The Limiting Factor Your Don’t Even KNOW About

Click Below to Watch a 30 second introduction from Dr. K 

Simply put, everything you do, including every effort you put forth during exercise, originates in your body’s central command center, the Central Nervous System (CNS). 

And for 99.9% of exercisers, the unfortunate reality is this:  your central nervous system is operating at a very elementary level, and it’s absolutely holding you back from experiencing the most rapid fat loss results. 

How and why? 

Bottom line:  most people simply do not understand how to properly communicate with their nervous systems, and as such are missing out on at least 60-80% of the metabolic potential of every single exercise they do.  In fact, even advanced trainees tend to be “under-achieving” by at least 30-50%. 

Can you just imagine how much faster you’d progress if you were able to double or triple the metabolic effectiveness of each and every exercise you do?  The answer:  A LOT FASTER. 

Going back to the problem, inefficient nervous system communication results in: 

• poor signaling leading to decreased force output and sub-par muscular contractions

• less overall motor units recruited

• less weight used for every exercise, set, and rep (for a workout requiring 10 sets of 10 reps, that inefficiency is compounded 100 TIMES over)

• overall less work done in any given session

• neuro-muscular fatigue occurring before muscles even receive the necessary stimulus to grow and/or strengthen

• fewer calories burned

• overall decreased metabolic effect of exercise even when the same effort is put forth (the same effort for 1/4 of the results)

• dramatically slowed results

• dramatically less fat loss

On the other hand, an extremely efficient nervous system results in: 

• greater signaling, leading to greater, faster, more intense contractions

• increased loads used for every single exercise, set, and rep (compound that improvement 100 times over for a workout requiring 10 sets of 10) – and that’s just one workout – imagine the effect this will have over 4 weeks worth of workouts!

• increased motor unit recruitment

• more stimulus from the same work

• greater strength gains

• greater lean muscle gains

• greater metabolic cost of every single exercise you do

• more calories burned (acutely/immediate)

• exponentially greater fat loss over time

Legitimately, the difference in the rate of fat loss between the above two examples is the difference between getting in incredible shape for summer and being self-conscious all the way through August. 

This is also the difference between hitting and maintaining your ideal body weight easily versus struggling for the rest of your life—period. 

Do you realize this means you’re probably struggling to lose weight right now because your nervous system is operating far below its capacity? 

Essentially, you’re working twice as hard for 1/4 the result—and I hate to see that happen! 

The fact is this:  Most fat loss programs do not even consider the role of your nervous system in program design, and as such, at best improve nervous system communication from ‘Poor’ to ‘Fair’.  Even if you consider yourself “advanced”, you probably still have room to at least double your nervous system signaling efficiency, and therefore your results. 

Bottom line:  If you really want to dramatically hasten fat loss results, then you absolutely MUST learn to improve your nervous system signaling from ‘Fair’ to ‘Good’ to ‘Great’-all the way to ‘Excellent’. 

And here’s the best part – it can be done in a very short period of time with the appropriate plan of attack, and you’ll do it while you lose fat at an accelerated rate. 

But before I teach you how it’s done, you first need to understand exactly WHAT is holding you back from experiencing your true metabolic potential-and there are 5 major contributors (each taking a major toll on nervous system efficiency): 

1. Muscle Imbalances
2. Incoordination
3. Sub-sensory pain signals in your joints
4. Inflammation & resultant decreased circulation
5. Improper use of rest periods in exercise program 

Let’s go over these, one by one, so you have a better understanding… 

Muscle Imbalances: 

Whenever your body senses imbalance, it tries to correct for it.  This means top to bottom (arms to legs), side to side (left to right), and back to front. 

If you’re not balanced in all 3 ways, your body will naturally stop growing and strengthening in an attempt to regain balance and prevent injury. 

As a practical example, many exercisers suffer from major imbalances from front to back.  Their quads generally dominate their hamstrings, and their “pushing” muscles (chest, anterior shoulders) quite often overshadow those of their back (lats, rhomboids, etc).  Essentially, these types of imbalances are actually like pulling the fire alarm for your body. 

In effect, you’re screaming at your body and telling it to stop growing, stop strengthening so the weaker muscles can catch up.  Unfortunately, unless you KNOW that’s going on and actively take steps to strengthen those imbalances, those muscle groups never catch up and progress declines or altogether stops – and this goes on indefinitely. 

In the end, calories that should be going to fuel strength and lean mass gains get shuttled toward fat storage.  Simply put, no matter how hard you work, you simply cannot outsmart your nervous system. 

Incoordination: 

There Are 2 Kinds Of Nerve Signals:  Efferent & Afferent 

• Efferent (like ‘exit’) are nerve signals that exit from your brain and go down to your muscles & joints – these signals create movement.
• Afferent are nerve signals that begin at your periphery (i.e. skin, muscle, joint, etc.) & work their way back up to your brain – these signals provide feedback after movement occurs to tell your brain what actually happened.

Until your joints are properly positioned and muscles receive constant, uninterrupted communication from your nerves, both your efferent & afferent signals are like a loose wire.  They are firing off, haphazardly, and your body is having to work twice as hard to control movement. 

Poor movement control = Poor coordination 

Poor coordination = Poor strength 

For example, incoordination may cause your forearms to work harder as you bench press, instead of the target muscle.  The result:  your forearms tire first and your chest is never fully stimulated.  The same is true on a lunge; your back leg will get tired before your front, and that’s not even where you’re supposed to “feel” the movement. 

Building a bridge between efferent & afferent signals will allow your coordination to improve, making advanced exercises easy, and improving the overall fluidity of every movement you make.  In other words, you’re nervous system will be effectively communicating with your musculature and as a result your body melts fat and builds muscle. 

Sub-sensory Pain Signals In Your Joints: 

Your body is constantly in pain, or, in other words, pain is very much relative.  You see, the types of nerve cells that respond to pain are never dormant; they are always awake, and they monitor the amount of activity at various areas of your body before reaching ‘threshold’ and setting off a chain of events resulting in palpable pain (pain that you actually “feel”). 

When joints are maligned and exercises are done in the wrong sequence, there is a slight increase of pain receptor activity that takes place.  Unfortunately, these nerve receptors send a message to your brain to turn muscles OFF and focus on eliminating the pain.  That’s why we go limp when we have back pain, for example. 

Now think about how much harder it must be for someone with overdeveloped pecs and a weak back to do shoulder raises.  As the imbalance grows, there will inevitably come a point where “rounded shoulders” caused by the aforementioned imbalance will actually force the deltoids (shoulders) to turn off, and the upper back (trapezius) will then take over the movement. 

From there, your upper trap attaches to your cervical spine, which creates and even bigger problem and more nerve signaling that’s turning off muscles as your trap pulls your spine out of place…yikes! 

The end result is a vicious cycle until you eliminate the issue altogether. 

Inflammation & Resultant Decreased Circulation: 

Following any workout your body is inflamed, or at least it should be.  Tiny little tears take place in your muscles, and this is what allows you to burn calories as the damage is repaired.  Meanwhile, your muscles grow. 

When there is more inflammation in your biceps, for example, than your triceps as a result of muscular imbalance between them, and one muscle is being over-shortened while the other muscle is over-lengthened, your lymphatic (healing) system will have a harder time getting rid of the swelling.  Once it does get rid of swelling, your lymphatic vessels are supposed to dump the fluid into your veins. 

Your muscle pump system (opposite muscle groups actually work like a pump to assist the venous system with the return of blood to the heart) becomes ineffective.  Your venous system, as a result, has to work harder, and your veins end up blocking your lymphatic vessels from ‘dumping’ their fluid and sucking up more. 

Swelling persists.  Over time, this will lead to more compression on nerves, and decreased blood supply to them as well.  Just like everything else in our bodies, our nerves need blood and oxygen to function at their best. 

And if they’re not getting it, guess what happens?  That’s right, nervous system inefficiency and decreased communication between nerves and muscles, leading to decreased fat loss and overall results. 

Improper Use Of Rest Periods In Exercise Program: 

Rest periods, when used properly, often do not rest your body at all.  In fact, there’s a such thing as ‘active rest’ and ‘passive rest,’ but most people don’t know how to choose which one they need during various points in their workouts: 

Active Rest – continue exercising, rest that particular muscle group 

Passive Rest – sit still and do nothing 

• When training for muscle building (i.e. bulking) passive rest periods are an intricate part of the program.

• When training multiple energy systems in your workout program, passive rest periods are essential to success with your second, third, and fourth sets.

• When training for endurance, circuit-style training is best, because it is a submaximal level over a prolonged period of time.  Naturally, this will lead to endurance, and you will be preparing your body for your particular goal.

• When training for fat loss, there has to be a balance between strength, energy system work, and endurance in order to become successful.  You have to build enough endurance to endure longer bouts of exercise without losing intensity, while you have to build enough strength to raise your metabolism.  It takes a carefully designed program to consider all factors for rest periods in a top-notch fat loss program.

Here’s The Bottom Line… 

You – yes, you – likely have quite a few “issues” that are holding you back from experiencing two to three times the fat loss results you’re currently experiencing.  With my new program, Full Throttle Fat Loss, I teach you how to address the ROOT problem, so that you can correct these issues and lose fat faster at the same time. 

Full Throttle Fat Loss becomes available on Tuesday, September 6th, but don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you hanging with just today’s information. 

In fact, tomorrow I’m going to be back with another article to teach you THREE ways you can start immediately improving central nervous system efficiency while overcoming each of the 5 “problems” we addressed today. 

The question you have to ask yourself is this: “Is setting myself up to double or triple my current rate of fat loss—whatever that may be—through a completely untapped medium, something I’m interested in?” 

If so, stay tuned for some serious “solutions” coming at you tomorrow. 

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I truly believe this is some of the most game-changing, revolutionary information to hit the fitness industry in years, and that’s exactly why I’m sharing it with you.  I will be posting the second part of this article tomorrow, but for now, please post your comments and questions for Kareem and I to answer below. 

Bring on the questions and comments!