Dr Chalmers Path to Pro - The Biggest Mistake People Make With Body Goals
A lot of people don’t see the results they want because they change their workouts too often. When you switch things up every few weeks, your muscles don’t get the consistent work they need to grow and get stronger. Real progress comes from doing the same key exercises over time with good form and purpose.
It’s important to know the difference between just working out and actually training with a goal in mind. If you’re trying to build a certain look or feel stronger in specific areas, the best thing you can do is stick with a well-designed plan and give it time to work.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:01 – The Most Common Mistake
01:00 – Muscle Growth Requires Repetition
02:15 – Difference Between Exercise and Training
03:05 – Purpose of Vibe and Group Workouts
04:10 – The Real Path to Body Goals
04:46 – Example: Arm and Tricep Training
06:19 – Customizing for Your Goals
07:42 – Consistency vs Variety
08:40 – Women and Muscle Growth Misconceptions
09:08 – Final Advice: Stop Changing Workouts
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right. So I was asked the other day of what I thought the biggest problem was that people had with meeting their body goals. One of the things that I see over and over and over again that's highly problematic is people change their workouts like every two or three weeks. That's not gonna get you where you wanna go. I keep, you know, I'll like, look at the people come in, they're like, I'm not getting where I want to go. I'm now hitting my goals. And I'm like, cool. And they're right, but I've been working out real hard. I'm, like, all right, cool, they're, like five days a week. I'm well, that makes sense. And so they give me their workouts, like these are the last five workouts I've had. And they were like, for the past three months. And they are like different workouts, their workouts change like every three or four weeks. And that's never gonna get you where you want to go body shape or function wise. The reason is because you've got to consistently work a muscle for it to grow And so if every two or three weeks you quit working a muscle where you work a different muscle where your work something, you know Differently, you're not gonna get where you want to go You know, we have people doing you know Normal bicep curls and then for you know, two and a half weeks and they went to hammer curls and they want to you know weird, you dumbbell curls where they're like, it's like weird stuff, like everything kept moving around. And they're, like, I've been doing this for, you know, six months, and I haven't, you know, haven't had any real, real growth, real change. Well, because you quit exercising muscles, you quit, you quit attacking the tissue and having it grow in the same direction.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:38] So that's, that's probably the biggest thing. Like, I have a, like the workout I do, I've been doing for two years. Every once in a while, you'll need to modify something because it'll start tweaking something or you'll, you need to add something to it to balance a muscle group or something like that. That's fine. Changing weights is obviously something that you're gonna have to do. You're gonna to have to go up and wait, but, you know, radically changing your workout over a couple of weeks. The reason that a lot of trainers do that is because people get bored because they're not focusing on their form. They're not focussing on what matters. They're just in there to kind of kill time. And if you're in there to kill time, and you're just like, okay, I want to spend 30 minutes a day or four minutes a day, moving my body and sweating. That's fantastic. Like, there's no problem with that. If that's where you're at, then changing your workout every couple weeks is totally fine. And you probably should do that because exercising with no direction, no point is still exercise. It's going to be healthy for you, but it's not training. Training is exercising with a purpose. So if you want to build your delts, your quads, your glutes or whatever, you need to do basically the same exercises a lot for a long time. That's how you grow muscle tissue. So you know, changing things up all the time isn't going to help you Design and develop and grow your body into what you want it to be It will help with energy function. It will have the sleep it'll help with mood. It'll help the depression.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:05] It'l help with anxiety It'll helped with you know Being able to consume foods and not get fat Like it helps with all of those things and it's going to help me cardiovascular system. It's gonna help your brain It's going be wildly beneficial just moving around and I love it like when you look at vibe and I love vibe I love the setup of what we did we change it all the time so people don't get bored but the purpose of vibe is not to build your body the purpose and vibe is to just get some exercise sweat feel better get your blood moving you know get all those things going loosen up the joints like that's the Like that's why our whole motto is feel better like come in spend 55 minutes feel better and you will And when because that's everybody like when you exercise especially in a farm for red radiation, you're always going to feel a lot better Uh, we have it geared up just for that, but no one's going to get No one's going to develop their delts or their biceps or their quads or their glutes, you know, really well and really defined function doing exercise like vibe or, you know, more or less Pilates or something like that. These class groups are basically just to get in and get some exercise because your joints moving and keep you from deteriorating. If you want to build your body, if you want to have a big butt and great legs, big biceps, nice to find delts, nice chest, you're going to have to pick the exercises, or everyone pick the exercise for you, that are best suited to that muscle group, and then do them for a long time. That's really kind of where it is. So if you're trying to figure out, hey, I want my delts or my biceps or whatever bigger.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:46] You know, you're gonna have to work on that. Like I've done the same basic exercises for my arms for 15 years, maybe 20. So, you know, that's kind of where it is. Like, you have the best exercises for your biceps are bicep curls because your arm does. Resist this and do it a lot. And just do it really, really good form until it's exhausted and your biceps will grow. Hammer curls works a little bit different function, which is fine, if that's the direction you wanna go. If you wanna use hammer curls and standard bicep curls, knock it out, that's fantastic. But you're gonna wanna do those for a long time. Like what I've done for triceps. Is I've done the same thing for a long long time. It's tricep press downs. The big difference that I the big change I've made between like the last 10 years is I went from doing both my hands on the on the stuff to just using single hand which I did that mostly for function move and a lot more core work. There's a giant amount more core worker if you're doing individual arms. So, that's the same exact motion and so using both arms I just use one. And like I said, it wasn't for my triceps, it was for my core for my stability function. So, you know, that's an exercise I've been doing for, you know, I've done it, I remember doing it in college. So I've done it for a while. Um, and I've got giant triceps and because I've worked them over and over and over again, and so that's how I go.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:19] So if you're, if youre not getting the goals you want, you don't, your body doesn't look the way you want it to, and you've kept changing your workout. That's probably part of the problem. So you wanna make sure that you're attacking the muscle group over and over and again. Like when I design workouts for people, we'll be like, okay, the first thing is, what are your goals? Like, what are we trying to do? Like, do you have pictures of what you wanna look like? You know, that type of thing. Do you have specific goals for function? You know? Are you a CrossFit person? Do you wanna do really good in the CrossFit games? Do you want to get on stage? Do you just wanna have, you know, nice shoulders and arms and butt and like, what are you goals? That's the primary thing. Let me design exercises around that. And I'm like, go do those exercises and tell me if they hurt. And people are coming like, they do kind of hurt. Well, that's because your body's impinged. And so we need to fix that issue. So we'll fix that issue once those stabilization exercises are done. We can basically go back to those exercises. Do they hurt now? I'm, like, no, they don't hurt at all. Fantastic. These are the exercises that are best attack that muscle group to grow it in the direction you want to grow. It you just have to work it for a long period of time. And that's kind of where you go. So. That's the biggest issue that I've been seeing, is that people expect the workout should change every three weeks or every month, and because that's how their trainers have done in the past, and that's not what you're wanting to do if you're trying to grow a muscle to a larger size.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:42] If you're just trying to get in there and check the box that you went and worked out today, awesome. Fantastic. Change your workouts as often as you want to. Do a new workout every single day. That's fantastic. If that keeps you in the gym from a health standpoint, great. From a grow your body, grow your muscles, change the way you look factor, that's not going to be where you want to go. And this isn't to say that women are going to get super big and bulk if they do the same exercises all the time. Generally what ends up happening, especially with the upper chest, back, shoulders, and arms, is that you just get defined faster. And One of the things that, and it's so funny to me, every single woman who's come in here, I've worked with, who's been like, I don't want to get bulky. As soon as they start seeing the development and their delts and they start to see the cut here and they started seeing like where you can define that's a tricep, that's the deltoid, that the bicep. They love it because they're like, I look so lean now, even though half the time they're up in weight because they've gained so much muscle mass. Even though they've lost a bunch of fat, they're still up weight wise, but they love the way they look because they define the musculature and given it some texture and give us some contrast with the things around it. And so now it's one of those things where it's like, oh, you have this beautiful form where you can tell you work out. You can tell your dedicated and your sacrifice and loyalty the whole, all the things because that's what it takes to actually grow muscle tissue over time.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:08] That's the biggest thing I've been seeing, is that people try to change their workouts way too often, or they don't have them designed for the body they want. Uh, that's kind of the biggest thing. Like a lot of my workouts based around function. So, you know, like when you're 70, are you going to be able to have balance and coordination, are going to able to take, you know, steps, are, you're gonna be able, what's your balance as far as your fall risk, you know, are even be able to have your shoulders and your hips and all those things work the way you want to. Uh, that's where a lot of our stuff is based off of, my stuff's based off of lots of core functionality, balance coordination. Um, but You know, you can also grow muscle tissue with the same exercises. So if you guys are, that's, if that's the problem that you guys have had, stop changing your workouts, get a really good customized workout for the muscles you want to grow in the direction you want them to grow. So have a, I want to look like this. I want move my body from where it is here to where, to this position, I want it to look this, then design your workout around that. And then just do that workout for, you know. A year, six months to three years like that, or like in my case, never stop doing the same exercise because you want these things to be a certain size and a certain look. So that's where that is. I think a lot of trainers are doing things just to keep people engaged so they keep coming back, which is again, great if exercise is all you're looking for, if you're not looking to have your body change and develop into something, but that's the way it is. So if you guys have any questions, hit us up, questions at chalmerswellness.com or drop them in the comments. Thanks for your time. Fabulous.
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