbrignole.com/

www.greatestphysiques.com/doug-brignole/

For Doug Brignole’s books, visit Amazon: 

www.amazon.com/Books-Doug-Brignole/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ADoug+Brignole

As always, your feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

Adam Zickerman – Power of 10: The Once-A-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution:

http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTen

We would love to hear from you with your questions, comments & show ideas…

Our email address is podcast@informfitness.com

77: REWIND / Doug Brignole Part 3 Transcript

Arlene  0:01  
The Inform fitness podcast with Adam Zickerman is a presentation of inform fitness studios specializing in safe, efficient, personal high intensity strength training, in each episode Adam discusses the latest findings in the areas of exercise nutrition and recovery, the three pillars of his New York Times best selling book, The Power of 10. He aims to debunk the popular misconceptions and urban myths that are so prevalent in the fields of health and fitness. And with the opinions of leading experts and scientists, you’ll hear scientific based up to the minute information on a variety of subjects. We cover the exercise protocols and techniques of Adoms 20 minute once a week workout, as well as sleep recovery, nutrition, the role of genetics in the response to exercise, and much more.

Adam  0:56  
Greetings, Adam here. Welcome back to the inform fitness podcast rewind. It’s our listen back to classic interviews with some of the best high intensity gurus, master trainers, researchers and doctors in the business. This is part three with Doug Brignole, on his website, Doug aptly describes himself as a bodybuilder on the outside, and a science nerd on the inside. In this episode, we discuss balance and core training intensity and something called reciprocal intervention. Enjoy. You know, we started this whole talk, you know, talking about myths and belief systems. And here, here’s another topic where that’s fraught with a lot of different belief systems. So I think you’d agree that many physical therapists and trainers misuse the word balance when they refer to doing specific type of exercises that improve balance, aren’t they really referring to improving proprioception rather than balance? And isn’t proprioception and balance two different things?

Doug Brignole  1:53  
Yes, absolutely balances equilibrium. Balance has an inner ear. Also, the bottoms of your feet, and your eyes are the sensors that basically inform you, whether you’re standing upright, or leaning to the right are about to fall, whether the ground you’re standing on is flat or not the that is actually balanced. And as people get older, their senses start to deteriorate their eyes, they’re there, they have neuropathy, so they don’t feel their feet as much, right. So when someone says, you know, I lose my balance, well, they could have inner ear problems, he could have visual problems, they could have, you know, neuropathy problems, and those things are contributing to them. Not understanding not being informed as to whether or not they’re upright or not, but if you put that person on a BOSU ball, which is basically proprioceptive training, it’s not helping their sensors, they need to see a specialist and ear, nose and throat specialist, an eye doctor, you know, someone that’s going to address that neuropathy, in order to really fix their equilibrium issue. But what bothers me about the fitness industry is that it has sold proprioception as balance, because balance seems to have more value as a buzzword than proprioception. And so people don’t want to argue with fixing their balance, they might argue with improving their proprioception, which is basically a skill, right is coordination at a particular skill. They might say, well, that’s fine, but you know, if it’s going to compromise, and it always does, by the way, if it’s going to compromise, the resistance exercise portion of that, when I’m combining it, then I’d rather not trade it off.

Adam  3:34  
So so doing unstable exercises, you know, doing let’s say a set of squats on on a on a BOSU ball or wobble board or something like that. You don’t feel that that improves balance, for some

Doug Brignole  3:46  
No, what it what it improves, it improves your ability to coordinate yourself on that Bosu ball. Right? You will eventually get very good at that once you get off of that Bosu ball. You’re no longer in that environment to which you have adapted. Right. So it’s essentially worthless. Right now, I had a client who said You know, I had a trainer who had me standing on BOSU balls, and I didn’t find myself any any more easy to stand on one leg when I’m washing one foot in the shower. Well, that’s because when you’re standing in the shower, that’s not the same thing as standing on a BOSU ball. You got good at the bosu ball coordination trick. What happens is as we get older, we narrow our movements down to straightforward when we’re young and we’re playful, and we’re playing in the in the beach on the sand. We’re playing volleyball, we’re doing lateral movement, we’re doing backward movement. We’re jumping up and down. And as we get older, we pretty much move straightforward, right? So we lose our ability to move laterally, we lose our ability to coordinate our brain with these automatic leg movements, right. So let’s just say that you are at a party and somebody has put their purse down right next to your right foot. And all of a sudden you realize that as you started to move to your right, something blocked your foot. By this point, you’ve already leaned your bodyweight, so far over to the right, that you are going to fall. Having stood on one leg will not help you. What will help you is having practiced lateral movement, repositioning that foot. So if I were training you, I would say, Okay, here’s what we’re going to do, I’m going to throw this basketball to you, you’re going to shuffle to three stops to the right, you’re going to catch it, throw it back, you’re going to shuffle it to the right, and maybe I won’t tell you where it’s gonna go, it won’t be right left, you’ll have to think with and then all of a sudden, your feet will start to become automatic. Again, preventing falling is more about coordination. It’s more about having your legs work in autopilot. Literally, when you’re standing on one leg, you will not prevent a fall. But a fall happens when you’ve leaned your body way too far over and the one that will save you is lifting that leg and moving it somewhere else. And that has to …