.png)
FAQS
Are the workouts really just 20 minutes?
Yes. When you workout with an experienced instructor's supervision at Live Oak Strength, each rep you do will be more effective than any rep you could do on your own, greatly decreasing the amount of time necessary to stimulate positive physiological changes. You will also have the rare opportunity to workout on a full line of MedX, which is regarded as the Rolls Royce of strength training equipment (you can read more about the advantages of working out on MedX here). Thus, 20 minutes is more than enough time to get the job done.
Some of our most advanced clients workout for just 15 minutes a week and continue to get stronger. More minutes/hours/days of exercise with this high-effort approach will offer no additional benefits, and in fact would only increase your risk of injury and make your recovery take longer. Think quality over quantity, and intensity over volume.
​
If you are serious about making changes to your health and fitness you will have to learn to work out with intensity (if you're not willing or able to learn how, this workout is not for you). You can not sprint a marathon. The same goes for strength training - you can either work hard (with intensity) or long (more volume), but you can not do both. The preponderance of scientific literature states that your subjective level of effort while exercising is the number one controllable factor that dictates the results you will gain from an exercise program. There is no way around this. We will keep you safe and teach you how to be successful on your strength training journey. ​The results that you produce are largely dependent upon your genetics and the intensity in which you are willing to work.
​
When will I see results?
Within the first 8-12 workouts, our clients report feeling stronger and moving more easily. Small aches and pains often seem to subside as our muscles learn how strong and capable they are, and the strength levels of our youth are restored.
Within the first 4-6 months at Live Oak Strength, it is typical to see at least a 30% increase in the measurable strength of your major muscle groups. After a year, this jumps to 50%. With the adoption of a sensible diet and consistent effort to get ample sleep and reduce stress levels, our clients are often astounded at how little exercise is needed to lean out and reveal a more athletic physique.
​
Will i lose weight doing this type of exercise?
That depends. Exercise alone is not going to be enough to accomplish that goal. No amount of exercise can make up for an unbalanced diet, high in the empty calories found in many processed foods that we’ve come to exist on these days.
We focus on getting people stronger, which correlates with increased lean tissue, which is more metabolically active. This means you will burn more calories as you navigate through your day to day activities. This combined with a controlled diet will allow you to keep lean tissue while nearly exclusively losing body fat, which is actually what we want.
​
There are many great approaches to lose fat that are quite popular today. It is important to understand that any popular diet works because of energy in and energy out - stated otherwise, we lose fat due to a caloric deficit no matter if we are doing keto, vegan, paleo, or intermittent fasting. Choose whatever style of eating makes you feel healthy and not deprived. The key to sustainable health and a lean body composition is quite simple, eat less, train hard and recovery fully.
What if I have physical limitations from past injuries?
Strength training isn’t solely for people who are a picture of health. Taking an evidence-based approach to strength training will be one of the smartest decisions you will ever make. In fact, getting stronger is probably the single most important thing anyone can do to prevent further injuries, and to rehab from existing ones. What we do at Live Oak Strength is incredibly safe, making it a great option for anyone with an injury. In fact, the principles of this workout were founded on a multimillion dollar study on osteoporosis patients. The researchers running the study wanted to see if strength training could improve bone density, but the typically fast movements associated with traditional protocols were deemed unsafe, so the researchers slowed down the movement speed of each exercise considerably. They discovered that not only did bone density improve, but the subjects safely gained lean muscle as well.
By participating in strength training at Live Oak Strength, you will be using the best, most sought-after medical grade equipment, under the guidance of a highly qualified instructor, in a private, distraction-free, and temperature controlled environment. You can expect to have the safest, most effective, focused and methodical workout experience possible when you train with us.
What if I want to keep exercising 5-6 days a week to lose fat or because I enjoy it?
Physical activity every day is great, whether it be walking, yoga, sports or anything else that gets the body moving and puts a smile on your face. In fact, as you get stronger, you will be more likely to want to be more active because you will have more energy and feel incredible. Unfortunately, many people associate exercise with burning a lot of calories and losing fat. But, hunger always wins, and if you overdo the "cardio" you may find yourself overeating and having a hard time losing fat due to a caloric surplus. Cardio doesn't really burn that many calories over your baseline expendature, and is truly a very poor approach to losing weight. We recommend doing physical activities you absolutely love, not because you have to, but because you GET to with all your new strength (and time) that you now have from strength training. If you devote that extra time to adopting healthier nutrition and sleeping habits, you will find your body composition shifting to a healthier ratio, and the guilt of not doing enough fading away.
What can I do to improve my results?
Pay close attention to your nutrition, particularly your protein intake. Eat real food and nourish the body with essential nutrients. Also, aim to make your sleep quality a priority. Try to relax and not live a stressful life. Give a higher degree of effort during your workouts. Stop over analyzing every little ache and pain you have. Work on having a positive mindset. Your body repairs and restores at a cellular level during sleep. Being stressed out and undernourished are both common hindrances to getting results with exercise. Exhaustion affects your immune system and goes into overdrive thus leading to chronic inflammation and is not a great recipe for gaining strength and becoming healthier.
​
Exercise does not have to be complicated. Consistency, discipline and simplicity will take your farther than spending time searching for the perfect program. We invite you to adopt the strength-training lifestyle with us, and get your precious time back to go do more of what you love with the people you love. Time is not refundable, spend it wisely!
what training frequency is right for me?
EveryBODY responds differently to strength training. You must understand that more is not better, and that exercise is just a stimulus to the body, and only when the body is given the proper building blocks and time to recover will it RESPOND by growing stronger (much like the sun does not directly produce a tan, it is your body's response to the sun that does so).
​
That being said, most everyone can recover well working out twice per week. We have the technology at Live Oak Strength to track your progress down to a 10th of a percentage, so we actually don't need to guess what frequency will work best for you. We can use data to show you if you are under or over training, and then make educated and informed decisions about the ideal training frequency for you.
​
If you are already incredibly active, one focused session per week may suffice. If you are desk bound 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, you absolutely should be training twice a week (and moving your body as much as possible). Stress and activity levels change often, that is why none of our memberships have contracts and you can change your plan according to what is happening in your life and/or when you have new goals you'd like to work toward.
What should I do the days following my workouts at Live Oak Strength?
Relax. Get out in nature and enjoy some sunshine. It’s a physiological fact that your body needs sufficient time for rest and recovery. You need to eat well and strength train, but you also need to sit back, relax, and let your body do what it needs to do if you want to meet your goals. Once you have worked your muscles to the point of actual muscular failure, they require sufficient time to repair and restore torn fibers and build new muscle mass. This process can be enhanced only with proper nutrition, hydration, stress management, good quality sleep, and the luck of great genetics. This doesn’t mean do nothing, but rather do things you enjoy with the people you love. Walk Lake Merritt with a friend. Take a hike up in Tilden Park. Netflix? Absolutely. Just avoid all those hyped up, pseudoscientific nutrition documentaries.
Why do the workouts have to be intense? Why can't I just lift lighter weights more frequently and just live an active lifestyle?
Here's the deal. Your body hates building muscle and will do everything in its power to prevent you from building it. Muscle is extremely active and metabolically expensive tissue to keep on your body so you MUST give it a compelling reason to keep it and an even more compelling reason to add more of it (and believe us, you should be incredibly interested in maintaining as much of your muscle tissue as possible to ensure you can be independent until the day you die).
When you lift heavy things, your body will try to cheat and take the path or least resistance. In other words, your body is smart and "hides" from hard work by using momentum to take stress off the muscle. It is far easier to heave a weight than to move it slowly, and your body takes advantage of this to keep muscular fatigue to a minimum.
​
Light weights and just being active are great physical activities to blow off steam, but if you really want to maximize your results and benefits from exercise you MUST be willing to work hard and get out of your comfort zone. There is no way around this.
​
So what's the solution?
Eliminate momentum and workout with supervision so your instincts to cheat (by resting or moving quickly) don't win. Allow your coach to help guide you to safely recruit and exhaust the targeted musculature enough to give your body a reason to get stronger, improve it's composition, and operate at its highest level of fitness possible.
Can't I just do this on my own?
Chances are that if you're reading this you have tried to workout on your own and either your progress has stalled, your motivation has declined or you've never made exercise a habit consistently enough to get real results. And if that's not you, we guarantee we will keep you safer and get you far better results than you ever could going on your own. The science is clear, the closer the ratio to one-on-one supervision, the better the results. Multiple studies have shown people following the exact same program as each other in a one to one ratio of supervision, a one to three and even a one to ten (one coach, 10 clients), and the one to one group ALWAYS produced better results.
​
Without guidance, most people will choose weights that are too light, execute mostly unproductive repetitions or select the wrong exercises entirely. This means wasted time & no progress.
​
With professional supervision, you can reach the right level of effort, you save time AND you get results.
​
Having a regular occurring biweekly appointment with an expert instructor at Live Oak Strength leads to consistency
When it is on your schedule, it's more likely to get done. And when you don't have to remember how much weight, or how to do an exercise correctly, you won't be reluctant to show up. All you have to do is get here and work hard; we will take care of the rest from insuring your safety, writing and fine tuning your program around goals and injuries, and tracking every single rep, set and workout. That level of detail produces remarkable results.
