REGULARLY IRREGULAR

I hear it a lot. "Should I workout once a week, twice a week, once every other week, once every 21 days, once a month?"

Know what I think about workout schedules?

Screw that. 

There's a much better way that doesn't involve planning your life around multiples of seven. 

All you have to do is listen to the "voices" within.

I recently came across an old blog post I wrote in 2011. At the time of this post I was long since finished with making weights go up and down and had started a new company with one purely isometric machine. 

Reading this post again confirms how right my gut instinct was. Now I better understand why. Here's the post:  

“My new company is currently investigating the response of individuals to very brief, intense, and infrequent isometric muscle contractions. The benefits people are experiencing are impressive. The cool part? They spend no more than 20 seconds a week, or even less. In fact, within two to three months of program initiation most people must reduce their frequency to every other week or even once a month to experience continued progression. This equates to roughly four minutes of exercise (or less) per year. My company is 20 years ahead of the exercise curve. 

Mark my words, everyone will go in this direction, they just don't know it yet. I will tell you now that you really will experience better results from just 20 seconds of muscular exertion once in a while. Yes, exercise in the future will be very infrequent. It will be guided by innate intelligence rather than blind habit. You will listen to your body. Your body will tell you when it's ready. You may do it once every two, four, six weeks or more and that will be ok, and much more effective.

I get to see the future of exercise right now, and I like what I see. You will like it too.”

And here we are today, more than 10 years later with the interest in this approach growing rapidly. 

Back then the confidence of my assertion was purely visceral. I couldn't explain it. Today however, I can make a reasonable connection of the dots and explain why isometrics will take over the world. 

Hey, I was once where you are. I used to love the workout schedule. But the further I drifted away from making weights go up and down, and the more I used isometrics exclusively, and let go of what I thought I knew, and actually listened to my body, I gained a new perspective and finally realized what the voices were saying: 

"Not yet" "Not too much" "Ok, it's time now. Go for it"  

So a pattern started to emerge. I finally realized I felt my best, both mentally and physically, and improved most, if I waited until I had the urge.

When I felt like I really wanted to exert myself I did. If I didn't, I didn't. This meant flexibility and fluidity. It meant no schedule.

But why?

Here's where we connect a few dots:

In 2020, groundbreaking research got inside the central nervous system and showed that changes in the primitive reticulospinal tract of nerves drives changes in strength. Higher loads produced greater changes within the brain, plus grey and white matter of the spinal cord (see THIS COULD CHANGE THE WORLD). 

The highest loads possible come with maximum effort isometrics. Since this tract of nerves is bilateral and a major integrator of whole body movement, it doesn't matter if you go all out with one arm or one leg, the entire body fires. It's unavoidable.    

This area of the brain and tract of nerves is also involved in the bilateral pandiculation reflex I wrote about in WHY ALL OUT SHORT DURATION ISOMETRICS ARE THE NATURAL THING TO DO.

Yeah, so?

Quick review: Pandiculation is regulated by the limbic system. This is a more primitive brain concerned with instinct, mood, and basic emotions such as fear and pleasure along with basic drives for self-preservation.

Instinct? Emotion? Mood? Self-preservation?

Those are the voices.     Those voices don't necessarily speak on a schedule.

All-out isometrics are at the top of the "food chain" with respect to neurological "ripple effect" throughout the body.  A little goes a loooong way. That's why if you ignore the voices, they will begin to speak louder until you learn that your workouts have to become regularly irregular.

Read SAVE YOUR LIFE ENERGY for more proof.

It's simple self-preservation.

The future of staying strong, active, youthful, and energized, for EVERYONE, is just a few seconds of effort.    

The future is now. It is viiiv.

The voices say so.