Just think: You can enhance your workout by exercising your brain along with your body.

By Jeff Strickler, Star Tribune

Can we think our way to physical fitness? If only. But we can think our way to better fitness, according to personal trainer Michael Gonzalez-Wallace.

"Mental engagement is the key," said Gonzalez-Wallace, who works in New York City but proudly noted that his mother is a native of St. Paul and that his family made annual pilgrimages to Minnesota when he was a youngster. "When the brain is involved, you burn more calories and increase blood flow."

The culprit, he says, is boredom. Not the boredom that makes us want to quit an exercise program after a few days or weeks -- although that's still an issue. In this case, he's talking about the body's boredom with a particular movement once it has been mastered.

"The human body is very efficient," he said. "Once it has learned a series of movements, it will tend to minimize the amount of energy used on those movements."

So, even though you're doing the same exercises you were doing before, you're not getting the same results. The way to combat that is to keep changing things, he said. And the changes don't have to be radical.

"Even a small change will have a big effect, because it will challenge the body," he said. "The body says, 'Whoa! This isn't what I was doing. I have to concentrate now.' The body has to create new neuropathways."

The formal name for what he teaches is neuromuscular progressive resistance. Gonzalez-Wallace markets it under a catchier moniker: The Brain Muscle Workout (www.thebrainmuscleworkout.com).

His theory is scientifically sound, he insists, and he will provide the names and phone numbers of neuroscientists who can speak on the theory at length. But he said that he developed the concept out of common sense and routine observation.

"I've always been fascinated with how the body moves," Gonzalez-Wallace said. "Just something as simple as walking. You see someone walking on a rocky beach, where they are very carefully making every step, and it's clear that they're not just using their muscles. They're using their entire nervous system.

"When people talk to me about muscles as just muscles, that doesn't make sense. It's important to train all of the body's systems together: balance, coordination and cardiovascular."

He recommends what he calls "controlled imbalance."I'm not talking about [imbalance to the point of] falling on the floor," he said. "It's very easy to increase your heart rate. Take something as simple as a biceps curl. By lifting your heels as you do it, you're exercising 28 extra muscles that are responsible for stabilizing the body core. And all those muscles require blood, which means the heart is pumping faster. But we haven't changed the arm movements at all."

Another trick he uses to keep the brain involved is to have a client do one exercise with an arm while doing a different exercise with a leg.

"You work your way up to the ostrich position, in which you stand with one leg bent up behind the other," he said. "The more complicated the movement, the more brain activity it requires and the better the result."

Jeff Strickler • 612-673-7392 • jstrickler@startribune.com