The Illusion of Exercise Core Essentials Pro Article

Med Fit™

Neural Fit™

Let's examine the client's cuing for a traditional vertical machine chest press.

Figure 1a

Figure 1b

Figure 1c

Neural Fit™ – Examining the Illusion of Exercise

Have you every heard the saying "motion is not exercise"? After spending 15 plus years in the health and fitness industry I began to realize that exercise is in the gym setting is simply an illusion, an illusion that most gym patrons cannot see through, and unfortunately many instructors. Some of the issues we contend with when trying either to assist in the rehabilitation of an injury or simply trying to increase our client’s functional strength with our clients are as follows:

• Poor kinesthetic awareness
• Scar tissue formation
• Pain inhibition
• Incorrect assumptions of biomechanics
• Incorrect instruction

The one that is the most prevalent is the incorrect assumption of biomechanical behavior. The biomechanical misconception can be seen in most strength training exercises but is can also be seen in any resistance type of exercise, regardless of the apparatus used. Confused? Let me break it down for you.

Let us take a traditional vertical machine chest press.

The general cuing for a client in this exercise could go something like this:

“Keep your shoulders back, grasp the handles and push to full arm extension, making sure not to hold your breath.”

This is a typical way a client may be instructed in a chest press. However, how that client interprets the exercise based on the verbal cueing and how the body reacts may surprise you. In any given exercise there is surprising amount of confusion that occurs in the event. Staying with the example of the chest press, the visual perception is one of a linear movement with the resistance moving away from the body. When looking at the pictures and watching where the distal end of the lever travels it is easy to see why we would assume that, when in fact it is internal rotation of the shoulder we are looking for.

To add to the confusion, the first point of pressure received by the body is in the cutaneous sensors in the hand. This creates an overwhelming amount of input at the distal end of the lever. With the visual perception of a forward linear motion and pressure stimulating the cutaneous sensors of the hands there is little choice to but to do this exercise incorrectly. Perception of movement coupled with stimulation of sensory receptors evokes a prior related experience into play to aid in forming a perception.

Since the goal of a chest press is to train and strengthen the chest we need to ask, how exactly does the chest affect the shoulder joint? As the shoulder joint is a pseudo ball and socket and can only provide a rotational pattern when properly stabilized, the chest when contracting “horizontal adducts” the humerus. This simply means that the humeral head is rotated inwards by the chest and not pushed forward as most would think. The triceps brachia are responsible for elbow extension but this is not the primary focus of a chest press. So if we were to firstly stabilize the shoulder girdle we wouldn’t get the forward drift of the humeral head and then secondly by contract the chest, paying attention to using the muscle contraction of the chest to draw the arm inward in adduction we would get a full contraction instead of having the stress travel away from the point of origin and traveling to the point insertion. The triceps will naturally engage in the process and requires little thought as it is secondary in the kinetic chain of events.

Every exercise has its own illusion and we need to take the time to understand how the client perceives the exercise as it could mean the difference of success and failure.