The Bone Health Blueprint

If you've ever incorporated running into your exercise routine, you know how challenging it can be to stay injury free. Running is a unique mode of exercise due to its repetitive nature & demand on the bones, tendons & muscles. With each step your body experiences 3-4 times your body weight! Crazy right!? For this episode, Dr. Jamie Mraz details a quick and easy "test" that you can perform to see if your body is ready for the demand of running. She also dives into how to implement running into your routine, how to pre-hab & re-hab before and after runs, and other things to include into your routine that will help keep you bulletproof and running injury free.

If you're interested in working with Dr. Jamie remotely, be sure to check out her website: www.reconnectperformance.com
You can also follow her on Instagram @doc_mraz

Have you ever focused on how you breathe during exercise? For some people, it's the last thing that comes to mind, especially when lifting weights. But is there a best practice for breathing while resistance training? There are many strategies out there, some that even involve not breathing (Valsalva maneuver). The goal of breathing (or not breathing) is to increase intra-thoracic pressure (pressure around the spine) to best maintain posture & technique during the movement. With that, pressure around your heart & throughout the cardiovascular system will be affected. You may have even noticed feeling light-headed or left with a headache post workout. I bet your breathing may be the culprit. So, tune in for some of my best breathing strategies for resistance training, as well as a way to improve your breathing in general.

What does the person who holds 4 world records in the kettlebell swing do each night? He has a hard time sleeping because he's too excited to get the kettlebell back in his hands for more. In this episode I chat with Sergeant Major Steven Burkett of the United States Marine Corps (aka sergeantmajorkettlebell on Instagram) and dive into what keeps him coming back for more. There is so much to unpack in this episode, from learning to thrive on self-competition, finding what you love about movement & exercise, must hear kettlebell swing cues, and discussion about training and exercise you don't want to miss!

Thank you again, Steven for sharing your time for this episode. I really enjoyed getting to chat with you!

If you'd like to follow Steven, his IG handle is sergeantmajorkettlebell

If you've spent some time in the gym, you've likely tried a barbell squat, a Smith machine squat, and a leg press. You were probably thinking only of which of those is going to best improve lower body strength. But! Did you ever stop and think which of those 3 may best engage my core muscles as well!? This episode dives into some new research asking that exact question. You may have a guess as to which one of those three will engage the abs and lower back extensors the most, but you're going to have to tune in to find out!

Rating or commenting on this podcast is always welcome as it helps to dial in the content to what you to hear most! Thank you!


Article of reference:
Saeterbakken, AH, et. al. Core muscle activation in three lower extremity exercises with different stability requirements. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 36(2)/304-309

We've discussed many times about the pros and cons of lifting to failure, but most of those conversations have revolved around using higher relative resistances (closer to your 1 rep max). So, what if we compared using a higher resistance and a lower resistance and lifted to failure and not to failure in each scenario? Do you think strength improvements were the same? What about improvements in muscle size? Like the saying I use all the time, can we do "less work" but still get the same result... Tune in and find out all the juicy details.

There are some obvious differences between men & women related to exercising physiology. Hormonal, anatomical, and relative strength to name a few, but is there a difference in how each engages specific muscles during exercise? Some recent evidence may provide a window into this as a recent article shows differences in how men engage the hamstring muscles during the lowering phase of a squat compared to women. Now this may be important to note as injury risk to the knee tends to be higher in women compared to men in certain sports, and this could be a potential reason for that difference. In this episode I chat with Chad Trudo, CSCS, the Director of Strength & Conditioning for Aurora University and discuss how he assesses and programs his women athletes with these findings in mind.

Article of reference:
"Electromyography comparison of sex differences during the back squat"
Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 36(2)/310-313.

Ruptured tendons are quite the serious event, that involve pain, discomfort, and months of rehab to return to normal functioning. But normal functioning is not always the goal for many. Most people want to achieve levels of fitness above and beyond where we were pre-injury. In this episode Dr. Lussier provides some excellent training ideas that are easy to implement into your own training if you are dealing with a muscular/tendon injury and want to keep the train rolling & continue excelling in your personal health and fitness.

 You can get more information about Dr. Nicole Lussier and how you can work with her at:
Instagram: bodyinmotionpt
Website: www.bodyinmotionpt.com

How does your body react to squatting in shoes versus barefoot? Will joints like the hip and knee move differently? Will muscles of the quad and lower back engage differently? There is a division in the research where some articles will show that the shoe allows for a more upright torso posture and provides the ability to get further into the squatting position. Other research will state that there is no real difference between the two situations. I dive into a current article where both sides are examined to provide a real world take on things to consider if you are thinking about converting from shoes to barefoot. Let's dive in!

We've chatted about this topic before, and with more work, more time is spent on the backend recovering for the next workout. But what if you shorten the timeline, say a training bout of 8 weeks where you aggressively kick up the amount of work you perform. How much "more" is "more" related to what you can expect out of improving your strength and muscle size. How many sets per week for a specific muscle group might you actually need? How much relative weight do you need to lift? How quickly should you lift the resistance? How much rest in between sets might you factor in? We'll chat about all these questions and more in this episode, along with a few things to consider if you decide now is the time to ramp up your workouts. Happy training!

This is a very interesting episode that has some heavy hitting take away messages for listeners of all abilities. How does working through a full range of motion compare to working through partial ranges of motion related to improvements in strength and bench press speed? That may seem like a question that doesn't have much real-world impact, but I think you may see the light after listening to this episode. Some abilities transfer to all scenarios of fitness while others may not depending on how you specifically train. The discussion will revolve around training at full range of motion, 2/3 range of motion, or 1/3 range of motion on the bench press and how those training styles will affect your ability to improve at each of these ranges of motion. I think you'll have some pretty heavy hitting arsenal moving forward with your fitness journey after taking a listen to this episode.