I wish the book would describe the "point" of each exercise.
Like the swiss ball lateral rolls. Or that rotating lunge. I've decided to skip the rotating torso part of that lunge because I don't know what the point is and it felt awkward.
I wish the book described what muscles were being targeted with each exercise, or if its only for balance, like I think the SB Lateral Rolls are then I wish it would say so. Because I'm not so worried about my balance. I don't have a problem with falling over ever day, but I do happen to be fat every day, so if I could replace that with something else then I would do it. Like Calf Raises. I'd rather have calf muscles than better balance when lying on an inflated ball.
And then the Romanian Dead Lift. In FL1 I'm doing these on the same day as regular deadlifts, and I wonder why. I wish it was explained. Are different muscles worked doing Romanian? Are the muscles worked differently? And if so, then how?
I guess my question is "Why?" for a lot of these exercises.
I've seen enough "whats the point of this exercise?" or "where am I supposed to be feeling this?" threads here to feel like maybe I'm not the only one.
The point of each exercise is to get stronger, period. By skipping the rotational part of the lunges you are cheating yourself and changing the program to something other than NROL. They feel awkward b/c you are not used to the movement. If you would just do them instead of being lazy they would get easier. If Lou broke each exercise down into what muscles were worked in each excercise and what the point was, the book would be 1000 pages long and then you wouldn't read it. Would you? The rotation targets the rectus abdominis, internal/external obliques, transverse abdominis, and spinal erectors. The point is to strengthen your core b/c that is kinda important for overall health and quality of life. The swiss ball rolls target these muscles as well as leg muscles (including your calves). I don't mean to be a dickhead but damn. If you are really that interested in the kinesiology then do some research. Don't change a professional program b/c your weren't spoon fed inforamation that really isn't 100% necessary. Just do the program as written and then add your calf raises at the end if you think that they will make or break your overall fat loss.
Hm, I have considered your position and decided that even if it means being spoonfed, I would like to know why I am doing something when I do it.
You almost convinced me not to wonder what the purpose of some of the exercises were, but then you told me what they were for, which means that asking paid off. Then I got confused.
What if the book had just added a sentence or two for each exercise to explain what muscles they work (especially on those exercises where you might not feel anything)? It seems logical, but then I would lose the sense of wonder and mystery that goes with rolling around on an inflated ball. And what if somebody were to come up to me while I was doing a bulgarian split squat and ask why I had my leg up on that bench.... What if I had an answer instead of "I don't know, and even if I did know I wouldn't spoon feed that info to you!" Then I would have to have, like, a whole conversation or something. Or then I couldn't say "Because it says to do it in the book". What if he were to say "The book didn't say why?" I couldn't give a grin and a wink and say "life is more exciting with a little mystery, isn't it!" No, that joy would be robbed from me.
So no, you don't sound like a dick. You are right. I should expect an weightlifting book to tell me to do something, but not why. Curiosity killed the kitty cat, right?
I can see why you want to know those things, and it just shows you don't want to do a program mindlessly, but with understanding and insight. That is very cool and few people ever develop such interest.
It might help you to get an illustrated book like Muscle Mechanics or Delavier's Strength Training Anatomy. They don't go into crazy detail but will show you how things work in an easy form.
You need to look at books as serving a specific purpose. You get a book like NROL because you want ways to organize exercises to get you to a specific goal. That's it. You will need other materials to get going in the direction you like.
Oh the lunge with rotation is a good one.It promotes stability and works on the diagonal lines between your hips and shoulders and it both improves your lower body strength and your posture. Not bad If you have any right/left imbalances it would show them right away.
I was a little salty this morning and I believe it showed in my post, so for that, I apologize again. I agree w/ Galya that having an understanding of what you are doing and why you are doing it is superior to just doing it b/c you were told, and congrats to you for that. What bothered me was that instead of looking up the exercise in an alternate resource and seeing what the benefits were, you just decided to not do that part of the exercise.
As for your asking paying off, it did, but now you are short the benefit of the extra knowledge that you would have gained by actually looking up the information yourself. I'm sure you've heard "If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime" Yeah I know it's cliche, but it's true.
Yes, high fives, low fives, and daps and taters and fist pounds all that stuff : )
i thought the entire premise of nrol was to work on the movement without being overly concerned with the specific muscle being used. trying to get out of the mindset of saying today i am doing back and bis and instead say i am working on pulling. the rotational part of it is working on twisting. if you need to know what the muscles are than i would say you are working on obliques and lots of stabilizing muscles. the idea is to get a higher level of performance out of your body through working on the 6 basic movements. but its your workout and if it doesn't suit you as rx'd than i don't see harm in altering it. less benefit but not any harm. besides the only way a workout will be any good for you is if you stick to it. its a lot harder to stick to a workout you don't like and if liking it means not rotating than go for it.
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Swim! Bike! Run!
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Oh the lunge with rotation is a good one.It promotes stability and works on the diagonal lines between your hips and shoulders and it both improves your lower body strength and your posture. Not bad If you have any right/left imbalances it would show them right away.
sorry just read this. i like this answer.
__________________
I intend to live forever, so far so good.
Swim! Bike! Run!
1.5k!, 40k!, 10k!
Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad.
So what does Romanian Deadlifts do that the deadlifts I just did didn't already do? It seems strange to have them both in the same workout (FL1).
I tried the swiss ball lateral rolls again yesterday. Its not really a twist, push, pull, but I did feel it this time. I felt it in my thigh, the party right above the knees. I'm pretty sure that's not where I was supposed to feel it, but at least I felt something somewhere, right?
And I didn't even look goofy because there was another guy there with a jumprope and a torn up bible doing kung fu kicks over the machines. Nobody even noticed me with that guy running around.
I "just do it" too .... but agree that many times I wonder what it's for. Then I huff and puff and move on.... I agree with Gary.
If 1000 pages is the result of all the muscles used, then how about a diagram of the body with the parts highlighted, as used on so many circuit-training equipment? No biggie, but it would be nice...
It's a workout program. There's plenty of information elsewhere about anatomy and physiology and kinesiology. This is a book with a workout program. *shrug* If you're interested in more, you should go look at more stuff out there. If you don't care or already know this stuff and want a workout program, this book gets ya that.
Hmmm... I was feeling RDLs in my lower back, like where the back of the love handles are. Right above the hips.
I didn't know I was supposed to feel it in my lower legs and ass. I do like they say though and keep my back "proper" and shoulders back. I wonder if I'm doing it wrong? I don't think I am, because I watch in the mirror and it looks right, but I don't feel it in my hamstrings or ass.
So what is a good book out there that describes all of these exercises in detail and what muscles they work and the proper way to do them? Is there a popular one that is readily available in the bookstore chains?
RDLs: you are supposed to contract your glutes before you go up. Lower back compensation is common with people whose glutes don't fire on time. Try this: before the workout that has RDLs, do some glute bridges ( you lay on your back, knees bent and drive your pelvis up using only your glutes). 2x12 should be plenty. Then as you do the RDL, think of your lower back being glued to your pelvis, all movement should occur in the hip joint. A good way to see if you are using your lower back to do the RDLs (which you shouldn't be) is to try one with just bodyweight. Pinch some skin on your lower back, a horizontal skinfold over your lower back vertebrae, and do the exercise. The skin should stay put between your fingers. If it slips out, you used your lower back.
Swiss Ball Lateral Rolls - your trunk is resisting rotation as you end up on each extreme supported only by the shoulder on the ball and your feet. The rest of your trunk is off in space being pulled down by gravity and by holding steady and straight you are resisiting rotation.
RDL - starting from the top of the movement, with soft knees a good cue is "butt back" - you are pushing your bottom backwards while keeping your torso properly aligned (hinging at the hip). You are NOT bending from the waist.
To learn the movement, stand a few inches in front of a wall and push your bottom back until you touch the wall. Move out a couple inches & repeat. Repeat until you have the full movement and feel the tension at the bottom position.
As you push backward the BB will move toward the floor of its own accord almost - keep it right next to your thighs. You should feel your entire posterior chain being tight & ready to spring. When the bar is just below your knees it is probably to the point that you can't lower the rest of the way just by pushing back - you'd have to bend the knee. That's were you actively contract the glutes and extend the hip to raise back up.
And I didn't even look goofy because there was another guy there with a jumprope and a torn up bible doing kung fu kicks over the machines. Nobody even noticed me with that guy running around.
i'm of the just do it camp, but i understand the thread. one thing i miss is a note on what to watch out for... like overextending your knees. before NROL i lifted from the body for life book which was great about warning you when you were doing something that could strain you by doing it wrong. there really aren't any tips on things to watch out for... but there is the thought expressed not to be a hung up on form (which allowed me to lift more and through good form out the window, hopefully not in sacrifice of a muscle strain!)
Different books have different goals, as some on this thread noted.
When Home Workout Bible came out in fall 2002, some readers complained that it didn't go into enough detail about what each exercise did for the targeted muscles. But that was never the goal. The point was to show how to do the exercises with multiple types of equipment, so people with different home-gym setups could do the same workouts.
The reason my colleagues and I wrote and published HWB was because so many readers of Men's Health magazine complained about us showing exercises performed in gyms, when they didn't have access to all that equipment. So we wrote an entire book about how to accomplish training goals with a variety of equipment, and people complained because it didn't go deep enough into the physiology.
The Book of Muscle was done partially in response to that. It delved into the physiology as deeply as any of us thought we could or should. (Side note: Originally, Frederic Delavier was going to be our illustrator for BOM. Then Strength Training Anatomy became a huge success, and we had to find another artist to do our anatomicals.)
But neither BOM or HWB (or Testosterone Advantage Plan, for that matter) really got into the details of how to set up a training program -- the basics of sets, reps, and exercise selection for specific goals. That was what we wanted to do with NROL. I had no desire to write extensively about physiology because I'd already done that in BOM. And, for that matter, I didn't want to show every conceivable variation for every exercise because I'd done that in HWB, and I didn't want to include an entire diet program because my coauthors and I had done that in TAP.
The publishing process for each book is about two years. (The early ones all overlapped, since I was on staff at the publishing company.) It takes 3-6 months just to write a proposal, 3-6 months to write the book after the proposal has been accepted and a deal reached, and 3-6 months to deal with revisions, photos, and final edits. The balance is spent waiting for the other people in the process to do what they need to do.
It takes that much time and effort because I don't want to repeat information from one book to the next.
The downside, as this thread shows, is that readers who haven't read the previous books will wonder why I focused on one aspect of training and not another, but I hope that readers who've read the earlier ones appreciate that each book is a stand-alone effort.
Like a lot of things in life I think many people subconsciously look for "the answer" in a single given place… and the thought that a book should have everything and cover everything so that they only need the one to steer them to the right answer is not so different from looking for the perfect diet or supplement or whatever.
Combined with the hunger for more information that comes from having been taught something, and there is disappointment that it didn't all come in one neat package.
A problem of not necessarily knowing where to go next to get a similar level of clarity in this confusing mess of fitness information, because some books are better written than others and Lou's writing is among the better writing out there for people looking for that level of clarity and instruction… might just contribute to the problem.
Which may also account for much of the "this book/program or that book/program… WHICH IS BETTER?" threads.
I think you were saying that everyone should read every book I write so they get the full scope of my brilliance, and I can put my kids through college.
I wish the book would describe the "point" of each exercise.
If you have any right/left imbalances it would show them right away.
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