EUGENIZATION.

Happy New Year to everyone!  It’s around this time that 2 types of articles/posts begin to spring up: articles gushing with misguided overenthusiasm about setting New Year’s goals; and overly cynical posts that say something to the effect of “New Year’s goals are so worthless/I don’t believe in New Year’s goals/You’ll just end up quitting in 3 weeks anyway.”

Now, trending towards the former (hey, I am a personal trainer, after all), this much I can admit - the cynics have statistics on their side.  According to a survey by Franklin Covey, 67% of the people who make New Year’s resolutions fail before the end of January.  By Valentine’s Day, that’ll rise to 80%.

Of course, if you’re already a regular gym-goer, this is no news to you - a quick glance around on your February 22nd workout says it all.

Why is the failure rate so high for New Year’s resolutions, and what can you do to improve your chances?

It’s a trick question.  Failure rates are higher for New Year’s resolutions because more folks make them.  Here’s a real life example: ACE is the largest certification organization in the fitness industry.  Their certification test has the highest failure rate of any in the industry.   But it’s also the easiest test in the industry.  The failure rate is highest because the ACE test is taken more often than any other exam (often by the least-qualified applicants).

In other words, there’s nothing inherently treacherous about New Year’s resolutions that make them prone to failure.  But the flipside is that there’s nothing special about them that makes them easier to stick to either.

I still stand by one of my favorite frothy sentiments: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing today. Got fitness goals worth achieving?  Then don’t wait for New Year’s, or any day.  Start.  Right now.

Posts you may find handy for goal-setting/achieving:

Making Resolutions Stick.

Rethinking Your Workout Plan.

Making Time For Exercise.

In the previous post, I alluded to the terms neurological efficiency and neurological recruitment.  These terms sound similar but are quite different, not in the least in that neurological efficiency cannot be improved, whereas recruitment can be improved.  Consider this post an attempt to clear up confusion.

Both terms refer to what goes on in a muscle and its corresponding motor units.  Skeletal muscles are voluntary; in other words, you can will them to contract and relax (try doing that to the smooth muscle in your intestines).  Something has to carry the signal to contract from your brain to the muscle, and that something is the motor unit.  The impulse to contract goes from your brain, into the motor neuron, through the axon, and finally into the muscle fiber(s), the end result being contraction of those muscle fibers.

It’s probably clearer to show a diagram, so here ya go:

It may come as a surprise to you that you can’t really contract every single muscle fiber you have in your body all at the same time (not under “normal” conditions, anyway).  Neurological efficiency is the ability to contract a percentage of a given pool of muscle fibers. Neurological recruitment, however, is the ability to activate a greater number of individual motor units.

Say you have 100 muscle fibers in your biceps brachii muscle, activated by one particular motor neuron.  Someone with poorer neurological efficiency might only be able to contract 40% of the available fibers in any one contraction.  Someone with better neurological efficiency might be able to contract 80% of their available fibers.

Here’s where it gets a little murky - imagine now that the aforementioned 100 fibers was part of just one motor unit, and you had 5 motor units feeding your biceps (500 total fibers).  An untrained person might only be able to activate 3 of those 5 motor units at any given time (giving him a potential of 300 fibers working together), whereas a trained person might be able to activate all 5 (giving her a potential of 500 fibers working together).

Of course, the math gets complicated when you combine neurological efficiency and recruitment.  In the above examples, let’s assume the untrained guy is neurologically efficient (80%), and the trained female is neurologically inefficient (40%):

Untrained male = 300 x .8 = 240 fibers contracting with any one impulse

Trained female = 500 x .4 = 200 fibers contracting with any one impulse

Keep in mind these are just made up numbers to help illustrate the point; no athlete is out having his or her neurological efficiency tested.

An analogy:  Imagine a kiddie pool filled with water, and you’ve the task of emptying it out with a bucket.  You’re holding a 5 Gallon Home Depot bucket.  The bucket correlates to neurological efficiency - no matter what, you’ll can’t purge any more than 5 gallons with any one bail.  Neurological recruitment correlates to number of buckets - you can increase the amount you bail by simply increasing the number of buckets you use at any one time (using 4 buckets simultaneously being quite the sight).

Since most coaches and trainers like to focus on things you can actually change, the main focus in exercise science is on improving recruitment.  And that can be done through consistent, hard training.  Neurological efficiency is genetic and unchangeable, and (understandibly) ignored.

Teri asks:

I have larger hip muscles than Joanne.  So why is it that she can lift more than I can in lower body exercises?

It may surprise you to discover that there are lots of factors that determine strength (or, more accurately, expression of strength).  Here’s a quick and dirty list compiled off the top of my head, and you can almost bet that it isn’t exhaustive:

• Cross-sectional diameter
• Neurological efficiency
• Tendon length
• Tendon attachment point
• Limb (bone) length
• Technique*

*I hasten to add that “technique” is more a factor that influences expression of strength, as opposed to “strength” proper.  So why is it listed?  Because you can’t really quantify strength without expressing it (i.e., you can’t test strength without lifting something).

It might be due to one or more of the listed factors (and perhaps, all of them) that a person with smaller muscles can outlift a person with larger muscles (in Joanne and Teri’s case, it’s probably 2, 3, and 5).

You’ll note that of the factors listed, only two are factors you can change: Cross-sectional diameter (aka muscle size) and technique.  So it’s not worth worrying about the others, nor is it worth fretting over how much you can lift vs. how much someone else can lift (unless, of course, you’re facing them in a powerlifting meet).  Instead, place a high emphasis on progression:

• How much can you lift today?
• How does it compare to what you lifted last week?  Last year?
• How much (more, I hope) will you be lifting next month?

It’s fun to see how you stack up against others - the entire human race would wither away if we didn’t have that primal urge to be king or queen of the pack - but ultimately, physical fitness (and everything that term means to you) is a solitary affair.  The only person you’re racing with is yourself.

Edit (12/17/08): Samantha adds two more changable factors that influence strength: Fat levels (more fat = more leverage) and recruitment (note: This is different from neural efficiency.  I’ll explain in the next post).

If your weights aren’t getting heavier, then you’re not getting any stronger, your bones aren’t getting any denser, and your muscles aren’t growing.

Every missed workout is a missed opportunity to stimulate exercise benefits.

You accrue the benefits of exercise during the rest periods between workouts, not during the workouts.

And if you’re not eating in a manner in line with your fitness goals, you’re almost (almost) wasting your time.

Why care about where your elbows are on a press?  Or how wide your stance is on leg press?  Or whether or not you maintain a proper (neutral) arch in your spine when deadlifting?

Little insults over time add up.

Have you ever sprained your ankle?  Even if you didn’t need crutches, you (naturally) hobbled around, putting more weight on your non-injured side.  And perhaps to your amazement, you began to get pain in the muscles or joints of the non-injured side.

All because one side of your body took a little bit more of your weight (which you move around all the time, I might add) for a prolonged period of time - perhaps as short as a matter of days.

What if you (knowingly or not) always pressed harder with your dominant arm?  Or allowed your knees to drift in ever so slightly on each rep of leg press?

It’s worth taking a critical look at your form (and rejiggering your weight loads if necessary).