People talk about having to get a single floor home at the age of 70-something or 80-something. If you aren’t doing any strengthening, you are actively training to be incapable of ascending a flight of stairs. Just buy the single floor home now.
If you aren’t training to get better, you are training to get worse. People all the time tell me, “my knee NEVER bothered me BEFORE; it’s a MYSTERY why it bothers me NOW.” No mystery. Entropy. But the human body is an open system and you can add energy to it to improve things if you like. Instead, you’ve been training to get worse. Surprise! You achieved your goal. Exercise isn’t about stupid f*&$ing calories. It’s about being capable enough to not be an invalid with basic daily life. If you are 30-something, 40-something, 50-something and you aren’t making any effort to ensure your muscles can EASILY take you up a flight of stairs today, then don’t be surprised when they can’t get you up a single step one day soon. If you aren’t making an effort to at least maintain strength, let us stop with pretense: you are actively trying to become handicapped. That dice roll may land you in a wheelchair next year or in 40 years. But it’s coming. It’s no mystery. You can cultivate basic fundamental human physical capacity with a couple of minutes of grownup intent. But, if you refuse, then just save your family and friends the heartache and buy the single floor home now.
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Scientific laws get disproven. That's not a typo. Laws. Yes, also theories and hypotheses. But laws get disproven. Health "facts," which people still believe, have been revised many times in the past two decades. "Truths" about optimal nutrition for humans change by the day. Fitness recommendations are wrong eventually. Frankly, all knowledge is incomplete. That's the nature of human discovery. So the balance of what is right and what isn't must shift as our knowledge becomes less incomplete. These shifts make people uneasy. Even the most die-hard progressive-minded people don't take kindly to their paradigms getting destroyed. But destroy we must. Destroy we have. Destroy we will. That's progress. Don't fear it.
Last year, with my then three-year-old daughter, I was reading a book - Women in Science (50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed The World) - which my wife had bought for her. In just about every case, their breakthroughs required upending nonsensical tradition. This is in the sciences, mind you, where one might expect a bit more of a forward-thinking atmosphere. However, in the deepest depths of hard sciences, continuing into modernity and contemporary times, pervasive dogma and resistance to newness is at a peak, especially if the idea comes from a woman/outsider/youth/alternate-paradigm-proponent. Fear - we fear - humans fear the inevitable forward movement of discovery. The fear of progress is so great that few of those women every received their due credit. Nobel Prizes came late or never. When it comes to the double-helix structure of DNA, we know the names of Watson and Crick (who stole credit, by the by); but even in the field of genetics research, Rosalind Franklin, the woman who actually painstakingly worked to discover that shape remains relatively unknown at best and vilified at worst. Another brilliant woman within this book, Chien-Shiung Wu, DISPROVED A SCIENTIFIC LAW. That's right: a LAW. Not a theory. Not a hypothesis. A LAW. Just 60 years ago, might I add. It's your struggle. It's my struggle. It's the human struggle, both for our world and for our personal development. We latch onto familiarity, old news, wrong traditions. We fear stepping forward. But face that fear, we should. Some have. And some will. Stretching and aerobics are nice. But they miss an enormous piece of the puzzle. Progressive resistance is the only way to combat the otherwise-inevitable bone loss (and other lean tissue loss): https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/strength-training-builds-more-than-muscles
As far back as 2005 various evidence was pointing in the direction that skeletal muscle is part of the endocrine system. That is, people theorized that when you contract muscles hard against a resistance, many other processes unfold in the body with regard to hormones, immune function, and peptide signaling. In 2008 this was confirmed. More theorizing about its role in human health was proposed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18923185/ Over the past 11 years, more myokines have been confirmed. There are beneficial signals in the body which only occur when we use progressive resistance. This may be a newly-confirmed area of human biological sciences. But it is confirmed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myokine Lifting weights is the cure. Well-meaning people look at an example of a metabolic disaster, and say, “at least she’s getting fit.” No. Fitness is not hours of cardio. Fitness is capability to perform all physical tasks. Endurance is a subset within SEVEN objective physical skills, categorically. In the storefronts pictured above, we have two massive businesses whose combined contribution to fitness is ONE modality of ONE facet of physical fitness. Health and fitness professionals define fitness very clearly, and none of it involves just doing tons of cardio and starvation.
Jogging and cycling are great and all, but during a basic athletic screen I and almost every other tenured fitness professional follow science-based guidelines to check fitness as primarily a product of neuromuscular health and type II muscle fiber development. Cardiovascular endurance training governs NONE of this. And I have seen many advanced endurance athletes abysmally fail on 5 out of 7 NSCA batteries. Read that again. A-D-V-A-N-C-E-D endurance athletes F-A-I-L 5 out of 7 basic physical testing requirements. Type II muscle development manages balance, risk of fall, ability to get in and out of a chair, keeping osteoporosis and sarcopenia at bay, agility, quickness, acceleration, deceleration, explosiveness, even the potential for improvement in flexibility, mobility, and body composition. Period. Take an elite endurance athlete and have him or her perform a BASIC balance drill or BASIC agility test and they may injure themselves irreparably. This isn’t hyperbole. Their training occurs in energy systems and utilizing muscle fibers which have little to do with improved life. Societally, yes, our problem is generally people don’t move much. But physiologically the miss is on strength development, not a need for hours of repetitive single-plane monotony. An employee of mine was once working with a woman to stall her rapid wasting. She had lost a significant amount of bone density every year for 10 years in a row. Her husband has done almost every ultra and major distance endurance event in Minnesota history, and was convinced if his wife did the same that her lean tissue would stop being lost. She tried his tactic, but no dice. She lost even more bone density. So she hired my employee. They trained strength. And the strengthening did something which hours of cardio could not do: it reversed the bone loss. She gained bone tissue density for the first time in at least 10 years. This isn't a miracle story. This is a known product of resistance exercise which endurance training CANNOT do, by definition. The husband, who was obviously a great fan of endurance training, believed that that ALONE suffices for health and fitness. Even after his wife confirmed the results with a second DEXA scan, he scoffed, and one day said, “show me something you do.” She demonstrated a static split stance lunge. No explosiveness. No added weight. No dynamism. Just control under load through a greater range of motion. Separate feet side to side. Separate feet front to back. Descend. Ascend. The husband, continuing his dismissal, arrogantly proceeded to “show her up,” except as he descended into his very first rep he pulled his hamstring. This guy can run 100 miles at 5 degrees of hip flexion, 5 degrees of knee flexion, 2 degrees of ankle range; but the moment he performed not-even-a-full-range lunge, he practically ceased to exist. ZERO mobility. ZERO strength. ZERO frontal and transverse plane development. Even in the sagittal plane, he was a joke, at best utilizing 7% of healthy range of motion. This isn’t a knock against endurance athletes. They do remarkable things. They have a mental toughness, to be sure. But NO fitness professionals consider that a well-rounded, fit, or even healthy athlete. Fitness isn’t long distance monotony. It’s capability in total human performance. One single little subset of cardiorespiratory endurance capability is NOT the answer for most Americans, most sedentary people, most struggling with supreme muscle imbalance. The adductors and inner hamstrings tend to be short AND weak in most people. Don’t get confused. Short doesn’t mean strong. And lengthened doesn’t mean weak. Oftentimes, the body will hold a short position specifically because the tissue is too weak to be safe while elongated. And, although there are in fact outrageously weak people who are hyperextensible with incredible flexibility, the average person who moves a muscle fluidly into long patterns is "strong enough" relative to the perceived effort.
I’m not a big fan of “stretching” in the conventional sense because there’s no evidence that most of the populace can benefit from it. Most of the time what's really happening is you're forcing the structural limit of tissue past a prudent angle, further destabilizing the likely already-unstable joints. Instead, there are better techniques to improve what people think of as "flexibility." And it isn't stretching. It's mobilizing. And yes, these are different actions. Very different. It's not just some parsing of words. When we actively mobilize tissue (reps versus long holds), such that we know the person can control that new range of motion, we continue to earn the trust of the body and never surpass the tissue limits. Therefore, we don't further weaken the individual (which does happen in long static stretches and certain forms of yoga). What I like about using an adjustable box like this is objective metrics. This client uncomfortably tried to set up in a straddle at 8 risers just a few weeks ago. Now, smoothly she’s gotten to 3. Soon it’ll be the floor. There’s no forcing, no pain, no passive (external assistance) methodology. It’s her own nervous system slowly working the tissue into greater and greater ranges. As the connective tissue turns over (6-8 months), naturally she’ll be able to keep going farther. Why sprint? It teaches the body to accomplish MORE work in LESS time. Yes, there are the metabolic after-effects, EPOC, and such. But don’t lose sight of the need, somewhere in your training, to become fundamentally better than you were. Too often, with the emphasis on depletion, people do longer activity only to find that they are becoming less and less capable. People in my network will triumphantly report back to me that they did a few hours of walking. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing, especially when compared to NO activity. But when compared to anything else, it doesn’t represent improvement in health prospects or fitness capacity.
Of course this doesn’t mean you have to hit 2000 watts (or the 1800+ featured here: https://www.instagram.com/p/B3E6ZKqj2gj/). It just means that you should figure out a way to compared-to-self improve. That's why sprint. You won’t outwork your nutrition. On this day alone, this visit to the archaeological site alone, we hiked several miles. I was on my feet at least 5 hours every day. I worked out. We hauled bags across Greece. I chased my kids around. During that trip, I gained 20lbs in under two weeks, and that’s eating predominantly whole food of Mediterranean diet. Granted, my body is more prone to adding weight than anyone I’ve ever met. I would be over 500lbs if I didn’t live with parameters. My ectomorphic peers in the fitness industry don’t get it; but I could be a heavily muscled (but fat) 350lbs in 6 months if I actively went for it.
Don’t delude yourself. It IS your eating. Activity is great. Obviously, I’m a proponent. But check the nutrients. And stop laying the responsibility of fitness solutions on exercise alone. Through the course of two weeks traveling, I’ve been incredibly active, but not necessarily paying attention to full ranges of motion. As such, I can feel I’m getting tighter. Here at this wonderful studio in Kalamata (@thecamp10.gr), I got a full-fledged opportunity to workout, focused on mobility.
With this exercise (video here: https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ypK77HCPk/), the split stance, you can either focus on maximal overload, or mind-muscle connection, or ranges. In fact, in all lifts, this is the case. People don’t understand “lifting”. It’s a multi-faceted skill, with many sub domains. Sometimes it’s about getting the heaviest weight. Sometimes it’s about the reps. Sometimes it’s about activation. Sometimes it’s about improving what some people still call flexibility. For me, 30kg dumbbells aren’t going to challenge me on overload; but they are a good centerpiece while opening up tissue again. I’ve met many people over the years who don’t really ever even attempt to understand strength and athleticism. They are fixated on breaking a sweat or muscle failure or a pump or burning calories. Those are all great things. But if you can’t control your hip under load, reduce risk of injury, and FEEL stronger and more mobile, what‘s the point? Stay mobile. Or maybe get mobile. Gratefulness for everything we have is a skill. We practice. We get better.
Fixation on what more we wish we had is a skill. We practice. We get more ungrateful. We become an ingrate. I am in constant amazement for how skilled people get at either. One person sees a cloudy day and jumps for joy at the growth they'll get. Another person sees a beautiful sunrise and grumbles why it can't be a sunset. One person appreciates the chances they've got. Another person throws them away because it's not "good enough." One person thanks the heavens their chronic pain is a little less today. Another person, pain free, ruins the week because of an incident they once experienced long ago. One person happily donates and gives when they have next to nothing. Another takes and takes when they have almost everything. One person sees how inhospitable every other part of space is and they're filled with wonder at how we were granted a world so beautiful. Another person obsesses over the wrongs of humankind and thinks they're owed a better, theoretically easier life. We all can observe. We all can thank. We all can do. The Camp 10 by Zeus in Kalamata, Greece is such an exceptional fitness facility with expert coaches. The format and their approach is ahead of the curve, not just in terms of paying attention to functional movement, but clearly implementing it with GROUPS, which I’ve never seen any studio or gym appropriately implement before.
I had an incredible time with my friend here, Ιωαννης Παπανικολος, discussing methodology and meeting his team. Frankly, I wish I could’ve organized the trip such that I made it here more of the days; and it’ll definitely be a centerpiece of future visits. In 2003 I was in Greece for 3-4 months, but was so busy studying 10+ hours a day that I didn’t pay much attention to the fitness scene. At that point, gyms and training in that country were primarily for high level athletes. There were the occasional gyms in Athens, but basically no locations for the layperson. In 2006, it was still very much the same. I certainly didn’t find much worth visiting. 2009, I remember finding next-to-nothing in the guidebook. The nicest gym we visited that year was an opulent one in our palatial hotel in Cairo, Egypt. In 2014, it was apparent a lot had changed (WiFi everywhere, even in remote villages, for one). CrossFit gyms came up in searches in a lot of major cities. Now, I would argue that some places in Greece are surging ahead of the American fitness scene. "Ahead of the US fitness scene?", you may ask. Yes. Most fitness spaces in the US are holding onto an outdated member access model (ie - pay your monthly subscription and then don't even show up) or defunct group training model (ie - pay per class, for packages, or for unlimited monthly classes, and then learn nothing about human movement) which yields no results and is just hurting people left and right. At least twice per week I get inquiries from COACHES at boutique and warehouse gyms on how they can fix their own programming or stop injuring themselves. Meanwhile, these guys in Kalamata at The Camp 10 by Zeus are creating a private studio format which takes injury-prevention incredibly serious, and places functional movement screens at the start of their programming, while posting placards on the walls with reminders of what is appropriate for each skill level of client. I can’t say enough good things about them. And I’m excited to see how they expand and influence others. I'd also add that in the past 10 years it's become less uncommon for peers of mine to look at corrective exercise or athletic training workshops overseas. It might've been considered more of a novelty or even "weird" to attend a CEC or CEU conference in Europe 15 yers ago; but even booking a trip to Asia or Australia for continuing education nowadays might be par for the course depending on the specialty of the coach. The fitness innovation and sensible athletic education going on in other parts of the world makes most of our standard models and even novel boutique franchises look quaint. Frankly, for the enhanced competitive athlete, most countries other than the US afford them the best landscape for their training and supplementation. It's not rare to see some of the fitness influencers camp out in the United Arab Emirates for months at a time to train. Even the layperson looking to address sarcopenia has a better chance troubleshooting their condition just walking into gyms and pharmacies in Thailand than at rigorous medical appointments at highly rated clinics in the US. Keep an eye out, because some of the best ideas are coming from the international community. |
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