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.

BLOG-A-PALOOSA: "Design" Rant

UNINTELLIGIBLE DESIGN?

So for a year or so now I've been posting these tips, and am going to continue to do so, but I've finally become just a little more computer literate, and have been poking around the net quite a bit for other fitness information. Turns out that, to put it mildly, I'm not the only one doing this "fitness blog" thing. Most of the other folks appear to post... pretty darn regularly, rather than waiting around for some enormous inspiration to strike and spending months procrastinating and then figuring out how to phrase their ideas with just les mots justes. Well, I'm doing the same. I've decided that I'm going to post more often, darn it all! Yup, even if it's just to say, hey, here's my next post, I'm going to post more often! Even if the kwalitty of my riting suferrs.

The tips will still come -— don’t worry. I’m going to try to make them monthly instead of "quarterly," as fellow fitness-blogger Lou Schuler recently described my paltry output. But I'm going to do intermediate posts too, for my Mom. I mean, for all my fans (the self-deprecation will continue).

So what am I going to talk about? Same stuff, I'm just going to be a little less precious about it, and I might stray off topic every now and then.

Subscribers will continue to receive TIPS in their mailboxes, but not the more frequent musings posted here.

Aaaanyway —- I wanted to kick things off with a little observation here: remember "intelligent design?" Remember how for about five minutes this form of thinly-veiled creationism was threatening to nudge out legit science in our kids' classrooms? And remember how it was essentially pummeled into submission, first in the popular press, then in the courts, when a Pennsylvania judge ruled that intelligent design, by scientific standards, essentially... wasn't?

And I for one was relieved. A couple of years ago, my wife Heidi and I attended a one woman show called "Mother On Fire" by local artist and NPR commentator Sandra Tsing Loh. The show detailed her frantic search for decent schooling for her elementary school aged kids. After surveying the myriad stratospherically overpriced private-school options in the greater LA area, she begins to consider cheaper parochial schools, concluding that "The teaching of evolution just might not be a luxury my family is able to AFFORD!" My wife and I were a few months away from putting our daughter Kate in preschool, and we laughed hysterically -— probably because for us, hers felt like a dilemma that was just a liiiiittle too close to home.

Anyway, back to I.D. Thankfully, despite the protestations of our wise and moderate president, mainstream America seems to have dodged the intelligent-design-as-science bullet for the time being, and advocates for the cause have disappeared for now, or perhaps, karmically, devolved back into the single-celled-organisms from which they grew some few million years ago.

So I wonder: why do otherwise reasonable, eloquent authors -- some of whom are fitness authors, not usually a bible thumping crowd -- still use the term "the human body was designed to..." [fill in the blank with whatever point the author's trying to make]. I read this phrase all the time, and it perplexes me to no end.

Maybe I'm sounding nitpicky and pedantic: I've done that before. I certainly get what these guys are trying to say -- something along the lines of "the body functions optimally when..." I could stomach that phrasing much easier, because science is evoked, if only faintly. But saying that the body was designed to do this or that is tantamount to saying not only that there was a designer (which may be true but is irrelevant to the discussion at hand), but also that the author happens to have a clear line on just what that designer had in mind when they did the designing, and for you lesser mortals who don't have God on speed-dial, here's the dope.

I'm willing to concede that some of these fitness guys know a hell of a lot more about squatting and curling and omega-3 fatty acids than I do. But I'm not willing to concede that any of them has a direct line as to what the big Strength and Conditioning Coach in the Sky intended when he assembled the human body, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals, in form and moving so express and admirable.

DF Tip #25: A Little Thing Called "Science"

So there's this new thing called "science" that has a lot of people talking these days and I thought I'd spend a tip talking about it, just because, gosh, I'm thinking it might have some applicability to the fitness world.

As a personal trainer I am compelled to renew my certification every couple of years by attending continuing education classes. These classes usually take the drab, drone-y form of a remedial driving class: the lecturer either tells you things you've known for decades, or speaks with great vehemence about very questionable things, then concludes by asking you to pony up $49.99 for the Abdomulator. Not my favorite way to pass a weekend.

So a few weeks back, faced with a choice between acquiring some continuing ed. credits or getting pounded with a myofascial foam pad by the Internal Affairs Division of Personal Trainers, I attended a seminar held by a chap called Alan Aragon. Whatever the topic of discussion, I was at least intrigued at the prospect of seeing a fitness presentation led by a fire-breathing dragon.

Aragon turned out to be far more interesting: his seminar was titled "Girth Control: The Science of Fat Loss & Muscle Gain," and in about 30 seconds I could tell that this guy was no Internet-guru quack, a type I've come down on pretty heavily in the past. Nope, Aragon's one smart cookie, and lucky for anyone he works with, he's also something that we don't see a lot of in the fitness world: a skeptic.

If you've even skimmed a fitness book, sat through a late-night infomercial on weight loss, or glanced at an ad for any muscle gain powder or drink or system or piece of equipment, you'll know that the fitness world is chock-full of whackos whose zeal is almost religious: you've got your gurus, your crazy, hopped-up evangelist types like Bill Phillips, your sacraments in the form of protein powders and Omega-3 supplements, your holy scriptures with titles like Fitness is Religion and Body By God. We strap ourselves into medieval exercise machines and endure whatever pain and suffering they can mete out. Fat is the devil we must exorcise and scorch away; muscle is the shining Holy Grail, pursued with ever-redoubling conviction and fervor. Hallelujah! Praise the lats!

Amidst all the speaking in tongues, Alan Aragon is a fitness agnostic. He's -- what the hell, let’s just belabor the hell out of this analogy, shall we? -- he’s Galileo, insisting that the Catholic Church cede to the empirical evidence and admit that the Earth circles the sun.

Let's just hope that he never recants.

Basically, he's an advocate of applying this "science" thing in pursuit of optimal dieting and exercise techniques. So what's so novel about that?

Well, shockingly, the deluge of fitness advice that is regularly dumped on the public is almost never subjected to much scientific scrutiny. Rather like our current administration, fitness folks tend to just repeat things until everyone slowly decides that they must be true. And I'll admit that in the past I've been guilty of jumping on the trendy train, just because, well, I'm human too, and I get excited about new fitness information just like everyone else.

Here's a great example: remember how we grew up thinking that you should drink 8-10 glasses of water a day? We must have heard that a hundred times growing up. Well, you know how many studies to prove that 8-10 glasses a day was optimal for most people?

Zero. As you've probably heard by now, the 8-10 glasses of water a day thing was pretty much pulled out of thin air by a guy with a few letters after his name. He meant well -- someone asked him how much water he thought people should drink and he gave a good-faith estimate based on his experience -- but he never meant for us to parrot him for decades, his ball-park estimate posted on school-nurses' walls nationwide and reprinted in every issue of SELF since Cheryl Tiegs graced its cover.

Remember the scene in Modern Times when Charlie Chapin finishes a long day of tightening lug nuts on an assembly line, and reels around with the lug-nut-tightening twitches, finally assaulting a poor woman with strategically-placed buttons on the front of her jacket? As consumers of fitness advice, we're a little like that. We hear that antioxidants and Omega-3 fats are good for us and we start swilling multivitamins by the fistful and flaxseed oil by the gallon. Meantime, we never bother to read the studies showing, rather convincingly, that too much of some antioxidants can cause stomach problems and too much Omega-3 fat can compromise immune functioning.

Thank god for guys like Alan Aragon: he's out there poring over studies, sifting through them for faults, and revising recommendations as necessary. Aragon reads the fine print, and it usually says, in so many words, "The guys who did this study also stand to profit handsomely from its results." The low-carb industry has lost a little steam lately, but you can bet there are a few dozen aspiring Atkins heirs out there scrambling to get a headline in Men's Health about how women are chemically more drawn to men on low-carb diets than their flour-stuffed brethren.

It's ironic -- and no surprise -- that I hadn't heard of Aragon before this seminar. As he pointed out in his talk, a book with "moderation" in the title most likely won't find its way to the bestseller list. No, we like our fitness tips extreme, absolute and universally applicable. Cut fat to lose weight. Cut carbs to lose weight. Eggs are bad. Eggs are the perfect food. Eat only vegetables. Eat only raw foods. Eat only grapefruits. Eat only meats. Eat no meats. Aerobic exercise is the second coming. Aerobic exercise is the scourge of the devil.

With so much money to be made in the fitness industry, it's no wonder there are so many crackpots and snake-oil charlatans claiming to have found the Holy Grail. And some of the manufacturers of these products also happen to publish popular magazines covering the topic of fitness, and if an article in the magazine happens to cover a popular athlete and that athlete happens to use a given product also manufactured by the magazine's publisher, well, I'm no economist, but I'm sensing something of a threat to perfect and absolute journalistic objectivity here.

The antidote? Well, in a word, science. Guys like Alan Aragon make a living sifting through the detritus for useful nuggets of dietary advice, and have a wealth of expertise and experience and to help them do it. But everyone -- myself included -- can be a little more on their guard about blindly following the latest trends, and about taking every blurb on diet and fitness at face value. We can find out the source of the studies that fitness articles cite as evidence for their claims. Using the internet, we can often find the studies themselves and make up our minds for ourselves: does this study really prove what they say it proves? What might they have missed? What biases might be in play? Basically, we don't need to be fitness lemmings, following the carb-deprived crowd right over the cliff.

That was the most useful little nugget I got out of that weekend seminar. Think for yourself. Resist extremism. Use common sense. Moderation is key.

And, this "science" thing is useful.

Thanks, Alan.

Andrew

DF Tip #24: In Praise of Sprinting

When was the last time you went outside and ran as fast as you could? If you're like most adults, you're probably groping for a memory that's at least a couple of decades old. You might remember a more recent incident if you take public transportation regularly or if you're the father of a three-year-old with Joyner-Kersee-esque foot speed, as I am. But the vast majority of us -- dedicated exercisers included -- just don’t sprint.

By "sprinting" I'm not only talking about running at 100% effort. I'd also count any cardiovascular type of movement -- swimming, biking, running, stair-climbing, rowing, calisthenics, even circuit weight training -- that you can perform at your absolute limit for a period of at least 20 seconds. Pushing so hard that 30 seconds leaves you an exhausted, panting puddle. That kind of effort.

I suspect that people avoid this type of exercise for one simple reason: it's just too darn hard. Sure, we know hard work is important when we exercise, but there seem to be certain types of exercise that strike us as just plain excessive. Amongst strength exercises, chin-ups, squats, dips, and weighted lunges generally find their way onto most gym-goers' "Too Hard to Bother" list. The Versaclimber, that upright cardio machine that simulates the action of scaling a steep rock wall, is tops on my own list. Can barely spend five minutes on one of those god-awful things without crying like a little girl.

But there's an irony to avoiding tough exercises: the number one reason given for failure to exercise is lack of time. People have careers and families and if they were to squander three precious hours a week on exercise then it would pose a serious threat to the survival of the species, quite possibly the universe. But my question is this: if people are so strapped for time (which we all are, let's face it), why does anyone spend a single second, for instance, on something as useless as a thigh-adductor machine? And why do so many of these free-time-impoverished people scrupulously avoid the very exercises that stand to do them the most good in the least amount of time?

A correlary to the "too darn hard" excuse is this: I think many exercisers find hard work on the order of sprints, squats, and chin-ups faintly embarrassing. They feel it's uncivilized to sweat or pant or push too hard. Far better to spend twenty minutes on the recumbent bike working up a decorous little sweat. There's a civilized level of effort and then there's being narcissistic, causing a fuss, or just plain showing off. I believe people also see sprinting as dangerous, particularly for the over-35 set: all that huffing and puffing and pounding? Can it really be good for you?

The truth is, yes. It is -- REALLY good for you, and that's the real point of this particular tip. As a fitness guy, I of course applaud anyone's efforts to get up and move, whatever form that movement takes. But it's increasingly clear to the scientific community that exercise needs to be pretty vigorous to have a measurable effect on incidence of heart disease, longevity and the like. There's mounting evidence that interval training (trainer-speak for sprint training) outdoes more moderate forms of cardiovascular exercise in nearly every way that matters: in caloric burn and weight loss, in the release of beneficial hormones, and in the building and maintaining of muscle mass.

Although the number of calories burned during a short- to medium- length session of sprint training is the rough equivalent, or possibly lower, than the caloric burn one gets from a longer session of moderate-pace training, the caloric afterburn from sprinting far exceeds what one sees from slower cardio work. And for fat loss, caloric afterburn (or Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption for us fitness geeks) is where the rubber meets the road.

Consider: your resting metabolic rate -- the number of calories you burn just breathing, digesting, and staying alive -- accounts for 60-80% of the energy you burn on the average day (that figure, and most of the others I cite below, are from Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove’s terrific book, The New Rules of Lifting.) Your RMR is usually estimated by multiplying your weight in pounds by 11. So, for instance, as a 180-pounder, I burn almost 2000 calories a day just sitting on my tuckus. That’s a pretty good number of calories burned just catching up on my TiVo.

Now, let's compare the metabolic effects of two different types of workouts. Let's say on a given day you put in a pretty decent steady-state half-hour on a cardio machine and burn 250 calories. That's the equivalent of a banana and a couple pieces of string cheese, or a small serving of the average, medium-healthy cereal (sans milk), or an apple and some cottage cheese. Let's face it, we’re not talking about a great deal of chow here. You'd have to spend seven hours on that treadmill at that pace to burn off even a single pound of fat -- and that's assuming that everything you burned was fat, which it probably wouldn't be.

For anyone with more than a couple of pounds to lose, those are some pretty harsh numbers. So say that instead of your steady-state workout, you decide that you'll trust this kooky online trainer guy and try doing sprints. Choosing a form of cardio that won't aggravate any chronic injuries you might have, you warm up at an easy pace for five minutes, then crank up the speed and incline till you're pushing the limits of your abilities for a thirty-second sprint. Then you back it off to a recovery pace for 90 seconds, repeating the work-rest pattern for a total of five sprints. Then you ease off for three minutes at recovery pace and call it a day. Including a warm-up and cool-down, you can get through this really effective sprint workout in 18 minutes. Depending on how you structure the workout, you might burn 50 calories more or less doing sprints on than you would doing the steady-state workout above. But the magic really happens when the huffing and puffing is over: unlike a steady-state workout, wherein your metabolism dips back to its normal level shortly after your workout, your RMR now stays elevated for up to TWO DAYS after a sprint workout. You read that right.

How elevated, you ask? That's hard to say: it really depends heavily on how hard you push yourself during your workout. But even if your RMR stays elevated 5% for a period of 24 hours -- a conservative estimate -- your sprint workout burns almost 150% of the calories that are burned doing your steady-state workout. That's a pretty good return for what amounts to a smaller investment of time.

But the advantages don't end there. I've pointed out the physical differences between sprinters and endurance runners before: the former tend to be quite muscular and the latter quite stringy. This is, in part, because sprinting helps build and maintain muscle mass (since your fast-twitch muscle fibers, which grow the most, are called into play during sprinting) and endurance exercise burns through muscle mass (since you don't need a lot of strength and power to jog, so your body breaks down the "unnecessary" muscle tissue for fuel). So in addition to burning calories, sprinting also builds and maintains strength, power, and muscle mass, essential ingredients in looking and feeling good. That additional muscle mass, in turn, burns up more calories, both when you're using the muscles and when you're at rest. To repeat a sentiment I've posted in this space more times than I can count, "building muscle mass" does NOT mean bulking up to massive, bodybuilder proportions. For anyone not chucking around massive quantities of iron whilst regularly whacking synthetic and illegal hormones into their veins, it means looking toned and athletic.

Finally, sprinting just feels fantastic. Or I should say, when you're DONE sprinting, it feels fantastic. Yes, it's hard as hell while you're at it: it burns the muscles, your heart pounds, your urge to stop or slow down is sometimes irresistible, you may even feel a little nauseated. Like I said, fantastic. But you're only at it for about 30 seconds, so a rest period is never far off. And as someone who's spent a fair amount of time working at long, steady state pace workouts AND at sprint workouts, I'd say that for endorphin flow, sprinting beats slow straight-up cardio hands-down. I pushed it pretty hard on my bike early this morning, and I feel alert and charged up even now, seven hours later, right in the middle of my usual afternoon slump. I can feel there's something still going on metabolically as a result of that workout. If I'd gone long and easy, I'd need a nap or a strong cup of coffee right now.

Now, let me throw in my usual ounce-of-prevention for all my gung-ho readers who might think I'm saying that sprinting is the ONE TRUE WAY to fitness and to do it every day all day long. There's a reason that sprint workouts only last 20-30 minutes: they're not only very challenging, they're tough on the joints, too. So if you're doing your sprinting on foot, I'd caution against doing more than three sprint workouts a week. If you're swimming or cycling, you can do as many as five -- but your body will still take a cumulative beating, so take a break if you start to feel achy. Work up to full effort on your sprint intervals over a period of weeks. Don't compare yourself to other exercisers: your sprint speed may be the equivalent of someone else's jogging speed, or vice versa. Remember to pace yourself so that your last sprint interval is as fast as your first. And if after all my exhortations past, you think it's wise to skip a warm up or cool down and jump right into maximum effort, well, I wash my hands of you and your reckless ways.

Start with the simple program outlined above. You can always adjust work periods and rest periods, so the interval system gives you a virtually limitless series of workouts to choose from. Good luck, and let me know your progress!

Andrew

DF Tip #23: Look Out for Gurus!

This morning I was reading a well-traveled blog by an exercise guru (I'll call him David), who claims that when it comes to fitness, we've got it all -- or most of it, anyway -- wrong. There are very few topics he isn't willing to take on: fitness, genetics, dental care, the movie industry, economics, the Loch Ness Monster... Okay, not that last one. But it's clear that David fancies himself something of a Renaissance man.

Much of his writing on fitness is about what NOT to do: he hates steady-state cardio activity, he doesn't like high reps or high volume weight training, he doesn't believe in veganism or vegetarianism, doesn't believe in sports drinks or post-workout glycogen replacement in general, doesn't like weight machines. He's totally down on carbs and sugar. He thinks that many weight-room warhorses -- full-range bench presses and wide-grip lat pull-downs, as well as most abdominal exercises -- are dangerous.

In place of these chestnuts, he advocates what I'll call Cro-Magnon Fitness (he calls it something else) -- a training system based on his conception of the activity patterns of our hunter-gatherer ancestors: heavy, fast-paced training, one-arm/one-leg movements, low reps, heavy weights, and explosive movements. He favors jumping, leaping, and throwing medicine balls, movements that he contends mimic ancient, high-intensity activities like escaping predators and taking down prey. He likes eating meat and thinks grains are the scourge of the gastrointestinal world.

David isn't short on self-esteem. He spends one entry going into detail about the reaction a female salesclerk had upon seeing him in an Armani suit she was trying to sell him (SPOILER: her reaction was positive); another on the effect that his bounteous testosterone stores have on women, and, more distressingly, on dogs.

We get it: David is a hunk of virility, and if we'd only adhere to his principles of training, if only the misguided fitness industry would listen to him, then this country, nay, the world, could be populated by men and women whose mere essence drives the opposite sex, and much of the animal kingdom, into fits of uncontrollable lust.

Let me backpedal a bit before David’s disciples, hip to the fact that I’m talking about their messiah, come to my house and expose me for the fitness-drink-swilling, carb-eating, long-distance running fitness hack that I apparently am. David does make some good points. He likes a lot of the same stuff I like in the gym. He rightly cautions against extremism and fanaticism in endurance sport. And at 6'1," 195 pounds, 8% body fat, and almost 70 years old (!), he's clearly found a system that works for him. The problem is that he takes the indisputable fact of his own success and assumes that his methods will work for... pretty much everyone. That's where he and I part ways.

Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of fitness can look at the guy and see that he isn't well suited to long-distance anything. He's a mesomorph, a thick-boned, fast-twitch muscle guy, good at short duration exercise and explosive movement (he once played pro baseball), and not much on endurance. So in a way it makes sense that he would benefit from a system of weight training that is particularly suited to that type of physique -- to wit, very high intensity, heavy weights, low volume -- and abhor the kinds of activities that don't agree with this body type -- namely, endurance sport.

But that's no reason to dismiss endurance sport activities -- and the reams of scientific data that support their benefits -- altogether. Nor does it mean there aren't scores of people out there who benefit from long-distance running, or cycling, or swimming. There are: I've known a few thousand of them personally. But David doesn't talk about them; instead, he takes a head-shaking, I-told-you-so pleasure in posting anecdotes about the rare occasion when an apparently-healthy endurance athlete dies from a heart attack while training.

David's advice on weight training is equally short-sighted. In his blog, and in interviews (which are also accessible via his website), he carefully explains how you only need to lift weights twice a week, performing one hard set per body part per week, using a carefully-worked out system of ascending weight and descending repetitions. He claims that using this system three times a week for forty minutes a session is all that is needed for optimal fitness.

I'm sure many of my clients would love to be in and out of the gym in thirty-five minutes, just twice a week. I'm sure many of them would prefer not to do the three or four grueling sets of squats or deadlifts or chinups that leave many of them sore for days afterwards. And I'd be happy to prescribe such a workout regimen if I believed for a minute that it would be effective.

If only. In practice, the truth is that almost everyone needs more stimulation than David recommends. In my experience, this manner of weight training leads to a particularly precarious combination of under- and over-training: the muscles aren't trained with enough volume or frequency to stimulate growth, but during workouts themselves, the tissues are subjected to such extreme stress that the trained muscles wind up either injured, or at the very least, more vulnerable to injury outside the gym, so a trainee will wind up wrenching their back tying their shoes or doing some equally innocuous physical activity.

Moreover, David's revolutionary ideas have already been advanced, touted, and largely relegated to footnote status in most fitness circles, for many of the same reasons I go into above, starting as long as three decades ago. Arthur Jones, the entrepreneur behind the Nautilus craze, and the late bodybuilding champion Mike Mentzer both advocated similar training systems back in the 80’s. Today, there's a good-natured kook on the Internet who calls this training system -- I kid you not -- the "Doggcrapp" method.

It's not that what they say is worthless. Like any other training technique, heavy, high intensity training has its place. But just because this training system has proved useful for a handful of high-profile athletes does NOT mean that all other training systems -- which have been tried and tested and proven effective by athletes and workaday exercisers everywhere -- are useless and should be thrown out.

If I've learned nothing else in my years as a trainer and athlete, it's that you can't use a cookie cutter to create fitness programs. As ever, it's different strokes for different folks. Sure, David gestures vaguely at the notion of variety in training, but only within the strict parameters of his very limiting recommendations. Maybe some of what's worked for him will work for you, too. But what's misleading about his points, and what I caution all twelve of my readers against, is the one-sidedness of it. He sternly steers us away from one type of fanaticism while slyly advocating another: no machines! No endurance activity! No grains! In pointing out the dangers of overdoing aerobic activity, he effectively makes the point that not all exercise modalities are for everyone -- but then immediately contradicts his own well-taken point by trying to sell us on his own ONE TRUE WAY to fitness. As I've said many times before, there are simply too many bodies out there, and too many useful, effective, and, frankly, really fun ways of exercising, for one system to work optimally for everyone, forever.

Another word of caution while I'm on it. The systems that fitness gurus advance are, inevitably, a repackaged form of something others have been doing for a long time. Functional training is a souped-up version of the calisthenics we all did in gym class. Balance training is something that circus performers did centuries ago. Spinning classes? Boxing? Tae Bo? Kettleballs, for the love of Pete? There's value in all these things, but let's not pretend that no one ever thought of them before. These guys might have gone sailing in the Atlantic, and maybe they'll come back with a story or two, but that doesn't make them Columbus.

The lesson here is that there's very little that's new under the sun: you've just got to keep searching till you find the thing that's right for YOUR body and YOUR goals, right now. That's why one of my main principles -- in as far as I can say I have any principles -- is to keep exploring, keep challenging yourself, keep expanding your physical repertoire. Sure, go ahead and take up David's principles for awhile. See how they work for you. Then ignore it all and join a crew club for a year. Then do spinning classes. Cycle Alaska. Then take up competitive power lifting.

The body is too complex and fascinating an organism, too inherently curious and adaptable to stay satisfied with one exercise modality for long. Explore long enough and eventually, you'll become something akin to a guru of your own physiology. Maybe you'll stumble on a series of long-forgotten exercises that you become convinced is by far the best and most effective system in existence, and why has no one thought of it before?

At that point, you might feel inclined to start your own blog about how you've discovered the ONE TRUE WAY to get fit and tell everyone about it. All I'll say is if you do, keep your dukes up.

Have a great week,
Andrew

DF Tip #22: The Bare Truth

My wife Heidi takes a stripping class every Tuesday from 8-10 PM. The class she takes is called S Factor, though recently other such classes have popped up in gyms and dance studios across the country. Men aren't allowed in, but Heidi tells me that every week the teacher leads the students through a warm-up, followed by some intense muscle toning and ab work. She'll show them how to do a pole trick or two (there's a stripper's pole in the classroom), and then, one by one, the students perform for each other. The music and costumes vary -- students choose their own -- but they all wear six-inch heels that they acquire -- at a discount -- at a store on one of the seedier blocks of Hollywood Boulevard.

Who are these women (and what are their phone numbers, I hear my male readers ask)? Damaged, abused, man-hating, drug-addicted types? Hardly. In as far as there is an S Factor "type," the clientele appears to be upper-middle class and about as normal as you can get. Career women. Moms. CEOs. Contractors. Homemakers. A smattering of actresses and other industry types, this being LA; tall, short, young, old, skinny, chunky, black, white, fit, not. Your basic cross-section of female Angelenos with a few bucks of disposable income.

Okay, so when Heidi first expressed an interest in stripping, I'll admit I was a tad freaked out. Did she have some deep-seated need to strut her (excellent) stuff in front of strangers? Was she working through some issue I wasn't aware of, and why in the Sam Hill wasn't she happy spending her Tuesday nights with me watching Kiefer Sutherland shoot up the bad guys on "24"?

Once my two main fears about the class were allayed (there are (1) no men and (2) no nudity in the classroom), and sensing in the dull recesses of my brain the possibility -- however remote -- that I might benefit in some peripheral way from Heidi's pursuits -- I decided to encourage Heidi to try it. All right, let's face it, I pretty much shoved her out the door.

Now Heidi's been at it for two years, and continues to love the class. It's a great workout, she loves the way it makes her feel, loves the sensuality and beauty of the movements. I've met some of her classmates (S Factor devotees bond quickly), and they all report new levels of strength, flexibility and endurance from the class. More importantly, however, the women report a greater sense of confidence and ease with themselves. Simply put, it makes them feel beautiful.

And yet, S Factor provokes some pretty extreme responses. When Heidi suggests to friends that they try it, she's often met with wide-eyed terror. One woman I know recently said she thought the class sounded "horrifying." The association of stripping with all things exploitative, objectifying, and degrading makes S Factor a tough sell to some people.

I’ll admit it, it is pretty out there: groups of women of all ages, shapes, colors and creeds getting together, putting on ecstatic music, and stripping off most of their clothes while the other students watch, hooting and hollering in jubilant support. How Sapphic! The right wing shudders (while secretly wishing they could go watch).

But I think that S Factor, and classes like it, are kind of important. I think they're part of a kind of cultural breakthrough. True, I'm totally biased, and maybe I just want to hold onto the fantasy of my wife as a naughty nurse, but let me explain.

No one needs me to say that, as a culture, we're pretty screwed up when it comes to sex. Our religions tell us that sex is wrong and bad. Educators tell us that it's dangerous. The Friday the 13th movies tell teenagers that if they have sex, a mad killer in a hockey mask will come and hack them to pieces. Pop culture tells us that we're not sexy unless we conform to certain laughably unrealistic aesthetic standards, standards we abhor but somehow find ourselves admiring and aspiring to anyway. By adolescence, our sexuality is squashed, titillated, and pummeled to such an extent that we hear reports on a practically daily basis about the horrible ways people go off the skids because of some bizarre, recklessly-channeled sexual urge.

The women at S Factor -- bless their bustier-clad hearts -- are doing their part to undo all that. Short, tall, fat, thin, old, young -- they’re claiming their birthright to their own sexiness, and I think it's long overdue. So much in our culture says that we aren't allowed to feel sexy unless we look a certain way or drive a certain car, that sexy women are stupid and vacuous, and these women are saying NO, anyone can do it. They're an army of lingerie-sporting regular women, screaming at us that, for the love of God, being sexy is a good and fun and harmless part of life. As Steve Martin says to the virginal Lily Tomlin in All of Me, "Sex is one of the things that makes you feel like you're really living, like it's good to be alive!" I for one applaud their efforts. Not because we need more sexuality in our culture, but because we DO need to hear the message, louder and clearer and more often, that sexuality isn't just the domain of the six-feet and six-packed.

There is a fitness tip in all this, and it's this: amongst all the insecurity, guilt and self-loathing we feel about our exercise, we need to find a way to enjoy and celebrate our bodies for how they look and feel now, not just what they may someday become. I see people every day who exercise not to challenge themselves or to feel good but to punish their bodies for failing to live up to some rather arbitrary standard of beauty: they put in a workout that would shame Lance Armstrong, but they can't appreciate their accomplishment because there's still a dimple of cellulite on their right hamstring.

Of course, S Factor may or may not be for you (for one thing, you might be a man). But the larger point stands: fitness has many dimensions, not all of them as straightforward as building flexibility, strength, or endurance. Done correctly, exercise can coax you into places you don't usually allow yourself to go, pushing at limits that are not only physical, but emotional, psychological, and spiritual as well. I have clients who have never felt grounded who suddenly "arrive" in their bodies because of weight training. I once taught a dozen flighty, giggly teenaged girls with string bean bodies how to use broadswords, and I swear they were more confident and assertive by summer's end. Exercising to look great is as good a goal as any, but hunt around enough and you may discover something that nudges you of your comfort zone and gives you a renewed and expanded sense of who you are. Perhaps even more important than finding a type of exercise that can reshape your body is finding one that reshapes your body image.

Have a great week!
Andrew

DF Tip #21: How to Swim

When I decided to do a triathlon last season, the thing that scared me most was the swim, probably because prior to January 2005, the longest distance I'd ever swum was at a swimming hole in New Hampshire. That particular odyssey was accomplished by flailing, gasping, splashing around like a wounded harp seal, nearly drowning, and, finally, utterly spent on the swimming dock 12 yards from shore. No one on the dock was the least bit impressed by my Spitzian efforts, least of all my wife, who pretended she didn't know me, even as I pleaded with her to call 911 to reboot my arrested cardio-pulmonary system.

Since then, though, and to my complete surprise, I now love swimming, and I consider it the easiest part of any triathlon I've done. It's still a great -- and blessedly less life-threatening -- workout, and since the water absorbs impact and prevents lightning-fast muscle contractions, even I am unlikely to injure myself doing it. Once you become reasonably competent at it, swimming also has a Zen quality: like T'ai Chi, there's a rhythmic, lyrical flow to the movement, and you can get so you feel very much at home in the water, as if you are dancing on top of it.

Before you get to that point, however -- and I'm hardly an expert at it -- you've got to do a little bit of work on technique. Take heart though: unlike, say, playing Chopin preludes on a Steinway, swimming is fairly easy to learn. There are really just a handful of principles that can take you from dog-paddler to barracuda in a few easy steps.

What you've got to remember from the outset is that very few people are BORN swimmers. Sure, a few million years back our distant ancestors may have had fins and gills, but we've been land-dwellers for so long that our instincts about what to do in the water are often more likely to drown us than get us to the next buoy. So learning to swim is about undoing a few inborn fears and impulses and learning to trust and love the water.

The tips below are on swimming the crawl, or freestyle, stroke. If you want to swim backstroke, or butterfly, or breaststroke, go ask someone else, because, well, I don’t know how to do them. I just don't. There, I said it. I feel better.

1) SWIM HORIZONTAL. Most of us landlubbers think that swimming is like walking through water, and so we swim more or less vertically, with our heads out of the water and our feet reaching more or less downwards. That impulse stems from the perfectly logical premise that as mammals, we can't breathe underwater and submerging our faces in the water will just cause sputtering, embarrassment and possible death.

But swimming vertically is just about the least efficient way to move through the water. Because water is so much more dense than air, your position as you move through it is vitally important to preserving energy. Use the image that you want to swim through as small a hole in the water as you can -- meaning, swim horizontally. Since your chest is filled with air and wants to float, you actually need to focus on pressing the chest and head DOWN into the water. The result will be that the butt lifts UP, which is exactly what you want to happen. The sensation will be like swimming downhill.

2) SWIM LONG. When you watch a world champion swimmer like Michael Phelps in the pool, you'll see that it doesn't take him very many strokes to get across the pool, whereas we mortals flail and flail, exhaust ourselves, and are still only halfway down our lane. That's because Phelps swims LONG: his yardage per stroke is phenomenally high.

Take a page from Phelps' book and learn to swim long by reaching and stretching as far in front of you as you can with each stroke. Then gather -- or "catch" as the pros say -- as much water beneath your wings as you can before pulling through, and finally pushing the water back behind you. Your stroke shouldn't begin until your arm is fully reaching over past your head and shouldn't end until your hand is down by your mid-thigh. Think of yourself as a huge turbine, consuming great quantities of water beneath you with each stroke.

3) BREATHE EASY. How often a swimmer breathes is a very individual matter. I was coached to breathe with each stroke, each time my left arm came out of the water to reach for another stroke. "Bilateral breathing," that is, breathing on every other side every third stroke, comes highly recommended by some coaches, and has the advantages of working both sides of the body equally, saving some energy, and increasing your awareness of what's around you during your swim. All good. If you can swing it, and don't find yourself gasping for air every five strokes like I do when I attempt bilateral breaths, go for it. I agree in theory that it's probably a better way to go, but I've never been able to manage it.

The universal truth -- for bilateral porpoises and unilateral guppies like me -- is that you should breathe as efficiently as possible. Meaning, don't lift the whole head out of the water, and don't twist your head behind you like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Just turn the head along with the arm and shoulder that's coming out of the water, just far enough to clear your mouth, take in a nice mouthful of refreshing air, and swing the head easily back down into the water. The key is to breathe without losing your basic, horizontal and extremely hydrodynamic positioning in the water.

4) KICK FOR FLOTATION. This morning I was in the pool and tried to get across the pool using only my legs, arms laid across a kickboard. Crikey, that was tough. By the end of 50 yards, which took me forever, the glutes were on fire and I had drowning anxiety. The lifeguard actually put down his iPod and was poised to dive in after me.

The point? Kicking doesn't add that much to your forward propulsion. In triathlon we are actually discouraged from kicking because it can tire out lower-body energy that is better spent on the biking and running to come. I'm not advocating that. But I am saying that your kick should be very relaxed and easy (are you sensing a pattern here?), with the ankles flopping like fins, not rigid like paddles. Legs should be more or less straight, and don't go for too much splash. Use the kick to help keep you horizontal, not like an outboard motor.

I realize that many readers will curse me for writing about swimming at the end of the summer, but when the cold months descend and you head indoors for your workouts anyway, swimming is a great option. It's a terrific upper-body toner, and it's easy on the joints, so you can do some laps some day when you just don't feel like hitting the bench press and the lat pulldown for the millionth time this month. Like you usually do... right?

Enjoy, and have a great week--
Andrew

DF Tip #20: The Thirteen Commandments of Lifting Weights, Part II

Okay, boys and girls. Last week I covered some of the basics: frequency, exercises, food, stretching and the like. This week we get just slightly more subtle. Fear not, we’re still talking about weight training here, a practice that's about as subtle as a freight train and only slightly less noisy. Still, now we're talking about things like rest and variation and duration, which are going to require just a little more cranial work to fully grasp and incorporate into your workouts. And of course I've got a little tip in there about heavy weights -- had to drag that old saw out at least one more time -- and then that final one, The Kicker, that I promised last time... happy reading.

8) THOU SHALT GET ADEQUATE REST. Another progress killer is lack of rest. This could mean resting between workouts (at least 48 hours between workouts for the same muscle group), or getting enough sleep on a regular basis. Everyone has a set point -- I know people who drag if they don't get ten hours, still others who are whirlwinds on five. Figure out what you need and stick with it. When you weight train, your body needs it even more than normal. Like children, we'd all be a little better off if we had a bedtime that we stuck to.

9) THOU SHALT LIFT FOR NO MORE THAN AN HOUR AT A TIME. After an hour, you're hormonally tapped out. Studies have shown that testosterone, the hormone responsible for muscle growth and strength increases (yes, in women too), drops off dramatically after 60 minutes of hard weight training. Moreover, the glycogen in your muscles is also on empty at that point, and if you've been working hard, as you should be, you'll be just plain exhausted, too. So keep your workouts down to an hour or less, including warmup, stretching, abs, and easy cardio work. It's the best way to keep yourself gaining continuously. One exception is low-intensity cardio work, which can be kept up for longer periods -- but that's the subject of another tip.

10) THOU SHALT VARY THY ROUTINE. Have I told you the tale of the client whose former trainer had given him just two workouts in THREE YEARS? Probably I have, because it appalls me so much. I rarely give a client the same workout twice. Now you don't have to be that imaginative -- that's part of what people pay me for -- but always, always, look for ways to shake things up -- with new exercises, different rep schemes, more challenging weights, etc. Need I mention again the S.A.I.D. principle? The body Adapts Specifically to the Demands you Impose upon it. No new demands? No adaptation. Meaning no changes: no new muscle, no fat loss.

11) THOUGH GÜNTER MAY FRIGHTEN YOU, THOU SHALT NOT FEAR THE HEAVY WEIGHTS. Challenging weights are the lifeblood of improvement in the gym. Granted, you CAN try doing an exercise on one of those colored bouncy balls and give yourself a balance challenge; you CAN do additional sets of the same weight you've always used; you CAN do myriad other things that will provide a new stimulus to the muscle. Yoga teachers and calisthenics devotees like military instructors like to say that you can't do anything with weights that you can't already do with your own body weight. That may be true, but there's no faster way to IMPROVE at a given movement than using an external resistance. That means weight. Ideally, heavy weights that make you fail at 8-12 reps. Don't be afraid of them.

12) FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS SPOT REDUCTION. Because so many otherwise intelligent people come to the gym saying they want to "work their abs so they can get a six-pack," I feel obliged to again say that working your abs will contribute only modestly to your efforts to build a defined midsection. Yes, abdominal exercises are important for all kinds of reasons, but you're not going to be able to see definition in the abs without lowering your bodyfat -- through hard weight training, healthy eating, and regular cardio work. Sure, you'll tighten up the muscles underneath any lingering fat deposits with sit-ups, leg-lifts and the like. But if you want to see the fruits of your labors, spend no more than 5-10 minutes of your gym time on abs and the rest on the exercises described in last week's Commandment #3.

13) ALL COMMANDMENTS ARE VIOLABLE. EXPERIMENT WITH WHAT WORKS FOR YOU AS WELL. Isn't that just an awful way to close this list? By saying that, hey, none of this might work for you at all? Well, I wouldn't be completely honest with you if I didn't say that in my day I've seen exceptions to just about everything I've recommended above. I've seen people build great physiques on machines. I've seen people progress like lightning lifting no more than five-pound weights. I've known people who have made great progress over many years doing almost the exact same thing in the gym year in and year out. Ultimately, everyone's body is different. If that wasn't true, everyone would do exactly the same workout and I'd be out of a job.

A lot of what I do comes down to figuring out what combination of weight, sets, reps, effort, rest, food and other factors is just right for the body in front of me. And that should be your goal as well: to figure out what makes your body respond, what gives you the best results in the least time, always remembering the 10th commandment that nothing works forever. These are the basics, but remember that your body is a unique organism and may very well respond uniquely to exercise.

All the more reason to get out there and experiment. Have fun!

Andrew

DF Tip #19: The Ten (well, Thirteen) Commandments of Lifting Weights, Part I

When I was but a wee lad, I used to sneak into the weight room at the local college. I'd try to squeeze in as many sets as I could before the beefy supervisor would kick me out (again), rightly convinced that the scrawny kid putting up 23 pounds on the bench press couldn't possibly be a college student, much less a college athlete. The guys in that gym seemed to be from another planet, positioning themselves under impossible weights at every conceivable angle and pushing, pulling, curling, squatting away 'til veins popped and muscles swelled.

Something about the clank of that heavy iron fascinated me. The weights those guys were lifting seemed hopelessly unwieldy, but the athletes' movements were precise and controlled. The work they were putting in was Herculean, yet except for the occasional grunt or pleasantry exchanged, the room was quiet, meditative, and everyone seemed to sense that some very important work was going on.

When I'd get home after one of these excursions, I'd descend into my basement and attack my own weight set with renewed vigor. Sure, the plastic weights didn't give the same satisfying clank as steel, and in the place of massive, 45-pound plates, all I had were a handful of 15-pound discs, but that didn't stop me. I didn't know what I was doing, really, but I put in some pretty decent workouts with that little DP set, which to this day resides in my parents' basement, much to their chagrin. I'll even put in a workout or two down there whenever I'm back home.

Still, I sure wish I'd had some simple guidance at the time. A distilled, easy-to-follow how-to guide that I could look over in five minutes and understand the basic principles of weight training. A guide that would hold me in good stead from the time I hoisted my first dumbbell 'til I'd done squatted my last squat and pressed my last press.

Well, it's too late for me -- I've run down a thousand blind alleys in search of the world's best workout, sometimes with great results, sometimes ending up in bed for a weekend with a bad back and a steady diet of Advil. For the rest of you, though, here's the list for the newbies -- and not-so-newbies -- out there that I wish I'd had at my disposal 20-odd years back:

1) THOU SHALT WORK THY ENTIRE BODY AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK (AND IDEALLY MORE). Bodybuilding wisdom, as expressed in the magazines, will sometimes hold that you should spend an entire workout on a single muscle group. This is called a "split system," and it can be useful, say, if you've divided the body into two or three groups. But in some programs, you work your entire body only about once every 10 days -- by which time you've missed the optimal window to hit each muscle group again, and keep it growing stronger. Now, some bodybuilders have weird genetics. Some of them -- yes, it's true -- use steroids. For the rest of us, we need to work each muscle group twice per week in order to see the best results.

2) THOU SHALT LIFT WEIGHTS AT LEAST TWICE, AND NO MORE THAN FOUR, TIMES PER WEEK. This is a corollary to the above. It's been shown that lifting weights once a week is adequate for maintenance and twice per week for some growth, but that three times per week is optimal for consistent improvement on a long-term basis. Incidentally, this is regardless of which muscle groups you're working. Something about just hauling iron around regularly, any which way, has beneficial effects on the whole system, to say nothing of the fact that it keeps you in the habit. In my experience, four sessions a week is acceptable if you're fuelling your body with loads of good food and enough rest, but unless you're really trying to seriously bulk up and have little else to do with your time, more than that is really just showing off.

3) THOU SHALT FOCUS ON BASIC, MULTI-JOINT MOVEMENTS WITH A FULL RANGE OF MOTION. This is an ironclad rule: if you want to make the most of your time in the gym, don't do a lot of little single-joint movements. Don't do a lot of "partials," i.e., little tiny squeezing motions that may produce burn in the muscles but don't do much else. Stick with the basics: squats, rows, presses, pulldowns, deadlifts, lunges. Yes, it's true, these movements are essentially what Günter does, but that's because Günter wants to get stronger. So do you. So get to work.

4) THOU SHALT NOT WORSHIP FALSE IDOLS -- NAMELY, THE MACHINES. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you want to make good use of your time in the gym, don't spend it on the machines. Yes, they look fancy and shiny and you'll just look cute as a button on the hip extensor machine. But machines are "labor-saving devices." To induce change, you must work hard. So why in the Sam Hill would you want anything to do with a device that saves you labor, eh, Freckles??

5) THOU SHALT STRETCH AFTER THOU HAST LIFTED. Not only does it feel good, it helps to prevent soreness, injury, improve posture, help you move more efficiently, and, I'd wager, just makes you a little bit happier after you've done it. Five minutes is all it takes for a great, full body stretch. Like the rest of your workout, do it with intention and presence of mind and you'll leave the gym feeling refreshed and alive.

6) THOU SHALT USE GOOD FORM. If you're doing the basics with free weights, as I suggest above, do yourself a favor and do them with good form. That means good alignment, good breath support, and good spinal positioning, for starters. If you don't know the right way to do an exercise, buy some books -- there's a million of them -- or hire a trainer. Good form strengthens joints and connective tissue and improves posture; bad form does just the opposite.

7) THOU SHALT FEED THY HUNGRY MUSCLES WITH GOOD FUEL. Okay, you've worked out hard -- well done. Now the clock is ticking. After a hard session on the weights, you've got to get some protein into your system but fast. So plan your life so that you eat a good meal -- preferably the largest one of the day -- within an hour after your work out. Impossible? Grab a protein shake to tide you over 'til you can have some serious chow. A good diet is the subject of another column, but I hope I don't need to tell you that you're unlikely to get stronger, leaner, and healthier on a steady diet of Ben and Jerry's and french fries, do I?

Okay, there's the first seven commandments, enough to tide you over for a few days while you organize your workouts and dip your toe into the vast world of strength training. Next time we'll cover rest, workout duration, how to shake things up, and the all important, lucky thirteenth commandment that throws new light on everything that comes before it. Don't miss it.

Have a great week--
Andrew

DF Tip #18: Everything (and Nothing) Works

In his terrific book The New Rules of Lifting, exercise guru Lou Schuler quotes an old exercise adage:

1) Everything works -- and, the corollary,
2) Nothing works forever.

Think about all the testimonials you hear during infomercials from practitioners of, well, just about ANY Get-Fit-Fast system (doesn't everyone watch exercise infomercials?). They all sound remarkably alike: "I tried everything and nothing works like System X. I lost x pounds in y days and now I'm a size z! I'll never go back to any other system, ever!"

I'd like to hear from these people six months later. Only then would we get a good sense of the efficacy of System X.

I don't dispute those initial great results. What I do dispute is how long they last, and whether the rate of improvement that these people report is sustainable. My wager? Resoundingly, no, on both counts.

Bally's can smugly hire "trainers" whose only qualification is passing a 10-question True-False test because virtually anything they do to a new client -- short of inducing a heart attack on a treadmill -- will work. Put just about anyone who hasn't exercised in a long time on the most muddled, unsafe, inefficient and sloppily thought-out program, and you will get results-for a while. The body simply can't help but change, because it's adapting to all kinds of new stimuli. The first few weeks with a new client for me are always terribly flattering to me. I see their new muscles showing through the skin, watch their training weights soar, and decide I'm some kind of genius, when really all I've done is gently nudge them in the direction of a weight or two and try to keep them from breaking anything.

But my brilliance doesn't last, even with the most genetically-gifted client. That initial burst of fast progress slows down, plateaus, and possibly even reverses itself a bit. It doesn't matter if your fitness routine includes ambling for a half-mile a day or doing three-hour marathons every weekend, if you keep doing the same thing, so will your body. Like your mind, your body gets bored with repetition. It makes no more sense to do the same workout routine day after day than it does to read the same book over and over and expect your mind to stay engaged. Maybe it takes a month, two months or even six months, but that plateau descends. Sometimes that's when people quit, much to my dismay. If they don't, I rethink their program, they recommit to working out, and we both redouble our efforts to get them to their goals. Like life, it's a constant process of starting over, again and again. Set after set, workout after workout.

So does all this mean you have to change things up ALL THE TIME? Never doing the same workout twice?

Well, yes and no. The exact same workout -- i.e., the same running route, the same time of day, the same pace -- will eventually produce stagnation. But the variation that is required to cause change and improvement doesn't have to be enormous: there are enough possibilities with running alone, for example, to keep you occupied for a very long time. You can do long distances, short distances, trail running, intervals, tempo runs, recovery runs, just to name a few. You can work endurance, short-distance speed, running form, or any number of other aspects of your activity and still make improvements in fitness. Whenever the gym is closed, or a given piece of equipment that I'm particularly fond of is broken, or when Günter monopolizes the squat rack for the same hour I'm at the gym, I always grumble, but ultimately I make better progress because I'm forced to do something different -- something that inevitably is more novel, more stimulating, and usually more fun than the tried and true movement I'd planned. Necessity, mother, invention, and all that.

The good thing is that you can stay in the zone of first-blush fast-progress for an extended period by giving yourself permission to keep experimenting with the various aspects of your workout. Consistent exercisers often compare acquiring the habit of working out to brushing one's teeth or showering daily. I agree that putting aside the time should indeed be habitual, but what you do during that hour 3-6 days a week should NOT be a habit. Once you've acquired a good baseline of fitness, it can be an adventurous break from the rest of your day that's never the same one day to the next: maybe you'll check out that mountain bike trail you spied the other day on your morning commute. Maybe you'll try to break 1:10 swimming 100 meters at the pool. If you've got a couple of hours on the weekend, maybe you'll grab a friend and hike up a mountain.

Sure, it's nice to have your good old running route, your good old pec workout, your good old bike trail to come back to, but if you keep things interesting most of the time, it won't feel so much like drudgery when you come back to the old chestnut workouts. And even when you're doing the tried and true stuff, there's no reason you can't still switch it up: ratchet up the intensity or the duration on your aerobic session. Throw an extra ten pounds on the bar and see if you can lift it. Convince your running partner to help you try to shave 30 seconds off your three-mile running pace.

Millions of magazines are sold, gadgets shipped and fortunes made on the universal assumption that there's a Holy Grail of workouts that will deliver everything to everyone: six pack abs, firm muscles, lightning reflexes, catlike balance, marathon endurance, sprinter speed, yogic flexibility, and the most gleamingly healthy heart and lungs this side of Lance Armstrong. Let me save you some time and money here: that workout doesn't exist.

If you were to ask me what the best workout is, the one that will change your body, make you leaner, faster, stronger, and more youthful, in brief I'd invoke my bodybuilding brethren who say that the best workout is the one you haven't tried yet. So get out there and experiment!

Have a great week,
Andrew