No Time to Work Out? Puh-lease.

And now, a guest post by Brooke Stone.  Click here to visit Brooke Stone Lifestyle Management: “Live your life. Let us do the rest.”

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So, here’s the deal.  It’s hard to find time to work out because it sucks (Mark, bear with me here).  Exercising uses up time and energy you don’t have and makes you sweaty - which feels good until it dries on your face and causes major post-adolescent acne hideosity.  But you know you HAVE to do it, or you will get unfit, unhappy, and un-hot.  No one wants that.  Sometimes we think we do (doughnut), but we really don’t (Vince jeans).

How in the world are we expected to work out when we have so many other demands on our time?  Buddha, Krishna, Unbearable Lightness of Being – whatever the hell is up there, or not – WTF?  How do we do it?!

We trick ourselves.  That’s right.  Trick.  We reframe the situation.  Assuming you have already tried scheduling a workout into your calendar, finding a workout buddy, and other typical suggestions to no avail, try these two suggestions and let me know how you do:

Take Control

Most of us believe we have little control over an uncomfortable situation.  With exercise, we explore the options, pick the least horrific alternative, and suck it up.  This usually amounts to two weeks of forced participation, and a fall off the wagon.  We set ourselves up to fail, which only increases the likelihood that we will fail again and again.  This cycle simply wont work if you wish to make health and hotness a priority.  So take control.

Try this: Acknowledge the workouts that you’ve genuinely enjoyed.  Take a minute and figure out what was making you enjoy them.  Did you love the instructor?  Did you love the way your butt looked in the $52 workout shorts?  Did you love the person sweating it out next to you?  The music?  The time of day?  The fact that you didn’t eat too close to the class and you didn’t feel like you had to vom?  Find out what was making you tick, and therefore click.  Write it down.  Now.  Do it.  Please.

Now, use this data to inform your fitness choices.  Go to classes taught by your favorite instructors exclusively – who cares?!  Buy the $52 workout shorts if they get that killer ass back to the gym.  Ask the instructor to play your favorite song – they have to make so many playlists, I’m sure they’ll thank you for the help.

Take control, create a situation to which you would like to return, and return!  You will discover that it’s much easier to find time for something you actually want to do, something tailor made for you.

More than Madonna Arms

Like most people, you probably arrive at the gym, yoga, Pilates with visions of the perfect physique, but it’s not enough to keep you on the gym floor or on your mat.  You get bored.  You get tired and sore.  You think there must be some better style of exercise that will deliver the results you seek.  So you go off looking for it and repeat the cycle in search of those ever elusive Kabbalah-inspired Madonna arms.  You will never find them.  Shalom.

Find your connection to physical activity on a level deeper than physical appearance.  When you are able to dig down and find a way to simultaneously condition your body and nourish your mind, you will work out every day and not understand how others do not.  You may have seen this in your marathon-running, yoga-crazed, or Mark Fisher Fitness-addicted friends.  Were you jealous?

Try this: Consider the parts of your personality that don’t get a lot of air time most days. For me, I almost never get to be playful and childlike or to exhibit my easy going, relaxed side (Yes, husband, I have one).  Thus, I have become addicted to rollerblading and yoga. These two physical outlets allow me to tap into the parts of myself I often shut away.  My alarm goes off in the morning, and I know when I hit my mat I get to be relaxed Brooke, even though my teacher and fellow yogis are the only ones who know she exists.  When I am rollerblading along the East River with my husband, wind in my hair, asphalt occasionally in my face, I’m free!  I can fall, I can be imperfect, I can laugh – loudly!  So I do these things, I look forward to them, and only after I’m done do I remember it was a work out. 

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Brooke Stone

Brooke Stone is a Lifestyle Management Professional with significant experience assisting individuals, businesses and NFP organizations. Together with her clients, Brooke works to increase productivity, manage commitments and streamline lifestyles. With a variety of skills including large scale project and event organization, small business start-up consulting, professional organizing, systems engineering and integration and superior personal and executive assistant skills, Brooke will help you find the time in your life you have been craving. 

A concern for the overcommitted lifestyles of parents, executives and involved individuals led Brooke to create BSLM. Brooke and all of the LMPs encourage you to outsource the parts of your life for which you have no time, energy or expertise and to rededicate the time saved to your life goals and passions. Lifestyle management, for every lifestyle. 

Brooke is a graduate of Ithaca College, a member of the National Association of Profess

ional Organizers and has been seen on A&E’s TV show Hoarders. Brooke is a contributor to the BSLM blog, Praxis.

Keep It Simple Sexy

Let’s keep this simple.

Summer’s coming.  You didn’t lose your holiday weight yet.  What should you do?  Well I could melt your brain with details about what’s optimal.  And of course individual context (body type, lifestyle, exercise preferences) needs to play a part.  But generally speaking, here are your big rocks:

1) Eat less calories than you need to survive.  We call this a caloric deficit.  If you fail to eat less than your body needs to maintain its current weight… you can’t lose fat.  Science always wins.

2) Focus on protein, moderate amounts of fat, and fruits and veggies.  Longtime readers know I don’t think there’s any magic to low carb diets.  And I’ve been openly critical of those who believe that carbs are inherently fattening.  BUT.  The reality is, it’s an easy way to cut calories without getting all OCD.  Focus on foods that are high in protein, and get some healthy fats, and eat tons of veggies and some fruit. 

3) Workout.  Duh.  Weight training time and again shows better fat loss results than traditional “cardio,” so it’s my recommendation you spend your first two to three hours of exercise having fun with weights (or bands or bodyweight exercise or whatever).  Not only is it better for fat loss, it’ll help you maintain your lean muscle tissue.  If you have more time, then do more traditional forms of cardio. 

4) Sleep.  Yep.  Get in your sleep.  It’s crucial for fat loss for several reasons.  At least 7 hours, preferably 8 to 9.

5) Drink a lot of water.  Get 96 oz.

BOOM.  I just made you hot.  You’re welcome.

As I always tell my clients, for most people, fat loss is simple.  And while simple is not the same as easy, it’s better than being hard AND complicated.  And if you want more details or would like some help in applying these principles to your specific situation, you know where to find me!

Movement is Life

There are a lot of rad things about modern day society.  I can watch YouTube on my cellphone.  I can get in a tin can that takes me from one part of New York City to another.  I can watch Mad Men on DVD whenever I want.  Hells to the yeah.

However… everything has a price.  The conveniences of modern society have made our life a futuristic wonderland in many ways.  But it has also contributed to an ever more sedentary way of life, and this is slowly but surely wreaking havoc on our bodies.  Not only are we fatter than we’ve ever been, but even the gym going population spends much of its time sitting at work, at home, AND at the gym.  Consequently, we move like shit and most people have zero athleticism of any kind.  My mentors in the fitness industry tell me there’s been a marked decline in movement quality within even the past twenty years.  Thanks a lot, interwebz…

Um… this is just weird.

I guess it’s better than slouching but…

Weird.

As a brief aside, I want to point out that the answer is sadly a little more complicated than “just move more.”  Context is everything.  Yoga, pilates, strength training, etc. are all therapeutic in the right situation.  But while people are welcome to disagree, I don’t think any of these modalities are universally appropriate.  A lot depends on the needs of the individual in question.  In fact, a certain percentage of the gym going population is probably a better candidate for physical therapy than for “doin’ the machines.”

While everyone would be served by consulting with a qualified movement professional who can steer them to the proper rung of the ladder, I don’t want to get lost in the details (though I will in a future article).  

The big takeaway is you can’t live a full life without movement.  Period. By all means, find the right type of movement for both your physical needs and for your preferences… but MOVE.

I completely and utterly reject a life without movement.  I reject a life spent sitting at a desk. It’s completely unnatural to never physically exert yourself.  We weren’t meant to sit all day.  We weren’t meant to spend most of our life hunched over computers.  Or in cubicles.  Or riding around the street or sky in tin cans. A sedentary life is a recipe for all kinds of health (and mental) problems.  Now I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater… I’m not suggesting you flush your iPad down the toilet.  Least of all, because it will probably do bad things to your plumbing.  Also, iPads are totally sweet and you should enjoy playing with them.  I just want to make sure you spend some time moving and reaping its benefits.

At its best, exercise should be a form of moving meditation; a prayer. It’s a sacred communion with the best of the human experience; sweat and toil as a physical expression of creativity and love. There’s a lot of power in bringing your awareness to your breath and choosing to just be in your body.  To let go of opinion and judgement and analysis and obligations and to-do-lists.  Just breath and be in your body, whether you’re doing chin-ups, swinging a kettlebell, a warrior pose variation, whatever.  Be here now. It’s maddeningly simple, but I swear it will change your fucking life if you let it. Can’t quiet your mind while sitting and meditating?  No prob.  Let your body teach you how to do it while moving and then bring it into more traditional forms of meditation.

Use it or lose it friends; retirement isn’t gonna be as fun if you’re dealing with chronic back pain or you can’t get up and down off the floor to play with your grandkids.  Consider this your wake up call.  Commit to making movement a part of your life and I promise it will be the single best investment you ever make with your time.

“Motion is Life.”

-Hippocrates, Greek physician, 460-377 BC

High five to you Hippocrates.  

Why It’s Easy To Scam You (It’s Not That You’re Stupid)

As loyal readers know, there are some sketchy ass “personal trainers” out there.  These trainers get their certification online in a weekend, spout out scientifically inaccurate information, choose dangerous, ineffective, and/or inappropriate exercises for their clients, and spend more time looking at their biceps in the mirror than watching their clients.

These trainers are not necessarily bad people: in fact, I’d say more often than not they’re totally well-meaning humans.  I may lament that uneducated trainers do things that could jeopardize their clients’ long-term health and hotness, but I don’t think for a second that any of them are trying to hurt anyone. They just don’t know what they don’t know.

In this blog post, I lay out some questions to ask a potential trainer if you’re unsure of their qualifications.  But why is it so many scam artists are able to thrive in this business?  

Ah yes.

The elusive Taint Press Technique.

Clearly a mastermind at work.

First of all, your body’s reaction to training is often counter-intuitive.  Our good friend Weekend Certification Trainer is happy to have you do sit-ups and crunches because you told him you want a six pack.  And if you don’t know that a six pack is predominantly a matter of being lean enough, you’re gonna be super psyched when you feel your abs “burning.”  Legit Trainer has to explain that not only are you risking your back health by doing millions of sit-ups and crunches, but to truly reveal a six pack, you’ve got to get lean.  Which means you’re better off eating properly and burning more calories doing full-body movements that use lots of muscle.  This is never as immediately gratifying as “feeling the burn.”

The second reason is that as Warrior Poet King of Strength and Conditioning Dan John says, “everything works… for six weeks.”  If you’ve been inactive and start training with Weekend Certification Trainer, and he starts kicking your ass from the first minute of the first workout, you’re gonna get some results.  Maybe not the best, fastest, or safest results, but you’re gonna probably see a difference in your body.  Legit Trainer has little choice but to start you off by doing some assessments, easing you into working out, and teaching you the basics before launching you into aggressive training. 

Thirdly, it’s human nature to judge a trainer’s ability on their physique.  This is particularly regrettable as very often the most genetically gifted (or chemically enhanced) trainers suck because they don’t know what it’s like to have to fight for every small fitness victory.  And since all trainers suffer from some degree of bias towards what works for them, this can present a big problem if the trainer in question isn’t sufficiently educated.  (Not everyone can be genetically gifted AND smart like my friend Maik Weidenbach: please read the Crossfit bitch slap on his blog.)

Once again, it’s hard to resist human nature.  If you want to get a bigger chest, you will naturally be drawn to a trainer who has a big chest (even if he got it via training that wrecked his shoulder and copious amounts of steroids).  If you want to lose weight, it can be discouraging to train with a trainer with a bit of a belly, no matter how much of an expert they may be.  Though as a side note, with all due respect to Educated But Overweight Trainer… you may want to walk the walk a bit bro.

She seriously may be an expert.

But human nature will not work in her favor.

As you can see, it’s pretty easy for trainers with good physiques and sociopathic confidence to sell you on training practices that are silly and/or dangerous (‘cough’ Tracy Anderson). So if you’ve ever purchased sessions from Weekend Certification Trainer, don’t feel stupid.  And remember, Weekend Certification Trainer was doing the best he could with the knowledge he had (I hope).  

As in all fields of life, a little bit of consumer education will go a long way to protecting your hard earned money.  But when it comes to working with a fitness professional, it’s not simply a matter of losing some money.   Your body is the most precious resource you have.  You don’t have to be an expert on training and nutrition.  But I implore you to do your due diligence for the sake of your long-term health and hotness.

Walking: It’s More Practical Than Tumbling Everywhere

Walking is a pretty fundamental human movement.  Particularly for those who don’t want to jump, skip, run or tumble as their only methods of getting around.  And while it certainly has its limitation as “exercise,” it can still be employed smartly to help you achieve your health and hotness goals.

Now let me start by saying a fat loss program built around walking is just dumb.  The amount of calories you burn while walking around is not going to be substantial.  And while any article about “Walk Your Way To A 6 Pack” makes me want to take shots of battery acid, there is definitely still value to be had for fat loss.

In fact, it is BECAUSE walking is so low intensity that it can be an effective supplement to a fat loss program.  Because of the body’s finite recovery abilities, you can only spend so much time doing high intensity exercise before you’re going to get injured or burnout.  This is PARTICULARLY true if you’re in taking in less calories than you need to maintain your body weight (and if you’re looking to lose fat, that had better be the case).  

For people with dialed-in diet and training programs, the addition of walking provides an easy way to burn extra calories and help the body recover more effectively without blowing yourself out.  Brisk walking (which I would define as elevated heart rate, but not panting wildly) is a classic, low intensity cardio move employed for years by bodybuilders to get ultra-shredded for competition.  While it has fallen out of favor in recent times, I personally still think there can be great benefit to the inclusion of walking for the above mentioned reasons.  

As a side note, I’d like to say I’m a fan of low intensity training AND high intensity training.  It’s that steady state, middle-of-the-road shit that I hate for most people most of the time.  To paraphrase the Warrior- Poet- King of Strength and Conditioning, Dan John, most people’s low intensity training is too high, and their high intensity training is too low.

A brisk walk first thing in the morning for 20 to 30 minutes is not only a great way to burn a few extra calories, but to clear your head and prepare psychologically to have a kick ass day.  If you REALLY want to have a great day, focus on breathing diaphragmatically and clearing your mind. Walking meditation is pretty bad ass, particularly in the spring and fall.

Bodybuilders understand the value of walking.

Also: Big dude + Little dog = Silly

Additionally, choosing to walk as much as possible (easy for us NYers) is a great way to up your overall activity level throughout the day.  This type of extra activity is referred to as NEAT, an acronym that stands for Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (creation of heat, or calorie burning in laymen’s terms).  So if you’re really in it to win it, just start walking to work, taking the long way to the subway, or walking across midtown instead of cabbing it to the next bar health food store.

The key word above is “supplement”: walking is an excellent supplement to a solid diet and workout program.  But if you think you can rely on it to create any substantial effect in and of itself… well in that case you probably want to go back and read the rest of the article that you skipped.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.

…

There.  Aren’t you glad you went back and actually read the article instead of skimming?  Now you can talk about NEAT at cocktail parties.  You’re welcome.  

So do feel free to add in some brisk walking a few mornings a week if you’re looking to maximize fat loss.  Just don’t expect to be able to outwalk poor nutritional choices.  The bagel is gonna catch up to you.  (See what I did there?  Yeah, I hate myself too.)

Tracy Anderson- She Says Some Wack Shit

In the world of fitness, there is room for disagreement and intelligent discourse among reasonable educated people.  The human body is complicated and the reality is there is still a lot we don’t know about how the body responds to training and nutrition.  I think the hallmarks of a good fitness professional are an aversion to dogma, a ravenous intellectual curiosity for continued education, and a genuine burning desire to provide the best service and information to their clients (and blog readers).

There are those, however, who seem to be oblivious to what we do know about how the body works.  They seem to either be criminally misinformed or outright intellectually dishonest.  These same people can be very successful because they can make outrageous claims, like “I can make your butt look just like Gwyneth Paltrow’s.”

Ladies and gentleman, I give you… Tracy Anderson.

 

Hula hoops are pretty sweet

 

In the bio on her website, she makes a number of jaw droppingly ludicrous claims: 

-  Tracy’s method is to strengthen the smaller muscle groups so that these muscles can pull in the larger muscles.  (“Pull in”, huh?  WHAT.  THE HELL.  DOES THAT MEAN?!?!  … No I’m serious.  Someone tell me what that means.  Is she referring to stabilizers pulling in the bigger more prime mover type muscles?  How does that work exactly?)

-  she has helped her clients achieve toned and defined bodies with smooth and firm skin.  (Um… Does she have like a skin care line or something?  Me confused.)

-  Tracy decided to study and research muscle structure and specific training techniques.  (She “researched.”  Awesome.  I’d be FASCINATED to look at her reading list.  No doubt she’s a Supertraining afficiando…)

Now, as most of you know, I’m a pretty happy guy.  And I’ve always maintained one of the keys to my happiness, is I really respect people’s rights to do whatever they want to do.  Its a free country, right?  America.  Sweeeeet!  But a certain line is crossed when… actually, sorry, can you hold on a second? I have to open something real quick…

WHAMMO!

A line is crossed when a “fitness expert” either out of ignorance or dishonesty makes recommendations that do not serve people’s health and fitness pursuits. People spend a fortune ($900/month for her Tribeca location) to train in the Tracy Anderson Method and so far as I can tell, she blatantly makes shit up.  If you never lift weights over three pounds, you don’t help maintain or increase your bone density and you do nothing to stave off the risk of osteoporosis. Gwyneth Paltrow, Tracy’s star client, is 37 and has osteopenia (the precursor to osteoporosis). Listen, diseases are multi-factorial.  I’m NOT saying Tracy Anderson’s methods gave Paltrow osteopenia. But they didn’t do anything to prevent it.  And as far as the physique benefits of lifting ultra light weights, her “method” has been proven inefficient at best over and over again.  And I’m sorry, the idea that women can’t or shouldn’t lift relatively heavy weight is an insidiuos form of sexism.  And I’m not even going to touch the fraud allegations that seem to have bedeviled her over her career.

The reason Tracy Anderson can get away with this is that much of the general public is massively undereducated when it comes to fitness.  How could you not be? First of all, human bodies are complicated and much of what serves your goals is counterintuitive (see Monday’s post about side bends and love handles).  Then there are a small army of “experts” trying to make money off you and sell you their products, books, and magazine, and if they look fit and speak confidently, the layperson understandably has a hard time telling fact from fiction.  To make things more confusing, if you go from doing nothing to doing ANYTHING, you are going to see some results, particularly if you cut your calories significantly and go from taking in more than you need to less than you need.  So no doubt many of the people who train with Tracy do see some positive changes in their body.

Now I don’t believe in saying anything on the interwebz I wouldn’t say to the person’s face.  So in the absurdly unlikely event this gets back to Tracy Anderson; let’s be fitness friends Tracy.  If I’m being unfair and you really have a scientific explanation for your training method, PLEASE tell me.  I will literally write up a new blog post and publicly apologize and explain why I’ve changed my mind.  Or at the very least I can disagree peacefully, knowing you actually have reasons for why you train people the way you do.  As opposed to just to being a plain old liar.

So Tracy, what books have you read?  Who are your favorite fitness authors?  Who has had the biggest influence on your training philosophy and why?  What type of “research” did you do that led to the formation of your method?  I’m really open minded.  

So in closing, yes, there is plenty of room for debate in the fitness industry.  But to promote methods that fly in the face of decades of exercise science is completely indefensible and unethical.  And for that reason my moral code prevents me from rocking my usual MO and just letting her do her thing, because at the end of the day, she’s training someone’s mom.  It might not be her mom, and it might not be my mom, but it’s SOMEONE’S mom.  Or someone’s boyfriend.  Or someone’s niece.  Or Jennifer Aniston.  I don’t know if this woman is a sociopath who has no problem lying to advance her career, or if she is really is that ignorant.  And honestly, I don’t care.  Her “method” only serves to add more confusion to the society at large as to what strategies are their safest and most efficient path to health and hotness. 

I’m sure Tracy Anderson has many wonderful qualities as a human.  I don’t wish her ill will personally and she’s certainly entitled to her opinion. But what she’s doing professionally is wrong and I call shenanigans!

CALL OF HEROIC TRUMPETS!!!

Oh and Tracy?  Stop saying you can “restructure muscles.”  If you’re gonna make stuff up, at least make it sound science-y.  ”Restructure muscles” kinda makes you sound like a dumb ass.  Good evening.

Functional Training Is Not a Fad

The fitness industry is a breeding ground for weird fads.  Some come and go (usually the ones that suck, thank goodness) but some stay around and change the way we look at exercise.

Functional training is one of those “fads” that isn’t in fact a fad at all.  It is my belief that the rise of functional training has created a paradigm shift that will continue to benefit those seeking a life of health and hotness.  Unfortunately, functional training has often been misinterpreted and this is partly because it’s kind of hard to nail down an exact definition.  

I personally like the definition given by one of the fathers of the functional training philosophy, Coach Mike Boyle: functional training is the application of functional anatomy to training.

(Yes, gentle reader, I know I talk about Coach Boyle a lot.  But trust me, the dude’s kind of a big deal and if you have found value in what I share, it’s in large part due to his influence on me.)

Coach Boyle:

Pretty fly for a white guy.

So we now have a definition of functional training.  Sweet!  

“Mark… what does functional anatomy mean?”

Oh.  Sorry.  Functional anatomy is a way of looking at the muscles of the body that considers the way the muscles actually work in real life.  This is different than what I would call “cadaver anatomy”.

For instance, one of the things your quadriceps (the muscle on top of your thighs) can do is straighten your knee.  This is why you can use the leg extension to train your quads.  But in real life, you generally don’t have to straighten your legs against weight on your shins.  That’s why the leg extension is not “functional.”  

Again, I don’t think any movement is “wrong” and I think all tools have their place.  I bag on machines a lot, but if you’re a bodybuilder and your body is working well (for now) and you just want to get swol’ bro, have at thee. Furthermore, there can be some limited use in the rehab setting for leg extension work.  But the fact is, in the real world, the quads don’t work like that. They work in concert with your hamstrings (and most of the rest of your body) to create movement.  

And just to be clear, another tenet of functional training is that it is fundamentally about the training effect is produces, and not what it looks like.  Namby pamby one leg on the bosu ball single arm lateral raises with the pink 2lb dumbell with your eyes closed while you recite the alphabet backwards is NOT functional.

…

Are you fucking kidding me?

PS: Brian Patrick Murphy, is this the gym in Little Rock?!?!

I think there’s wisdom in training the body the way it works in life.  It is my belief that training which reflects functional anatomy maintains quality of movement and therefore reduces the chance of injury, increases your longevity, and allows you to actually perform should you want to dive in to a pick up basketball game.  Again, I think a lot of bodybuilders look awesome.  And I understand they are training for a certain look.  But there are lot of guys that “look like Tarzan and play like Jane” (not my line).  If you’re cool with being big and muscular and moving like shit in a pickup basketball game, cool.  That’s just not reflective of my personal training philosophy nor is it my recommendation for those of you that want to live the health and hotness dream.  

Train your body the way it’s actually designed to function and you’ll not only look great, you’ll feel and move great.  Booyah.



“But I Wanna Get Rid Of These Lovehandles!!!”

Let us consider this term: spot specific reduction.  Spot specific reduction means burning fat on a specific site of the body.  Here’s the thing; it doesn’t exist.  Wah wah.

When you are burning more calories than you are taking in, your body will pull the fat stores from where ever it likes in order to access the energy it needs.  In fact, of particular bummerness, you know those “stubborn” areas?  Usually back fat and low abs for men and hips and thighs for women?  They tend to be the last place the body wants to burn fat for a bunch of science-y reasons beyond the scope of this article.

Consequently doing exercises that work the muscle underlying the unwanted body fat but burn minimal calories is NOT a great way to get rid of the fat (ie weighted side bends for love handles, crunches for lower abdominal fat, etc.).  You’re way better off doing multi-joint, big bang movements like squats, pullups, deadlifts, and the like because they are going to burn more total calories.  

 

BIG BANG MOVEMENTS = HOT

To add insult to injury, if you’re reeeeally getting crazy and doing high volume (lots of sets) and frequency because you are DEADSET on burning the fat overlying the muscle group you’re targeting, you may actually thicken the area.  Just what you wanted!  A THICKER WAIST, HOORAY!!!  Now I tend to think this is going to be unlikely for most people (again, its hard to “accidentally” grow bigger muscles), but even so since the benefit is pretty much nil for fat loss it’s not gonna be a great use of your time.

Now there can be a place for those isolation movements if you’re looking to add some muscle to specific areas in order to make desirable aesthetic changes (or strengthen a weak link that’s holding back your performance on the big bang movements), they’re just not your friends when it comes to burning calories in a time efficient manner.

So the takeaway here is this; if you want to burn fat, you have take in less calories than you’re burning and consequently exercises that burn few calories are not of much value.  

It’s also worth noting that when trying to burn fat a combination of training and nutritional strategies will serve you best.  If you’re just cleaning up your diet with no training, you may not hold onto your muscle (and shapely sexiness).  And you really can’t out train your diet, so if you’re rocking the old “I deserve this 7 pound hamburger!  I DID SPIN CLASS TODAY!!!” philosophy, you are blunting and probably totally thwarting your fat loss goals altogether.

“I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER?”

Beautiful Strength

Remember when people used to do “calisthenics”? For most of us, the word carries memories of gym class circuits of jumping jacks, pushups, and perhaps some stretching.  And although the phrase has fallen out of frequent use in the current fitness vernacular, its etymology is worth considering: Kalos Sthenos.

Kalos Sthenos is Greek for “beautiful strength.”  Kalos Sthenos is a big deal.  I’ve come to realize it’s probably one of the defining elements of my training philosophy; I want my clients to move as beautifully as their bodies look.

Coach Mike Boyle has been quoted as saying “if it doesn’t look athletic, it’s probably not athletic.” Simple but incisive, and really just another way of saying the same thing.  Humans intuitively recognize the lack of proper technique.   They may not be able to pinpoint exactly why, but if non-strength training aficionados watch two people squatting side by side, they could probably identify whose technique is better.

I think we can all agree this looks like shit, yes?

Please.  God.  Make it.  Stop.

 

My particular background has probably left me ultra-sensitive.  I may be a meathead(ish) strength junkie now, but there was a time in my life when I would routinely take up to 8 ballet classes a week.  And although I was never the most naturally gifted, I worked my balls off and developed a modicum of technique and proficiency.  Consequently, I had an appreciation for the aesthetic qualities of movement from the beginning of my love affair with moving iron weights from Point A to Point B.

For those of you training for health and hotness (read: PRETTY MUCH ALL OF YOU), I challenge you to prize quality of movement above all else.  Movement MUST precede exercise.  That’s why I believe the Functional Movement Screen is the industry’s premiere screening tool.   If you don’t have certain basic movement capabilities, you don’t have the fundamental mobility and stability to execute good exercise technique, no matter how much your ego may crave lifting big weights.

And lest you think this is purely a matter of artistic sensibility, let me lovingly and bluntly tell you if your technique is shoddy, you WILL get injured.  Period.  Maybe not in your twenties.  But eventually.  Furthermore, if you really do want to move substantial weight and reap the health and hotness benefits, you’re not going to get there unless you’re honoring the laws of physics and proper biomechancis.  The gyms of America are filled with guys and gals doing partial range of motion exercises with brutal form and lifting the same weights for years.  If you want your body to change, you’ve got to PROGRESS your training. Otherwise you’re just spinning your wheels.

Now this isn’t an excuse to lift like a pussy (sorry Mom!) and get lost in your head about technique; a balance must be struck.  To modify Einstein’s famous quote about religion and science, technique without heart is lame and heart without technique is blind.  I want both in my training.  I want both in your training.  And if you need help, ask for it. 

Sounds hard?  It is.  And that, my friends, is why there is value in strength training beyond getting rippd abz.  Now as I’ve said before, I’m all for honoring that your primary intention in training may just be to look good naked.  I’m merely suggesting that embracing the concept of Kalos Sthenos will provide psychological and physical benefits beyond chicks wanting to hang out with you. Though frankly… that is a pretty sweet extra benefit.

Snoopy LOVES heavy deadlifts.

And chicks LOVE Snoopy.

(Quick Side Note: I was first exposed to this term because it’s the name of a DVD by Fitness Super Heroes Brett Jones and Gray Cook.  The DVD breaks down an EXCELLENT old timey fitness move, the Turkish Get-Up.   Although I haven’t seen it yet, it’s on my list, and I wanted to give credit where it’s due.  Thanks Brett Jones and Gary Cook!)