“Being happy’s out of style
Feeling sad is all the rage The story's kinda boring though Might be time to turn the page Oh Maybe life is good And everything is fine Maybe take a breath Maybe do it twice I know you're in pain But that's a part of life And, baby, life is good And everything is gonna be alright” - Em Beihold About 17 months ago I had a massive uptick in my income of dollars, energy, and positivity/joy. Losing a few clients and connections who drained time and energy was such a force multiplier for good that it made me rethink other areas of life where my ROI was potentially much more negative than I was willing to admit to myself. So I left social media about 10 months ago, and the trend of benefit not only continued but accelerated. Reader, consider the following, because it will change your life for the better if you allow it. Tech giants know. In a 2011 New York Times interview, Steve Jobs revealed his children had not used the newly released iPad, stating, “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” Bill Gates in a 2017 Mirror interview, said his kids weren’t allowed phones until age 14, and even then, screen time was restricted (e.g., no phones at the dinner table). In a 2015 open letter to his newborn daughter, Mark Zuckerberg emphasized real-world experiences over digital ones, saying, “We want you to stop and smell all the flowers.” In a 2017 Q&A mentioning his daughters (then very young), he said they weren’t yet using tech heavily. In a 2018 New York Times interview, Sundar Pichai (Google) said he and his wife restricted their son’s screen time, including banning devices during meals. A 2018 Irish Independent article cited Evan Spiegel’s (Snapchat founder) protective stance toward his daughter’s potential social media use. Leaked Meta documents (2021, via Frances Haugen) showed Instagram’s negative impact on teen girls’ body image. Jonathan Haidt and others note tech elites often send their kids to low-tech schools (e.g., Waldorf), reinforcing a narrative of restricted digital exposure. Chamath Palihapitiya (Facebook vice president for user growth, 2007–2011) is even more outspoken. His most notable early statements came in 2017 during a Stanford Graduate School of Business talk, where he expressed “tremendous guilt” over his role in building tools that he believes are “ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” He criticized the “dopamine-driven feedback loops” of likes and shares, arguing they erode civil discourse and foster misinformation globally—not just in the U.S. He also revealed he barely uses Facebook himself (only a handful of posts in seven years at that point) and doesn’t let his kids touch it, famously saying they “aren’t allowed to use that shit.” This bluntness grabbed headlines and sparked debate, especially since it came from someone who’d helped make Facebook a juggernaut. Since then, Chamath has doubled down. In a 2019 Yahoo Finance interview, he elaborated on his kids’ zero-screen-time policy, linking excessive social media use at a young age to poor mental health. He wants his children to build resilience through real-world experiences—playing, failing, winning—rather than digital validation. By 2021, on CNBC, he called out Facebook again, saying it could’ve fixed its misinformation issues years ago but prioritized short-term profits over ethics. More recently, in 2024, Chamath endorsed Florida’s social media ban for kids under 14, calling it “obvious and sensible” on X. He framed it as a parent’s relief. He’s not just critiquing from the sidelines but advocating for systemic change, informed by both his Silicon Valley past and his current role as a father. It’s not just kids. There’s a solid and long-growing body of evidence that social media harms adults. Studies consistently show a link between heavy social media use and increased symptoms of anxiety and depression in adults. A 2018 University of Pennsylvania study found that limiting social media (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat) to 30 minutes daily reduced loneliness and depression significantly compared to unrestricted use. A 2022 MIT Sloan study tied the rollout of Facebook on college campuses to a 7% rise in severe depression and 20% in anxiety disorders among young adults. A 2018 York University study showed young women felt worse about their bodies after engaging with posts from peers they deemed more attractive. This effect isn’t age-specific—adults of all ages report lower self-esteem from similar comparisons. The American Psychological Association notes that constant exposure to “highlight reels” can distort reality perception, increasing dissatisfaction across age groups. HelpGuide.org (2025) highlights how engagement with social media platforms leads to compulsive use, and is linked to anxiety, depression, and even physical ailments in adults. PHYSICAL AILMENTS. Think about that. A 2017 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine tied this to perceived social isolation—ironic for a “connection” tool. Social media use, especially before bed, disrupts sleep, a key mental health pillar. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory noted this as a harm across ages, with adults also affected. A 2019 JAMA Psychiatry study found that three-plus hours daily on social media doubled poor mental health outcomes. A 2020 Pew Research stat showed 44% of U.S. internet users faced harassment, often on social media, which UC Davis Health (2024) links to severe self-esteem and mental health damage. This isn’t just a youth issue—workplace or personal conflicts spill online, amplifying stress. Fear of missing out (FOMO) drives compulsive checking, worsening loneliness. A 2013 PLOS ONE study on Facebook use found declines in subjective well-being among young adults, a trend echoed in broader adult populations per NAMI (2024). The paradox: more “connection,” yet more isolation. The 2018 Pennsylvania experiment showed cutting social media time directly improved mental health. Similarly, a 2024 analysis by Jonathan Haidt and Zach Rausch (from X posts) reexamined data and found reducing use for over a week improved mental health. The CDC reported a 57% suicide rate increase among 10-24-year-olds from 2007-2017, overlapping with social media’s rise. While not adult-specific, MIT Sloan’s college study extends this to young adults, showing mental health declines post-Facebook access. It’s evident that people should spend as little time on phones and screens and social media as possible. I knew that long before last year, having been an extreme late adopter, never even creating a social media presence until 2015; and at that point I begrudgingly joined because I thought it was a necessity for my business. Over the next 5 years I began to realize it was not only no benefit to me, but it came at a time and focus cost. The less time I’m online, the more money my business makes, and the more I can really connect with real people in my real life. That’s compounded benefit on top of the time I get back. That’s on top of the long-studied and aforementioned mental health benefits of avoiding social media. The foundational three problems are sensationalism, active propaganda, and algorithmic suppression. The sensationalism of news and the nonstop nature of social media generates unending grudges, real and imagined. If you always have enemies and can never let a newfound slight go, you can never free yourself from anxiety. Harvard has covered this: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/the-power-of-forgiveness#:~:text=Practicing%20forgiveness%20can%20have%20powerful,esteem%3B%20and%20greater%20life%20satisfaction. And so has Johns Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/forgiveness-your-health-depends-on-it But it goes beyond the sensational. Social media companies actively involve themselves in misinforming users, which adds to the mental health crisis they’ve already generated. Documents released starting December 2022 by journalists like Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss provide internal evidence of content moderation decisions to propagandize the public. Documents showed U.S. officials, including from the Biden administration and FBI, requested removal of specific accounts and posts, many containing factual critiques of policy (e.g., COVID vaccine efficacy debates). A notable case involved the suppression of a tweet by Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a Harvard epidemiologist, questioning mask efficacy for children—later a topic of legitimate scientific debate. The files revealed a "visibility filtering" system that reduced reach of certain tweets without notifying users, those from moderate/conservative voices or skeptics of mainstream narratives, even when not false. Stanford’s Dr. Bhattacharya was shadowbanned for lockdown critiques later validated by studies (e.g., a 2022 Johns Hopkins meta-analysis on lockdown inefficacy). The Missouri v. Biden (2023–ongoing) lawsuit explicitly shows federal officials coerced social media companies to censor content, including true information. Court filings cite emails where White House officials pressed Twitter to remove posts questioning vaccine mandates, some from credible sources. A July 2023 injunction limited government-platform coordination, proving credible evidence of overreach. Before Congress, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged mistakes in content moderation, including temporary removal of posts later deemed accurate. A 2018 Meta statement confirmed that posts rated false by fact-checkers lose about 80% of future views. Sadly, fact-checking is incredibly biased —e.g., a 2021 study by the Media Research Center showed PolitiFact disproportionately targeted moderate or conservative claims, often mislabeling factual statements. If true content is misjudged, it’s deamplified. During the pandemic, social media platforms aggressively moderated content to “combat misinformation,” although it exclusively targeted factual and scientifically-grounded perspectives if they happened to favor centrist or simply NOT extreme-far-left views. Early in 2020–2021, Meta, Google, Twitter and major news outlets labeled posts suggesting COVID-19 originated from a lab leak as misinformation and removed or deamplified them. Facebook reversed this policy in May 2021 after growing scientific debate and a Biden administration call for investigation made it the only credible hypothesis remaining. Internal emails from the "Twitter Files" revealed pressure from U.S. government officials, including the White House, to censor content questioning official narratives, even when rooted in expert opinion. And a whole book could be written on algorithmic suppression and media/social media propaganda. There are boundless numbers of compilation videos showing popular news personalities parroting the precisely identical talking points and lies for years on end. When Dick Cheney last year endorsed a democrat candidate, that was a jump-the-shark moment. But with the amount of propaganda already in action, people just sort of ignored the implications of an earnest endorsement by one of the dirtiest bloodthirsty warmongers in contemporary history. The propaganda fever pitch kept rolling in 2024 when social media outlets and conventional media outlets used precisely the same wording on multiple occasions to describe a delusional reality which viewers could see was false with their own eyes: https://youtu.be/1kKUye23KBQ?si=7EO7TR5asMc7xAfa https://youtu.be/3P5bz8dC7-k?si=zlRLwqm8gPvVZu_R It’s not even remotely isolated. There are numerous examples of talking points verbatim regurgitated by multiple news outlets: https://youtu.be/ksb3KD6DfSI?si=a5PpwqBev7Gih6jC And we all witnessed an incessant stream of lies for two years straight from widely-believed news sources: https://youtu.be/qWLc8dHW0T4?si=DoogPL5bvM8NR6pn https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cllpjp9jqdo/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/CllpmbxoTde/ https://youtu.be/zI3yU5Z2adI?si=hSo_WSIj3xf7QE29 https://youtu.be/zI3yU5Z2adI?si=sp1DN52NeKx3GHo5 One of the wilder examples involves the suppression of the news about Hunter Biden’s illegal foreign dealings (specifically in Ukraine in 2014 while the US overthrew its democratically-elected government: https://www.cato.org/commentary/washington-helped-trigger-ukraine-war) during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The news was initially flagged as potential misinformation by Twitter and Facebook. They blocked users from sharing related articles’ URLs, citing its "hacked materials" policy, and locked the New York Post’s account for weeks. Internal documents later released via the "Twitter Files" showed that Twitter staff debated the decision, with some acknowledging the lack of clear evidence of hacking. Subsequent reporting by outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times in 2022 confirmed the authenticity of Biden laptop data, including emails verified through cryptographic signatures. Facebook reduced the story’s visibility pending fact-checking, a move announced by Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesperson, on October 14, 2020. Of course, last year President Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon for Hunter Biden extending back to the non-coincidental year of 2014, even after President Biden repeatedly promised not to: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-broke-a-promise-pardoning-his-son-hunter-raising-questions-about-his-legacy Hoaxes abounded, which I need not get into. I am no fan of any famous person, any wealthy tycoon, or any politician, particularly a blowhard who is all three; but the ridiculous hyperbolic vilification of one contemporary man as the worst boogeyman in history went beyond the unbelievable and absurd: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VOkrxuZRUnk https://youtu.be/VMuDsjRs8Ns?si=Q5DDjaXKLQG0Hp3N Being on social media is an established detriment to mental health, with mainstream news outlets pulling up a close second. The very sources we thought we could rely upon for being informed are actually embroiled in misinforming us and amplifying our anxiety and negative emotions. Even its creators agree. Even social media founders agree. Even news outlets who were/are involved in propagandizing the public agree (on occasion). And I think, if you really reflect on your own state of mind, you too will know it to be true. More recently, Mark Zuckerberg added that social media is over anyway (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/mark-zuckerberg-says-social-media-is-over ). Algorithms have long pushed people to see advertisements and not friends, large companies and not small businesses, narratives and not discourse. People can feel it in their bones that real world interaction is orders of magnitude superior to online time. Virtual reality isn’t reality. Internet is not reality. Social media is fake. News is fake. TV is fake. But people in real life can be authentic. Take a break or at least limit your time, for your own sake, for humanity’s sake. You may not need to step away completely for 10-17 months like I did. But if you do, I guarantee you’ll feel better. Frankly, the world will heal. The benefits of social media reached their end between 2014 and 2024. And if you end social media for a day, a week, a month, a year, or forever, you can end its detrimental impact on you, on your community, and society.
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Methylene blue is a versatile compound with a long history of use in medicine, biology, and other fields. Technically, it's a salt used as a dye and a medicine which came to be taken as a supplement by experimenters in the fitness industry and anti-aging communities/enthusiasts. Olympic athletes are using it. It’s blowing up in the social media sphere. Anecdotes are hyperbolic and nearly unbelievable. Below is a detailed list of 30 pros and 30 cons associated with methylene blue, based on its known applications, effects, and limitations. Could it be a fit to bring your workouts or performance to the next level? Read and decide for yourself.
Pros: 1. **Antimicrobial Properties**: Effective against bacteria, fungi, and parasites (e.g., in treating malaria). 2. **Antioxidant Effects**: Acts as a potent scavenger of free radicals, protecting cells from oxidative stress. 3. **Neuroprotective**: May improve cognitive function and protect against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. 4. **Mitochondrial Support**: Enhances mitochondrial function, boosting cellular energy production. 5. **Treatment for Methemoglobinemia**: A well-established antidote for this condition, restoring oxygen-carrying capacity in blood. 6. **Low Cost**: Relatively inexpensive to produce and use in medical settings. 7. **Mood Enhancement**: Shows potential as an antidepressant by modulating brain chemistry. 8. **Anti-Inflammatory**: Reduces inflammation in certain contexts, aiding tissue recovery. 9. **Cancer Research**: Investigated for its ability to selectively target cancer cells in photodynamic therapy. 10. **Vasodilatory Effects**: Can improve blood flow by relaxing blood vessels. 11. **Memory Enhancement**: Improves short-term memory and cognitive performance in studies. 12. **Antiviral Potential**: Exhibits activity against some viruses in experimental settings. 13. **Staining Agent**: Widely used in histology and microbiology for visualizing cells and tissues. 14. **Reverses Cyanide Poisoning**: Used in combination therapies to treat cyanide toxicity. 15. **Long History of Use**: Has been safely applied in medicine for over a century. 16. **Low Toxicity at Therapeutic Doses**: Generally well-tolerated when used appropriately. 17. **Septic Shock Treatment**: Helps stabilize blood pressure in cases of septic shock. 18. **Photodynamic Therapy**: Enhances the effectiveness of light-based treatments for infections or cancer. 19. **Improves Hypoxia**: Increases oxygen delivery in low-oxygen conditions. 20. **Anti-Aging Potential**: May slow cellular aging by protecting mitochondria and reducing oxidative damage. 21. **Fungal Infection Treatment**: Effective against superficial fungal infections like candidiasis. 22. **Versatile Administration**: Can be given orally, intravenously, or topically depending on the need. 23. **Rapid Action**: Quickly metabolized and acts fast in acute conditions like methemoglobinemia. 24. **Biofilm Disruption**: May help break down bacterial biofilms, aiding antibiotic efficacy. 25. **Potential in Psychiatry**: Explored for treating bipolar disorder and psychosis. 26. **Dye Applications**: Useful in surgery to mark tissues or detect leaks (e.g., in urology). 27. **Anti-Parasitic**: Historically used to treat parasitic infections like schistosomiasis. 28. **Improves Wound Healing**: Promotes tissue repair in some topical applications. 29. **Research Tool**: Valuable in studying cellular respiration and redox reactions. 30. **Synergistic Effects**: Enhances the efficacy of other drugs or therapies in combination. Cons: 1. **Staining Risk**: Can temporarily turn skin, urine, or mucous membranes blue or green. 2. **Gastrointestinal Upset**: May cause nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea in some users. 3. **Drug Interactions**: Can interfere with serotonin levels, risking serotonin syndrome when combined with SSRIs. 4. **Photosensitivity**: Increases sensitivity to light, potentially causing skin reactions. 5. **Limited Research**: Some uses (e.g., anti-aging, neuroprotection) lack large-scale clinical trials. 6. **Toxicity at High Doses**: Excessive amounts can cause methemoglobinemia, ironically the condition it treats. 7. **Allergic Reactions**: Rare but possible hypersensitivity reactions in some individuals. 8. **Headaches**: A common side effect reported by users. 9. **Dizziness**: Can cause lightheadedness or vertigo in some cases. 10. **Not FDA-Approved for All Uses**: Many applications remain off-label or experimental. 11. **Potential Mutagenicity**: High doses may damage DNA in preclinical studies. 12. **Cardiac Effects**: May increase heart rate or blood pressure in sensitive individuals. 13. **Bitter Taste**: Oral administration can be unpleasant for some. 14. **Short Half-Life**: Requires frequent dosing for sustained effects in some treatments. 15. **Contraindicated in G6PD Deficiency**: Can cause hemolysis in people with this genetic condition. 16. **Staining Medical Equipment**: Can complicate procedures by staining tools or surfaces. 17. **Limited Solubility**: Challenges in preparing certain formulations for administration. 18. **Variable Bioavailability**: Absorption can differ widely between individuals. 19. **Potential for Overuse**: Misuse in alternative medicine circles without proper guidance. 20. **Skin Irritation**: Topical use may cause localized burning or itching. 21. **Interference with Diagnostics**: May skew results of certain blood or urine tests. 22. **Not Suitable for Pregnant Women**: Safety in pregnancy is not well-established. 23. **Monoamine Oxidase Inhibition**: Acts as an MAOI, posing risks with certain foods or drugs. 24. **Fatigue**: Some users report tiredness or lethargy as a side effect. 25. **Liver Strain**: High doses might stress liver metabolism over time. 26. **Unpleasant Odor**: Some formulations have a noticeable chemical smell. 27. **Psychological Effects**: Rarely, may cause confusion or agitation. 28. **Resistance Risk**: Overuse in antimicrobial applications could foster resistance. 29. **Regulatory Restrictions**: Availability varies by country, limiting access for some. 30. **Lack of Standardization**: Dosing and purity can vary in non-pharmaceutical-grade products. Researchers at Johns Hopkins called for a closer look at medical error, publishing a paper which estimated up to 440,000 Americans die each year due to it: https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2016/10/14/medical-errors-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us/. Naysayers fiercely attacked that figure. Their primary argument centered around how many people included in the estimate might have or would have died anyway. Unfortunately, I could never find one of these apologists account for a variable which might push the estimate UP. As I scoured arguments against the Johns Hopkins figures, sadly, each and every article worked earnestly to push the number as far down as is conceivable, ending up somewhere between 20,000 and 90,000. But we know that medical error is UNDERreported. No profession admits fewer mistakes than health authorities: https://jaapl.org/content/early/2021/05/19/JAAPL.200107-20#:~:text=In%20a%20survey%20of%20U.S.,patients%2C%20while%20only%20five%20percent. And the medical culture actually encourages their ranks to avoid admitting mistakes: https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/13/medical-errors-doctors/. So it’s hard to say what the figure actually is.
I think we might all agree, “too high.” Almost anything else gets the public fired up though. In 2021, over 26,000 Americans were murdered (NOT counting medical error), almost 21,000 were firearm-related: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm. The vast majority involve handguns, not rifles. Mass shootings account for a tiny fraction of these, around 700. Total of youths who die in mass shootings: less than 35. Any number more than 0 is too many. 34 kids killed by a firearm in mass shootings is 34 too many. Maybe 20,000 to half a million people killed by medical error is also something we should look into. Our unwillingness to challenge medical authority and organizations in medicine is pretty wild and certainly anti-modern. But our fonts of authority on health need more scrutiny, not less. We are now seeing a number of pandemic experts, like Deborah Birx, walk back positions on the safety of mRNA vaccines and call for Covid19 investigations for transparency: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/dr-deborah-birx-we-need-transparent-panel-on-covid-origins/ar-BB1m4gtI. This is a position which was called anti-science and anti-vax as recently as six months ago if the wrong person stated it. Pundits who once made fun of ivermectin are now taking it: https://www.yahoo.com/news/chris-cuomo-makes-ivermectin-face-210453781.html Influential experts and commentators agree 110% with what they dismissed as conspiracy theorizing only 1-4 years ago. And that’s fine. Absolutely people should be able to change their minds. Things are on the move. We can disagree over many different perspectives and worldviews. But the point remains: at ALL times, our outcomes will be superior when scrutiny of authorities goes UP, not down. As we age, our bodies experience changes that can impact mobility, independence, and overall health. However, strength training is one of the most effective ways to combat these challenges and maintain a higher quality of life.
1. Preventing Falls and Injuries Falls are a leading cause of injury among older adults, often resulting in fractures or long-term disabilities. Strength training helps by improving:
These benefits enhance joint and muscle stability, particularly in the legs and core, reducing the likelihood of falls and related injuries. 2. Managing Blood Sugar and Preventing Diabetes Aging can reduce insulin sensitivity, which increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. Regular strength training helps:
By improving insulin sensitivity, strength training plays a preventive role against diabetes in older adults. 3. Supporting Heart Health Cardiovascular health becomes increasingly important with age. Strength training offers several benefits for heart health, including:
These positive effects contribute to a healthier heart and reduced risk of vascular conditions. 4. Combating Osteoporosis and Sarcopenia As we age, we lose both muscle mass and bone density. Strength training helps combat these conditions in two ways:
5. Promoting Longevity The most compelling reason to incorporate strength training into your routine is its association with longer life. Studies show that regular strength training in older adults is linked to:
These cumulative benefits help reduce the incidence of chronic diseases, contributing to a longer, healthier life. 6. Overall Quality of Life Incorporating strength training into daily routines significantly enhances health outcomes. It helps:
With the right approach, strength training can be a cornerstone of healthy aging, showing that it’s never too late to build a stronger, healthier future. Reduction of Fall Risk: - Rodrigues, F., Domingos, C., Monteiro, D., & Morouço, P. (2022). A Review on Aging, Sarcopenia, Falls, and Resistance Training in Community-Dwelling Older Adults. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health*, 19(2), 874.[](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14552938/) - Daly, R. M. (2017). Exercise and nutritional approaches to prevent frail bones, falls and fractures: an update. Climacteric, 20(2), 119-124.[](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14552938/) - Fragala, M. S., Cadore, E. L., Dorgo, S., Izquierdo, M., Kraemer, W. J., Peterson, M. D., & Ryan, E. D. (2019). Resistance Training for Older Adults: Position Statement From the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 33(8), 2019-2052.[](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14552938/) Improvement in Glucose Sensitivity: - Villareal, D. T., Banks, M., Siener, C., Sinacore, D. R., & Klein, S. (2006). Physical frailty and body composition in obese elderly men and women. Obesity Research, 14(6), 929-937. (.)[](https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/how-can-strength-training-build-healthier-bodies-we-age) - Ishiguro, H., Kodama, S., Horikawa, C., Fujihara, K., & Saito, K. (2016). In search of the ideal resistance training program to improve glycemic control and its indication for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine, 46(1), 67-77. - Sigal, R. J., Kenny, G. P., Boule, N. G., Wells, G. A., Prud'homme, D., Fortier, M., Reid, R. D., Tulloch, H., Coyle, D., Phillips, P., Jennings, A., & Jaffey, J. (2007). Effects of aerobic training, resistance training, or both on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes: a randomized trial. Annals of Internal Medicine, 147(6), 357-369. Reduction in Cardiovascular Disease Risk: - Cornelissen, V. A., & Fagard, R. H. (2005). Effects of endurance training on blood pressure, blood pressure-regulating mechanisms, and cardiovascular risk factors. Hypertension, 46(4), 667-675. - Pattyn, N., Coeckelberghs, E., Buys, R., Cornelissen, V. A., & Vanhees, L. (2014). Aerobic interval training vs. moderate continuous training in coronary artery disease patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine, 44(5), 687-700. - Williams, M. A., Haskell, W. L., Ades, P. A., Amsterdam, E. A., Bittner, V., Franklin, B. A., ... & Stewart, K. J. (2007). Resistance exercise in individuals with and without cardiovascular disease: 2007 update: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association Council on Clinical Cardiology and Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Metabolism. Circulation, 116(5), 572-584. Combating Osteoporosis and Sarcopenia: - Fiatarone, M. A., Marks, E. C., Ryan, N. D., Meredith, C. N., Lipsitz, L. A., & Evans, W. J. (1990). High-intensity strength training in nonagenarians. Effects on skeletal muscle. JAMA, 263(22), 3029-3034.[](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4324332/) - Charette, S. L., McEvoy, L., Pyka, G., Snow-Harter, C., Guido, D., & Wiswell, R. A. (1991). Muscle hypertrophy response to resistance training in older women. Journal of Applied Physiology, 70(5), 1912-1916.[](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4324332/) - Nelson, M. E., Fiatarone, M. A., Morganti, C. M., Trice, I., Greenberg, R. A., & Evans, W. J. (1994). Effects of high-intensity strength training on multiple risk factors for osteoporotic fractures. A randomized controlled trial. JAMA, 272(24), 1909-1914.[](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4324332/) Reduction in All-Cause Mortality Risk: - Ruiz, J. R., Sui, X., Lobelo, F., Morrow, J. R., Jackson, A. W., Sjöström, M., & Blair, S. N. (2009). Association between muscular strength and mortality in men: prospective cohort study. *BMJ*, 338, a439. - Artero, E. G., Lee, D. C., Lavie, C. J., España-Romero, V., Sui, X., Church, T. S., & Blair, S. N. (2012). Effects of muscular strength on cardiovascular risk factors and prognosis. Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation and Prevention, 32(6), 351-358. - Katzmarzyk, P. T., & Craig, C. L. (2002). Musculoskeletal fitness and risk of mortality. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 34(5), 740-744. At least 23% of adults in America have mental illness: https://mhanational.org/issues/state-mental-health-america
At least 88% are metabolically unhealthy: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/met.2018.0105 And it’s getting worse every year. From 1960 to 1980, childhood chronic illness prevalence went from about 1% to about 3%: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1646496/#:~:text=Data%20from%20the%20National%20Health,parents%2C%20educators%2C%20and%20physicians. In the following 40 years, it doubled, doubled again, doubled yet again, and about doubled once more: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5010981/ https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/chronicconditions.htm#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20more,%2C%20and%20behavior%2Flearning%20problems. Essentially, it went from 1 out of every 100 kids in the 1960s to where it is now: 1 out of every 2 kids. Subdivisions of disease look even worse. The definition, categorization and screening for autism did meaningfully change from 1968 (DSM-II) to 1987 (DSM-III) and to 2000 (DSM-IIIR). But it has not since. In the last 20 years the prevalence went from 1 in 200 to 1 in 36. People try to do hand-waving and dismissal when comparing the 1960s estimate of 1 in 15,000 against the current Californian boys prevalence of 1 in 20. Wave your hands all you like. We are not in stasis. We are not getting better. And we are not getting only a tiny bit worse. Any in-depth analysis of public health trends shows overall worsening and at younger and younger ages. Thus, we are left with a simple question: why can’t people get healthy? Or one might simply wonder, “if it’s impossible for us to make an improvement, can we at least slow the rate of detriment?” This question plagued me long before I entered the fitness industry. However, in the over two decades I’ve been a health and fitness professional, it seems the deeper question is, “Are People Too Rigid to Be Helped?”. I’ve only seen the critical thinking capability of people decline along with a total collapse of American public health by every measure. It’s gotten me to wonder if people are simply too inflexible in their cognitive ability to be helped, even when it’s their own personal best interests of getting healthier. Also, it’s made me ponder a chicken-and-egg scenario, wherein the physical health of most people is so bad that it’s perhaps too much to expect that they’d become sharper in their reasoning. If they can’t get healthy, perhaps they can’t think clearly. If they can’t think clearly, perhaps they can’t get healthy. If we zoom out and look broadly at outcomes directed by modern day keepers-of-truth and the priestly caste, things aren’t getting better. Absolutely, since antibiotics and sanitation at the beginning of the 20th century, public health mostly improved until the 1970s. Since the civil rights movement from 1954-1968, many great steps undeniably followed for society. However, the overall trajectory since the 1970s sees a definite deceleration in progress and/or reversals. There are whole webpages dedicated to the dramatic worsening of overall prosperity since the 1970s: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com. Specifically, in medicine and health sciences, the bar today is so low that it’s embarrassing: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/half-of-ucla-med-students-fail-basic-tests-since-lowering-standards-for-minorities/54812. Certainly, since the beginning of the Department of Education on May 4, 1980, American students have steadily worsened when compared to international students. Black and minority illiteracy collapsed almost entirely until 1979: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp. In fact, that year was the narrowest EVER gap between white students and non-white students. In the years since, we have moved to a place where 85% of black students are “functionally illiterate”: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/579750-many-of-americas-black-youths-cannot-read-or-do-math-and-that-imperils-us/. Thus, just broadly, our citizens do not have basic literacy, let alone advanced thinking skill. Things are not improving. Contemporary studies don’t raise my hope. Less than 5% of American adults can consistently tell the difference between a statement of fact and an opinion: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/fact-opinion-differentiation/ To be clear, this is not an evaluation of WHETHER the fact is true or untrue. The statement of fact may be untrue. The opinion may be true. Or vice versa. But people cannot tell the difference between them. This has an obvious impact on healthiness. Without a doubt, those in positions of authority are working against the average person. We can see it in how pharmaceutical companies own media and the very regulatory agencies which are supposed to be protecting us from those same companies: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/conflicts-of-interest-in-science-and-human-health-have-reached-the-tipping-point And simply stated, researchers at Ivy Leagues are actually not very smart or honest: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/red-meat-research-from-harvard-faculty-who-are-sloppy-liars-idiots-ordered-by-the-justice-department-to-return-millions-in-stolen-funds-and-owned-by-foreign-interests Over and over again, we see “health authorities” champion superstitions, anti-science and pseudoscientific proclamations. As I’ve detailed before, the anti-scientific position of “scientific consensus” has been outright abysmal with regard to the radical mastectomy, Barry Marshall’s research on H. Pylori, and many unsafe medications, most recently notable are the vioxx scandal and the opioid scandal/crisis. But the embarrassments have no end. The flu vaccine effectiveness is negative: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6518843/. The efficacy is so low as to be nonexistent. Moreover, when we factor in people’s increased risky behaviors once vaccinated, the effectiveness is worse than being unvaccinated. It’s not merely that public health experts’ lies and half-truths are so pervasive and prevalent. It’s that “authorities” are so overconfident in their superstitions that they exuberantly partake in suppression of speech and thought. When children like Maddie de Garay became permanently paralyzed (https://downloads.regulations.gov/FDA-2021-N-1088-129763/attachment_1.pdf ) by the mRNA vaccines during the late 2020/early 2021 youth trials, the public never even had a chance at informed consent. Pfizer labeled the adverse reaction as “stomach ache.” A healthy Ontario boy died shortly after his mRNA vaccination, along with 400 other deaths and 10,000 serious adverse reactions suspiciously tied to mRNA vaccine rollouts: https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-health-canada-deems-400-deaths-after-receiving-covid-vaccine-low . Nonetheless, these very concerning cases have their reactions listed as “rash” or other non-serious response. Numerous legitimate researchers have been raising concerns in peer-reviewed publications about our hurried adoption of the novel vaccine technology. But they are minimized, dismissed, and vilified. Now, maybe these are merely coincidences. Maybe it is totally dumb luck that Sweden had far better outcomes than the US while not locking down, while not closing schools, while not enforcing youth mRNA vaccination, while abiding by the heterodoxy of the Great Barrington Declaration formulated by Stanford and Harvard researchers. Maybe. Unlikely. But maybe. Maybe the US being the only country on earth to recommend infants receive three mRNA Covid vaccinations before nine months old is just a fluke, a glitch, and not a feature of a strategically-designed public health machine aimed at destroying its citizens’ vibrancy and turning them into lifelong sickly customers. Maybe. But really, people can just look around. Look at the average populace around you. People are not healthy or fit. People are not independent thinkers. They’re generally regurgitating verbatim talking points from corporate media. Or simply look at an average classroom. The percent of children with severe special needs is outrageous. The number of children with major physical challenge and mental/emotional instability is climbing. Obviously. As such, I charitably gift a fair bit of my personal time to help clarify a number of health and fitness topics, pulling from extensive professional experience, my own personal experiments, and also the overwhelming evidence in the field. I make nothing from this. I don’t want notoriety. I purposely take months or years off of social media platforms precisely because I do not crave attention. I have a family and multiple businesses to attend to in the real world with real people. My online presence is purely to teach and to learn. I make nothing from it. I want nothing for it, except to beneficially impact the handful of people willing to grow. It is exclusively downside, a cost both in the time I could be making money or with my family, and a cost in the actual money to pay for a business website and hosting. The ROI is negative. An extreme loss. In fact, even this is an understatement, because almost everything I share which is iconoclastic or heterodoxy gets de-amplified, suppressed, or hidden. Unlike online influencers, I have a real company with a physical storefront; and giant tech companies collude to delegitimize any genuine outlet like mine from showcasing dissent. My early Facebook posts on Parkinson’s gained up to half a million views. A one-off YouTube video I made on knee-related orthopedic issues gained hundreds of thousands of views and tens of thousands of engagements. My brief efforts at Instagram peaked around twenty-thousand followers and interactions in the thousands. Our website once had a single day with tens of thousands of visits. However, after 2018, with each blog entry on conflicts-of-interest and the prevalence of non-replicable scientific research, we could actually measure the linear suppression of our visibility by Google and Meta algorithms. It turns out that the speech suppression machines ramped up at precisely that time period: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/EIP_Jira-Ticket-Staff-Report-11-7-23-Clean.pdf https://oversight.house.gov/release/the-cover-up-big-tech-the-swamp-and-mainstream-media-coordinated-to-censor-americans-free-speech-%EF%BF%BC/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-white-house-pressured-facebook-to-censor-some-covid-19-content-during-the-pandemic Ironically, in the aftermath of algorithm suppression, I made a lot more money. It pushed me to spend less time on charitable online posts which make nothing for me; and the more I focus on my live business which has always made my entire income, obviously, the better it is for me. But from time to time I still share, explain, cite and offer pieces of advice for those who are curious. Many aren’t curious. That’s fine. In discussions, however, I find that even some of the curious people have a genuinely hard time understanding the material, even when dumbed down, even when devoid of opinion, even when simplified to totally non-debated facts for simple takeaway. No shame. Lots of complex topics can be confusing. But when people cannot decipher whether a statement is opinion or fact, genuinely I am not sure where to begin. Thus, some years ago I built a critical thinking guide: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/4-tips-to-sift-conflicting-science https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/validity-and-soundness https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/induction-is-not-deduction https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/opinion-versus-argument https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/correlation-is-not-causation-trend-is-not-even-close-to-mechanism https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/settled-science Yet still, I find that people simply struggle to weigh input. In some circles, insults become a sort of shorthand to refuse any sort of discussion, thought, debate, engagement, evidence or argument. Slurs take the place of thoughtful discussion. “Racist” and “nazi” and “bigot” and “______phobe” and “pseudo_____“ have lost any relevant meaning. They are too often the universal language of low-IQ people dodging thoughtfulness and flexible learning. I have encountered even highly educated people insisting that anyone who doesn’t perfectly agree with them is always one of three things: unintelligent; crazy; or evil. This itself is the Ableism or Bulverism Fallacy tied into Ad Hominem Fallacy. It assumes ones own opinion is already conclusively THE TRUTH; therefore, any dissent or disagreement must be explained exclusively by attacking the opponent instead of the opponent’s arguments or evidence. This isn’t a gloom-and-doom rant. We should recall that there are wonderful stories of progress. There are powerful examples of rags to riches, destitution to prosperity, rock-bottom to pinnacle, despair to salvation, scientific research breakthroughs, and glimmers of hope all around. That said, there is no denying that the past decade people have been competing for who is the bigger victim. Abdication of personal responsibility is the norm. A willful rejection of self-discipline is the norm. Victim narrative is the norm. Participation ribbon culture is the norm. It’s not a coincidence that the popularity of getting dumber, more opinionated, and more unhealthy all coincide. It’s particularly vexing for me in health and fitness topics. We can see the abject failure across fifty years of experts and authorities in public health. Yet somehow, a small percent of the populace keeps coming back to them, like an abused spouse defending her abusive husband. The good news is that trust in institutions and “experts” is vanishing: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines/ https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx But really, there are still some 29% of people who claim to have “great confidence” in the opinions of demonstrably wrong and corrupt officials, when a healthier figure would be 0%, and a more reasonable claim would be “SOME confidence.” Sadly, 36% of the population claims to trust media a “great deal/fair amount”, when we know that they colluded with intelligence agencies to suppress speech/truth: https://oversight.house.gov/release/the-cover-up-big-tech-the-swamp-and-mainstream-media-coordinated-to-censor-americans-free-speech-%EF%BF%BC/ A multi-year congressional investigation into Covid measures found that nearly every single “conspiracy theory” which media suppressed or pilloried was correct: https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/ The experts are wrong, and not a little. The voices of media were wrong, and not a little. And we now know for a fact that they lied repeatedly. Is it any wonder that the percent of the populace who trusts them is quite similar in quantity to the percent of the populace who is mentally ill? At a bare minimum, I hope we can all see there is a big problem with authorities, experts, the modern priests, AND a problem in the individual and society. Once we do, of course, the questions still remain regarding solutions. Simply, there are four notions to keep in mind. Foremost, I argue we must reject authorities. We must reject authoritarianism in all its forms, for now and forever. It’s actually quite weird that totalitarianism crept into liberal philosophy the past four decades. Suppression of thought and speech was a hallmark of fascism, which so ironically was embraced by “the left” during Covid lockdowns and online debate. That’s perhaps too complex to totally unpack. But suffice it to say, as a de facto default baseline, we must respond with immediate disapproval toward any and all figures of authority. Don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to others. Hear a person out. Pause. Reflect. Cross-reference. Ponder. Then, if it seems prudent, make up your mind for yourself about whether you will allow that expert’s input into your framework of acceptable conclusions. Second, remember your acceptance is provisional and contingent. It’s not final, ever. If at any point better evidence or questionable circumstances arise, you may reject that conclusion again. Third, remember that the universe is predictable and run by consistent physical laws. Everything has a cause or causes. Perhaps nothing has been more injurious to modern health than the mystification of health, fitness, and disease. The Postmodernism push to make truth relative was wrong. It’s time to move back to Empiricism. Experts have worked earnestly to convince the populace that autoimmune diseases and autism and cancers “just happen.” This is anti-scientific and anti-modern thinking. Nothing “just happens.” Everything is the outcome of prior causes and influences. It’s not mystical. We don’t need superstition wrapped up in our sciences. Pathologies have causes. Policies and substances have unintended consequences and shift health risks one direction or another. We can debate TO WHAT DEGREE any given behavior or substance shifts risk. But when people completely dismiss any sort of risk or influence from a whole category of drugs or treatments, that isn’t scientific. That’s religious mystical hoodoo. Fourth, given that the physical universe has real palpable causes, we’d do well to accept accountability and seek greatness. If we are mystical premodern simpletons, sure, the Fates are happening to us, we are powerless by every measure, and all is pointless and futile. But if we are modern scientific people with agency and will and determination, we impose outcomes on our surrounding environment. With this in hand, we can both accept the consequences of our actions and direct ourselves toward better ones. Instead of exasperation and disempowered futility, we have agency and empowered greatness. Of course, with random chaos as the framework, how could people possibly get healthy? If there are no causes, why consider altering them? With inflexibility and a religious adherence to listening to the experts (ie - authoritarianism), how could society improve? By definition, it cannot, because the bedrock of that society is built upon destroying any outside criticism, any non-authority input, any possible improvement. That society is a totalitarian regime. However, on the contrary, with agency and empowered greatness, you better believe people will get healthy. A free society which rejects authorities can keep making progress. It can keep improving its tactics. It embraces advancement. It embraces growth. It rejects dogma. It embraces difficult questions, uncomfortable ideas, and new and better ways. Let us be the free society, where people take responsibility for their own futures, and where the totalitarian keepers-of-truth are turned to ash, eradicated forever, and held to a standard of accountability commensurate to the power they so thirsted to impose on humanity. This claim has been making its rounds in the internet for some months. I could not determine on what hard statistics, if any, people are basing this claim. Certainly, the AVERAGE fitness of the vast majority of the populace plummits as time goes forward. So there is some truth to it. In my experience, which is considerable now (over the two-decade mark of professional training and coaching), people do rapidly get weaker after teenage years. And it is true that widespread health and fitness statistics are worsening and at an accelerating rate. As people age, they get weaker. Weakness raises risk OF fall and risk FROM fall and risk IN recovery. That is, the weaker you are, the more likely you are to fall. Moreover, the likelier you are to take serious injury. Moreover again, you are likelier to get sick or even die in the hospital subsequently. In graphs of death from fall, the prevalence in a population is precisely linear with strength loss. However, there is also a large body of evidence that older populations can make immense progress if they train. And our concept of what older populations can tolerate in training needs some updating. I have worked with clients in their 70s and 80s who absolutely can and do sprint, and they get faster with training over time. Simply put, if you train to get slow, you get slow. If you train to be faster, you get faster. If you train to get stronger and have better balance, you get stronger and improve balance. If you train to get weaker and have terrible balance, you get precisely what the inactivity and avoidance bargained for you. I live this. I don't just study it. I don't just have thousands of case studies from over twenty years of 70,000+ hours of experience in the field. I live this. In my son's recent endeavors to run faster, and in pondering this meme making its circles in the social media, I began to wonder: how fast can I sprint nowadays? About ten years ago I was able to hit 19.0 to 20.0 mph on free runner treadmills. And although I seldom train sprinting in the conventional sense (as opposed to just really faster rower or airdyne or cycling), I KNOW I am still pretty fast. But I did not know PRECISELY. So I set out about a month ago to see. Day one I was still able to top out the treadmill at a respectable 12.0 mph. Currently, I canNOT maintain it (as I haven't trained this in years) for minutes at a time; but I can hit it for 10-30 seconds, depending on the incline. It equates to the pace of a 5 minute mile. My treadmill goes no faster. So all I had readily-available at my finger tips was incline. At 12.0mph, each 1% incline reduces the per-mile time by 10 seconds. At 12%, that's the same force required to run 15.0 mph on a flat surface, a 4-minute-mile pace. Steadily, every two days or so, I tried another couple percent higher. Ultimately, I was able to hit 12.0 mph at 12% for 10-20 seconds. On the free runner treadmill at Lifetime, my son and I topped out at pretty high speeds, my highest being 16.2 (pictured above are two screen captures from videos of my attempts, one at 16.0 and the other 16.2). It's no 19-20... yet. But I also haven't been earnestly training it for years. I suspect in a few months I could surpass my prior sprint speeds. Speed and power are essentially the very top progression of strength, agility, balance, coordination. Thus, sprinting is critical in some format for everyone. It has to be based on the individual's ability. But there is no real reason anyone should avoid going fast eventually. Train it gradually. Be patient. But you may be surprised at just how rapidly you can regain ability you might've thought impossible. And it assuredly will go a ways to dispel the meme that's making its rounds. Truly, you'll be surprised simply be incorporating it for even 4-6 weeks. I was. At my buddy's gym today I tried 12.5mph at 15% incline, which equates to the same amount of force to go 17.31 mph on a flat surface ( see video below). It's actually pretty funny how slow a 6'3" guy at 270+ lbs of bodyweight looks even at 12.5mph. Now I realize not everyone out there is already training 1,000lb belt squats and insane lower body lifts - so yes, of course, I had a head start of a significant advantage to retraining the high speed. But for each person out there, there will be a small impact and speed at which you can start. Maybe it's a walk. Maybe it isn't even a walk. I have had clients who need to begin with cycling. We work up to a walk and/or reverse walk very very gradually. But once they have enough strength, we can tolerate impact in the training. That process can take a year with compromised individuals. I know. I have trained people like this many times. But afterward we can take single-leg impact. Then they can jog. For short bursts, then they can run. Ultimately, many will regain moderate sprinting capability. And among people who have been diligently training incredibly heavy strength, the road back to fast runs and sprints is unimaginably short. Let us all be curious about where we are with regard to this skill and work at curating it. This screenshot is from my online banking application for Elev8 Wellness’ first business account. I opened that account with $100 on Thursday, December 28, 2012. I left my prior employer on Thursday, January 10, 2013, and I began accepting retainer payments for Elev8 Wellness the following day, Friday, January 11. In the course of five days I made $37,992.68, receiving four paid-in-full agreements in one day (January 14, totaling 26.6k), and then began shifting solely to month-to-month agreements immediately afterward to ensure my steady “salary” for the next 11.5 years (and still going).
I hadn’t spent anything on that business other than my LLC’s registration with the state of Minnesota and professional liability insurance in December 2012. I hadn’t yet paid commercial rent, technically not even having a sole dedicated business space until the February afterward. I hadn’t bought any equipment. I didn’t have social media or a website. I didn’t have a business card. I was not even thinking about advertising or marketing. Literally, I simply sat down with people in person, presented value, and asked for their support. “You have to spend money to make money” may be a lie - a lie which Forbes tackled that same season: https://www.forbes.com/sites/actiontrumpseverything/2013/02/09/you-have-to-spend-money-to-make-money-and-other-lies-people-tell-entrepreneurs/ What you definitely have to do is you have to make a lot of money in order to be worthy to spend even a tiny amount. You have to be valuable. You have to know how to communicate. You have to be incredibly honest with yourself and others, but bold, and painfully humble, knowing your responsibilities do not just evaporate when you have a goal or a dream. Then you get the privilege to spend money. Long after, you GET to spend money. To continue making money or to scale up, yes, of course, you will spend. In the eleven-and-a-half years since, my costs have risen DRAMATICALLY. Under private health insurance in 2015, our total health costs for my family were a hundred thousand dollars. Monthly business space costs are 5k minimum. Costs are a privilege and an opportunity. I received that opportunity as a consequence of my incredible sacrifices and willingness to go without for myself for a very long time. To this day, I still get paid last. Uncle Sam. Kids. Family. Biz. Investments. Then, long after, I get to eat, get to rest, get new clothes, get to visit friends and family. And oftentimes, coming last in the equation, I don’t get to rest or visit friends and family. But never, ever, ever, did I FIRST spend money in order to make it. I have started and run several businesses of consequence. I have managed big teams. I have worked for myself exclusively for nearly twelve years, and on other businesses for over thirty. I do it to the tune of being able to support my family, my community, and a lot of causes. You don't have to spend money to make it, not initially. It can save you time on learning curves. It can save you on time with skilled labor. Money can save you a lot of time when you hire mentors and teachers. But you don't HAVE TO spend it. That's errant. It's a tool like any other, which users may distribute in place of other effort. All the same, you'll still have to figure out how to generate and present value, how to be honest, how to communicate. Money can't buy any of those. I used to not know. I figured a lot of top coaches ran back-to-back appointments 12-16 hours in a row, or logged 7 day weeks all the time. When I was at Bally’s 2004 to 2010, I had a peer who once did 141 sessions in a pay period, beating my personal record of 113 (65 in one week and 48 in the other) by quite a bit. These are only the 60-minute sessions, mind you. To those hours add notes, prep, scheduling, consults, assessments, meetings, workshops for CECs, etc. When I was at Lifetime 2010 to 2012, I once had a peer who about matched my record $65k productivity in a month, and several who beat me in the quarter. This was a lot of sales, but also a lot of serviced appointments. Granted, I was managing as well. But I just figured this is how workers work. My performances stood out. My teams did set a lot of national records. But they weren’t wildly divergent from other top performers. And frankly, people had bested me lots of times at lots of junctures along the way, in a month or a week or a quarter. I didn’t see these outcomes as spectacularly unique. There are many amazing pros out there in the top one-tenth of one percent.
Then, as I ran my own business in the independent sphere, often outstripping these hours and performances, I began to realize something was a little bit different about me in 2013. At the large facilities and giant corporate companies, I maybe stood AMONG the top one-tenth of one percent. But in the independent sphere, I found not a single person running the sheer number of client appointments that I ran, week after week, year after year. No one in all of the fitness influencer or strength-coaching sphere has ever shared calendar screen captures like mine. No one. Not ever. Not close. Not by miles. For about a year or so, I would post my wake times and a message on Instagram, somewhere between 2:15am and 440ish, depending on the day. Scroll way back on my Instagram and you’ll see. But still, I found no one sharing schedules like mine. Wake times, sure. But no calendars like mine. No one. Ever. And it started to dawn on me that no one has ever even been close to the experience I’ve logged in strength coaching and training. No one. It’s not a brag. It’s just that no one else on earth is built to be able to focus on others up to 18 hours in a day without breaks, and do it for decades. No one. It’s possible there are some guys in their 70s who’ve coached or mentored as many hours as I have. But again, only I have the receipts. Plus, everyone knows how consolidated intensives simply produce more learning. A person who practices piano for six hour per day every day for five years (about 10,000 hours) is simply going to be better than a person who practices one hour every other day for sixty years (about 10,000 hours as well). I just haven’t seen one person ever share even a short season of busyness that compares to my standard week of two decades. I have some great peers. I admire some great personalities who have curated vast social media followings. But respectfully, none of them are even close to the experience I’ve logged. I love ‘em. God bless ‘em. But humbly, I am the pinnacle in this domain. Not at everything, mind you. But at quite a bit in human performance, actually. This is not an opinion of conceit. It is an objective measurable fact. We could look at my own metabolic experiments or client testimonies. However, lots of coaches have gained 80lbs of muscle and lost 70lbs of fat personally while having trained dozens of people through 50-200lb transformations. That isn’t very unique, actually. I could make a very lengthy list about bringing one of my clients to be an IFBB pro bodybuilder in her 60s, a client who lost 140lbs in 8 months, clients without limbs, clients without sight, clients with cancer, clients whose outcomes that absolutely boggle the mind, and some with 10 to 20+ year success and progress. But somewhere out there, you are still going to find a handful of coaches with a cool story for each of mine. I do doubt you'll find it all in one other person. And I am confident it's totally singular to have been doing that without a lull for two decades. Moreover, I’ve done that AND I have seen my kids nearly every day of their lives, I have kept my friendships, my relationships, and really just a fairly low-profile and balanced (as of the past 6 years) life. My wife has been urging me to create workshops for men who want to be top performers and energy dynamos, and for trainers and coaches who want to be at the top of their abilities. Part of it is because I have now coached several famous influencers. Part of it is because I have coached many clients who previously trained with famous and world-renowned trainers; yet every time their experience with me was superior. Part of it is because I genuinely have been the most overbooked professional in this industry for two decades. And the distance between my experience and that of the best-known names in fitness is not even close. Regularly, I meet with clients who worked with or are themselves world-renowned/famous influencers, clinicians or coaches. Every single time I uncover insights which that expert never dreamed of finding. It isn’t because I’m better or smarter than all of the top gurus in the world. I’m not. It’s simply because I have more experience than all of them. The way I achieved far more troubleshooting experience than every expert in the field of strength coaching and personal training is by consistently booking significantly more hours of appointments than any of them have ever covered, even in the busiest seasons of their lives. It’s just my default. wrote about it ‘19: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/experienced-coach-or-good-workout-er And ‘21: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/how-to-fit-workouts-in-a-schedule-with-no-time And last year: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/5-truths-from-45-hours-of-coaching-in-4-days But also many many times on Instagram and LinkedIn going back to 2015: https://www.instagram.com/p/B1PzPjKDwIp/?igsh=MXVlaGRrMThkdnc4ag== https://www.instagram.com/p/BxN4Nltjzvf/?igsh=MWNkZTcwdDk4czc1Ng== Going back to 2013, all work days were like that. Pick a random Thursday in ‘16; and it turns out I booked 7 hours of sessions on my “off day”. I never found a role model or mentor who even came close. A few guys on social media appeared to put in the sweat equity: Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Gary V, and Dwayne Johnson. But I also noticed they often slept in 1-3 hours later than my usual: https://www.instagram.com/p/BdDAMnznRR3/?igsh=c2Z2cTZlOTQ4NTA5 https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/there-is-no-kinda-disciplined https://www.instagram.com/p/Bau1khXBUnq/?igsh=amx1bnhsOXJpbXlr https://www.instagram.com/p/BICdWWsDnAE/?igsh=MWc5cW1udzdwcXZi Moreover, they aren’t running packed days like mine focused on other people. Almost all of their waking hours are on self. They aren’t mentoring others thousands of hours per year. They aren’t spending time with their kids every single day of the week. I became my own role model. Most people cannot handle the intensity of 12-16 hours of coaching in a row with no breaks at all. So they don’t. Either they can’t be on their feet that long. Or they cannot mentally focus. They aren’t organized in a manner to keep the notes/memories straight. Business acumen and experience aside, even pretty tough people cannot handle it. So they don’t. It’s not a knock against any of them. They spent their energy and hours on building massive social media followings or on gaining suffixes, writing books, fame, or obsessive self-improvement which leaves little time in the week for anything/anyone else. They hit their personal limit and hire everything else out. But for me, I can. So I do. But HOW I got here may be more instructive for the newer coaches or even for the many, many, many veterans who pretend to be far more successful than you and I both know they actually are. In recent years I’m more discerning, never overtly working more than 3.5 days per week, but easily logging no fewer than 8 appointments on those 3.5 days (yes, I consider 8 coaching sessions a half day), and typically 12-16 on Sundays and Wednesdays both. Occasionally, I cannot keep a Monday or Friday less than that as well. On very rare occasion, my long days are only 10 hours of appointments (but still 2 hours of note prep and research, NOT counting bookkeeping, spreadsheets, and payment management). Ask my coworkers, employees and peers going back 20 years. This is mostly how it’s always been. I still have pages from my planners in 2004-2010 when I’d get up at 3a, take appointments 5,6,7am, management hours 8-2p, lift, director work 4-7, appointments 7p, 8p, home. And I still spent time with my wife. I still did laundry and dishes. I still mowed my lawn. I still went to family gatherings. Somehow. I wouldn’t recommend it. The cost came from my sleep, recovery, health. I could. So I did. But I also found that at the extreme limits it would impair my value. Technically, I could take even more hours, but my capacity to be electric and engaged for each hour is greatly inhibited after much more than 50 appointment hours in a week I’ve come to notice. How am I the most consistently successful strength coach on earth? It’s not marketing dollars or google ad words. In fact, I am probably the worst person on the planet with regard to these. We have previously hired SEO teams and curated social media efforts. For us, they aren’t a fit. No one addicted to screens and social media is my target audience, I’ve learned. Incredibly successful business owners and academics which I tend to coach often don’t even have a social media account. Most of my super wealthy clients do not even have Meta applications on their phones or devices. So an online presence is nice. But for advanced coaching, it’s actually a hindrance by virtue of being such a massive loss of hours and energy spent on people who aren’t ever going to be substantial supporters. This is also how I’ve discovered that the fitness trainers and coaches with massive online followings are mostly frauds. Not all. But most. The people camping out on YouTube for hours a day and viewing your videos at 3am are not serious, not committed to growth or change, and 110% not investors of any kind. Go ahead and slave to get 100 million followers; and I can pretty much guarantee you have no valid real world coaching experience or business knowledge to discuss. Pay a full-time team to optimize your social and website; and I know you haven’t developed anyone, you’ve never managed people, and you have no long-term or serious clients. I’m talking about how I gained real experience to be a real coach in the real world with real people, running a real brick-and-mortar physical storefront. For tips on the online illusion of expertise or success, you will have to go elsewhere. A few weeks ago I met with a client who’d trained at the Olympic training facility and with the founders of MAT. He has had famous coaches. I’m sure all of those experts are impressive in their own right. But I always find areas they’ve missed. These meetings were no different. I uncovered opportunities for this client to reclaim athleticism that other experts hadn’t dreamed of. However, it would be a mistake to think my expertise is what gained my success or my hours. Rather, it was these hours that gained me my high level expertise. To get the hours started first with willingness. Since everyone begins as a non-expert, the fastest path to expertise is willingness to take opportunity and to generate chances for opportunity. I began in the fitness industry with the willingness to accept any duty. If the facility needed toilets cleaned before opening at 5am, I wasn’t too proud or too good to do it. If the pro shop needed the till counted before opening on a Saturday or Sunday, so be it. When members joined at 9pm, someone needed to meet them, interview and interact with them, welcome them and hear them, guide them, and instruct them. In my mind, all of these “menial” tasks were a path to understanding the total working machine of the fitness industry and ultimately gain more chances for more opportunities to advance my understanding ever further. I could. So I did. I can. So I do. Be willing. That’s first. And from that I find is a natural gravitation toward learning. I long ago lost track of speciality certifications, workshops, classes I’ve attended since working professionally in this industry. It’s in the hundreds. I spent a good portion of 2012 memorizing the entirety of the USMLE1 medical school lecture series. I shadowed cardiologists. I trained a lot of MDs and physical therapists and exercise physiologists and PhDs in Nutrition Science. I learned a lot from them along with teaching them a great deal. I ran workshops. I hired and developed a few hundred health and fitness professionals. I found early on that the more brilliant your employees and peers and clients, the more you could learn during every minute of work. I increasingly maximized. When I gained clients who were successful business people, I learned about business. When I took on clients with outrageous health challenges, I learned health troubleshooting. Every single second is a learning opportunity. Every. Single. Second. That is the “how.” The “why” is a little trickier. The short answer is I needed to. I never had a side gig. Fitness wasn’t a side hustle. I didn’t have backers or family money. When things went sideways in my wife’s workplaces or when we started a family, there was no alternative. I had to be the greatest who ever lived. I did not have an option to fail, to flail, to falter, to be average, or even to be pretty great. I had to be superb. And it helped to have some healthy competition and know that I had some peers who were busting their asses as well. Sadly, that is missing for too many influencers or fitness pros. They don’t have mentors or even genuine hard-working peers. So they are never going to mature into the potential they have. They don’t have anything to draw them up other than views or likes, which are, by definition, a hallmark of INexperience. When I worked at Bally’s, there was a pride in having the appointment book as full as possible. I could actually SEE what other trainers’ days looked like. When I obsessed over national reports, I was legitimately intent on being at the top of those reports. I could observe the number of sessions sold or serviced by hundreds of clubs across the country. I knew what it meant to be the best, and what it would take to beat the best. I could see some absolutely freakish performances and call those clubs and talk to those trainers or directors. Today, that spirit is gone. It’s been replaced by trying to have the greatest social media followings, which is largely a measure of how little genuine coaching experience you can even have. Think about it: you can either work; or you can post. You should do some of both. But the “reports” today are not reports at all; they are merely measures of popularity which reward only the marketing. That’s where the incentive is. So that’s where the “performance” remains. I have now coached a number of influencers who have never completely more than 25 appointments in a week, most do no more than that in a month. They monetize their followings and sell online programs. So there was never the incentive for them to book up on mentoring or direct coaching. They cannot ever achieve high level mastery of exercise science or nutrition or just progressive human movement with this low volume. It’ll take them 30 years to be where I was at in my first 5-10 years, but maybe even longer since there will be no intensive consolidation of experience. But they don’t have any spirit of competition around them to hone them anyway. Almost none are starting at high volume fitness centers. And they are burning up tons of hours on videos and posts at the BEGINNING of their “careers.” It’s actually quite sad, because I think I may be among the last generation of great coaches. The measure of expertise in human performance has been steadily shifting toward entertainment, not evidence-based, not empirical, not experience-driven facts. And the young coaches don’t even know it. They are comparing themselves against equally-inexperienced online personalities. Influencers online genuinely don’t know that they are actually quite terrible and should probably not be sharing their “insights”. And the overall market has no way to know this. For a lot of people, it would stand to reason that a guy with five million YouTube subscribers must be an expert, even if you have never seen him post a single calendar shot like mine, even if you’ve never seen him post videos with different clients, even if you’ve never seen him change an ounce of body composition or personal performance himself. So people have to understand there are two markets. There is the real world market where investors will support incredibly advanced strength coaches. I would include online and virtual coaching within this market. But then there is an entertainment market which has little to nothing to do with health and fitness. The up-and-comers and the veteran coaches alike need to make a decision about which market they want, because deep personal connections are not related to Facebook ads and ebooks. Again, you could do both. I admire those who’ve generated a fair bit of effort at each. But the massive experience with real world coaching is not going to come from bending over backward to make another post, to get more content, to shoot another video, to snap a few more shots. NONE of that is exercise science. None of that is valuable experience in strength coaching. It is cinematography experience. It is entertainment experience. It is moviemaking experience. More than anything, choosing the real world market is how you become the most consistently overbooked professional trainer and strength coach on earth. Don’t look at helping people as a temporary launch point to get to your next scheme. You have to look at training/coaching itself as the actual peak. It’s not a stepping stone. It’s not a layover. Coaching is the peak. And being an online famous person is not coaching. They are unrelated. They are in opposition, in fact. The way you become the most consistently overbooked professional trainer and strength coach on earth is you must first see that it is THE height. Be willing. Make every second a learning opportunity. Be ravenous to learn, dying of thirst for experience. If you crave online fame, that’s fine. Pursue that. But please don’t try to place yourself on the same level as me or professionals like me. If you crave opportunity and learning and experience, then you will be a genuine master, a true expert. And that’s how you’ll go on to excel in the real world with real people as a real teacher. Not just for a moment. But for decades. Did You Know That "Light Physical Activity" Can Be More Fatiguing Than Heavy Weight Lifting?2/27/2024 Low force contractions induce more central fatigue and nervous system fatigue than high force contractions:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17626289/ This research demonstrates that long duration training of a low or moderate intensity is more taxing to the nervous system. Mechanistically, this aligns with our understanding of sympathetic activation. A stress state (of varying degrees) occurs during any training, any perceived anxiety-producing trigger, any prolonged activity. The stress hormone production, receptor down-regulation, and therefore CNS fatigue will have more to do with length of activity than load/intensity. Anecdotally or observationally, the lay audience can confirm this finding. Elite strength athletes are on average more recovered, less anxious, less irritable, less agitated, than non-athletes or elite ultra-endurance athletes. Gym-goers who emphasize short strength training (no matter how heavy) tend to suffer fewer CNS downsides than gym goers who emphasize lengthy routines. Orthopedic injuries (many of which stem from CNS fatigue) occur less in people whose workouts are heavy in load and short in duration than in those people whose workouts are lighter in load and longer in duration. Metabolic stress does some of the work and mechanical tension does a lot.
Beyond being in a state of caloric surplus, rested, and some more generalized debates over volume/intensity/progressive overload, the proposed processes which stimulate muscle growth come down to metabolic stress and mechanical tension. The old theory was muscle damage. “Break it down to build it up,” was a common bro-science aphorism. Not only isn’t it true, but it actually cannot be. No expert in the field affirms this anymore, because of the many counterexamples and obvious impossible paradox therein. Elongating muscles creates the greatest muscular damage, and training which emphasizes forced stretches and hyper-mobility does NOT improve muscular size or efficiency. The contrast of gymnasts versus yogis is perhaps the clearest example of how fixation on lengthening or over-lengthening muscle tissue does not result in a size, speed, or strength gain. Are there benefits to improving control of greater range of motion? Of course. But the very act of “relaxing into a stretch” instead of developing control in it and power over it means limiting mechanical tension, maximizing damage, thereby cutting the strength and size stimuli. Metabolic stress is real but harder to nail down. Contraction of skeletal muscle does produce myokines, alters energy uptake through changes in glucose transporters, and there are some real measurable reactions in hormone responses on site and throughout the person. The degree to which this contributes to overall health and fitness is significant. The precise muscle size impact from any one cascade is unclear, however. There are plenty of athletes who contract muscles millions of times at low tensions and have zero muscular development despite the metabolic stress contribution. See olympic and elite marathoners and endurance cyclists. This leaves us with mechanical tension. I have noticed a trend with upstarts in the past five years or so where they are obsessed with mechanical tension as the be-all end-all. And I’d agree that across decades of professional experience I MOSTLY see muscle size gains in response to mechanical tension. That is, as people truly encounter muscular performance limits, and barely eke out a last or genuinely failed rep, that is where we tend to see size gains most dramatic. The journey requires progressive overload, obviously. But the individual mechanism within a workout is the enhancing of mechanical tension. To be more clear, when a relatively rested person encounters a strength exercise in a stable position and performs 5-20 reps but only ends the set because the velocity of the movement grinds to zero, THAT is that person’s maximum mechanical tension for the intended muscle group of that exercise. However, I want to caution against a cult-like insistence on ONE way and only one way. The first reason for this is that we don’t KNOW for a fact that getting to absolute muscle failure is better than getting very close. And we don’t KNOW how much better (or if) very-close is than close. The second reason I caution people is that to be able to effectively get near muscle failure, you have to first develop expertise. And to become advanced and skillful (and retain said skill) you will have to train sub-maximally some of the time. Moreover, if people do not include some power, speed, and greater range of motion training into a program at some point, the participant is more likely to get hurt or discontinue, such that he or she can no longer gain the reward of mechanical tension. At this point, most people might be asking, “What does this translate into for my workouts?” Or, “how do I apply this?” Let’s take a machine chest press as an example. Imagine you are able to press about 200lbs on this exercise for around 8 reps. Let’s say we start this workout with this exercise, such that you are fully rested once getting to this piece of equipment. Potentially, you’d perform a set of 100lbs for 5 reps, very strictly and intent on creating tension and mentally connecting with the pecs, triceps and deltoids. Afterward, you might wait 3 minutes, and perform another sub-maximal set, 3 reps with 150lbs, perhaps. Wait another 3 minutes. Now, it’s time for business. You set up with all of your normal posture, cues, settings and mentally commit to getting 9-12 clean and toilsome reps with the 200lbs. The first 7 reps may be harder than you anticipate. 8 is grueling. At the 9th rep, it’s a serious question whether you can complete it or not, but, through gritting teeth and eating the pain, you get it. Now, you fight headlong into the 10th rep and the weight is grinding to a halt; but you continue pouring your every fiber of will into budging it another millimeter. And possibly it doesn’t go. You still go to war in your heart and drive your body in the back pad as the bones in your arms seem to bend against the impossibility of the handles. THAT is mechanical tension. THAT is one working set. And THAT alone is sufficient stimulus to get stronger and gain muscle size. Afterward, you might desire doing another few exercises for the same or similar muscle groups. There’s nothing wrong with that. Potentially, you could muster almost the same wherewithal for a legitimate working set like that on the same muscle group a few times in a whole workout sessions. If you include a separate muscle group, certainly you could. However, any degree of workout far in excess of that is not supported by evidence for the purposes of this simple discussion. Certainly, you could add many more exercises and sets and reps and alternate modalities, if you want to generate some more muscular endurance or train a variety of additional skills. But for muscle size, there isn’t a need to add lots of additional sets or exercises. In time, that chest press must be 210, 220, and 12 reps or more, BUT in the same manner, the same grind, the same intentionality, the same degree of battle. THAT is how muscle is actually built. |
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