Although I'm sort of a journeyman in this industry, I like to think, as Robert De Niro says in THIS BOY'S LIFE, that I know 'a thing or two about a thing or two.' But there's one thing I'm not and never can be without a lot of surgery, hormones, and therapy, and that's a woman. I like to think that fitness is fitness is fitness, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander and all that, but the fact is that women do respond in subtly different ways, and have often have different needs and goals, than men.
So if you happen to be a woman interested in fitness, you should definitely check out the following resources:
1) Rachel Cosgrove's Blog. Like me, Rachel is a triathlete. Unlike me, she's an Ironman finisher. She has also coached numerous figure competitors to high finishes and, from her writing, appears to be in the know about all things fitness-related. I just discovered her blog today, and it's a breath of fresh air. It's also nice to have someone out there writing about training for endurance events who is equally well versed in the world of strength training and diet. Meaning she knows how to train for extreme events without getting injured. I've never met Rachel, but I'm told she coaches locally and I hope to saddle up on my bike with her group sometime in the near future. I fully expect her, and probably most of her charges, to leave me choking on their dust.
2) The New Rules of Lifting for Women, by Lou Schuler, Alwyn Cosgrove, and Cassandra E. Forsythe. If it's anything like its predecessor, this book will hardly need my endorsement. Back in 2005, Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove (husband of Rachel, above) put out an unassuming-looking fitness book called The New Rules of Lifting, which has become, in my estimation, pretty much the gold standard for practical, up-to-date, and clearly-written advice on the fastest and most effective ways to lose fat, gain muscle, and increase strength. Chat rooms sprung up for people using its programs. Among fitness geeks, a mini-revolution was born, in which long-time lifters started accepting its very new, and rather controversial ideas, as the new gospel of How To Weight Train the Right Way. And frankly, I think it's deserved. Alongside Chad Waterbury's Muscle Revolution and Mike Boyle's Functional Training for Sports, it belongs in the library of absolutely anyone who's the slightest bit interested in fitness.
So I'm doing something I really should never do, and that's giving this book a blind endorsement, because I fully expect this book to be every bit as innovative, thorough and readable as its predecessor. I know both Cosgrove and Schuler the tiniest bit (the latter only via email, but that counts these days, right?), and they're absolutely the top of their field. If it's decreed by Schuler and Cosgrove, you can rest assured it Will Build Muscle and Burn Fat. I know less about their collaborator, Ms. Forsythe, but from all accounts, she, too, is the genuine article.
A word of warning here, the book isn't even OUT yet, and WON'T be before the holidays, meaning that you can't even purchase it as a gift for a friend. Then again, giving a "get in shape" book to a woman you love for Christmas is dicey territory, so maybe it would work better as a New Year's present to yourself to go along with your resolution to hit the gym hard this year.
Have a great weekend.
Showing posts with label alwyn cosgrove. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alwyn cosgrove. Show all posts
Friday, November 16, 2007
Friday, November 02, 2007
Diseased Canine Training
Alwyn Cosgrove had an interesting post recently that got me thinking. Dangerous, I realize, but hear me out here, gang. Ready for my new crazy assertion that will have everyone talking? There's No Difference Between Cardio and Strength Training. There. You heard it here first.
The American College of Sports Medicine, which recently laid out new exercise guidelines for average folks (and whose recommendations I picked apart at length some months back), makes a clear distinction between exercise intended to challenge the heart and lungs and exercise designed to challenge the muscles, namely, that "cardio" works for one and "strength training" works for the other, and, to maintain health and fitness, you need to do a little of both.
Alwyn's argument is that if you're exercising, you're working the muscles, heart and lungs all together. So to parse it and say one type of exercise works one thing and one the other is a false distinction. When you exercise, the body does one thing: it moves, and the heart and lungs are going to support that movement to the best of their ability. All you can do is change the speed, force, and direction of the movement. That's it.
Cosgrove uses the 'walk a mile' analogy: walking a mile is, in fact, a resistance-training exercise. The resistance is your body weight, the set lasts about 15 minutes, and you perform something on the order of 1500 reps.
I think the cardio/strength distinction sprung up around the time that those accursed weight-training machines started cropping up that were designed to isolate tiny muscles that you could work all day long and never raise you heart rate a single beat per minute. If all you ever do is these isolation moves, you can bet your heart and lungs aren't going to get much of a workout, and that you'd better go out and do some jogging or gardening or washing the car just to remind your c.v. system that it's alive.
But if you're doing real strength-training workouts, where you pound the basics for 45 minutes, your heart and lungs are going to get a serious workout--provided, of course, you DON'T turn your 30-60 second rest intervals into 5-minute 'catch up on ESPN' sessions between sets. Your largest muscle groups working in tandem against high resistance will produce a serious cardiovascular demand, and it's compounded when and if you do supersets or simply minimize your rest between sets.
And this is why I think that the one item that people should absolutely bring with them into the weight room, that nobody does, is a stopwatch. When I do a session of squats or deadlifts, you can bet that I'd like nothing more than to rest four minutes between sets. But if I've scheduled a session of multiple sets of 20 reps with 30 seconds rest between, the only thing that's going to keep me honest is that secondhand, hopping implacable towards the exact second of my undoing, laughing at my laziness if I'm not under that bar when the time comes.
Done in this way, strength training is a KILLER cardio workout. You don't even need the high reps. You can do back-to-back sets of heavy rows, heavy dips, and heavy deadlifts, none for more than five or six reps, and be a wheezing, panting mess in three minutes.
And, sad to say, but turning yourself into a wheezing, panting mess several times a week is a pretty darn good goal for any reasonably healthy person looking to get or keep themselves fit. Those are going to be MY exercise guidelines: if you look like a rabid dog when your session's over, you had a good workout. If you could go out to Spago's afterwards without so much as a shower and a little gel in the hair, guess what, Freckles, you dogged it today.
Let's face it: jogging and all those mamby-pamby machines are really avoidance mechanisms. I used to jog and I used to work out with a lot of little isolation moves. Then friends who needed help moving would call on me because I was a fitness nut, and guess what? I'd punk out SOONER than everyone else. I wasn't any more up for the challenge of moving heavy things for any period of time than my sedentary friends were. Moving furniture is really a series of deadlifts, farmer's walks, overhead presses, squats, weighted lunges, and step-ups done for hours on end. It's nothing like strapping yourself into a machine and doing curls. It's a full-body, heart-and-lungs-AND-muscles workout. And I just hadn't put in the hours to be able to handle it.
But here's a little success story to balance that one: once I figured out that I'd been fooling myself all those years and got serious, I began to stick mostly to the basics, and built myself into a stronger, leaner and more muscular version of myself. I cut out all the jogging because I had asthma and figured I'd never be much for endurance anyway. Some time later I started studying the martial arts, and got very nervous when the sensei told us to lace up our running shoes for a half-hour run around town. To my surprise, it was no problem for me. Miracle of miracles, the weight training had whipped my c.v. system into shape. Not into triathlon shape, mind you--you've still got to train specifically for your sport--but in far better shape than they'd been before I started hitting the weights with any intensity.
Many athletes know that it's really not an either-or thing with muscular strength and cardiovascular fitness: you don't have to train these two functions in isolation. It's a both-and thing, and the most fit people--martial artists, boxers, sprinters, and gymnasts among them--work out in a way that challenges both functions at once. They're producing close to a maximal force and power for a long enough period so the heart and lungs approach THEIR maximum capability. I don't need to say again that the physiques of those athletes are what the vast majority of people--men and women--would consider their ideal shape: muscular but not bulky, lean but not cadaverous.
So what does that mean for the rest of us? Well--in a word, train hard. Don't just jog, sprint. Don't just lift--lift fast and hard, using compound sets and multi-joint exercises. Keep yourself honest by keeping a careful eye on your rest between sets. It's getting yourself into that rabid dog state--the sweating, grunting, can-barely-stand that's really going to do you--ALL of you--the most good.
The American College of Sports Medicine, which recently laid out new exercise guidelines for average folks (and whose recommendations I picked apart at length some months back), makes a clear distinction between exercise intended to challenge the heart and lungs and exercise designed to challenge the muscles, namely, that "cardio" works for one and "strength training" works for the other, and, to maintain health and fitness, you need to do a little of both.
Alwyn's argument is that if you're exercising, you're working the muscles, heart and lungs all together. So to parse it and say one type of exercise works one thing and one the other is a false distinction. When you exercise, the body does one thing: it moves, and the heart and lungs are going to support that movement to the best of their ability. All you can do is change the speed, force, and direction of the movement. That's it.
Cosgrove uses the 'walk a mile' analogy: walking a mile is, in fact, a resistance-training exercise. The resistance is your body weight, the set lasts about 15 minutes, and you perform something on the order of 1500 reps.
I think the cardio/strength distinction sprung up around the time that those accursed weight-training machines started cropping up that were designed to isolate tiny muscles that you could work all day long and never raise you heart rate a single beat per minute. If all you ever do is these isolation moves, you can bet your heart and lungs aren't going to get much of a workout, and that you'd better go out and do some jogging or gardening or washing the car just to remind your c.v. system that it's alive.
But if you're doing real strength-training workouts, where you pound the basics for 45 minutes, your heart and lungs are going to get a serious workout--provided, of course, you DON'T turn your 30-60 second rest intervals into 5-minute 'catch up on ESPN' sessions between sets. Your largest muscle groups working in tandem against high resistance will produce a serious cardiovascular demand, and it's compounded when and if you do supersets or simply minimize your rest between sets.
And this is why I think that the one item that people should absolutely bring with them into the weight room, that nobody does, is a stopwatch. When I do a session of squats or deadlifts, you can bet that I'd like nothing more than to rest four minutes between sets. But if I've scheduled a session of multiple sets of 20 reps with 30 seconds rest between, the only thing that's going to keep me honest is that secondhand, hopping implacable towards the exact second of my undoing, laughing at my laziness if I'm not under that bar when the time comes.
Done in this way, strength training is a KILLER cardio workout. You don't even need the high reps. You can do back-to-back sets of heavy rows, heavy dips, and heavy deadlifts, none for more than five or six reps, and be a wheezing, panting mess in three minutes.
And, sad to say, but turning yourself into a wheezing, panting mess several times a week is a pretty darn good goal for any reasonably healthy person looking to get or keep themselves fit. Those are going to be MY exercise guidelines: if you look like a rabid dog when your session's over, you had a good workout. If you could go out to Spago's afterwards without so much as a shower and a little gel in the hair, guess what, Freckles, you dogged it today.
Let's face it: jogging and all those mamby-pamby machines are really avoidance mechanisms. I used to jog and I used to work out with a lot of little isolation moves. Then friends who needed help moving would call on me because I was a fitness nut, and guess what? I'd punk out SOONER than everyone else. I wasn't any more up for the challenge of moving heavy things for any period of time than my sedentary friends were. Moving furniture is really a series of deadlifts, farmer's walks, overhead presses, squats, weighted lunges, and step-ups done for hours on end. It's nothing like strapping yourself into a machine and doing curls. It's a full-body, heart-and-lungs-AND-muscles workout. And I just hadn't put in the hours to be able to handle it.
But here's a little success story to balance that one: once I figured out that I'd been fooling myself all those years and got serious, I began to stick mostly to the basics, and built myself into a stronger, leaner and more muscular version of myself. I cut out all the jogging because I had asthma and figured I'd never be much for endurance anyway. Some time later I started studying the martial arts, and got very nervous when the sensei told us to lace up our running shoes for a half-hour run around town. To my surprise, it was no problem for me. Miracle of miracles, the weight training had whipped my c.v. system into shape. Not into triathlon shape, mind you--you've still got to train specifically for your sport--but in far better shape than they'd been before I started hitting the weights with any intensity.
Many athletes know that it's really not an either-or thing with muscular strength and cardiovascular fitness: you don't have to train these two functions in isolation. It's a both-and thing, and the most fit people--martial artists, boxers, sprinters, and gymnasts among them--work out in a way that challenges both functions at once. They're producing close to a maximal force and power for a long enough period so the heart and lungs approach THEIR maximum capability. I don't need to say again that the physiques of those athletes are what the vast majority of people--men and women--would consider their ideal shape: muscular but not bulky, lean but not cadaverous.
So what does that mean for the rest of us? Well--in a word, train hard. Don't just jog, sprint. Don't just lift--lift fast and hard, using compound sets and multi-joint exercises. Keep yourself honest by keeping a careful eye on your rest between sets. It's getting yourself into that rabid dog state--the sweating, grunting, can-barely-stand that's really going to do you--ALL of you--the most good.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Hero of the Beach
When President George H. W. Bush described Saddam Hussein's initial aggression in the first Gulf war as 'kicking sand in the face' of Kuwait, pretty much everyone knew that he was alluding to the story of 'Mac' in the Charles Atlas ads. Indeed, to anyone who picked up a comic book during most of last century, the sand-kicking phrase remains about as familiar as ad copy gets. In readers of superhero comic books, Charles Atlas and his business partner, Charles Roman, had found their perfect target audience: one that was overwhelmingly male, of an age to be very concerned about issues of manliness, and primed to buy into the hero mythology that the ad depicts. As Gene Kannenberg Jr. points out in a terrific essay about the ad, the story of Mac is really a miniature version of the stories of Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, or Captain America, which are themselves the stuff of male adolescent fantasy. One day you're small and weak 'boy' -- as Mac's lady friend ('Grace' in other versions) calls him in the ad -- the next, you're a muscular 'he-man,' fully in charge of your own fate, a willing and able protector of the oppressed, and an object of universal admiration. It's a primal and undeniably appealing fantasy: maybe, just maybe I could be the biggest and the strongest guy on the block -- the Hero of the Beach.
Mac's physical change is all the more attractive to a reader because it occasions an almost complete change in personality, social status, confidence and outlook. Grace, formerly condescending, now gazes longingly at him, as do other women, attached and unattached alike. For his part, Mac is suddenly more interested in flaunting his new muscles and drinking in the newfound attention they bring him than he is in cultivating a monogamous relationship with the now-fawning Grace: he appreciates her, certainly, but he no longer needs her, because, as a 'real man,' he stands on his own. Funniest of all is the fact that the final caption, "HERO OF THE BEACH!" appears written across the sky, as if decreed from above that Mac's muscles confer upon him the virtue and courage of heroism.
Significantly, the means by which Mac achieves his transformation are completely omitted from the ad -- all we see is the ambiguous caption "Later" beneath the picture of the new Mac admiring himself in the mirror. For all the detail we get about his metamorphosis, Mac's newly muscle-bound condition might as well have been brought on on by a radioactive spider bite.
It's a complete fantasy, an exaggerated picture of how Atlas's program works, and a transparent play on the insecurity and vanity of the reader.
And you know, I'm okay with that. "The Insult" in fact, remains the alpha and omega of fitness advertising: 'exercise,' ads still claim directly or suggest with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, 'will make you desirable, powerful, rich, popular, and, depending on your preference, hypermasculine OR hyperfeminine.' Lou Schuler wrote last week that vanity is underrated as an impetus to get us exercising; I would add that fantasy, perfectly encapsulated in the story of Mac, is similarly underrated, and in fact, remains the primary driving force that gets us to the gym. What is vanity, after all, but a narcissistic fantasy with ourselves as the object of admiration and desire?
Look, I'm happy that exercise and fitness is healthy and will give me a longer, happier life, but that's not what keeps my client list full. Most people come in wanting to look like a particular actor or actress -- they want to become objects of desire themselves. And again -- that's fine, because I get that. I love sports movies (even though I'm largely indifferent to sports) in large part because they inspire me in the gym; there's almost always an image or two that conveys something heroic or mythic in the admittedly silly compulsion I have to thrash my body frantically about several times each week.
As persuasive as the news is about superior blood lipid profiles, cardiac functioning, longevity, joint health and bone density in exercisers, it doesn't really motivate me. I may have outgrown Mac, but the heroic myths are what get my blood pumping. Carl Weathers as Apollo Creed. Jason Statham implacably kicking everyone's ass. Even Daniel Day-Lewis effortlessly skipping rope at 200 rpm in the underrated movie THE BOXER. (He may have been skinny, but you wouldn't have wanted to get in the ring with him.) Somehow the physical strength and competence that these guys possessed on screeen seemed inextricably linked with their confidence, drive, focus, groundedness -- all qualities that I strove to cultivate as a kid. Let's face it: I'm still striving to cultivate them, and guys like these still inspire me to do it.
They're actors, granted, and not "real" athletes (though Weathers played professional football for a time). But they and many other have kept me fired up over the years, kept me getting up early, pushing the weights, hitting the bag, getting in the ring to spar, putting in 20 miles on my bike on Sunday mornings. And I know that no fitness magazine would sell more than a half-dozen copies each month if, next to each article about exercise and liver health, there weren't twelve digitally-enhanced photos of tanned, shapely young men and women frolicking on the beach, ecstatically jaundice-free. We may be mature, educated, secure in our careers, but the fantasy that athleticism and muscularity make men courageous and heroic -- and women some elusive combination of beautiful, desirable, AND tough and strong -- is hard to shake. It appeals to us on a pretty primal level.
So I've just come clean with my superficiality -- anyone care to join me? Who has inspired you over the years? What image, body, moment, face, personality has fired you up?
Comments welcome.
PS: Since Alwyn Cosgrove gave me a plug recently, I thought I'd give him one here: on September 15th, Cosgrove, Chad Waterbury, and Russian Kettleball conditioning expert Pavel Tsatsouline will be giving an all-day seminar in Los Angeles. It pains me that I'm unable to attend, but with these three world-class experts working hands-on with everyone in attendance, it promises to be a pretty amazing workshop, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get fitter, stronger, leaner, and healthier. Someone go, take notes, and send me a report, please! --Andrew
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
A Ph.D Asks ME a Question
A few weeks ago I mentioned an old buddy and lifting partner of mine in this blog. As Internet karma would have it, he wrote me shortly after that and we started up some online fitness gabbing. Now Deano's no fitness aficionado like me, just a lowly, barely-literate Ph.D in biology, so, predictably, he had a few questions for me. I thought I'd post a piece of our back-and-forth here.
A track-and-fielder in school, Deano's currently trying to break the 5-minute mile barrier, his own personal Everest. (In a previous email to Deano I mentioned Chad Waterbury, the iconoclastic strength coach I mention here, and that's the "Chad" he's referring to):
It seems like Chad favors exercises that use multiple muscle groups simultaneously to build strength and mass in any given group. You and I used to talk about isolating muscle groups to really hit them. His approach does make a lot of sense to me when the goal is to perform a task efficiently: My training for the mile is largely about learning to run a 5 minute mile pace without putting any needless stress on any one part of the body. But I'm surprised that his approach works better if the goal is to bulk up a particular muscle group. In other words, I'm saying that his philosophy sounds like what I do, not what I thought a weight lifter does.
The idea of isolating a single muscle group -- which is not physiologically possible -- comes from bodybuilding. Most people seeking to add the maximum amount of muscle to their frames perform lots of single-joint exercises like curls, calf raises, leg extensions and the like, in addition to old-school compound moves like squats and presses. Some coaches and online lifting junkies may dispute me on this, but, based on what I know of the training protocols of most serious bodybuilders, and from my own personal experience, performing some single-joint training is crucial if getting maximally buff is your number one training goal.
Much of the thinking about muscle isolation comes out of the Weider school, where every common-sensical lifting axiom has "Weider" stuck in front of it, as in "The Weider 'Gravity Exists' Principle," or "The Weider 'Oceans are Wet' Theory." Weider's books and magazines were certainly my main source of lifting advice back when you and I were pumping iron back in Hanover, so that's why I trained that way: I didn't know any different!
Weider has been taking a lot of heat lately, but lots of guys get effectively huge using those methods (with perhaps some help from a needle or two) and as I said, the majority of people who are big for a living seem to continue to use them. However, Waterbury and many of the other pioneers these days, like Alwyn Cosgrove and Mike Boyle, come at things from a slightly more functional/athletic standpoint (though Boyle's blood might boil if he read 'functional' next to his name!). They are less interested in muscle for muscle's sake than in health, strength, and athletic performance with improved appearance as a desirable side effect.
But there are subtle differences even among the approaches of this new wave as well. Waterbury's background is in weightlifting (more concerned with strength than appearance); Cosgrove is a fat-loss expert (mostly concerned with body composition); and Boyle is an athletic coach (mostly concerned with keeping pro athletes healthy and strong). So all these heavy hitters have their own angle, and none of them are focused as exclusively with turning you into Quadzilla as Weider was -- or as you and I were back in the throes of our 1980's teenage machismo.
Again, the faithful will claim that the system devised by their respective figureheads works best for everything: strength, muscle mass, body composition, power, sports performance, looking good naked. But I don't find that to be true. I've never been as big as I was in college, when I was using a Weider-esque body part split, but I got very lean using Cosgrove's methods and felt quick and athletic on Boyle's programs. I'm only a few weeks into using Waterbury's methods, but I can already feel myself getting stronger on key lifts.
Obviously there's some convergence among all these methods: Boyle's athletes still look great; Waterbury's charges still get lean; Weider devotees still get strong. It's more of a question of emphasis than developing one quality to the exclusion of all others. But if a band of evil robots came to Earth and threatened to devour anyone with over 10% bodyfat, I'd put Cosgrove in charge of the worldwide fat-loss blitz. If the same robots said they had a hankerin' for any puny earthlings who couldn't bench press twice their bodyweight, I'd elect Waterbury to Benching Czar. And if the robots gave us a sporting chance and said they'd let us go if we could best them at a human-on-robot game of flag football, I'd nominate Mike Boyle to head up the strength-and-conditioning department of Earth's Beat The Robots team.
The other guys would be deputies, no question. But even specialists have specialties.
As pretty much every great coach has acknowledged, it's easy to get caught up in the small variations that make up 15% of the experts' programs, such as whether an isolation move or two is worth the time in the gym. Far more productive is to focus on the 85% that they DO agree on and make sure you're getting plenty of that. What this all goes to show is that, unsurprisingly, there is no single best way to train for every individual for every goal. And frankly I like it that way: without a little variation, without even -- dare I say -- a little good-natured frisson among the experts and their acolytes, I'd probably have to pack up my blog and go home.
A track-and-fielder in school, Deano's currently trying to break the 5-minute mile barrier, his own personal Everest. (In a previous email to Deano I mentioned Chad Waterbury, the iconoclastic strength coach I mention here, and that's the "Chad" he's referring to):
It seems like Chad favors exercises that use multiple muscle groups simultaneously to build strength and mass in any given group. You and I used to talk about isolating muscle groups to really hit them. His approach does make a lot of sense to me when the goal is to perform a task efficiently: My training for the mile is largely about learning to run a 5 minute mile pace without putting any needless stress on any one part of the body. But I'm surprised that his approach works better if the goal is to bulk up a particular muscle group. In other words, I'm saying that his philosophy sounds like what I do, not what I thought a weight lifter does.
The idea of isolating a single muscle group -- which is not physiologically possible -- comes from bodybuilding. Most people seeking to add the maximum amount of muscle to their frames perform lots of single-joint exercises like curls, calf raises, leg extensions and the like, in addition to old-school compound moves like squats and presses. Some coaches and online lifting junkies may dispute me on this, but, based on what I know of the training protocols of most serious bodybuilders, and from my own personal experience, performing some single-joint training is crucial if getting maximally buff is your number one training goal.
Much of the thinking about muscle isolation comes out of the Weider school, where every common-sensical lifting axiom has "Weider" stuck in front of it, as in "The Weider 'Gravity Exists' Principle," or "The Weider 'Oceans are Wet' Theory." Weider's books and magazines were certainly my main source of lifting advice back when you and I were pumping iron back in Hanover, so that's why I trained that way: I didn't know any different!
Weider has been taking a lot of heat lately, but lots of guys get effectively huge using those methods (with perhaps some help from a needle or two) and as I said, the majority of people who are big for a living seem to continue to use them. However, Waterbury and many of the other pioneers these days, like Alwyn Cosgrove and Mike Boyle, come at things from a slightly more functional/athletic standpoint (though Boyle's blood might boil if he read 'functional' next to his name!). They are less interested in muscle for muscle's sake than in health, strength, and athletic performance with improved appearance as a desirable side effect.
But there are subtle differences even among the approaches of this new wave as well. Waterbury's background is in weightlifting (more concerned with strength than appearance); Cosgrove is a fat-loss expert (mostly concerned with body composition); and Boyle is an athletic coach (mostly concerned with keeping pro athletes healthy and strong). So all these heavy hitters have their own angle, and none of them are focused as exclusively with turning you into Quadzilla as Weider was -- or as you and I were back in the throes of our 1980's teenage machismo.
Again, the faithful will claim that the system devised by their respective figureheads works best for everything: strength, muscle mass, body composition, power, sports performance, looking good naked. But I don't find that to be true. I've never been as big as I was in college, when I was using a Weider-esque body part split, but I got very lean using Cosgrove's methods and felt quick and athletic on Boyle's programs. I'm only a few weeks into using Waterbury's methods, but I can already feel myself getting stronger on key lifts.
Obviously there's some convergence among all these methods: Boyle's athletes still look great; Waterbury's charges still get lean; Weider devotees still get strong. It's more of a question of emphasis than developing one quality to the exclusion of all others. But if a band of evil robots came to Earth and threatened to devour anyone with over 10% bodyfat, I'd put Cosgrove in charge of the worldwide fat-loss blitz. If the same robots said they had a hankerin' for any puny earthlings who couldn't bench press twice their bodyweight, I'd elect Waterbury to Benching Czar. And if the robots gave us a sporting chance and said they'd let us go if we could best them at a human-on-robot game of flag football, I'd nominate Mike Boyle to head up the strength-and-conditioning department of Earth's Beat The Robots team.
The other guys would be deputies, no question. But even specialists have specialties.
As pretty much every great coach has acknowledged, it's easy to get caught up in the small variations that make up 15% of the experts' programs, such as whether an isolation move or two is worth the time in the gym. Far more productive is to focus on the 85% that they DO agree on and make sure you're getting plenty of that. What this all goes to show is that, unsurprisingly, there is no single best way to train for every individual for every goal. And frankly I like it that way: without a little variation, without even -- dare I say -- a little good-natured frisson among the experts and their acolytes, I'd probably have to pack up my blog and go home.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Frankenstein No More!
I have to admit that I'm pretty abnormal in that a new workout program or idea gets me really excited, especially when it's one that I can incorporate into my own regimen. I certainly like hearing about the latest trends in resistance training for seniors, but it's nothing like when I read an article by a coach I respect who says, "Descending sets have magical properties!" or "Seven sets of four reps will give you the ability to turn invisible!" Heck, I even get excited when some coach I haven't heard of, or actively despise for the dishonor he's visited upon my family, says something weird and off-the-wall about exercise that I think just might work. I can barely wait to get to the gym and put it to work (Disclaimer: the invisible thing doesn't work; I only became slightly translucent).
The one exception has been a training method that's been getting a lot of play during the last few years. It's called total body training, which, as the name suggests, is a method whereby you work all major muscle groups in the course of a single workout session.
This method will strike few people as novel: it's been around since the fifties, and I've used it on clients since I first started training professionally. But the alternative, a "split" system, has always seemed cooler, more advanced, more intense. Total body training seems almost quaint by comparison, partly because it's so simple: go in the gym, work out all your muscles, go home, rest and eat, come back a couple of days later and repeat. In a split system, you divide the body into parts, working some parts one day, some parts another day. An upper-lower split is common; so is what's called a push-pull split, but the possibilities are endless, including what I like to call the "Frankenstein" split, wherein your body is divided into so many sections that you only get around to training the entire thing about once every ten days or so.
The complexity of the split system is what makes it perfect for obsessive exercisers like me: you can fret about the acute variables till you're blue in the face. When I'm planning a new routine for myself, Heidi will often find little scraps of paper strewn about the house with little workout charts and calendars on them, filled in and scratched out as I search obsessively for the better mousetrap of strength-training routines.
But there's really no obsessing with total body training. It's about as straightforward as it gets.
It just seems too easy, I'd think. I'm too advanced for this first-day-of-school stuff. Just six exercises? Just three or four sets each? JUST THREE DAYS A WEEK? What would I do with myself for the other half hour of my daily gym time?
Good old fashioned hubris, folks.
After all the hectoring, all the chat-room talk from the gym rats who have suddenly seen the light, all the disapproving grandmothers at the Y telling me, "You don't need so many sets for your traps, there, son," I decided to give total-body-training a try for, really, the first time since I began working out in the 80s. No more twelve sets for chest, eight for biceps, fifteen for legs. I was going to go by the book, whittling it down to absolute basics.
I decided not to follow any specific coach's system, but basically the workout I devised is a hybrid of the systems of a bunch of guys who are way smarter than I am about this kind of thing, notably Alwyn Cosgrove, Mike Boyle, and Chad Waterbury.I call it my Boylegrovebury routine. I called it the Waterboy-grove routine for awhile but was getting funny looks.
You know where I'm headed here: it works great. It's tough, it's more intense than most split systems I've done, and maybe most useful of all, it's fast. The workouts take about forty minutes, giving me plenty of time to do all those other things in the gym that usually get the short shrift, like dynamic warmups, post-workout stretching and the like. I leave the gym feeling great. Surprisingly, I'm handling weights as heavy as I ever have; recovering well, gaining size in some places, losing it in others as appropriate. It's not just the maintenance routine I expected it would be: I'm making progress, and I'm getting sore.
I wonder if, in a way, all those years of "advanced" training primed the pump for me to return to a lower-volume system. Thanks to all those "chest days" and "leg days," and doing isolation moves till the cows came home, I finally know something about the way my body's put together. I can squat and deadlift with good form, something that I believe took me about ten years to learn to do well. So three working sets is now three real working sets, not two sets of flailing and one set of work. I wonder if it's even possible that that advanced strength trainers in general need LESS volume than intermediates for this very reason.
Presses, chinups, rows, squats, lunges, deadlifts and other basics seem like moves you master with a couple weeks of training. So does the total body training model. The obvious next step seems to be to look for something else, something new, something more advanced. But these moves are really the pliés and straight punches of iron pumping, the things you learn on your first day but will never stop perfecting. When I watch a great athlete in action, it's not so much his ability to call on a thousand obscure techniques and fancy moves that impresses me, nor is that what makes him a good player. It's his mastery of the basics: Tiger's drive, Albert Pujols' swing. Heifetz probably could have made an audience cry playing a G major scale.
Sure, there's a place for advanced techniques in training, but since returning to the oldest of old-school training methods, I'm reminded again that they'll never beat the basics.
PS: I'm going to be offline for a few days -- off to the San Juans for a reunion of my massive Irish-Catholic family till next Monday. In the meantime, check out the various new links to the right of this text! "Greatest Hits of DF," and the video link -- which will be up as a blog entry shortly -- are both free and make great stocking-stuffers!
The one exception has been a training method that's been getting a lot of play during the last few years. It's called total body training, which, as the name suggests, is a method whereby you work all major muscle groups in the course of a single workout session.
This method will strike few people as novel: it's been around since the fifties, and I've used it on clients since I first started training professionally. But the alternative, a "split" system, has always seemed cooler, more advanced, more intense. Total body training seems almost quaint by comparison, partly because it's so simple: go in the gym, work out all your muscles, go home, rest and eat, come back a couple of days later and repeat. In a split system, you divide the body into parts, working some parts one day, some parts another day. An upper-lower split is common; so is what's called a push-pull split, but the possibilities are endless, including what I like to call the "Frankenstein" split, wherein your body is divided into so many sections that you only get around to training the entire thing about once every ten days or so.
The complexity of the split system is what makes it perfect for obsessive exercisers like me: you can fret about the acute variables till you're blue in the face. When I'm planning a new routine for myself, Heidi will often find little scraps of paper strewn about the house with little workout charts and calendars on them, filled in and scratched out as I search obsessively for the better mousetrap of strength-training routines.
But there's really no obsessing with total body training. It's about as straightforward as it gets.
It just seems too easy, I'd think. I'm too advanced for this first-day-of-school stuff. Just six exercises? Just three or four sets each? JUST THREE DAYS A WEEK? What would I do with myself for the other half hour of my daily gym time?
Good old fashioned hubris, folks.
After all the hectoring, all the chat-room talk from the gym rats who have suddenly seen the light, all the disapproving grandmothers at the Y telling me, "You don't need so many sets for your traps, there, son," I decided to give total-body-training a try for, really, the first time since I began working out in the 80s. No more twelve sets for chest, eight for biceps, fifteen for legs. I was going to go by the book, whittling it down to absolute basics.
I decided not to follow any specific coach's system, but basically the workout I devised is a hybrid of the systems of a bunch of guys who are way smarter than I am about this kind of thing, notably Alwyn Cosgrove, Mike Boyle, and Chad Waterbury.I call it my Boylegrovebury routine. I called it the Waterboy-grove routine for awhile but was getting funny looks.
You know where I'm headed here: it works great. It's tough, it's more intense than most split systems I've done, and maybe most useful of all, it's fast. The workouts take about forty minutes, giving me plenty of time to do all those other things in the gym that usually get the short shrift, like dynamic warmups, post-workout stretching and the like. I leave the gym feeling great. Surprisingly, I'm handling weights as heavy as I ever have; recovering well, gaining size in some places, losing it in others as appropriate. It's not just the maintenance routine I expected it would be: I'm making progress, and I'm getting sore.
I wonder if, in a way, all those years of "advanced" training primed the pump for me to return to a lower-volume system. Thanks to all those "chest days" and "leg days," and doing isolation moves till the cows came home, I finally know something about the way my body's put together. I can squat and deadlift with good form, something that I believe took me about ten years to learn to do well. So three working sets is now three real working sets, not two sets of flailing and one set of work. I wonder if it's even possible that that advanced strength trainers in general need LESS volume than intermediates for this very reason.
Presses, chinups, rows, squats, lunges, deadlifts and other basics seem like moves you master with a couple weeks of training. So does the total body training model. The obvious next step seems to be to look for something else, something new, something more advanced. But these moves are really the pliés and straight punches of iron pumping, the things you learn on your first day but will never stop perfecting. When I watch a great athlete in action, it's not so much his ability to call on a thousand obscure techniques and fancy moves that impresses me, nor is that what makes him a good player. It's his mastery of the basics: Tiger's drive, Albert Pujols' swing. Heifetz probably could have made an audience cry playing a G major scale.
Sure, there's a place for advanced techniques in training, but since returning to the oldest of old-school training methods, I'm reminded again that they'll never beat the basics.
PS: I'm going to be offline for a few days -- off to the San Juans for a reunion of my massive Irish-Catholic family till next Monday. In the meantime, check out the various new links to the right of this text! "Greatest Hits of DF," and the video link -- which will be up as a blog entry shortly -- are both free and make great stocking-stuffers!
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Fitness Conference Rundown
Just got back from Chicago, where I attended a three-day summit put on by PERFORM BETTER, which makes fitness products and puts on educational seminars like this one.The main thought that ran through my mind throughout the conference was: wow, there are a lot of people in this field who are far smarter, better informed, and richer than I am, and let's face it, Freckles, many of them are about 10 years younger than I am.
These thoughts only occasionally threatened to drive me screaming from the room. In between bouts of hyperventilation and nausea, though, the weekend was pretty terrific.
A few specifics:
FRIDAY, 5/11
I attended a lecture by a guy named Thomas Plummer, who's a multiple gym-owner and zillionaire. He cursed like a sailor while sagely advising trainers to behave courteously. Early in his lecture he warned us that he'd piss us off, and I think he managed that. How could he not? Since he's management at the highest level and most of us are trainer-drones, it was like Donald Trump addressing a roomful of croupiers. Nevertheless, he's a funny guy, and certainly knows the industry. Some rather sobering information about the future of the industry, where we're headed, and who will survive. The upshot: I'm dead.
Next, I attended a workshop given by Ed Thomas called "The Subtle Side of Fitness." Ed's a courtly chap who carries himself like the lifetime martial arts/yoga/old-school fitness devotee that he is. Lots of interesting photos of old-time health clubs, overstuffed with gymnastic equipment, climbing ropes, ladders, balancing towers and the like. His point was that physical awareness and coordination, which used to be the cornerstone of the fitness "industry" (such as it was) should find its way back in. He's right, and those old gyms looked like a lot of fun. Reminded me of some photos I saw of a gym belonging to a guy named Mark Twight, who trained the actors for the movie 300. Twight's place is a converted barn with a bunch of heavy stuff to lift and things to climb and swing from. Give me that over Hammer Strength any day.
Thomas' presentation and photos also made me think of my late paternal grandmother (who was almost 102 when she died five years ago). Kathleen Walsh Heffernan was a P.E. teacher in the early 1900's, and probably worked in environments very like the ones in Ed's presentation: there were photos of young women climbing walls and ladders and hanging upside down in puffy skirts and what looked like ballet shoes, and Ed told us that this was where fitness was heading...again. Somewhere, my grandmother was beaming.
The final lecture on Friday was given by a guy named Bill Parisi on the art of networking. Parisi has a franchaise called "Parisi Speed Schools" that cater mostly to kids and adolescent aspiring athletes. It's a business model based on combatting childhood obesity--and on making Parisi lots of money, which it has done quite effectively. Parisi's one of those big, animated, passionate guys who could probably make millions selling sand in the desert. It doesn't matter if you know he's working Dale Carnegie's principles on you all day and all night: he's irresistible. One of his lessons was that you need to find a niche to market yourself in. After the presentation, I chatted with him a bit and told him I was getting into fitness writing. His immediate response: "THAT'S YOUR NICHE!!"
SATURDAY, 5/12
Got up early to work out at the Hyatt Regency's very civilized gym. Unsurprisingly, about a dozen very fit trainers were already there when I arrived at 6:30 AM, shunning the cumbersome machinery that cluttered up the place. Instead, they stood about performing difficult, full-body stuff that required enormous balance and coordination...not unlike the impassive, shockingly aligned exercisers in Ed Thomas' photos and prints. One female was cranking out more chinups than a Navy SEAL. The wave of the future indeed.
Felt pretty good about the workout I'd put in until about an hour and a half later, when, after a shower and breakfast, I sauntered into Juan Carlos Santana's "Combat Training For Fitness" class. Over the course of a forty-minute workout, he easily flattened the hundred or so trim, muscular training types who showed up. Santana has trained a host of Ultimate Fighter types, and relies primarily on continuous circuits using body weight squats, jumps, lunges, and a few primitive devices like elastic bands and kettlebells--another new-old school workout device--to get the job done. Suffice it to say that I wished I had neither eaten breakfast nor showered before that particular class.
Like Parisi, Santana's another magnetic guy who you could see leading a charge on a battlefield and getting everyone down to the residents of the local retirement community to follow him to certain death. I like to think I push myself pretty hard when I work out, but at Santana's urging I squeezed out more reps with more focus than I dreamed possible.
Amidst all the sweating, grunting and cries of "Oh God," Santana made an interesting point: that, from yogis sitting in lotus position for days on end, to monks who fast for weeks, to Native Americans who suspend themselves on hooks piercing the skin on their backs, the endurance of pain has long been seen as a pathway to spiritual enlightenment. It's a good observation, and ties into something I've been ruminating about for a few weeks now: the crossover between the pursuit of fitness and a deeper, more intangible awareness that turns regular exercise into something approaching a spiritual practice. You don't want to get too "out there" with that line of thinking, but there is something to it. As I've noted before, the language of religion and the language of fitness have lots in common.
Next was Al Vermeil, former trainer for the Chicago Bulls, and I by that I mean THE Jackson-Jordan era Bulls, not the wayward, motley crew of the last few years. Vermeil's job was to keep seven-footers healthy in one of the winningest, most popular franchaises in professional sports. He was good--an older guy with absolutely nothing left to prove, just out there, spreading a little knowledge and wisdom like there's nothing he'd rather be doing. He approaches training from the physical therapy angle, meaning that I've got to race to keep up with all the transverse abdominis, quadratus laborum, and piriformis talk flying about the room.
One interesting point he made was that many back problems and postural issues are the result of poor motor control of the fine muscles around the spine. The general public is often told that "strengthening the abdominals" will rectify back problems, but Al's point was that before you train the larger, superficial muscles of the core, you have to re-teach the smaller muscles--whose names are hard to pronounce, much less spell--to work properly. If you crank out thousands of sit-ups and leg raises without the smaller muscles doing their thing, what you get is a condition known as "global dominance:" big muscles doing the work of small muscles, which is like trying to write by moving at the shoulder joint rather than the wrist and fingers.
Last of the morning lecturers was Mike Boyle, whose book FUNCTIONAL TRAINING FOR SPORTS I've praised to the heavens in this space before. Mike's another highly-accomplished pro-sports trainer who to me, manages to bridge the gap between brilliant, analytical guys like Vermeil and guys like me who just want the lowdown on techniques we can apply to our everyday clients. Boyle has a cohesive fitness philosophy that is based on thousands of in-the-trenches hours keeping highly-paid athletes on the playing field and out of the rehab clinic. He's got a few controversial ideas, such as an incurable distaste for weight-room warhorses like the back squat and the barbell deadlift, but it's hard to argue with a guy who's had this much success and whose methods smack of so much good old-fashioned horse sense. A few months ago I saw a photo of me from when I was training using exclusively Boyle's methods, and even though his training programs are designed for performance and not aesthetics, I actually was looking pretty good at the time; you might have even pegged me as a guy who exercised regularly. Further evidence that if you train for function, form tends to follow.
To my surprise, Mike's lecture even offered some empirical evidence for my "Grow it early and you'll never look squirrelly" theory that I wrote about a couple of weeks back. On one hand it's good to have my instincts validated; on the other hand, now I can't claim it as my personal, unproven pet theory. Bless/curse you, Mike Boyle.
The early afternoon was taken up with more bon mots from Santana and Boyle, and concluded with a lecture by a guy named Ryan Lee, another fitness-industry-marketing machine cut from the Parisi/Santana steamroller-of-a-personality cloth. Lee made it seem like making scads of money in the fitness industry is and should be ridiculously easy. He also made it clear that I should update my blog at least twice a week (Ulp...Well, here's once THIS week). Lee had some great ideas and did make me think that there was plenty more I could be doing to jack up my business, and not just on the training end. So get ready for Andrew Heffernan's SIX PACK BRAND VITAMINS!
SUNDAY, MAY 13th
Didn't get much sleep the previous night because I'd ventured out from the confines of the convention center the previous night to attend a production of TROILUS AND CRESSIDA at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Good show, but, immersed as I was in the world of training, my mind kept wandering to the methods I might use to improve the physiques, posture, and abdominal tone of the actors' physiques. Occupational hazard, I suppose.
Gray Cook was another sports rehab guy, an engaging speaker with a disarming down-home quality that, along with his running I'm-a-redneck joshing, disguises how brilliant he is. He's another physical-therapy guy whose approach I'd like to continue to learn more about. The primary thing I took away from his lecture was to address postural and functional problems before training for strength, or, For God's Sake, Knucklehead, Don't Let Your Clients Use Bad Form! A good lesson.
Alwyn Cosgrove was next, who I would rave about if I hadn't done so seventeen times in this blog space already. Suffice it to say he lives up to his hype, leads a brutal exercise session, and despite having only recently emerged from a barrage of successful chemotherapy treatments, still does a mean one-leg squat. Following the endurance sports models of Team In Training and Avon's Walk For Breast Cancer, Cosgrove has raised a nice chunk of change to fight cancer with his program LiftStrong--an 800 page book-on-CD filled with cutting edge fitness articles, information, and his own, very personal Cancer Diary. Cosgrove is definitely one of the good guys.
Finally, Eric Cressey is a preposterously accomplished guy who, at age 25, is not only a very successful powerlifter but one of the most highly respected trainers around. Just listening to his lecture and getting a sense of the depth and scope of his knowledge made me wonder what the hell I've been doing frittering away these last 36 years. Part of me wanted to jump up on the stage and strangle him in all his youthful, charming, and articulate glory, but one look at his arms and chest made me realize that even that was a futile fantasy. My only comfort is that someday, many, many years after I've fallen into decrepitude, dementia and death, Eric Cressey, too, will die. Sure, there will be streets in Boston named after him, an Eric Cressey annual parade, and hoards of future gold medallists tearfully crediting him with all their success, but he will be dead, and I must be thankful for that one, tiny blessing.
Overall, it was nice to be in an environment where fitness geekhood was the norm rather than a freakish abhorance, and to rub elbows with some of the top people in the field. Credit must be given to Chris Poirier, who was the conference coordinator and responsible for assembling this fitness dream team. The summit is coming to Long Beach and Providence, and it's well worth any trainer's time to check it out.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Good Gyms
Last weekend I took a couple hours and drove up the 5 freeway to Newhall, where the legendary Alwyn Cosgrove runs a gym called RESULTS FITNESS.
I met Cosgrove a couple of months ago at a seminar and chatted him up. I knew his writing and fitness philosophies; I also know about his gym and expressed an interest in seeing how he ran things; he kindly told me I could drop by any time.
So last Friday, I did.
Given Cosgrove's reputation, I was half-expecting something enormous: a huge, multi-floored fitness emporium equipped with all the latest machines and fitness paraphernalia. A staff of behemoths, with Olympic bars and squat racks as far as the eye could see. People performing esoteric moves with great purpose and intensity. The occasional, massive trainer screaming, randomly, "DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?"
I pictured Ivan Drago training in "Rocky IV."
But RESULTS is not that at all: it's actually a fairly unassuming storefront in a strip mall in quaint-ish downtown Newhall. And once inside, it’s immediately clear that the equipment is nothing special either. A nicely-organized rack of dumbbells. A few Olympic bars and benches. A squat rack with a chinning bar. Some cardio equipment. Lots of floor space for stretching. And maybe two or three of the absolutely most basic fitness machines: a lat-pulldown/rowing station and an adjustable-angle cable station are the two I remember seeing.
The one nod to esoteria was a strange device that looked a little like a Pilates rebounder -- and the woman who was showing me around, Donna Bent, told me they'd won that piece of equipment the previous week at some function (no one touched it in the time that I was there).
So in its physical plant, RESULTS is a nuts-and-bolts place, and that really shouldn't have surprised me. In his approach to training, Cosgrove is a nuts-and-bolts guy.
The demographic of the clientele was fairly predictable: unsurprisingly, at 11 AM on a weekday, it was mostly women who either weren't working or whose jobs afforded them time off on a weekday to put in an hour or so at the gym (sort of like my job).
But what impressed me the most were the muscles on these women, and the energy and focus these women were summoning to build them. The one bare midriff I saw (it's not a flesh-baring place) was nicely muscled, as were the arms and shoulders these women sported. They all looked like strong, capable, athletic types, and it's no surprise -- they were doing exercises that required some serious strength and athleticism: chinups, deadlifts, rows, squats, all at a brisk pace, with some pretty serious weights. I heard some hearty grunting while I was in there. I'm not allowed at CURVES, but I don't imagine you hear a lot of grunting there.
I spent about forty-five minutes with Donna (who was very nice and a pretty darn athletic looking specimen herself), and in addition to getting the sense that the training at RESULTS is goal-oriented (hence the name of the place) and intense, I got a good sense of the vibe of the place as well, which is perhaps its most important feature, and the main reason a potential client would choose RESULTS over BALLY’S.
It's similar to a gym called CARL AND SANDRA’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is run by a guy named Carl Miller, a former Olympic weightlifting coach. I visited the gym about a year ago. Carl’s a great guy, very accomplished, and took 90 minutes of his day to work with me and talk about their philosophy.
If I were king of everything, all gyms would be run like RESULTS and CARL AND SANDRA’s. If I ever run a gym, these two gyms are the template I would model my gym after. What makes them different from, say, 24-HOUR FITNESS?
Lots:
1) PERSONAL ATTENTION. Both gyms feel like Cheers: everybody knows your name. They're friendly places where you want to go, want to spend time.
2) RECOGNITION FOR ACCOMPLISHMENT. At RESULTS, there are before-and-after pictures of some of the gym’s more impressive transformations. At CARL and SANDRA's, you get a special notice on the wall the longer you've been a member. The notion of striving for improvement and change is reinforced in both cases.
3) CONTINUED INSTRUCTION. The programs followed by the clients at both gyms are designed by professionals who are aware of each client's goals, injuries, limitations. Each client follows their program to the letter, and every few weeks is given an updated program, thus ensuring progress. Supervision is provided: at RESULTS, it's semi-private; at CARL's, it's one-on-one every few weeks, but trainers -- all of whom share the same training philosophy -- are always on hand to assist.
4) TRAINERS WHO ARE ON THE SAME PAGE. At most gyms, trainers barely know one another, much less each other's clients. Asked to train someone else's client, most trainers would have no idea what to do. But at RESULTS and CARL'S, the training programs are part of a larger training philosophy which underlies everyone's program. So even if you might have a particular trainer that you work with, any trainer at the facility can pinch hit if need be.
5) METICULOUS RECORD KEEPING. Check out the trainers at the average gym. Then check out the trainees. Are they writing down what they do? Unlikely. Yet how can you be sure you're making progress if you don't keep track? That's like playing golf or bowling and not keeping score. Are you getting better or worse? At the good gyms, it just makes sense to keep track. Who said "What is measured, improves"? I don't know, but they probably pumped iron.
6) A FEELING OF "SERIOUS FUN." This is the complement to #1, above. Sure, everyone's nice. But it's not at the expense of the work that everyone's there to do. It's supportive but not distracting.
7) LESS FOCUS ON STUFF. Both gyms have everything they need but not much more. Given the choice between filling up a gym's floor space with a dozen near-useless machines that work tiny muscles in a non-functional way and just having that extra space for stretching, doing ab work, jumping rope, or calisthenics, I know what I'd choose. Cosgrove and Miller have chosen likewise.
8) INSPIRATON. Cosgrove himself is a former Tae Kwon Do champ. The trainer on duty when I visited RESULTS was a competitive powerlifter. Carl Miller coached two American Olympic teams. Cosgrove’s wife, Rachel, brave soul, is training for an Ironman-distance triathlon. These people practice what they preach.
I'm sure there are dozens more points I'm missing here. I don't know whether I would ever want the hassle or worry of owning my own gym, but if I do, this is how I'd want the place to feel.
I met Cosgrove a couple of months ago at a seminar and chatted him up. I knew his writing and fitness philosophies; I also know about his gym and expressed an interest in seeing how he ran things; he kindly told me I could drop by any time.
So last Friday, I did.
Given Cosgrove's reputation, I was half-expecting something enormous: a huge, multi-floored fitness emporium equipped with all the latest machines and fitness paraphernalia. A staff of behemoths, with Olympic bars and squat racks as far as the eye could see. People performing esoteric moves with great purpose and intensity. The occasional, massive trainer screaming, randomly, "DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?"
I pictured Ivan Drago training in "Rocky IV."
But RESULTS is not that at all: it's actually a fairly unassuming storefront in a strip mall in quaint-ish downtown Newhall. And once inside, it’s immediately clear that the equipment is nothing special either. A nicely-organized rack of dumbbells. A few Olympic bars and benches. A squat rack with a chinning bar. Some cardio equipment. Lots of floor space for stretching. And maybe two or three of the absolutely most basic fitness machines: a lat-pulldown/rowing station and an adjustable-angle cable station are the two I remember seeing.
The one nod to esoteria was a strange device that looked a little like a Pilates rebounder -- and the woman who was showing me around, Donna Bent, told me they'd won that piece of equipment the previous week at some function (no one touched it in the time that I was there).
So in its physical plant, RESULTS is a nuts-and-bolts place, and that really shouldn't have surprised me. In his approach to training, Cosgrove is a nuts-and-bolts guy.
The demographic of the clientele was fairly predictable: unsurprisingly, at 11 AM on a weekday, it was mostly women who either weren't working or whose jobs afforded them time off on a weekday to put in an hour or so at the gym (sort of like my job).
But what impressed me the most were the muscles on these women, and the energy and focus these women were summoning to build them. The one bare midriff I saw (it's not a flesh-baring place) was nicely muscled, as were the arms and shoulders these women sported. They all looked like strong, capable, athletic types, and it's no surprise -- they were doing exercises that required some serious strength and athleticism: chinups, deadlifts, rows, squats, all at a brisk pace, with some pretty serious weights. I heard some hearty grunting while I was in there. I'm not allowed at CURVES, but I don't imagine you hear a lot of grunting there.
I spent about forty-five minutes with Donna (who was very nice and a pretty darn athletic looking specimen herself), and in addition to getting the sense that the training at RESULTS is goal-oriented (hence the name of the place) and intense, I got a good sense of the vibe of the place as well, which is perhaps its most important feature, and the main reason a potential client would choose RESULTS over BALLY’S.
It's similar to a gym called CARL AND SANDRA’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is run by a guy named Carl Miller, a former Olympic weightlifting coach. I visited the gym about a year ago. Carl’s a great guy, very accomplished, and took 90 minutes of his day to work with me and talk about their philosophy.
If I were king of everything, all gyms would be run like RESULTS and CARL AND SANDRA’s. If I ever run a gym, these two gyms are the template I would model my gym after. What makes them different from, say, 24-HOUR FITNESS?
Lots:
1) PERSONAL ATTENTION. Both gyms feel like Cheers: everybody knows your name. They're friendly places where you want to go, want to spend time.
2) RECOGNITION FOR ACCOMPLISHMENT. At RESULTS, there are before-and-after pictures of some of the gym’s more impressive transformations. At CARL and SANDRA's, you get a special notice on the wall the longer you've been a member. The notion of striving for improvement and change is reinforced in both cases.
3) CONTINUED INSTRUCTION. The programs followed by the clients at both gyms are designed by professionals who are aware of each client's goals, injuries, limitations. Each client follows their program to the letter, and every few weeks is given an updated program, thus ensuring progress. Supervision is provided: at RESULTS, it's semi-private; at CARL's, it's one-on-one every few weeks, but trainers -- all of whom share the same training philosophy -- are always on hand to assist.
4) TRAINERS WHO ARE ON THE SAME PAGE. At most gyms, trainers barely know one another, much less each other's clients. Asked to train someone else's client, most trainers would have no idea what to do. But at RESULTS and CARL'S, the training programs are part of a larger training philosophy which underlies everyone's program. So even if you might have a particular trainer that you work with, any trainer at the facility can pinch hit if need be.
5) METICULOUS RECORD KEEPING. Check out the trainers at the average gym. Then check out the trainees. Are they writing down what they do? Unlikely. Yet how can you be sure you're making progress if you don't keep track? That's like playing golf or bowling and not keeping score. Are you getting better or worse? At the good gyms, it just makes sense to keep track. Who said "What is measured, improves"? I don't know, but they probably pumped iron.
6) A FEELING OF "SERIOUS FUN." This is the complement to #1, above. Sure, everyone's nice. But it's not at the expense of the work that everyone's there to do. It's supportive but not distracting.
7) LESS FOCUS ON STUFF. Both gyms have everything they need but not much more. Given the choice between filling up a gym's floor space with a dozen near-useless machines that work tiny muscles in a non-functional way and just having that extra space for stretching, doing ab work, jumping rope, or calisthenics, I know what I'd choose. Cosgrove and Miller have chosen likewise.
8) INSPIRATON. Cosgrove himself is a former Tae Kwon Do champ. The trainer on duty when I visited RESULTS was a competitive powerlifter. Carl Miller coached two American Olympic teams. Cosgrove’s wife, Rachel, brave soul, is training for an Ironman-distance triathlon. These people practice what they preach.
I'm sure there are dozens more points I'm missing here. I don't know whether I would ever want the hassle or worry of owning my own gym, but if I do, this is how I'd want the place to feel.
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