Exercise Will Not Help You Lose Weight (?)

“What?” you may be asking…

Well the statement above is technically correct, depending upon a few factors.

I think I’ve read more on nutrition in the past two years than I did in the two decades before that.  Of course, most of the writings and discussions are centered toward fat loss and how to lose weight.  Invariably however, there will always be a short chapter, appendix, or side note about exercise and the role it plays in fat loss.  (Exercise suggestions written by a nutritionist…hmmm…red flag #1.)

The book I re-read most recently by Gary Taubes, “Why We Get Fat”, which was an extremely influential book in the areas of diet and nutrition, claimed that exercise will not help you lose weight.

In spite of what you may expect, I’m not going to attack him for disagreeing with my position on exercise, which I’m sure you are aware differs from his.  His opinion on exercise, like all his opinions on nutrition, are backed by facts.  And he certainly isn’t the only person to make this claim – as I said most non-fitness professionals do.  There is strong evidence that suggests that exercise won’t help you lose weight.

But…the studies and evidence that suggest that exercise doesn’t help lose weight, are based on people who exercise incorrectly.  They are studying exercisers who are doing it wrong.

That would be like me saying most people who diet don’t lose weight.  Which happens to be 100% true.  But the problem is that I’m leaving out the fact that most people “diet” incorrectly.

Ditto for exercise.  True – most people who exercise do not lose weight.  But it’s because they exercise incorrectly.  Don't blame exercise.

In almost every case they do either or both of the following:

• They do not pay attention to quality of their movement.  This leads to injury and/or joint pain, both of which either end an exercise regimen or greatly limit its effectiveness.

• They perform the wrong kind of exercise.  They continue to believe the dogmatic nonsense that long duration, steady state, low to moderate intensity exercise works.  It doesn’t.  If you don’t see that, then you aren’t watching closely enough.

Now, I’m not even going to get into the obvious – there are other reasons to exercise besides trying to lose weight.  You will look better, you will feel better, and you’ll be healthier.  Again, assuming you’re doing it correctly. 

But the bottom line is that exercise – if it’s the right type of exercise and if it’s performed correctly – will help you lose both weight and body fat.

For more on what types of exercise are right for YOU, and how to do it correctly, keep following us.

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Two Simple Ways to Fatten Up

Getting and keeping the slim, strong and sexy look is TOUGH.  Unfortunately, getting fat is pretty frigging easy.  One needs to look no further than commercial gyms and outdoor exercise areas, where the majority of the participants are overweight.  (That seems a little incongruous, no?  More on this later…)

What we have to do as people who are interested in health as well as looking great, is to avoid the two black holes of exercise and nutrition.

But if you really insist on keeping those spare tires and muffin tops, here are two suggestions:

 1. Keep performing low intensity exercise

This will ensure your metabolism never rises.  In fact it will continue to drop due to the natural aging process and due to your proclivity to always make your activity low intensity.  Your walk/jog/treadmill jaunt will burn very few calories comparatively speaking, and the calorie burning process will stop as soon as you stop.  The next time you eat – even if it’s something small and healthy – you will have put back the calories you just used, netting a break even on fat loss.  In other words you just wasted your time.  And the repetitive nature of your jaunt is also likely to be causing joint problems.  More on that later as well.

2. Keep believing grains are good for you

"Healthy Grains" is an oxymoron.  Evidence is overwhelming that sugars and grains are harmful both long term and short term.  Harmful meaning they will make you sick, both long term and short term.  I’m talking about mood swings, depression, ADD, ADHD, violent episodes short term and cancer(s), heart issues and cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s long term.  But grains and sugars will make you fat as well, and that’s what we’re here to discuss.  A really good way to get fat is to keep your insulin raised all day.  What’s the best way to do this?  Keep having grains and sugars.

For those of you looking to lose the muffin tops and spare tires, make sure you keep following us:

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Discover the Secret to Flexibility

If you’ve read my stuff before you know my feelings on stretching:  It’s probably the most misunderstood and misused aspect of fitness.  Frankly, there isn’t even a close second.  The overwhelming majority of exercisers take what is an extremely complex area of bio-mechanics and dumb it down to “If I pull on this muscle, that’s a good thing.”  Sorry, it’s a wee bit more complex than that.

A recent pulled muscle – my own quadracep – provided me with an example to prove my point:

I perform sprint intervals in my own workouts pretty often.  In fact, sprinting may be my favorite exercise in terms of return on investment.  The keyword here is “sprinting”.  100% all out sprinting.  The kind that if you do it for more than a few seconds you have to slow down or stop.  The exact opposite of what the shuffling limpers you see on the side of the road as you’re driving to work do.

Sorry, back to the point:

During one of my recent workouts, I felt a pull in my quad while sprinting.  Not quite bad enough to call it a day, but some tension and slight discomfort that made me more aware of my form and speed.  It occurred to me that this was a perfect example of what I’ve been telling people for years.

Think about it:

• I warmed up and loosened up prior to the workout.
• It was in the 8^th round of sprints, so had fully extended my legs are far as they can go hundreds of times prior to this.
• I was obviously “loose”.  My quad was working fine up to that point.

So why the pulled muscle?

Because my body could no longer control the lengthening.  “It wasn’t just stretch it and hold it”, like what everyone suggests you do.  It was rapid fire lengthening and shortening.  I.e., real life.

And therein lies the secret to flexibility, my fiends.

My body could no longer control the lengthening (as it had merely seconds prior) due to:

a) Fatigue, which caused poor mechanics

b) Poor mechanics, which caused fatigue

c) Some combination of a and b.

A very subtle change in my physiology and mechanics led to an injury.

In the fitness business, this is called an inability to maintain optimal length- tension relationships.

Incidentally, this is a concept Bruce Lee discussed decades before it became cutting edge.

This is also why any trainer who suggests that an excessively high number of reps of anything is an imbecile.  Fatigue causes injury.  Reason #742 if your coach is a Crossfit coach, fire your coach.

Parenthetically, just the night prior to my pulled muscle, Jacoby Ellsbury of the Yankees pulled a muscle running the bases.  If you think about it, that doesn’t make much sense either.  He obviously warmed up and stretched out.  It was the middle of the game so he had been on a 100% sprint more than once.  But because of choices a, b, or c above, he pulled a muscle too.

So here are the secrets to flexibility:

Pre-workout stretching, or static stretching does not prevent injury.

Functional flexibility is a matter of neuro-muscular coordination, not just lengthening a muscle.

Bruce Lee was decades ahead of his time not only in regards to the martial arts and filmmaking, but in exercise.

Crossfit coaches are dense.  Really, frigging, dense.

OK, the last two are generalized observations and far from secrets.  The first two are the take home messages for you. J

If you say this, you will fail.

As you know, I talk to people about exercise A LOT.  Many people, each in different situations and under different circumstances.

But I’ve picked up on a red flag that tells me whether or not the person with whom I’m speaking will ever get results.

Yes – there is one short phrase that if you utter it, tells me unequivocally that you will not get results from your program.

Want to know what it is?  Here it is:

“Well, it’s better than nothing.”

It's usually spoken when they tell me they are doing ____ for exercise and I roll my eyes.  “Well, it’s better than nothing, Jon!”  Wrong.

Yep.  That’s it.  When I hear "It's better than nothing" I know the person saying it WILL NEVER GET RESULTS.  They will never have the healthy, slim physique and lifestyle they want.  It tells me they are OK with the lowest common denominator and actually don't want to get better.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way:

Eating a doughnut is better than nothing – but it’s still pretty stupid.

Breathing polluted air is better than nothing – but it’s not a good idea.

(Insert waste of time exercise) is better than nothing – but it’s a waste of your time and may be injurious. 

If you want results from exercise, you need to stop doing things that are “better than nothing” and start doing things that WORK.  Like just about everything else in life, it’s about making better choices.

Want to be slim, sexy and strong?  Go to a good facility who will assess where you are, listen to your goals and design a plan for you.  A plan that won’t include things that are “better than nothing”.

As always, we're here to help.

We've Come So Far (Sort of...)

I had the pleasure of helping out with the strength and agility program for a girls’ softball team recently, and one of the conversations that came up applies to all of us interested in health and fitness.

But it occurred to me that we’ve come so far in the areas of fitness and exercise in my time in the business.  Since the turn of the century, more or less, we now know:

Statistically speaking…

• A commercial gym is probably the last place to go if you want to get in shape.
•  Low intensity exercise has very little benefit.
• If you don’t move in the manner your body is designed to, you will be injured and have to stop exercising.
• Eating fat does not make you fat or unhealthy.  Grains and sugars do.

These are all HUGE steps in the right direction.  They’re the reason so many of us are maintaining our health and fitness levels as we age – if not getting more fit and healthy.

But the one area in which we are lagging severely – and this was the topic with the softball players - is in the area of flexibility.  We are still woefully behind the curve on this one.

It’s an area of particular interest for me – “The Correlation Between Static Stretching and Injury Prevention” was the topic of my graduate thesis.  (Here’s a teaser: There is none.)

As usual, I don’t say this to impress, I say it to impress upon you that functional flexibility is WAY more complex than most people realize.  Far too complex to get into in a newsletter, for sure.

That being said, here’s a quick primer that may really simplify – and hopefully help your understanding of stretching and flexibility.

There are areas of your body that are not supposed to be flexible.  I choose to mention this because this comes up ALL THE TIME.  It’s why we have a poster at the Training Rim that says “No unauthorized stretching.”

Your knee is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FLEXIBLE.  Your knee is a hinge.  If it either rotates or hinges too far, like the hinge on a door, the hinge will come off as it would on a door.  A flexible knee is a torn ACL.

Your lower back is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FLEXIBLE.  Unlike your mid and upper back, your lower back needs to be strong and stiff.  It’s designed this way because it’s what holds us upright.  When it loosens or moves excessively is when we have low back problems.  A flexible lower back is a herniated disc.

As I said, there’s way more to it than that and way more to think about – another reason hiring a good training staff is key.  But if you keep these things in mind, you’ll be ahead of the curve in the fitness realm (as you already should be on the bullet points above).

Two GREAT Butt Exercises:

I recently had a conversation that went almost exactly the way a conversation I had about 10 years ago went.  It got me wondering where the people I had the conversation with a decade ago are now and where they are with their fitness goals.

But first, two GREAT butt exercises are single leg squats, and single leg stiff leg dead lifts, i.e. “storks”.  

I’d have trouble thinking of two exercises that give you more bang for the buck.  If you want rock hard glutes, these need to be a staple of your program.  Balance and coordination are improved, as is your conditioning if used in a circuit manner.  Every muscle in your lower body and core is engaged and will get noticeably stronger.  Because of the realistic nature of single leg training (have you ever moved in a parallel stance?  Didn’t think so…) the effects carry over to other aspects of your training program as well.

And did I mention ROCK. HARD. GLUTES…?

Here’s the problem (And this is the conversation I had recently that was the same as one a decade ago with different people):

Single leg squats and storks are challenging,  so people don’t do them.

They require motor control, proper reaction from the proprioceptive nature of the ground reaction forces, multi-planar stabilization, multi-level strength, and good control of length-tension relationships, among other things.*

So a beginning exerciser’s appropriate response should be:  “Wow – I should work on improving those things so I can do single leg squats and storks.  Then I can do workouts that make me strong, lean and fit.”

But unfortunately, that’s not the typical reaction.

The typical reaction goes something like this:

“Improving those things is challenging, and may require some diligence, persistence, patience, and hard work – plus Tony Horton says I don’t need that stuff.  So I’m going to continue to do the things I’ve been doing because they’re easy.  This will ensure I’ll never improve and my ass will continue to get softer, flatter and lower on my body.  Then years from now, I’ll ask Jon (again) what do I have to do to get in shape.”

Of course, those words aren’t used, but that’s really what people are saying when they say I can’t single leg train, so I’ll just keep doing _____ .

Yes, many things in exercise and fitness require a change of direction and some challenges.  But you can make this changes now and your future you will be reaping the benefits and rocking those jeans, or…

…you can continue to avoid changing and continue doing it the easy, safe way.  And to paraphrase Trinity in the Matrix – You already know where that road leads.

“Strengthening the strongest link does not strengthen the chain.”  TR Tenet #5 painted on the wall.

*If you don’t know what these things are, that’s not a problem.  We do and we know how to insert them into your program.

Fitness Lessons, World Cup Style

Between the U.S.’s great performance in the World Cup plus some of the craziness of the games, World Cup soccer has been everywhere you turn lately.  Being the fitness vulture I am, I decided to point out a few things about the conditioning of soccer players that can help YOU get lean and strong.  Because as was pointed out on pretty much a daily basis in the Training Rim – soccer players are in really good friggin’ shape. 

Here are some take home lessons for you:

1. Soccer players do Intervals.

Watch how soccer players run:  They alternate between 100% intensity, to resting, to relatively high intensity, back to 100%, back to rest, over and over.  In other words they do intervals – periods of very intense work followed by less intense work and rest repeated.

They DO NOT pick a low intensity and do that for an extended period.

Again, soccer players have very low body fat.  I’ll try it their way.

2. Soccer players change direction constantly.

Soccer players are constantly changing direction.  Forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonally, etc.  Constant direction changes force all joints of the body to work evenly.

They DO NOT start going forward and then keep going forward…for an indefinite period…

When joints are moved in all directions, they stay balanced and healthy.  When they go in only one direction over and over for extended periods they become dysfunctional.  (One of many reasons jogging is unhealthy).

Find me a good soccer player with bad posture, which is the tell-tale sign of joint imbalance and injury. Go ahead, bet you can’t find one.

Again – I’ll do it their way.

3. Soccer players stretch – AND STILL GET HURT.

The rash of hamstring pulls in the World Cup was almost comical in its frequency.  And every one of the players stretches prior to the matches.  So how does this happen?

BECAUSE STRETCHING DOES NOT PREVENT INJURY.  PERIOD.

Let’s be clear:  I did not say “don’t stretch.”  I said it does not prevent injury.  So if part of your workout is to yank on your knee and twist your back prior to exercise because you think it’s preventing injury, you are wrong.  Save your time.

Can these points make you an elite athlete like the World Cup players?  Probably not.

But they can get you simmer, stronger, and sexier!