What if the biggest limitation in your training isn’t effort but the fact that your exercises don’t align with how your muscles are actually designed to move?

In this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, Steven Sashen speaks with Michael Kamalu, Founder of Dr. Gains, who explains why “perfect form” varies by body, how regional muscle activation affects strength and development, and why conventional workouts often neglect rotational movement. He also shares the thinking behind the Gains Hammer, a tool he designed to better load rotational movement and help people train muscles through a more complete range of motion.

Key Takeaways:
→ Generic workout advice cannot fully account for individual anatomy, goals, and injury history.
→ Different regions of the same muscle can respond differently depending on angle, speed, and resistance.
→ Perfect form is not universal because anatomy can vary significantly from person to person.
→ Understanding your starting anatomy can help you train more effectively and realistically.
→ The biceps, rotator cuff, pronators, and supinators all play important roles in rotational movement.

Michael Kamalu is the founder of Dr. Gains and an entrepreneur with a background in medicine, research, health, and fitness. He trained at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine on a full scholarship and published research with an orthopedic surgeon for a professional sports team before leaving medicine to build three seven-figure companies in health and fitness.

His work now focuses on solving practical training problems through product innovation and education. After repeatedly seeing grip strength limit performance before the target muscle was fully challenged, and recognizing the lack of effective tools for loading rotational movement, Michael spent three years developing the Gains Hammer through 17 prototypes.

Today, more than 260,000 people follow his research and training content on YouTube, including physicians, therapists, coaches, and fitness professionals.

Connect With Michael:
Website: https://www.dr-gains.com/
Links Mentioned in Episode: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/michaelkamalu/gains-hammer?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doctorgains/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drgains_official
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-kamalu/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drgains_official
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/drgains

Connect with Steven:
Xero Shoes: https://xeroshoes.com/
X: https://x.com/XeroShoes
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xeroshoes/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/xeroshoes

Episode Transcript

Steven Sashen
If you’ve been working out, maybe the difference between the results you’re currently getting and the results you really want is just like, you know, a little twist way. And I mean that literally. And you’ll find out why in a second. I’m Stephen Sashin, co founder and chief barefoot officer here at Xero Shoes, and this is the Movement Movement podcast. We call it that because we are making a movement that includes you. I’ll tell you how in a second. It’s really easy about natural movement, doing what your body is made to do. Instead of getting in the way. We break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies you’ve been told about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body, starting feet first, you know, those things that are the end of your legs, that are your foundation. And we also, you know, show you what it takes to do whatever it is you like to do. Yoga, CrossFit, lifting high rocks, rowing, pickleball. Hopefully it’s not pickleball, tennis, whatever. And to do that effectively, efficiently and enjoyably. Wait, did I say. Oh God, Michael, you shouldn’t have said that. And I mentioned enjoyably because if you’re not doing something you like, you’re not going to keep doing it. So find something you enjoy and have a good time. So the way you can be involved is really simple. It’s what you know how to do. Just give us a thumbs up or a like or hit the bell icon count on YouTube or give us a 5 star rating somewhere. Go to the website www.jointhemovementmovement.com. nothing you have to do to join, just that’s where you find all the previous episodes, all the ways you can find us in social media and if you want to find us on a different place than you already did, places to do that as well. In short, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. So let’s get started. Michael, do me a favor, Tell people who the hell you are and what the hell you’re doing here.

Michael Kamalu
Well, thank you, Stephen, for having me. I’m the founder of a couple different companies, but the one we’re talking about today is called Dr. Gaines. I started it when I was a medical student at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine. And it is science based health and fitness with some unique approaches to the way it’s done. And in a way it aligns very well with, with, you know, the whole Movement podcast, everything you just mentioned as you made that introduction and that is to exercise in a way that your muscles are actually made for. Right. And a lot of this equipment you see is not made to produce force in a way that aligns with your muscles. So we’ll discuss that, I’m sure. And also personalizing training to your body, your goals, your injury history. A lot of the training advice, if not all of it that is online, is generic, made for the average body, which doesn’t exist. Nobody is average head to toe. And so it’s really important to personalize everything to your body as well. So there’s a. I don’t know how much you want me to go into the other elements of the business.

Steven Sashen
Well, let me, let me, let me pause There. So, Dr. Gaines, I always love that. And there’s a whole. There’s been a big movement lately in the online fitness world in particular about science based and evidence based lifting, evidence based hypertrophy and, you know, and strength building and all these. But the whole thing has been that it’s evidence based and science based. What’s your take on the state of affairs with that way people are framing things and what they’re actually talking about and teaching?

Michael Kamalu
Well, that’s a great question because unfortunately that term is now used all over the place and with very loose connections to actual science. Now I agree with the fundamental principle behind it. I am glad. You know, when I started the brand, what is it, six years ago now, seven years ago, something like that, there was not nearly as much emphasis on evidence based training as there is now. But what’s, I think still missing is the quality of that evidence that people need to know that not all studies are created equal. Right. You also need to sometimes follow the money, see who actually funded the study being done. But the problem is people. The average layperson isn’t trained to be able to actually read a scientific article and understand it. So most people are dependent on others to translate that research into actual understandable terms. And this is something I’ve actually, I have created an online database called Laymed, which is modeled after PubMed. And the purpose is actually to translate all of these scientific articles into a way that is understandable for people. And yeah, that’s not released yet, but that’s.

Steven Sashen
Oh, cool, cool. I’m looking forward to that. I mean, you know, to your point, not only is it difficult to read one of these and understand what things to look for to know if it’s valid, but there’s some things that you’ll never be able to find. And the example that I’ve given often is there’s a researcher who was at the University of Colorado who did a study that basically. Well, he said that he had a number of accomplished barefoot runners in the study and he didn’t name who they were nor did he say why he called them accomplished barefoot runners. But I said to him, as we had the one and only beer that we had together and it’ll be obvious why in a moment, I said, look, I know all the barefoot runners in town. I’m one of them. And I know the people that are in your study and neither I nor the people that I know are in your study. And the people that were are not accomplished barefoot runners. They do a little bit of barefoot training on the grass at the end of their normal training. That’s a completely different thing. And by the way, the sample size was so small that it’s really a pilot study. And he just got, you know, furious at me because it was like 12 people and so not a whole lot of data there. And sponsored by Nike. It was a Nike sponsored lab. Now I’m actually this can send something really funny, really quick and I’ve talked about this before, so I don’t want to dive into it too much. I’m not going to complain that Nike sponsored the study only because on their own website they published a study that they put the money up for someone else did it. So they called it independent, but they put up the money. And I think they may have designed the protocol, but it showed that their best selling running shoe injured over 30% of the people wearing it in 12 weeks. And one of their. And a new shoe they developed only quote, unquote, only injured 14 and a half percent of the people. And if they’re going to put on their own website results that bad, after 50 years of research and development that proved that different shoe designs cause different injury rates, you know, more power to you. Now arguably they might be doing that so that if someone ever sues them they can go. But look, it’s on our website even though it’s on a page that no one ever reads. But anyway, so the money thing is, can be important if you look at that statistically as well. Anyway, so since you’re, since you are Dr. Gaines, and I agree with you that the use of evidence based and science based is a little tricky. How would you think about what you’re doing given what you said about using muscles the way they’re made? And this will lead into why we’re explicitly having this conversation about that little twist for people. How would you say that you’re approaching things differently than people who are, let’s just say, you know, more mainstreamly available. I mean, there’s people who have, you know, millions and millions and millions of followers. Let’s say those people. I won’t mention them by name, not because I have a thing against them, just it’s not worth mentioning.

Michael Kamalu
So just to make sure I understood correctly, just how am I approaching training in general?

Steven Sashen
Yeah. So like, give me an example of something that, if you can think of one, where there may be a, quote, science or evidence based something and you have a different take on it. I’m pointing, I’m pointing this at you since you established the brand as Dr. Gaines. And there’s two words in there, I want to address each one of them. Let’s start with the doctor One first.

Michael Kamalu
Yeah, well, I, I can give a few examples then. One of those is the principle of scientific word. Non homogeneous activation. Late term uneven muscle growth. Okay. This is far more rampant than people realize, and it’s because it harkens back to what I said at the beginning here. The equipment we have in general is not made in a way that aligns with how muscles actually produce force. So, for example, pick your muscle, say it’s biceps, because you can see it easily here.

Steven Sashen
You can do this.

Michael Kamalu
Yeah. A, a bicep moves the forearm in an arc. Right. It’s, it’s generating force in an arc, not in a straight line.

Steven Sashen
Right.

Michael Kamalu
Free weights and cables can only generate linear resistance, which, meaning.

Steven Sashen
Right.

Michael Kamalu
They’re only applying maximum load at one point in that range of motion. Right. When, if it’s a dumbbell.

Steven Sashen
Let’s do the benefit of the doubt and you know, a small bit of an arc.

Michael Kamalu
Yeah, well, so, so maximum load is. At one point there is still load. You know that.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
You’re getting pretty load on either side of that, but at the bottom and the top. Right. Zero.

Steven Sashen
Nothing.

Michael Kamalu
Right. And that is critical. People don’t realize how critical that is because activation does not happen equally across the full length of the muscle. The muscle is broken up into fascicles. And each of those can feel dramatically different loads and activation depending on, I mean, the, the, the point of maximum resistance is one of them. I’ll give an example again with the biceps. If you were to load the biceps with your elbow fully extended, you get dramatically more activation in the distal region of the biceps than you do closer to elbow.

Steven Sashen
For people. Yeah, for people who are listening. So, so, yeah, imagine your arm being straight and the distal part is farther away, so closest to your elbow. So that’s where you’re getting the maximum force when you’re, when your arm is mostly straight.

Michael Kamalu
Exactly. So think of a preacher curl. Right? Except when with your upper arms, like horizontal, fully horizontal, so you have them resting, say on a table and you’re doing curls with a dumbbell like that. If you try that, first of all, you’ll feel immediately how big of a difference that is. You’ll feel, wow, my muscle never gets trained this way. Right, because it doesn’t. And then the opposite side of that spectrum, let’s say, is a, a spider curl where you’re that maximum point. The point of maximum resistance is at the very end of the range of motion when your elbow is almost completely bent.

Steven Sashen
So just for the fun of it, describe a spider curl, because that’s one that most people don’t know at all.

Michael Kamalu
Okay, sorry. So, spider curl.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
Let’s say you have a bench that is at a slight incline and you’re laying belly down, you know, face down on that bench, and then you are doing curls in that position. So your body, your upper body is mostly horizontal to the ground and you’re doing curls. The result of being in that position is your forearms don’t end up at 90 degrees to gravity, to vertical until your elbow is almost fully bent. And research shows that that biases the proximal or upper region of the biceps far more than the lower. So what, what does this mean? It means if you always are doing dumbbell curls standing straight, you are, you are triggering severe, right, imbalanced growth because you are hitting only the same region of the muscle maximally, day after day, week after week, month after month. And then what happens? You get into the wild, into nature, and you’re forced into a situation that loads the muscle in a way you haven’t strengthened and popped. Right. That, that’s where the injuries come from.

Steven Sashen
So, and, and even strengthen. I want to address that. There’s another version of that. So I had a situation in last indoor track season where I’m warming up. I was going to run the 60 meters indoors. Everything was going totally, totally fine during my warm up. I felt totally great. I had like two minutes before my heat was going to go off. And the blocks they had for me to start in had the. I set mine at 45 degrees or my back foot at 45 degrees and they only had either 40 or 50. Now that doesn’t sound like much, 5 degrees either way. But I, because I didn’t know how to make that choice to set it at 50. So basically it’s further, it’s closer to the ground. So that means there’s an extra little bit of stretch that I would get when I’m just coming out of the blocks. And I had the muscle strength for it. But that little extra stretch happened so quickly that my body went, whoa, whoa, whoa. And just everything seized up. So I didn’t pull anything. It just went, oh, can’t move that fast because it just wasn’t used to that amount of force at that little spot and not. And the force is the acceleration part of that, not the strength part of that. So, same kind of thing that we’re talking about. If you’re not training. I mean, this is a really interesting thing. If you’re not training the muscle so that it’s getting all those different parts of the muscle from proximal closest to you to distal, further away. You’re. That is an interesting kind of imbalance that. I don’t know that anyone’s talking about that.

Michael Kamalu
No, it’s. They’re not. And it’s. It’s really unfortunate. A big thing that. I like what you said. It was a really small difference, right? People underestimate just how big of a difference. Slight tweaks, slight changes to angle, to even load, to speed. All of those elements, for example, with velocity. There have been studies on this. Regional muscle growth is another way to say this regional muscle activation. If you are doing a squat, if you do a slow, let’s say just a standard barbell back squat, if you do that slowly, you get a completely different activation pattern in your quads than if you were to do it. If you were to jump with the bar.

Steven Sashen
Right.

Michael Kamalu
It’s. It’s the. You know, I’m going to have to review this study. I might be getting this wrong. I believe it’s the jumping triggers more in the upper region and slower loads the lower region more. But it’s been a while since I looked at that study, so it might be reversed. But you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t think that it’s the same movement. It’s the exact.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, you definitely wouldn’t think about it. But until. But when you do think about it, it is interesting because I can imagine that the faster version, you know, there’s just going to be a little more where you’re driving from the hip rather than paying attention to what your knees are doing when you’re doing it slow and trying to make sure you have good form, et cetera. So I can paint a good picture. Am I, you know, full of it or not? I don’t Know, I’d have to look at the data, but I can paint a good picture that would be worth studying. So that’s really interesting. Anything else on this side before we go ahead, before we talk about the gains side?

Michael Kamalu
Yeah, there’s a couple more. So I’ll use some lower body examples here because we’ll talk about upper body more later. But let’s, let’s use leg extensions as an example. Probably the most common, you know, isolation leg exercise in the gym. If you are using a flywheel machine versus a weight stack, completely different activation patterns. Why? Because the flywheel actually does generate force in an arc like the muscle. So that’s one of the few machines that actually does follow how the muscle produces force. So it’s loading into the quads equally from the beginning of the motion to the end of the motion.

Steven Sashen
That’s really. It’s funny. I have a flyable device for people who don’t know. Imagine this. Imagine that. Imagine you have a regular cable machine that many people have seen, but instead of having a weight stack at the end, you have a weighted wheel. And the cable doesn’t just go, just stop at the wheel, it goes around the wheel like if you’re winding a top. And so the first part, you’re having to get the wheel moving and then when you finish the motion, then it’s going to try and spin and drag you back down. So you centric load as well. But just getting it started is hard. It’s like imagine if you’re trying to push a car, getting it that first, you know, few inches is hard. The more you push, the easier it gets. Same kind of thing. And that actually does. That’s exactly how most muscles are. Well, that’s how muscles work at that lengthened position. You know, it takes a while, but that’s where they can ultimately be the strongest, et cetera, et cetera. And plywheel is one of those things that people have been trying to get that to catch on forever, ever and just has not happened.

Michael Kamalu
So we’ll. I’ll. I’ll show this here. Just so happens.

Steven Sashen
Wait, wait, wait. Hold on, wait. I’m going to ask you to hold off on that because. Because I definitely want to do that.

Michael Kamalu
I’m just going to demonstrate the wheels to the leg extension.

Steven Sashen
Okay. Now and keep in mind, people are sometimes just listening. So you have to describe what you’re showing to.

Michael Kamalu
Yep. So with, I’m going to use this as an example with the weight stack, leg extension versus the flywheel, like extension. And to picture that A lot of people have the weight stack leg extensions in their home gyms. It’s where you know, it’s at the end of the bench and there’s just. You can load up a plate, two plates, three plates on the end and do your leg extensions. Right. Because that is using just free weights. There is one point of maximum load and that’s at the very end of the range of motion when your legs are straight. At the very bottom, right. When your legs are fully bent, there’s almost zero resistance against that leg extension.

Steven Sashen
Right.

Michael Kamalu
The reason it’s different at the gym is because the gym uses a flywheel. So it generate. If you set that to £100, it’s £100 from the beginning to the end of the entire range of motion, which is not the case with free weights. And the. For those who are watching, this is a, a visual. That flywheel, it takes advantage of the wheel principle. If I am pulling down on something, but that goes around in a circle, then that pole, right. It, it’s generating equal resistance through the entire range. If I’m just.

Steven Sashen
Wait, I want to do a visual description of this. Imagine like a cable machine where for example, you have a weight stack that’s you know, a bunch of weights aligned vertically. You put a pin and the, you know, as much weight as you want and then there’s a cable that’s going to go up usually and then over a round pulley. Imagine that that pulley isn’t round. Imagine I’m going to hyper simplify it. Imagine that pulley is oval shaped and that pulley is changing shape as the weight is lifting. So what that’s effectively doing is changing the amount of force or the, the way the weight is being the direction of the force, application of the weight in a way that can make it feel like more or less. And in this case making it so that it’s matching the way your muscle wants to move. So more force at the beginning where you can apply it, less at the end where you can’t. Did I get that? Did I do that well enough?

Michael Kamalu
It’s close enough. It’s a good visual.

Steven Sashen
I was just going for close enough. I wasn’t going to try and be exact on that one. It’s tricky to describe, you know, non, non normal shapes. I couldn’t think of a good analogy.

Michael Kamalu
It is tricky. Another example is.

Steven Sashen
Oh wait, I have a perfect example for this. If anyone ever used a Nautilus machine, it’s kind of like that, except the Nautilus machines were upside down. The Nautilus machines were providing force in the opposite direction for some of them.

Michael Kamalu
I don’t, I’m not familiar with.

Steven Sashen
Oh, my God.

Michael Kamalu
Which Nautilus is a brand. Right. So which, which machine.

Steven Sashen
The whole point with the Nautilus machines is that, that the cable went around a Nautilus shaped. I mean, that was the idea cam that changed the resistance as you did the exercise.

Michael Kamalu
That’s it. That’s exactly it. Yeah, that’s exactly it.

Steven Sashen
Okay, so let’s. So, so, so, so, so I want to. So we’ve hit on the importance of, of using the muscles the way they’re made, including just this one thing of working them through the proper range with the right strength curve, the right amount of force in the right place. So we’re going to come back to that. I know, but I want to talk about the second part of your brand as Dr. Gaines, the gains part. So one of the things that’s really terrifying in the current world, I mean, my YouTube channel is just full of videos about what, like what I’m going to describe. There’s this weird thing that everyone thinks that they can make their body look exactly the way they want it to look. And the really horrible thing is there’s a bunch of people, especially very young people, taking a boatload of steroids that will mess them up, if not kill them to get, you know, this shape that they think they want and they think is good and is making them very, very unhealthy. And many people are dying along the way from doing that. But talk about the gains part and people’s expectation versus reality. When, especially when you are stimulating your muscles in a way that’s using, that’s giving you the best stimulation you possibly can.

Michael Kamalu
Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great topic and something that absolutely needs to be understood better. In fact, I’ve been doing a. Preparing a big YouTube video on this. I’ve been working on the YouTube video for the last four months on this topic on, you know, how training needs to be personalized to your body because everybody’s body is different. So for example, I, Most people don’t know this, but we, we don’t even all have the same muscles. If you, if you put, if you squeeze your thumb and your pinky together and then slightly flex your wrist towards yourself. Yeah. About half of the population will have a. Let me. For those who are watching. Yeah.

Steven Sashen
I want to see this.

Michael Kamalu
This right here. There’s a tendon that pops out in the very middle of your wrist.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
Half of the world does not have that tendon in at least one arm. That’s the muscle called the palmaris longus. Right. I actually have it in my left and not my right. So it’s. And there’s, there’s about a 99 chance that you are missing at least one of the muscles that everybody thinks they have or have an extra one that most people do not have. And another 99% chance for bones in the same degree. For example, there’s usually five lumbar vertebrae, right. But about 30% or so of the population is either missing one or two or has an extra one. And that significantly changes how you need to lift for a squat. For example, a lot of people, if you’re missing one, usually it’s because the L5 is fused to the sacrum. And what that means is your hips don’t have the same range of motion that most people have. So when you get down deep into a squat, your back is going to start curving much earlier than everyone else does. And coaches who don’t understand this, they’ll say, hey, stop curving your back. Right.

Steven Sashen
Right.

Michael Kamalu
They literally can’t. It’s fused. So they, they have to approach it differently. And then people who have an A sixth lumbar vertebra, again, which is common, they have the opposite problem where their back will hyper extend because they have too much mobility. And so the, the cues are actually completely opposite for those two people how they need to approach a squat. That’s why the, the. The title of my upcoming video is Perfect form is a Lie, because it. Perfect form is different for everybody. Right. There are general principles, but you have to know your body. It’s not the same as the person next to you. It’s not the same as the person who, you know, you’re watching a video on how to use perfect form. So that’s the starting point.

Steven Sashen
Yeah. And it’s certainly not the same as someone who is a professional athlete of any type, whether, you know, I mean, literally any type. There’s, There’s a great book by a guy named Nassim Taleb who got the idea that, you know, he loved the. What a swimmer’s body looked like, and he figured by swimming he would develop that body until he noticed what was happening was the people who didn’t have that body just got weeded out naturally over time. And I mean, I’m, you know, I’m. I’ve, my whole life looked like a gymnast. And I’m a gymnast, so. Or gymnast, diver, and sometimes soccer players. You know, I get confused There. But. But there’s nothing I can do. Those are the shapes that I’ve got. And, and. But it’s. It’s a weird Western thing that we think we can be or do anything if we set our mind to it. And that’s true. I mean, look, that’s true about business. It’s true about what your body’s going to do, et cetera, et cetera.

Michael Kamalu
So, so there is a. There is a lot of. You can do a lot with what you have.

Steven Sashen
Right. That’s where I was going.

Michael Kamalu
But you have to understand what your starting point is. Yeah, You’re. You. There are certain elements of your anatomy, of your muscle makeup, of whether it’s your predominantly fast twitch versus slow twitch. Your insertion points are going to be different, and those will bias towards certain strengths and weaknesses and certain muscle shapes. Right. There are muscle shapes that you may not be able to achieve no matter how much you work out, because that’s not the body you were born with. That said, once you understand what your starting points are, then you do, especially with this principle of regional hypertrophy, region specific muscle growth. You actually have a lot more control over muscle shape than people realize. You can. You can do things. Let’s say you’re somebody who, you know, biceps are a big ego muscle. Right. There are people who really. They feel like they have a divot at the end. You know, the biceps peak, It’s. It’s not growing. Well, that’s because they’re not doing exercises that actually target that specific region. Right. Now, you can’t completely isolate these different muscle regions. You can bias them, and that bias sometimes is 500% more in one region than the other. So it’s significant. So you do have a lot of control over how you can develop your body, but you have to understand what your starting points are. You have to understand your biology and then play to your strengths. If you have. Let’s use the calf. Right. This is a running podcast. The. The difference in muscle belly to Achilles tendon length, that ratio, you’re born with it. You can’t change it. And that ratio will determine what your ceiling is as far as explosivity.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
If you have a really long muscle belly and really short tendon, the tendon is actually where the elastic potential is stored and released. Right. So you’re. You’re not going to have a Michael Jordan vertical no matter how much you train. If your calf muscle is that shape, people are.

Steven Sashen
People are stunned when they see a bunch of Olympic. Olympic level marathoners and they have like no calves. They’re like just all Achilles. It’s like. Yeah, that’s why they can keep going like that forever. Because the Achilles is basically just a spring. They’re not using the calves they don’t have. They don’t need to. And then you look at sprinters and they’re all calves. I mean, you know, not all calves, but I mean, every sprinter has calves.

Michael Kamalu
Yeah, a lot of that calf size is, is because it’s fast twitch muscle fibers. Fast switch muscle fibers are actually significantly larger than flow twitch ones are. So if, yeah, if you’re constantly training explosivity, first of all, they probably, they were born with a much higher percentage than anybody else, but they also have a much bigger size potential because they have a lot higher proportion of fast twitch muscle fibers.

Steven Sashen
Well, and you know, two third. Well, depending on how old you are and how fast you are, a significant portion of the race is basically just doing calf raises. I mean, it’s using your calves to accelerate, go through the dry phase and then you’re using your Achilles to bounce your way to the end. You know, the whole thing about, about fast twitch and slow twitch also plays into figuring out what kind of stimulus or you know, sets and reps, let’s say it that way, is going to work for you. Can you talk about that? I mean, I’m just, it just occurred to me from you saying that that because I know what I respond to and what I don’t respond to just from having tried so many things where, you know, like, oh, that was interesting but I, but I don’t like it and that’s interesting and I love it.

Michael Kamalu
So this, this ties in very well to the region specific muscle activation we were talking about earlier. Because another thing people don’t realize is the, the proportion of that ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch is different in different regions of the muscle. So it’s, it’s not equal from one end of the muscle to the other and from the top of the muscle to the bottom. Deep versus superficial. So one of the strategies for targeting certain regions is knowing what that bias is. Now there is, this is a debated topic as to how much you can truly, you know, how much training for slow versus fast twitch actually makes a difference, right? It does make a difference. It does. How much, to what degree, that can be debated, but you absolutely can. And the slow twitch muscle fibers respond better to a higher volume, lighter weight and slower tempo. And if you are using that, then you’re going to be definitely biasing these low twitch muscle fibers in your body and they fatigue a lot slower. So after you’ve done your first however many reps, even if you’re training explosively or training with heavy weight, your fast twitch muscle fibers will fatigue and then all the load will go to the slow twitch after that. There’s also two different types of fast twitch. There’s slow and heavy and fast and heavy.

Steven Sashen
All right.

Michael Kamalu
The heavy isn’t as important for the right. I don’t think we need to go into that much detail. But the last thing.

Steven Sashen
Well, here’s my favorite example. One of my best friends is a cross country runner and we’re both, you know, older, older people. And we decided on the track one day we were going to do 200 meter repeats. So just 200 meters rest and repeat. And I could basically do three or four of those and I was done for the day and he could go forever with very little rest in between. And it’s completely different story. I know that when I’m, if I’m lifting does almost doesn’t matter how I’m doing it. Once I hit about the 35 second mark of time under tension, I’m done and I can apply more force more quickly. But I know 35 to 40 seconds just shoot me in the head after that.

Michael Kamalu
Yep. And another interesting fact that most people don’t know is your ratio actually isn’t set. It is trainable. You can convert slow to fast and fast to slow. Again, there’s your starting point. Right. So you’re going to be placed in a certain area of point of the spectrum and you can move yourself along that spectrum. But you’re. If you’re born on one end, you’re never going to be completely on the opposite end.

Steven Sashen
Somebody, somebody asked this used to come up on forums all the time, like pick your Olympic marathoner of choice. And they’d say, how fast do you think he can run the 100? And I would say maybe 13, 5. And they go, but he’s running a 15 second 100 for 26 miles. I went, right, that’s his maximum speed. And you don’t know how long it takes to get to full speed. He’d run about a 13, 5. Or they’d say, you know, how fast do you think Usain Bolt could run, you know, a marathon? He will never do that.

Michael Kamalu
Nope.

Steven Sashen
Yeah. Okay, so, so let’s move into where, where I knew we were going to go because I’ve hinted at it not very subtly. And let’s talk about the, let’s talk about twisting. Let’s talk about rotation and how that’s something that has been massively underappreciated, if not not noticed at all. And what you’ve been doing to. Well, I’ll let you just take it from there.

Michael Kamalu
Yeah. I personally think that rotational loading, rotational training is the single biggest deficit in modern training, and that’s largely because we don’t have the tools for it. Let’s take supination, for example. So supination is rotating your forearm so that you go from palm down to palm up. And that is there are two muscles that do that, the biceps and the supinator. So a lot of people don’t know the biceps has two roles. The vast majority of people only ever train one, and that is the elbow flexion. A lot of people, you’ll see people at the gym twisting the dumbbells right as they curl them up because they think they’re hitting that supination element. They’re not. Not even close. Reason being, a dumbbell is like a perfectly balanced seesaw. The two ends cancel each other out perfectly. There is zero resistance against that rotation. So you’re just turning your hand. There’s nothing fighting the rotation. So supination itself is not being worked.

Steven Sashen
Now, we don’t want to pause on that one. Would it be possible, And I know it’s not ideal, but would it be possible if you had a dumbbell that could do it? Where you a loaded. Let’s talk about. So your palm up. So you loaded the inside part of the dumbbell more heavily than the outside part. And if you could extend and add a longer lever. So like a longer. What’s the word I can’t find for what you hold on to? You know, the part you hold on to. So instead of handle, handle would work. Dude, I’m 60, 64. And change words, like easy words do not come to me. So you have a longer handle or you push your hand so that effectively it’s longer, you’ve got more on the inside than the outside and more weight. How much could that do? Or versus what I know we’re going to be talking about in just a moment.

Michael Kamalu
Yeah. So I actually did a video on this about three years ago. It’s titled Bicep Curls aren’t effective. And in it I gave a bunch of these hacks, they’re actually loading supination. Now, each of them is severely limited and we’ll get into why. But yes. So the easiest thing to do is just shifting your hand over to one side of the dumbbell so that there’s slightly more weight on the pinky said pinky end. If you have adjustable dumbbells, you can overload one side and then again there’s, there’s more load on that side. The biggest limitation with those is because they’re free weights. Again, you only have one point of maximum resistance, and that is when the other end of the dumbbell is perfectly horizontal. Right. If you’re holding the dumbbell in your hand and you have one side overloaded when the dumbbell’s horizontal, then yes, you’re getting a lot of load against supination. But at the beginning, there’s nothing, nothing, nothing at all. And especially in the palm down position. So when your palm is down, that’s actually your lengthened supination position. You would have negative load in that position. Right, Right. So that is the severe limitation with those, those type of hacks with what some people do is, is they’ll use a cable for this or a, they’ll hold a rag in their hand and kind of tie a dumbbell to one end and then rotate. Both of those also have the same limitation. There’s actually only. Go ahead.

Steven Sashen
No, let’s back up a half a step. So for people watching, I want you to show the show why we’re having this conversation. We can both do it fr. But it’ll be more fun if you do it show. I mean, with a typical bicep curl, you know, your, your palms are basically face up, your pinkies are towards your body, and the whole time and you know, you definitely see your bicep getting bigger as your arm is coming up. But you get that same. But that show what happens just from doing the supination component, because that’s what.

Michael Kamalu
Yeah, well, I mean, you can.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Kamalu
Just even if, even if I don’t change my elbow position at all, you can see going from a supinated to a pronated position.

Steven Sashen
So if you’re not seeing this, I’m going to describe it. So you can do it. Put your, have your, your elbow by your side and your palm parallel to the ground or your forearm parallel to the ground, palm down, and take a look at your bicep and then just turn your hand palm up and you’ll see that suddenly you have a bicep like you’re flexing. So just literally doing that turn. You haven’t changed anything about flexing your arm. You’ve activated your bicep more. And that’s something most people have never noticed. It’s like, what the.

Michael Kamalu
Yeah. So supination is Actually, more of the. It’s a significantly better way to actually target the biceps because you’re removing the brachialis and the brachioradialis. So there are. There are three big muscles, powerful muscles that flex the elbow bow. Right. And if you’re just going straight up, the brachialis actually gets more load than the biceps do.

Steven Sashen
Interesting.

Michael Kamalu
Supination. The biceps is the only one of those there. There’s also the supinator. That’s a tiny muscle.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
So it. It’s. It’s. The majority of that supinating role is the biceps. And also speaking about, you know, regional targeting, the long head of the biceps is actually more activated during supination than the short head is. The short head is a more powerful elbow flexor. The long head is a more powerful supinator. And the long head actually makes up most of that lower region of the biceps. The lowest region is more long head than it is short head. So targeting the long head specifically is another way to grow that lower region of the biceps. And supination is the best way to target your lung head.

Steven Sashen
So before we show what you’ve come up with, after years and years of playing around with this for the bicep, are there. What other places in the body do we see similar effects about rotation that is being undervalued or ignored?

Michael Kamalu
Yeah. So the biceps is the aesthetic one. Right. There are two other movements that are more important when it comes to functionality and injury prevention, and that is, let’s think rotation. How about rotator cuff?

Steven Sashen
Huh? Why would you think that rotator cuff would have anything to do with rotation? That’s a really. I think you’re out on a limb there, Michael.

Michael Kamalu
It’s a stretch. It’s a stretch.

Steven Sashen
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
But shockingly, we don’t train the rotator cuff with rotation.

Steven Sashen
Right.

Michael Kamalu
It’s literally named for it, but we have no way of loading it, especially progressively loading it. And that is why so many people have shoulder injuries. That’s why it’s the, like, number one complaint in the gym is shoulder pain, because the muscles that are actually responsible for stabilizing your shoulder joint, the rotator cuff muscles, they need to be trained with dynamic rotation. And nothing in the gym can do that, right? Nothing. There are. There is a specialized machine, rotator cuff machine that, you know, some clinics have, et cetera. And there are going to be people out there that say, oh, wait a minute, I do these external rotation exercises. What about that? And a. Well, the most common example actually is standing with a dumbbell like this and going like this.

Steven Sashen
So what? So standing again, elbow by your side, forearm parallel to the ground, thumb pointing up, and just, you know, moving your hand from pointing forward to trying to go out to the side, which. Yeah, it’s.

Michael Kamalu
Yep. Standing. Standing straight here, elbow bent and just moving the dumbbell side to side.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
Guess what? Where is gravity actually loading this dumbbell? Down. Straight down.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
How much is the dumbbell providing resistance against horizontal movement? Zero. There is zero load. Again, you’re. Yes. You’re rotating your arm, but all the load is against bicep flexion. You are not training external rotation.

Steven Sashen
Okay. So people, the argument people. Someone’s going to make. Because people love to argue for things they believe is. Yeah, but what if I use a resistance band instead of a dumbbell?

Michael Kamalu
Yep. Yep. So that’s better, right? If. If you are doing this external rotation with a dumbbell or any free weight now, you. You can lay sideways on a bench. Yeah. And if you do that, you’re in the same category as the weight stack.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
And the problem with both of those is what we spent a long time discussing. They only load one angle. They pull from one angle. Cables and free weights can only pull at one angle. The rotator cuff, the supinator, the pronators, which we’ll discuss. All of these muscles need to be loaded from the beginning of their range of motion to the end of their range of motion equally. Right. That doesn’t happen if you are. Do you want me to actually go and. Yeah, go ahead, do it.

Steven Sashen
Yeah. Let’s say. Let’s say he says, walking to his. His rack, pulling a cable. Pulling a cable out.

Michael Kamalu
So if I’m standing right here and. And doing this like.

Steven Sashen
So we’re describing the same thing we did with a dumbbell, except now using a cable. And so you’re getting a consistent amount of resistance, but that’s not the right. The right resistance curve or the right strength curve. Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
So right here. So if I. If I were. Pull the. Sorry. I’ll try to explain it for people who are listening. If I am. Pull the cable out. And now my forearm. My. My forearm is bent to 90 degrees and sticking straight out in front of my body. And the cable is pulling directly to the side of me.

Steven Sashen
Perpendicular. Yep.

Michael Kamalu
In this position, the cable is loading fully. External rotation. It’s loading fully at the beginning of this movement.

Steven Sashen
Nothing.

Michael Kamalu
There’s nothing. Yep. The only thing that’s being loaded, if you keep tension on the cable, then you are actually loading shoulder flexion because it’s. You’re pulling your shoulder across the body, there is no rotational resistance whatsoever. And how about here? Again, no resistance against rotation. So that same principle applies to if you’re laying sideways on a bench with a dumbbell or a weight plate in your hand. When your forearm is horizontal to the ground, you’re getting forced.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
At the beginning, nothing. The end. Yeah.

Steven Sashen
Well, in fact when you, when you did that, it’s like imagine if you’re lying sideways on a bench and you’re, you’re trying to again, your arm by your side and you’re doing this external rotation with your hand. So basically from your, your, your hand from being on your belly to being as far away from you as you can, it’s just like doing. It’s the same story as a leg curl. It’s the exact same problem. There’s like just no resistance at the beginning because you’re pushing out and then there’s too much in the middle. Yeah, it’s the same idea. So shall we cut to the chase?

Michael Kamalu
Yes. So no, no matter what, if you’re using a cable or a free weight, there’s only one point of maximum resistance. And, and it’s being, it’s, you’re trying to work a dynamic muscle with linear resistance.

Steven Sashen
Well, you’re, you’re, you’re put, you have that one point of maximum resistance and it’s usually quote, the sticking point instead of the point where the muscles are most effective. That’s the glitch. Yeah. So talk about what you did, which is brilliant.

Michael Kamalu
I spent the last three years and a total of 17 prototypes designing this product right here, what I call the gains hammer. And it is the first tool that enables you to actually dynamically load your, in this case, upper body muscles using cables, plates or dumbbells you already have. So that’s one of the best parts is you don’t need separate equipment, you don’t need a specialized machine. You use whatever you already have. And what it does is it takes that linear resistance and bends it around a wheel, a cam shaped curve which like you mentioned previously, this exact, it took me a lot of prototypes to get this exact curve right. To match the resistance curve, the force profile of these muscles.

Steven Sashen
I’m going to describe it in a way I can’t describe the curve very well. It’s really, it’s very elegant. But back to our example of having a dumbbell where if you hold, you know like push your hand to one side of it so you have more on the inside. Imagine. So what’s making that work is the physics of it is the moment arm having the weight further away creates extra tension. So imagine as you were going through this thing of just, you know, supination that the, the, the length of that handle is dynamically changing. The further out it is, the more resistance you get. The closer it is, the less resistance you get. You’ve basically created something that effectively changes the length, that changes the moment arm to match the strength curve of the muscle.

Michael Kamalu
So I’m gonna, I’m gonna use an example here. What I, this is one of the accessories that comes with the games hammer and it is how you use it with free weights. So I’m holding up a dumbbell here

Steven Sashen
and yeah, strap that goes around.

Michael Kamalu
Just a strap, right. And it holds that dumbbell securely. And then you attach that to the end of the gain center. Now this can also attach to a cable and it can also attach to weight plates. And so any, any form of weight you have. And now what happens is if I am doing, let’s say, supination, we didn’t talk about pronation, but we can, that’s even more important when it comes to elbow and, and wrist health. But anyway, now as I rotate, this is generating equal resistance through that entire range of motion all the way from when my hand is pointing completely down that supination, that rotation. Because the strap is being bent around this cam shaped curve, that entire rotation is loaded in a way that’s actually matching the biceps and supinators strength profile. And the first time you do this, it just takes one replacement. You’ll be like, oh my goodness, I have never trained supination before. I thought I had, I did.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
Now if you want to do pronation, right. And pronation is just the opposite way of, of rotation where you’re going from palm up to palm down. And I just grip it in the opposite direction.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
Now I’m rotating this way. And again the entire range of motion is being loaded. And I can progressively overload it, right. Just by increasing how much weight I’m attaching to the end. And the pronators are even more neglected than the supinators. And that is where you get golfer’s elbow and also tennis elbow to some degree. But it’s because people don’t, people can’t train rotation. Again, the, the tools didn’t exist. And then the other example is let’s do shoulder rotation. So I wanted to do external rotation. Again, I’m just going to hold my arm out here straight.

Steven Sashen
Oh.

Michael Kamalu
So I’m gonna.

Steven Sashen
All you’re doing internally.

Michael Kamalu
Yeah.

Steven Sashen
Holding your arm straight out in front of you, elbow straight, and then just rotating your whole arm, you know, doing supination and pronation. That’s actually getting the rotator cuff.

Michael Kamalu
So this is, this is, you know, training external rotation. And then again you can do the same thing with internal rotation. And there’s, let’s take the triceps, for example, because this goes far beyond even just those isolation rotation movements. The long head of the triceps is significantly more activated if you add pronation to your tricep extensions. But if you do that, like a lot of people will do this with a rope attachment, they’ll go down and then rotate their wrists down at the bottom. That rotation is actually not being loaded. Yes, you’re, you’re twisting your wrists, but there is no resistance against that, that rotation.

Steven Sashen
Right.

Michael Kamalu
There’s a, there’s a tiny bit.

Steven Sashen
A little bit. A little bit, yeah.

Michael Kamalu
When you do that with the gain’s hammer, not only are you getting that extension, but you’re getting loaded pronation while you go down. And then again you can do that on the opposite side and load supination as you are doing your tricep extensions and preferentially activate the lateral head. So there’s over a hundred different exercises you can do, whether you’re isolating these rotational movements or adding rotation to, to what you’re doing. Any, any upper body exercise. So it, it replaces, you know, a drawer full of handles. The other element to the design, people will. If, you know, you’re not watching, there is a big base at the bottom that I’ve applied a triple layer of rubber to. And the reason for this is, and this is also the reason behind the name the Games Hammer. It’s when you’re doing hammer exercises, currently your options on the market are a rope.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Michael Kamalu
Or a wedge. Right. 99 of people are going to be using one of these. How many times have you gone away from using a rope? And man, my hands feel great.

Steven Sashen
Yep.

Michael Kamalu
This thing is uncomfortable to say the least. And also it trains your grip more than the muscles you’re actually trying to target because you’re being forced to, to actually secure what you’re holding on to. And, and the wedge is, requires even more strength than. So that’s why I added this big, thick, wide base. Your hand rests on top of it. So it almost completely eliminates grip from the equation. So all of the activation actually goes to the muscles you’re trying to target rather than your grip.

Steven Sashen
Love it. So now, and this is just, you know, the tip of the iceberg about everything that you’re doing. So do me a favor. First of all, this has been a blast. Secondly, do me a favor. Tell people how they can find out more about just everything you’re doing and the games Hammer so they can start, you know, adding rotational training, which I think is tremendous. I mean, as a former gymnast and every gymnast has shit shoulders, you know, and I’ve had mine put back together. Each one. This is something I’m very excited about. So how can people find you and find all the various ways they can engage with you and benefit from doing that?

Michael Kamalu
Yeah. So Dr. Gaines.com with a dash in the middle. Doctor-gains.com that’s my website and the Gains Hammer I launched on Kickstarter one week ago. Actually, it funded within less than 25 minutes. It’s done extremely well. I’ve been working on it for a long time. So it’s been very anticipated by those in my own audience. But yeah, so it has three more weeks on there, but super early bird, early bird pricing is about to end. But I have some in that go check it out. There’s some really cool stuff on there. If you just go on to Kickstarter and search Gain Sammer, it’ll pull it up. And then on my website, I also have a link to it if you want to scroll to my website. And then you can also learn about the personalized training. I’m developing an app right now that actually takes all of my programs, my training methodology, and then I’ve partnered with Inbody and some, some 3D body scanners and other diagnostic companies to automatically pull your information so that we can then truly personalize your training to you. There are a lot of apps out there that say they personalize the workouts. They don’t. They don’t really. Right. But the app I’m about to release will actually personalize everything to you and the Gains Hammer exercises will be part of that. So, yeah, of a lot of other stuff on there that’s coming out, but that’s how to find everything.

Steven Sashen
Yeah. And there’ll be a link on there for your YouTube channel, which has tons of content and I highly recommend people checking that out as well. That’s how we first bumped into each other. So, Michael, it’s been a total pleasure. Thank you again. For everyone else, thank you. Just a reminder, head over to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find all the previous episodes, all the ways you can engage with us on social media. If you have any questions, comments recommendations, people you think should be on the show. Especially if you know someone who thinks I have cranial rectal reorientation syndrome and wants to tell me in front of other people, I’m game. You can drop me an email. I’m @Move M O V E. Join the movement. Movement.com. but most importantly, go out, have fun and live life feet first.