Muscle Activation – Mike Hoban Podcast #26

In this podcast, Dr. Justin Marchegiani interviews Mike Hoban, a strengthening and conditioning expert to talk about the science of muscle activation in strengthening and enhancing athletic performance.

Find out the methods to reactivate our muscles by pressing the neurolymphatic points to restore and improve function.  Also the importance of proper nutrition and supplementation in building muscles, the different muscle testings, exercises to minimize injuries as well as the treatments available.

 

In this episode we cover:

01:46   Muscle activation points

15:37   Supplements for performance enhancement

17:41   Muscle Loosening and Gamma loop

26:26   Lactic Acid Training

29:50   Downside of Steroids  

 

 

 

 

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Justin Marchegiani:  Hi, this is Dr. Justin Marchegiani here.  Welcome back to Beyond Wellness Radio.  We have with us in studio, Mike Hoban and I am looking forward to a great chat with Mike.  Mike is a strengthening and conditioning coach.  He works with athletes at the collegiate level, the professional level and even kids in middle school and such.  Mike also works    with Arcway Technology which is a great technology for injury prevention and to speed up healing.    And before we go to Mike, I just want to remind everyone to check out beyondwellnessradio.com where they can get the show updates.  Feel free to click on ask-a-question and you can ask the question for us and we will answer it on the air.  And also check out justinhealth.com as well as fixyourthyroid.com for your female hormone and thyroid balancing video series.  Again, Mike how is it going, man?

Mike Hoban:  Awesome, Dr. Justin.  Thank you for having me.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes, it was great catching up with you back at the Bulletproof Conference in September and I just saw your lecture on muscle activation, was just phenomenal.  So, if anyone did not get a chance to view it can you just kind of give us a summary of what you talked about and about muscle activation?

Mike Hoban:  Sure.  Basically, all muscular activation really is turning on muscle that has been shut off for whatever reason.  So, there are many ways to do it as you know, we are both trained in similar fashion.  What I try to put together was a method for people to basically be able to reactivate the big three muscles on their own.  So the big three muscles were the psoas also known as the hips, the glutes and the hamstrings.  And that is all it really was.  So it was just a matter of showing people what points to press on to reactivate those three muscles to get out with their performance with better movement right after that.

Justin Marchegiani:  Now, during the seminar, you had people come up and you were testing their psoas, testing their glutes and their hamstrings and their hip extensors and you were finding ones that were weak and were not turned on.  So when you find a muscle that is weak what does that mean?  Is it like, is the person just not weak?  Or is it like the person just not getting the activation there?  Can you describe that?

Mike Hoban:  Yes.  Essentially what it is for whatever reason the muscle has shut down and gotten into a protective mechanism…

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  So when that happens obviously it goes into a short, basically like a wound-up position.  So think about like if you are in a fight and someone is about to hit you, you cover up and kind of tuck into a position where you are safe.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  Your muscles do the same thing.  So, by activating it you restore them to their normal life and they fire properly and basically operate at a higher level.

Justin Marchegiani:  Right, so you see people that still are strong, maybe from a hardware perspective, right?  The hardware is strong, the muscle is strong but from the software or the operating system perspective they are not neurologically strong.  Is that what you mean?

Mike Hoban:  Exactly.  I mean to give you an example.  First time I learned about some of these stuff I was studying with Dr. Jay up in Minnesota.  And I mean I am a decently strong guy.  I can still squat between 500 and 600 pounds.

Justin Marchegiani:  You are a beast, Mike.

Mike Hoban:  (Laughs) Not the beast I used to be but you can say that.

Justin Marchegiani:  (Laughs)

Mike Hoban:  He threw me on the table to test me and my psoas were just all large muscles, as you know.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  I could not hold them up.  He pushed me down with two fingers and then proceeded to make fun of me for the next 30 minutes.

Justin Marchegiani:  (Laughs) Got it.  So let us say I come in to you, right?  To see you and I have a weak hip flexor, weak psoas, weak glute, weak hamstring.  What would you do?  How would you assess me?

Mike Hoban:  Well, we will put you on a table basically to, you know, basic therapy table and we put you through a whole series of muscular tests.  So basically everything that I did at the conference and I have people lay down.  You put a limb in an extended position and apply force to it.  Not in a dangerous method but in a way basically just to test to see if the muscle is working properly or not.  And from there, you know, you get your response and see what you need to do. 

Justin Marchegiani:  Now from what I understand, the points that you are hitting, you are hitting these neurolymphatic points.  And just for people at home, if they put their hands at the back of their head and they feel that little ridge at the back of their head that is one of the points that Mike accesses.  So that little ridge right at the back of the head and you kind of find a real painful spot.  There is also one more right at the angle of the jaw, right where the jaw meets the neck.  And it is like kind of behind the earlobe and it is that really sensitive spot.  Now those correlate towards your glutes and your hamstring.  Now I know, again, a lot of people may not be able to get tested for their glute and hamstring.  But can you talk about how they would active their glutes and hamstrings with those points?

Mike Hoban:  Yes basically just what you talked about.  You feel around that ridge at the back of the head and the point you find in the jaw.  And you look for sensitive spots and those sensitive spots are signs.  Whenever those spots are tender or feel sensitive as you have said that is a sign of how shut down that muscle is.  So when you access them and you put pressure on them eventually those spots become less and less sensitive to the pressure.  And that is a sign that your hamstrings and glutes are firing better.  And most people will notice the difference especially with my athletes.  When I test them they will be able to up work on themselves and we noticed that some of the times they are faster and they are lifting more weight and they are doing things with better technique as well.

Justin Marchegiani:  Right.  So I see a lot of my patients and they may have like shutdown psoas or shutdown hip flexors, right?  Glutes.  And it is nice because we can say, “Hey, this is the spot to rub.”  So you may be like treating them.  You may be doing like some muscle spindle work or using the arc to get some of these muscles activated. But the nice things about these spots is you can actually give them exercises just to rub during a movement right when they are at a gym or if they are a baseball player at the plate.  You can give them movements and exercises to do right during the at bat or right during the movement to stimulate muscles, is that correct?

Mike Hoban:  Oh yes, it is a take home system and it is something that works very well.  It really helps to exacerbate, you know, whatever type of therapy you or myself are putting the individual through.  It helps to basically solidify it, is how I look at it.

Justin Marchegiani:  And I remember when you treated me, I would say about a year and a half at the first Bulletproof Conference, you did a maneuver where you were testing the oblique muscles.

Mike Hoban:  Yes.

Justin Marchegiani:   So the oblique or the abdominal muscles and you are twisting me or turning me.  So anyone that throws the baseball or hit the tennis racket or swings the golf club or swings the baseball bat, again that is the core muscle that are going to be turning your hips.  And I remember with me, you had me rub the inside part of my adductors or groin areas and I was like ten times stronger.  Can you talked about that movement and how people could do at home?

Mike Hoban:  Yes.  It is a very simple technique.  I mean, the easiest way to test it at home would probably be to, because you can test your ads on your own, I would say do a sit up and see how long you can hold up that position.  So try to get to a 45° angle and try to stay there.  Most people would have a difficulty doing these.  They are going to have to either start compensating and using their tibialis or you know using your arms to help them stay up there.  And the activation itself is really simple.  So you put your hands inside your legs and you basically rub up and down, you know.  What we say with the male athletes is you rub these nuts.

Justin Marchegiani:  (Laughs)

Mike Hoban:  Pardon my French.

Justin Marchegiani:  (Laughs) Oh, man.

Mike Hoban:  (Laughs) And you do that for about 10 seconds and then you re‑test and that is a very, very quick activation.  And people see results very quickly with it and that is all it takes.  And most people can hold that position, you know, probably if you held it for 10 seconds the first time and probably hold it for 30 to 40 seconds after the treatment.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  So we just did the abdo obliques there, we did the extensor, the glute and the hamstring.  And by the way, is the one on the back of the head is that the glutes or is that the one on the side of the jaw?

Mike Hoban:  The jaw is the hamstrings.  The back of the head is the glutes.

Justin Marchegiani:  Okay, got it.  Are there any more of those points that you know of that someone listening to this show would be able to use right away?

Mike Hoban:  There’s a bunch of them.  Those are the big three.  Those are the main three.  Probably the other one that is the most important would be the psoas activation.

Justin Marchegiani:  And where is that point?

Mike Hoban:  That is medial to, I will just use layman’s terms, the hip bone.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  So the ASIS you would come medial probably about an inch to two inches and start looking for a tender spot there.

Justin Marchegiani:  So for anyone listening put your hands kind of where your pockets would go and feel for that really bony prominence that kind of sticks out, that is the ASIS and go in one inch.

Mike Hoban:  Uh-humm.

Justin Marchegiani:  Alright, cool.  And then everyone, you are just rubbing that or stimulating it, for what 5 or 10 seconds?

Mike Hoban:  Yes.  You want to get pretty deep on it.  You want to use, relatively speaking 8 to 12 pounds of pressure because you have to…  You know if you are a little bit of a thicker individual you probably need to push a little harder.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes, got it.

Mike Hoban:  Because you do have to stimulate that nerve bundle but you have to get in.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  Okay, cool.  So Mike, tell me about some of the athletes and some of the people that you work with.  I know you worked with a lot of professional athletes as well.  And what are the things that you are doing to help people get to the next level, get drafted to play at a high professional level?

Mike Hoban:  Well, the biggest thing we do is the minute the individual walks in our door is we start with an evaluation.

Justin Marchegiani:  Great.

Mike Hoban:  And we look at, I look at so many things I do not even know where to start.  I train a lot of pitchers.

Justin Marchegiani:  Uh-humm.

Mike Hoban:  And so pitchers just about always have what I call, I just refer to it as a pitcher’s retroversion.  It is basically their push leg, the ankle is always sprained.  And it is not because they actually sprained it.  It is the position that it goes into when they push off the mat.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  So if you ever look at that, a pitcher actually rolls his own ankle on the opposite direction from where he is throwing the ball and where his body is going.  This is the rubber, the way they use the rubber off the mound.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.

Mike Hoban:  So that is one of the things that we end up doing.  We end up doing like a tib-fib technique which I do not know if your audience is familiar with that.  But we basically just throw a little tape on the ankle and that makes sure that all those muscles in the leg keep firing in the proper method.  Once we do that that is kind of what we consider, you know ground zero.  When everything is firing properly and working that is when we go into, you know, the basic strategies in training and what not.

Justin Marchegiani:  Great.  And so just to describe for everyone at home, a tib-fib technique Mike is talking about is a shock absorber technique.  Essentially you are taking the tibia or the bottom part where the calf is and you are whacking the heel.  You are whacking the heel in right towards the tibia kind of like you were running and you are simulating force going to the joint.  Because how the body is lined up is if force does not get absorbed properly into the joint because the joint is not stable, it actually sends nerve signals to the brain to shut down the muscle. If the joint is stable it will send signals to accrue the muscle.  So what Mike is talking about is whacking the bottom of the heel right in line with tibia.  And we test any other muscle in the body and it will shut down if that joint is unstable.  And this is important because an ankle issue can cause weakness anywhere in the body.  It can probably take what, 5 or 10 miles per hour off a fast ball?

Mike Hoban:  Oh easily, it can do that and you can have close to half a second to a 40.

Justin Marchegiani:  Wow!

Mike Hoban:  Yes.

Justin Marchegiani:  Unreal.

Mike Hoban:  We have seen that if they are in a fatigued state and if they have been going for a while the other 45 will drop dramatically.

Justin Marchegiani:  Now I find that is a huge thing in the athletes and professional people that I see, it is the tib-fib.  Now is there anything like that that you would consider like a deal breaker?

Mike Hoban:  Good question.  Probably, again as I primarily deal with baseball players but I see it in every sport, there is always a pelvic imbalance.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  And that is because it seems no matter what sport we are into there is always one side that is favored over the other.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  So that is a big thing we need to restore right away as well.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  And can you talk a little bit more about diet and kind of what you are teaching your athletes to eat?

Mike Hoban:  Well, the high school kids you basically just pray that they are not stuffing some coke right down their necks 24/7.

Justin Marchegiani:  (Laughs) Right.

Mike Hoban:  But as far as diet, the thing that we would look at are adequate protein intake.  Good essential fats.  Grains which is, you know, a war in and of itself with these people and then proper hydration.   Those are the four basic things we look for initially.  After we kind of get those things in line that is when we can start to move on to the more complex stuff.  Diet is one of those things where it is much psychology as it is physiology.  And you really have to kind of give people what they can handle because food is a very sensitive subject with a lot of people.

Justin Marchegiani:  Right.  Can you touch upon protein?  What are your recommendations for protein to people that are trying to put on muscle or athletes and such?

Mike Hoban:  It depends on the individual.  It depends on how quick the metabolism works.  You know how often they are training.  Are they in a sport or out of a sport?  For the sedentary athlete who is training, you know, about three times a week and we train hard.  We do lift heavy weights…

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  We try to get them to get a gram of protein per pound of body weight.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes, that makes sense.

Mike Hoban:  Yes.  Whether that actually happens or not is another story.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  Like I said especially dealing with high school kids because you know cookies are so much tastier than a protein shake.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  But you try to make sure they, at least while they are here at the facility, you know, they are drinking their protein and doing what they are supposed to do after their workout and taking their supplements during their workout as well.

Justin Marchegiani:  That makes sense. That makes sense.  And taking about supplements, are there any supplements that you recommend for training or to improve performance or stamina, things like that?

Mike Hoban:  The biggest thing I recommend most people use is good omega 3.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  Aside from the certain staples that we always recommend.  We always recommend magnesium.  We always recommend protein powder and omega 3 because you want to keep insulin and inflammation in proper levels.

Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Mike Hoban:  We are always going to have some level of those but you want to keep it in the proper level.  Like I said, protein and magnesium I think is huge.

Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Mike Hoban: Just because that is the nutrient of insulin sensitivity.  There are just so many functions in the body that magnesium helps with.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  Got it.  And you are obviously trying to cut grains out of these kids’ diets too, right?

Mike Hoban:  Yes.  You want to eliminate all the bad stuff.  But like I said, it is very, gluten especially, because you know, go and tying it with inflammation.  But like I said it is got to be a slow process because you have to kind of give and take, if you know what I mean.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  If you take something out of their diet I have to give them something back somewhere along the line.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  So let us say I am an athlete or I am a person and I am trying to run faster or sprint faster.  Like what are the things that you would look at in my kinetic chain?  What are the things that you would want me to do in my exercise routine so I can sprint faster or move faster?

Mike Hoban:  Well, we have to look at what is going with you at first.  So if you need to sprint faster I am going to guess there is a problem to begin with.  So nine times out of ten with the kids we see, they are what we call push runners where they are relying on the musculatures to the front of their body.  So when they try to run from their quads or from their psoas which just does not work, that is not our muscles of propulsion so to speak.  So first thing that we need to do in that case is to get them dominant back to their glutes and hamstrings.   And from there, we look at ankles, we look at rotator cuff, we look at how everything fires properly, what is the posture you are in.  So just to give you an example because I am kind of rambling here, first thing that we would start to do is to strengthen the ankle joint.  So I like to do a lot of barefoot stuff.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  Just kick off their shoes and they start to do things like wine hops which is an exercise as simple as it sounds.  You just hop back and forth over a line on one foot.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  Another thing that we would do is like trampoline squats where they have to basically engage the muscles in different planes.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  And anything even like toe walks, basic stuff where they are up on the balls of their feet and recruiting the muscles properly and squeezing their glutes as they step.  Because that is going to teach the body basically how to land in the right position and propels off properly.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  Got it.  And it is fascinating what you said because I find a lot of people, their glutes and their hamstrings are off mainly because they are just sitting all day and that psoas basically reciprocates and inhibits that glute muscle so the whole extensor chain in the back is just shut down, right?

Mike Hoban:  Uh-huh.  Definitely, definitely.  And a lot of it I find with these athletes.  We start these kids at such a young age and in some of these sports like for example, soccer.  You know, where it is a stop start score and these kids do not know how to decelerate on the glutes and hamstrings.  So they start relying on the musculature in front of their body and that develops kind of a push run syndrome.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  So if I am a person, an athlete or even just a regular everyday person coming to see you, you have talked about the Arcway Technology which is a specific bioelectric device that I know you use with your athletes for performance enhancement as well as injury healing.  How would you incorporate that into your program?

Mike Hoban:  Again it depends on the individual.  But one thing we do like to do is the loosening.  It is probably the best function on that machine.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  So, pre-workout we loosen and post-workout we loosen.  Doing it in the beginning gets the muscle to go back to its original life and myofibril is back where it should which allow for better range of motion for most people. And it allows for the muscles to fire properly as we are talking about.  That works much better once the muscles are activated.  So whether someone is put in balance or doing their lymphatic points they get even range of motion from loosening after we have done that.  Post workout, what it really does is helps restore the muscle fibers and reduce some limits.  That is huge for most people because they feel like they have worked but they do not feel like they are dead the next stop.  And that is really like psychological for a lot of people.

Justin Marchegiani:  So you just said something very interesting.  I never thought about using the electricity coming through over those neurolymphatic points.  And you are saying you get great results using it over the points as well.

Mike Hoban:  Yes.  You can do that or you just stimulate the points prior to.

Justin Marchegiani:  Okay.

Mike Hoban:  I have done stuff where like, because you know you can Arc your own hand and do things like the ARP.  I have actually Arc my own hand and done some activation points on people.  They were not overly appreciative about the time that they were there afterwards.

Justin Marchegiani:  (Laughs) That is great.

Mike Hoban:  They were a little angry with me during the process and when they found out they were a lab rat they were really angry.  But after that they got over it.

Justin Marchegiani:  Nice.  Now you mentioned like loosening.  You were using the current to loosen the muscle.  You were using it afterwards to helps regain elasticity after the workout.  What about during the workout?  Are you putting current into the muscle to see if we can recruit more muscle fiber during the movement?  Did you do things like that at all?

Mike Hoban:  On occasion.  On occasion we do some gamma loop stuff where we attach it into an extensor to get a response from another extensor.  So one of the things that is kind of known in the Arc community is if you want to get the hamstrings to fire more you put the Arc on someone’s triceps.

Justin Marchegiani:  Okay.  Can you talk more about this gamma loop?  This is fascinating.

Mike Hoban:  Okay.  So the gamma loop is basically to put it in quite simple terms, all extensors in our body are related and all flexors in our body are related as well.

Justin Marchegiani:  Okay.  So kind of how we embryologically form, the extensors are related together and the flexors are, right?  That is what you said?

Mike Hoban:  Yes.

Justin Marchegiani:  Okay, got it.

Mike Hoban:  So by attaching the arc to one extensor you are going to get a response in all the extensors.  So by putting it on the triceps which is an elbow extensor you will get a response and the hamstrings and glutes which are hip extensors.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  Okay.  That makes sense.  And if we do bicep that would be the bicep and the psoas?

Mike Hoban:  Bicep and the psoas and the quad.

Justin Marchegiani:  Okay got it.  Very interesting.  Alright.  So is there anything else you wanted to touch upon that you find as just very helpful for people trying to perform better?  Like just key foundational things.

Mike Hoban:  I think one exercise that is very under graded for most individuals and we do not do enough of it because it is not really a sexy exercise is the Superman.

Justin Marchegiani:  Ah, okay.  Can you talk about the Superman, how does it work?

Mike Hoban:  Well, basically the Superman is just an exercise where you lie on your stomach face down and you lift your opposite arm and your opposite leg and reestablish what is called a cross crawl pattern which is something we kind of lose.  Because in our society as kids, were brought to our feet too quickly.  We are not allowed to crawl and really establish those proper neural patterns and that kind of messes us up later in life.  People want their kids on their feet, you know too quickly and they establish poor patterns at such a young age and you have to break them later on as they become athletes and when they want to progress.

Justin Marchegiani:  Absolutely.  And for anyone listening, who is a parent and has children; do not force your kids to walk too soon.  Do not try to pick them up and have them walk.  Do not put them in a Jolly Jumper that actually destroys their cross crawl neurological system.  It screws up the development of their cervical curve in their neck.  Because when they crawl for that, you know 12 to 14 months they develop that cervical curve for the child has to look up.  I agree.  I see so many people these days where they just like pushing their kid to walk so soon making their kid like an Einstein because they can walk sooner.  I am like, “No, you are pushing them through important developmental periods.”

Mike Hoban:  Exactly.  And it is one of those things were you know, like they say at people, “You need to learn to crawl before you learn to walk.”  We are kind of skipping that step.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes. I was like looking at family pictures where I saw me in a Jolly Jumper which are the things attached to the doorway and then you jump up and down in them.  And I was like 6 months old and I am like, “Oh, my God!  My neurological pathways are not developed by then.”

Mike Hoban:  Yes.  I think my parents just kind of used me as a soccer ball when I was a kid.  That was what messed up my neurological patterns.

Justin Marchegiani:  (Laughs) So when you see your athletes coming in how do you make the connection that there is a cross crawl deficiency maybe when they were younger to their movements as an adult or teenager?

Mike Hoban:  Well, one of the easiest ways is just have them run and we will see nine times out of ten in some of these kids who were put through these things when they were young they will actually try to run same on same leg as opposed to doing opposite on opposite like we were supposed to.

Justin Marchegiani:  You know that is funny you say that, Mike because when I treat a lot of patients every now and then I get a fair amount of patients when we are doing like, we are working on the hip flexor or the extensors or we are kind of like marching in place, you know, the exercise we were doing with the Arc.  And they are marching in place and they just, for the life of them, do not synchronize their hands and feet.

Mike Hoban:  It is crazy, right?

Justin Marchegiani:  It is like, no, no, no.  Like this and then do this and then you just try to break it down really.  So there are some people I have to take their arms totally out of the equation because they could not sync them out.

Mike Hoban:  Yes, it is funny because if you actually do a muscle test on someone, say you test their shoulder and you test them on.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  If you have them marching properly so like right arm, right leg, left arm left leg.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  And have them do that five or ten times and you retest their arm it will be weaker.

Justin Marchegiani:  Oh, really?  I would repeat it, Oh, wow!  Yes that totally makes sense.

Mike Hoban:  Yes because they shut down their own neural system.

Justin Marchegiani:  So if they are doing their left arm left leg or right arm right leg at the same time it shuts down the neurology.

Mike Hoban:  Oh, yes and it will weaken it to a point where you can push that arm down with two fingers, it is crazy.

Justin Marchegiani:  Wow!  Wow!  Unreal.

Mike Hoban:  And the funny thing is to reestablish it if you shut it down in ten strides that is going to take 20 strides to reestablish it.

Justin Marchegiani:  So you had to put in more feedback into the system to kind of correct itself.

Mike Hoban:  Yes, you got to really reboot it.

Justin Marchegiani:  Okay.  Well, I got an email recently from Ben Greenfield and it was an article on sleep that he had written.  It is very fascinating.  I wanted to kind of run it by you.

Mike Hoban:  Sure.

Justin Marchegiani:  How important is sleep for recovery?

Mike Hoban:  Oh, it is huge.  It is huge. Because I mean that is when we secrete our hormones, growth hormones and what not to help our body recover.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  That is when our immune system recovers.  That is also when our nervous system recovers.  So sleep is enormous.  You know, I recommend just to try to get 8 to 10 hours, if possible.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  And is there a particular window in which falling asleep at this time is better than another time?

Mike Hoban:  Well I would say falling asleep prior to 11 pm for most people is good because of the cortisol.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  So obviously cortisol is kind of a, well, I was going to say a necessary evil, but cortisol is actually our friend for part of the day.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.  Absolutely.

Mike Hoban:  But you want to have that secreted at a certain time and when you are sleeping it actually helps with some of the rebuilding process with regards to testosterone and estrogen and what not.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  Got it, okay.  So if I am someone coming into your practice and let us say I am not like a professional or a college athlete but I am just someone that wants to be more active and wants to lose fat or to lose weight doing the absolute least amount of work, what would you recommend?

Mike Hoban:  Well, if you are ready for it, and that is the big thing because you have to give the body what it is ready for and what it is going to accept.  So if you go beyond that that is when things like overtraining and injuries happen.  But if you want the most bang for the buck, lactic acid training is probably where it is going to be at.

Justin Marchegiani:  Alright.  This is similar to what Body by Science I think.    Is it Dr. Doug McGuff, he talks about these stuff, too?

Mike Hoban:  I believe he does, yes.

Justin Marchegiani:  So if I am an individual and I want to try this lactic acid training and I think Poliquin also talks about it, too.  Correct?

Mike Hoban:  Uh-huh.  Yes Charles has also some on it, yes.

Justin Marchegiani:  So how would I go about applying this and using it?

Mike Hoban:  So what you want to do to increase lactic acid, you want to use big muscle groups and you want it to go for long durations of time.  Now when I say long durations, I mean up to a minute.  So if you are going to do it in a weight lifting workout, we will do something like a barbell back squat for, you know maybe 10 reps with a 4-second eccentric and a 1-second concentric.  Do that for ten, rest about a minute and you go right into an upper body exercise, say like a Lat pulldown, 10 reps same count.  And you want to basically establish as much time under tension as you can to increase as much lactic acid production as you can and increase the calorie burn.

Justin Marchegiani:  Okay.  Alright, got it.  So you would do that and typically you would choose like squat movements.  I know Doug McGuff has like, he does a lot of machine stuff.  So would you do like a leg press?  What would you recommend?

Mike Hoban:  You could.  I mean you can do leg press.   It depends on the individual.  If you are someone who is working out alone and you are not really familiar with weights then yes by all means use a machine.  If you are overweight I would stay away from the leg press just because you are not going to get the good range of motion that you are going to need and it is also going to push on your stomach and your internal system and it is going to cause a lot of pressure to go to your head.  Probably not the best feeling in the world for most people.  But yes machines are always a good option.  You can even do like a goblet squat.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  To start out.  And then go right to a hamstring crawl or something of that nature.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.

Mike Hoban:  Yes. So I would probably go just to lay one out really simply, say like either a body weight or a goblet squat, you know, and then take a minute rest go to the lat pulldown, 10 reps 4 seconds on the eccentric stroke and 1 second on the concentric stroke.  Repeat that four times.  Reps two minutes; move on to your next sequence.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.  That makes a lot of sense.

Mike Hoban:  Uh-huh.

Justin Marchegiani:  Now there a lot of emphasis put on especially for weight loss and I do it with my patients as well which is like burst training or high intensity interval training.  Can you comment upon that?

Mike Hoban:  Yes.  I mean it is a great concept and it works really well for people.  You have to again going back to, I am going to sound like a broken record here, but you have to go back to what the person is ready to handle at that time.

Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Mike Hoban:  So, sprints work great.  I think for most people it is finding the proper modality to do it then.

Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Mike Hoban:  When I do my sprints I like to use either like a recumbent bike or sometimes the rower if I am feeling especially masochistic that day.

Justin Marchegiani:  Ha-ha.

Mike Hoban: Those are the two I tend to go.  I do not really like the treadmill for that.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.  Yes, that makes sense.  Okay, alright.  Now I am going to go on some juicy stuff here.

Mike Hoban:  Okay.  We love juice.

Justin Marchegiani:  I love it, I love it.  Actually on that topic, what is your opinion?  I know you have lots of athletes at all levels.  What is your opinion on taking steroids?  What do you see?  I mean, obviously there are great gains on the short run.  What do you see in the long run?  What is your take on it?  Honestly just off the cup.

Mike Hoban:  My take on steroids.

Justin Marchegiani:  And to just be clear, we are taking about anabolic steroids..

Mike Hoban:  Uh-huh.

Justin Marchegiani:  That typically you would inject for athletic performance enhancement.

Mike Hoban:  Yes, that stuff is kind of a buzz right now.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  As with anything we take in this world, there is use and abuse.

Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Mike Hoban:  Though they can be taken properly and used to get an effect with minimal side effects or they can be abused and you can completely damage yourself later on in life.  I know of people that have really abused steroids for a long period of time and you know; now they do not have testosterone in their body.  Their cortisol levels are so low that they are in constant joint pain because they have no way to suppress anything.  So it is one of those things where you can use it but you know, at what cost?  What is going to come later on in life?  And I think that is that thing, too many people are far too near‑sighted and they do not just use it, they abuse it.  And that is what causes problems there down the road.

Justin Marchegiani:  And I have worked with a handful of professional athletes, too.  And one of the things I see, the main motivation why a lot of athletes use steroids is not just for performance enhancement, it is because they keep on getting freaking injured.  And I see a lot of people it is like, “Who makes it through the college ranks, and the minors or into the professionals?”  It is like, “Who can like withstand the injury and the abuse to your body?”  And a lot of people are using these things just to heal faster from their injuries.  What is your take on that?

Mike Hoban:  I think it is a temporary fix to a permanent problem.  Generally speaking when people get injured in a sport like, let us look a sport like baseball; it is because their body is not prepped properly for what they are going to be up against.  So, you know if you go into a sport like baseball or football where your muscles are imbalanced and there is an uneven pull on your musculature or on your skeletal system, yes as soon as you throw too hard or take a hit something bad is going to happen.  And something is going to pop, something is going to tear.  And I think that is the thing that people neglect.  So taking a steroid to help yourself recover faster, okay.  But what are you doing to remedy the actual issue?

Justin Marchegiani:  Right.  So like basically, steroids are just stimulating the body to heal but if the underlying imbalance, the underlying physiological, neurological imbalance is still there, well, it is like you are just putting a Band‑Aid on like a gaping wound.   It is just not going to be enough to fix it.

Mike Hoban:  Exactly.  You are putting a Band-Aid on a ruptured femoral artery.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Mike Hoban:  Nothing is going to change you are still going to bleed out.

Justin Marchegiani:  Got it, got it.  Well I think we were talking earlier, you are having this new site come up.  Can you talk about this new site?  Like what is the address?  And what are the things that you are promoting and offering on the site like?

Mike Hoban:  So we are going to have a website probably up in hopefully a couple of months.  We are still collecting a little bit of data and trying to write some articles.  It is called Magni-Fitscience.  And what we are going to do is we are going to offer some really quality supplements at a very good rate to the public.  And we are also going to have some online training and we are going to be posting informative videos and informative articles on how to make fitness a part of your life.  And how to easily streamline it in and make it not so much of a burden and make it kind of a, how can I put this, more convenient to people.

Justin Marchegiani:  More convenient.  Got it.  So if someone wants to workout with you like via Skype would you be able to help people like that?

Mike Hoban:  Yes.  Definitely.  We can write programs.  We just need to collect a little bit of data and we can definitely send something out.

Justin Marchegiani:  Great.  Mike, is there anything else you that want to share with our listeners that you think will be really beneficial at all that we have not touch on?

Mike Hoban:  Let us see.  There are so many things.  Proper supplementation, proper recovery and proper nutrition will take you much further in improving your life than most people realize, I think.

Justin Marchegiani:  That is great.  Awesome, Mike.  Hey, I think our listeners will love everything you have to say and I really appreciate you coming on the show.

Mike Hoban:  Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Justin.

Justin Marchegiani:  Thanks, Mike.

Mike Hoban:  Thank you.