https://youtu.be/6hMIXA8f3uQ
Fitness expert, champion bodybuilder, and MS advocate, David Lyons, teaches Matt and Tara how to form the mind-body connection when you have a chronic illness. David talks about mindset, goal setting, and the importance of joining the right program. David shares tips from his Optimal Body Personal Fitness program. You can find David on Facebook where he shares awesome fitness tips and videos.
This is part two of our interview with David. The transcript is below. You can also watch the video or listen to our podcast.
Matt: Hey everybody. My name's Matt and this is Tara, and we're from Situation Positive. We're here today with our good friend David Lyons of Optimal Body Personal Fitness. Um, we're here for a special workout because we joined the program and we wanted to learn more about it. David welcome to the show.
David: Thanks for having me guys.
So I appreciate it. And you know, something I'm going to get you guys in top shape and I'm going to get you guys feeling better, but more important than that, I'm going to get your brains connected to those muscles of yours.
Tara: Alright, so we're ready to get started if you are?
David: I'm ready. Okay.
Matt: So I'm a little scared.
David: You. You should be.
Matt: I know.
David: Tara's not scared, but you should be. Wait. Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to be showing you different exercises for different body parts because the way to train correctly is to separate what you're doing. We're not doing a full-body workout here.
This is not a 30-day beach body. This is a three-day cycle of breaking up muscle groups so that we're getting the most out of each one of those exercises, the sets that we do, the reps that we do, and we're getting each muscle connected to the brain. If we do all of it at once, the brain is going to get too confused.
We're not that smart. So we've got to break it up a little bit. So the first body part we're going to be doing is we're going to work our chest and we're going to be doing something called the chest press. So similar to working out in a gym using a bar and doing a chest press, we're going to be doing this with resistance bands from an upper angle, which you could also do here.
I had it connected to my equipment, but you can connect this to a door using the door anchor, and you put the door anchor over the door. You put the bands into, through the door anchor and you can pull it from the door at the same angle we're going to do here. So I'm going to step over here and demonstrate it for you.
Matt: So if you're like me and you don't have workout equipment at home, this is something you could still do?
David: Absolutely. Because all you need are all these great resistance bands and a door anchor. And if we're doing leg exercises, you could use a, uh, ankle strap as well. But what we're going to do is we're going to be stepping forward away from where the band is attached.
So that we're getting some resistance. Even when our arms are in the back position, our elbows are up and our arms are being pulled back, our chest is being stretched. We're pushing forward. So this is a chest press. So this is the press in this position. We are going to be holding and squeezing our chest for four seconds.
So, Matt and Tara, we're going like this 1, 2, 3, 4 squeezing as hard as we can, the muscles of our chest coming back, getting that stretch. Now, this is called contraction training, and it's a, um, it's a training method I created so that when you're holding that position in a contraction position, your brain is being told that your chest is being
contracted. So as we're holding and squeezing, we're literally telling ourselves that we are pushing with our chest and we're holding that chest that gives our brain, the time to connect to the chest. Four seconds is all you need. You could actually push the six seconds more than that is overkill.
