Exercise Professional Education

10/13/2026

The Next Muscle System Specialist Online Course Cohort Starts November 16, 2026, at 1pm EST.

It's time.

Register here:

Invest in this 108-hour Muscle System Specialist Online Course and begin the Program to become a master of using exercise as medicine, learning to assess and improve pain and dysfunction associated with movement and position maintenance with a unique philosophy of the body and its methodologies.

10/06/2026

“We have a brain for one reason and one reason only -- that’s to produce adaptable and complex movements. Movement is the only way we have affecting the world around us… I believe that to understand movement is to understand the whole brain. And therefore, it’s important to remember when you are studying memory, cognition, sensory processing, they’re there for a reason, and that reason is action.”
Daniel Wolpert - Neuroscientist

09/29/2026

Next Muscle System Specialist Program Cohort Reviews begin November 16, 2026, at 1pm EST.

Register for the course!

The price will increase next year. But that is not as important as gaining the unique, powerful knowledge and skills this program will provide for your career.

Click on the link below:

Invest in this 108-hour Muscle System Specialist Online Course and begin the Program to become a master of using exercise as medicine, learning to assess and improve pain and dysfunction associated with movement and position maintenance with a unique philosophy of the body and its methodologies.

09/22/2026

Prognostic Significance of Between-Arm Blood
Pressure Differences

Abstract
Blood pressure (BP) recordings often differ between arms, but the extent to which these differences are reproducible and whether the differences have prognostic importance is unknown. We enrolled 421 consecutive patients from a medicine and a renal clinic at a veterans’ hospital. Three BP recordings were obtained in each arm using an oscillometric device in a sequential manner and repeated in 1 week. Patients were followed for all-cause mortality 7 years. The right arm had 5.1-mm Hg higher systolic BP that attenuated by
2.2 mm Hg a week later. Systolic BP dropped 6.9 mm Hg over 1 week and by an additional 5.3 mm Hg in patients with chronic kidney disease. Accounting for the visit and arm effect improved the reproducibility of the BP measurements. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.74, which improved to 0.88 after accounting for visit and 0.93 after accounting for arm. The crude mortality rate was 6.33 per 100 patient-years. Every 10-mm Hg difference in systolic BP between the arms conferred a mortality hazard of 1.24 (95% CI: 1.01 to 1.52) after adjusting for average systolic BP and chronic kidney disease. BP differences between arms are reproducible and carry prognostic information. Patients should have evaluation of BP in both arms at the screening visit.

Hypertension. 2008;51:657-662

09/15/2026

How can we use classical mechanics and Thermodynamics to gain a deeper, broader understanding of exercise?

By understanding the following key concepts:

1. System equilibrium and non-equilibrium states
2. The human body is a system of mass
a. This mass is made up of a heterologous material continuum
3. The human body exists in a gravity field
4. Exercise is about the position and motion of systems
5. Exercise is about using the human body to interact with the gravity field
6. Exercise is about changing the human body’s position (motion)
7. Exercise is about maintaining position in the presence of external influences applied to it
8. Exercise is about changing the human body’s position and the position of an external influence
9. Exercise is about the use of, and conversion of, energy from one form to another.

What do we need to know?

1. The Principles of Statics
a. Moment of Inertia - The tendency of a body to resist angular acceleration, expressed as the sum of the products of the mass of each particle in the body and the square of its perpendicular distance from the axis of rotation.
b. Equilibrium of Force System - The body is said to be in equilibrium if the resultant of all forces acting on it is zero. There are two major types of static equilibrium, namely, translational equilibrium and rotational equilibrium.
c. Resultant of Force System - The body is being acted upon by two or more forces
d. Components of Force - A Force acting at some angle from the coordinate axes can be resolved into mutually perpendicular forces. Translational and Rotational. Forces in Planes.
e. Law of Lever and Mechanical Advantage (MAd) - Magnitudes are in equilibrium at distances reciprocally proportional to their weights. MAd = Foutput/Finput
f. Centroids (Centers of Mass) - The center of mass of a geometric object of uniform density.
g. Friction - The force created by the relative motion of two or more solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements in contact and moving in opposite directions to each other.
h. Cables - A cord of metal wire or rope used to operate or pull a mechanism
i. Torque - The measure of a force's tendency to produce torsion or rotation about an axis, equal to the product of the force vector and the radius vector from the axis of rotation to the point of application of the force; the moment of a force.
Torque = moment x force

2. The Principles of Dynamics
a. An object at rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by another object. Newton’s First Law
b. The rate of change of an object's linear momentum is directly proportional to the force on the object. Newton’s Second Law
c. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s Third Law
3. The starting position of the human body relative to the gravity field.
4. The direction of Earth’s gravitational influence on objects within the field.
5. The point of application of other systems on the human body (point of interaction).
a. Stress (= force ÷ unit area) and Strain (= length change ÷ original length)
6. The relative direction of position change (motion) of the human body (acceleration).
7. Velocity and acceleration of position change (momentum and force).
8. The velocity and direction of the external influence (momentum).
9. Human Anatomy and the material properties of its tissues. (variety of cellular tissues)
10. The material properties of the external influence. (mass and elastomers)

09/14/2026

Great article about our colleague and Certified Muscle System Specialist Jay Weitzner and his work with Cy Young winner Chris Sale.

Chris Sale explains how his work with Jay Weitzner at Symmetry Exercise Clinic contributed to his resurgence with the Atlanta Braves.

09/08/2026

“True fitness needs to be from the foundation up, and that means fitness for all the cells and tissues that make up your musculoskeletal frame.”

DiNubile, MD, Nicholas A. Framework: Your 7-Step program for healthy muscles, bones, and joints, 2005, Page 4.

09/01/2026

Congratulations to our colleague Todd Collura for earning his Muscle System Specialist Certification! Nicely done!

08/25/2026

The Resistance Training Dose-Response: Meta-Regressions Exploring the Effects of Weekly Volume and Frequency on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gain

"ABSTRACT
Background:
Weekly set volume and frequency are used to manipulate resistance training (RT) dosage. Previous research has identified higher weekly set volume as enhancing
muscle hypertrophy and strength gains, but the nature of the dose-response relationship still needs to be investigated. Mixed evidence exists regarding the effects of higher weekly
frequency.

Objective:
Before meta-analyzing the volume and frequency research, all contributing RT sets were classified as direct or indirect, depending on their specificity to the
hypertrophy/strength measurement. Then, weekly set volume/frequency for indirect sets was quantified as 1 for ‘total,’ 0.5 for ‘fractional,’ and 0 for ‘direct.’ A series of multi-level
meta-regressions were performed for muscle hypertrophy and strength, utilizing 67 total studies of 2,058 participants. All models were adjusted for the duration of the intervention
and training status.

Results:
The relative evidence for the ‘fractional’ quantification method was strongest; therefore, this quantification method was used for the primary meta-regression models. The posterior probability of the marginal slope exceeding zero for the effect of volume on
both hypertrophy and strength was 100%, indicating that gains in muscle size and strength increase as volume increases. However, both best fit models suggest diminishing returns, with the diminishing returns for strength being considerably more pronounced. The posterior probability of the marginal slope exceeding zero for frequency’s effect on hypertrophy was less than 100%, indicating compatibility with negligible effects. In contrast, the posterior probability for strength was 100%, suggesting strength gains increase with increasing frequency, albeit with diminishing returns.

Conclusions:
Distinguishing between direct and indirect sets appears essential for predicting adaptations to a given RT protocol, such as using the ‘fractional’ quantification method. This method’s dose-response models revealed that volume and frequency have
unique dose-response relationships with each hypertrophy and strength gain. The dose-response relationship between volume and hypertrophy appears to differ from that with strength, with the latter exhibiting more pronounced diminishing returns. The
dose-response relationship between frequency and hypertrophy appears to differ from that with strength, as only the latter exhibits consistently identifiable effects."

Pelland JC, Remmert JF, Robinson ZP, Hinson SR, Zourdos MC. The Resistance Training Dose Response: Meta-Regressions Exploring the Effects of Weekly Volume and Frequency on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gains. Sports Med. 2026 Feb;56(2):481-505. doi: 10.1007/s40279-025-02344-w. Epub 2025 Dec 4. PMID: 41343037.

08/18/2026

Are you taking blood pressure readings from your clients?

Maybe consider taking readings from both arms?

Prognostic Significance of Between-Arm Blood
Pressure Differences

Rajiv Agarwal, Zerihun Bunaye, Dagim M. Bekele

"Abstract
Blood pressure (BP) recordings often differ between arms, but the extent to which these differences are
reproducible and whether the differences have prognostic importance is unknown. We enrolled 421 consecutive patients
from a medicine and a renal clinic at a veterans’ hospital. Three BP recordings were obtained in each arm using an
oscillometric device in a sequential manner and repeated in 1 week. Patients were followed for all-cause mortality
7
years. The right arm had 5.1-mm Hg higher systolic BP that attenuated by
2.2 mm Hg a week later. Systolic BP
dropped 6.9 mm Hg over 1 week and by an additional 5.3 mm Hg in patients with chronic kidney disease. Accounting
for the visit and arm effect improved the reproducibility of the BP measurements. The intraclass correlation coefficient
was 0.74, which improved to 0.88 after accounting for visit and 0.93 after accounting for arm. The crude mortality rate
was 6.33 per 100 patient-years. Every 10-mm Hg difference in systolic BP between the arms conferred a mortality
hazard of 1.24 (95% CI: 1.01 to 1.52) after adjusting for average systolic BP and chronic kidney disease. BP differences
between arms are reproducible and carry prognostic information. Patients should have evaluation of BP in both arms
at the screening visit. (Hypertension. 2008;51:657-662.)"