Why Isolation is dead!

Why do we do what we do?

This is a question that is the foundation much of what Anthony Robbins, the great motivational speaker, talks about. He reasons that when you find the why, the right answers come much more easily. This article is not about motivation, but about resistance training, but the question is very pertinent – Why do we train the way we train? If you look in any gym or health club today, you will see people using all sorts of machines to train with and doing a huge variety of isolation exercises in order to stimulate the muscles to become bigger, stronger and more functional.

Fitness Instructors and Personal Trainers the world over continue to write training programs for clients that break the body into various body parts and even individual muscles or muscle groups – they talk about chest, back, biceps, triceps, shoulders, glutes, quads, hamstrings and calves. My point is – do the advances in science support such programs?

Let’s examine the roots of this type of training. To do this, we have to go back to the 1930’s, when much of our understanding of the anatomy of the body came to prominence. I call this type of anatomy ‘table-top anatomy’, because it came about through researchers using electrical equipment to stimulate the individual muscles of cadavers (dead bodies) in order to see what effect they had on bones and joints. Hence, we learned that the biceps flex the elbow, the triceps extend the elbow and the soleus extends (plantarflexes) the ankle. We also learned that a muscle must cross a joint in order for it to have an effect on the joint, right? – I’ll discuss this a little later.

The research from the 1930’s was corroborated in the 1950’s when extensive muscle testing was performed as a result of the polio epidemic. In this case, researchers used living individuals, but again their research was conducted with the subjects lying on a table. The researchers did their upmost to isolate individual muscles and learn their effects on bones and joints as it gave them a lot of information in identifying when a person was starting to suffer the effects of the muscle-wasting polio disease.

It was in the1950’s that bodybuilding rose to prominence, and the bodybuilders obviously used knowledge of anatomy when designing training programs. To this day, bodybuilding ideas continue to dominate, although the vast majority of the population do not want to look like bodybuilders.

In the 1970’s resistance, a guy called Nautilus produced a range of machines that allowed people to isolate muscles whilst allowing for stricter technique and often allowed for an increase in the amount of weight or load, an exercise variable that we all know is required for muscular hypertrophy. On the face of it, this sounds like a great idea – we are all taught the importance of good technique and machines mean you can even sit down while you do it!

At this point I would like to pose a couple of questions – how many veteran bodybuilders do you know who are pain-free? Why are bodybuilders so much weaker, even though they have more muscle, than traditional strongmen? It is ironic that the strongmen that had preceded the bodybuilding movement, and knew very little about anatomy, used very integrated and function-based movements to train for strength and power.

The word integrated is the key here. Modern biomechanists and functional anatomists have begun the long process of identifying how the body interacts in function. When I say function, let’s look at the proper definition, as the word is often misused today. The New American Medical Dictionary defines function as:

‘The special work performed by a structure in its normal state’

So what is ‘normal state’ for human beings – is it lying on a table? I think not. Gary Gray is a Physiotherapist in the US who, along with Dr Tiberio, has had a huge impact on our understanding of training. They have built on the work of leading anatomical and biomechanical researchers such as Ida Rolf, Andre Vleeming and Raymond Dart and in 2004, identified the following as essential for functional movement:

• Movement should be Tri-planar
• It should be integrated
• It requires proper gravity-orientation (ie, mostly upright!)
• It should be propriceptively enriched
• It should produce dynamic stabilisation

One of the key aspects of integration is the effective use of the kinetic chain, which is a linked system that can more effectively absorb, distribute and produce forces within the body. The body utilises multiple segments and joints, so the interaction between them become vital to the overall performance of the chain.
It can be summed up by the following quote:

‘The body knows nothing of muscles, only movement’ Bobath, 1980

The way the kinetic chain can fulfill this amazing role is by integrating the muscle, skeletal and nervous systems together to produce, control and manage the forces the body has to interact with in life. These forces are gravity, momentum, ground reaction forces and itself.

This is where the true beauty begins, because fascia (a type of connective tissue) can provide the body with a network that can support, absorb and transfer forces between segments to allow the smooth brilliance of human movement that we see in athletes and dancers. This is because the fascia is derived from the same mesoderm germ layer (see breakout box content) as the muscles and the skeleton. As such, there is a common thread of biology which covers and interacts with each system. Fascia interacts with the nervous and musculoskeletal system to facilitate the flow of information that helps to load and
unload structures within the kinetic chain in the most efficient manner – thereby increasing movement and performance capacity and reducing injury. I had the honour last week of presenting at the ‘Meeting of the Minds’ (www.ptnmeetingoftheminds.com) alongside such distinguished presenters as Paul Chek, Charles Poliquin and Michol Dalcourt. One presenter was not linked to the fitness industry and his name is Thomas Myers. He gave the most fascinating presentation on the role of fascia in the human body. His book, Anatomy Trains, had had a big influence on the PT Academy ethos and his presentation strengthens my belief that Personal Trainers absolutely MUST be taught about fascia.

As a point in case, I now want to return to the belief that most of us have that a muscle must cross a joint in order to have an effect on that joint. That is true of electrically-stimulated cadavers, but not of living beings. It has been shown, for example, that: the soleus “accelerates the knee into extension twice as much as it acts to accelerate the ankle in extension for positions near upright posture” (Zajac & Gordon, 1989). How does the soleus do this without crossing the knee? The answer lies in anatomical myofascial lines, which are lines of force distribution in the body that are the integration of both muscle and fascia.

When we understand that, we are compelled to throw away the idea of isolating the muscles of the body and using machines to ‘assist’ us in our training. While isolation can indeed produce the stimulus for muscle hypertrophy, it lacks the multi-level stimulus approach the body requires to perform tasks in an effective manner and can ultimately lead to dysfunction and chronic pain. Although fitness expos the world over are full of increasingly fancy machines, they do not provide the variety and the range of positions our joints and segments are capable of.

In order to train the body in a way that is complementary to its design, we must remember the following:

• Joints have the capacity to move in three planes of motion (not equally in all planes), which allows them to control forces placed on them and to load associated structures to assist smooth controlled movement. We need to rid ourselves of saggital-plane dominance in the gym and get the frontal and transverse planes involved.
• Eccentric control of force is vital to overall kinetic chain functioning; force reduction always preceeds force production, which dictates that you must load (stretch) before you unload (contract) the system. Use gravity and momentum to load the body, allowing the system to function at closer to full potential.
• Isolation is dead, long live Integration
• Get your clients off seats, benches and stability balls and into proper gravity-orientation – standing up.

In summary, much of what we currently do in the gym (especially in Australia) is in the dark ages and based on an outdated understanding of anatomy. Even bodybuilders (not representative of the average client), who are in love with the word isolation, would greatly benefit from integrated strength that can only be developed by training in an integrated manner. Paul Chek started the revolution with his ‘Primal Movement Patterns’ and we must continue to build on the work of such visionaries by continually asking ourselves: Why do we do what we do?

Breakout Box Content

As the human embryo develops, it has 3 distinct layers which integrate over time:

• The mesoderm: which gives rise to the muscle, bone and fascia
• The ectoderm: which gives rise to the brain, nervous system
• The endoderm: which gives rise to the digestive system

As these germ layers begin to migrate and grow, the mesoderm begins to wrap itself around the other two layers. Note in the diagram below how fascia is interwoven into every layer of the muscular system and are integral in connecting bone to muscles. A layer of fascia surrounds and individual muscle fibre, it then intertwines around all the fibres that make up a muscle fibre bundle and surrounds the bundle itself. As can be seen, there us another layer of fascia that surrounds the entire muscle. This fascia then blends into the tendon and yet more fascia attaches the tendon to the bone, with yet more fascia connecting other tendons and muscles. When we consider that recent research demonstrates that fascia can conduct force (Myers, 2008), we see how integral fascia is when considering how the body works.

References

Chen CS; Ingber DE. 1999. Tensegrity and Mechanoregulation: From Skeleton to Cytoskeleton. Osteoarthritis Cartilage. Jan; Vol. 7(1), pp. 81-94
Dart R. (1950) Voluntary musculature in the human body: the double spiral arrangement. British Journal of Physical Medicine
Myers, T., 2001. Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists. London: Churchill Livingstone
Myers, T. 2008. Presentation at Meeting of the Minds Conference, Colorado, USA
Siff, M, 2003 Supertraining. Supertraining Institute; 6th edition
Vleeming, A., Mooney, V., Dorman, T., Snijders C., and Stoeckart, R. 1999. Movement, Stability and Low Back Pain. London: Churchill Livingston
Zajac F, Gordon M (1989). Determining Muscle’s Force and Action in Multi-Articular Movement. Exercise & Sport Science Reviews 17: 187-230.