The Rant II
Pat Dale
Its that time of the month again for Pat, he has gotten himself all worked up and let fly at some of the more annoying things that seem to be hanging around our industry. On the agenda, hamster wheels, sports drinks for people trying to lose fat and the themed exercise classes. go on Pat!
Last time I got my ranting hat on I mentioned dumb diets, functional exercise, bodybuilding routines for non-bodybuilders and trainers who don’t train themselves. In the month since I wrote that, a few more things have wound me up...
Hamster wheels
What the hell? Have I lost the plot? Not really. By hamster wheels I’m referring to the common practice of doing cardio for extended periods of time in the “fat burning zone” in an attempt to lose weight. If I see one more person plodding away on a treadmill whilst reading a bloody newspaper I swear I will make them eat every single page! Unfortunately, you can’t really blame the hamster for jumping on the wheel – they have the best intentions and have been misinformed by the media and their personal trainers. When you exercise with a moderate heart rate (e.g. 60-75% of maximum) you are indeed burning primarily fat – it’s just that you aren’t burning a lot. Fat is very energy dense (1lb = approx 3,500 calories) and as such will provide energy for prolonged periods of sustained activity. Hamster wheel cardio will barely put a dent in your energy reserves (that’s your body fat) and is very inefficient in terms of returns for time spent exercising. Assuming you are in energy balance (eating the exact number of calories you need to maintain your weight) you will need to run about 35 miles to lose 1lb of body fat and as most people are hyper calorific chances are that to lose weight they actually need to run further! Marathon running anyone?
So, if hamster wheel cardio won’t cut your fat down to single digits, what will? Oddly, it’s shorter workouts. Now, before you go thinking I’m advocating easier training sessions, I have to add that that I mean shorter but very intense workouts. Interval training is one option and FCR or threshold training is another. 20 minutes or so is your sweet spot – short enough that you can really go at it but long enough to get you flooded with lactic acid. Try 1 minute of sprinting with 2 minutes of jogging repeated 5-7 times or alternatively try rowing 5 km as fast as you can. These short but sharp workouts produce oodles of lactic acid which in very simple terms has to be flushed out after your workout has been completed. The flushing out can take 24-48 hours and requires energy which results in your metabolic rate being elevated for up to 2 days post-training which will put a real dent in your body fat levels. Okay, you won’t burn so much during the actual workout but you will burn a lot of carbohydrate (in the form of muscle glycogen) and create a calorie deficit which will have to be repaid by your fat stores (assuming you don’t chow down too hard post-training!) Want to get lean – do some HIIT (high intensity interval training). Want to get really lean, try SHIIT (that’s super high intensity interval training!) but that’s for Ninjas only...!
Gym users who are trying to lose weight but drink sports drinks while training
Honestly – why do people do this? Sports drinks contain primarily sugar, which triggers the release of insulin which inhibits fat burning and promotes fat storage. Not exactly what most exercisers are trying to achieve! Because of clever marketing, media misinformation and bad advice, many exercisers think they need to drink these dieting disasters to help them train for longer, not realising that their sports drinks may well allow them to work out for longer but will also mean they have to if they want to lose weight. For almost every type of training, water is fine for keeping you hydrated during exercise. Remember, fat loss requires an energy deficit meaning that we need to burn more than we consume. Any energy shortfall will then be made up from our body fat stores. Consuming calorie dense drinks while exercising makes about as much sense as trying to put out a fire by pouring petrol on it.
Sports drinks aren’t completely useless though, and can provide vital fuel for long workouts such as training for marathons or triathlons or when weight management isn’t a concern. Training or competitions that last longer than an hour may require the use of sports drinks to avoid a drop of in performance, especially in games lasting 90 minutes or so but, for the average gym user wanting weight loss, think of sports drinks like any other soft drink – wasted calories.
Body Pump, Body Combat, and any other group exercise class with a sports theme
I have a confession to make – please don’t tell anyone – but I used to be an aerobics teacher. This was admittedly some 20 years ago and as a straight male, I was something of a novelty act but the thing was, back then, aerobics classes were exercise set to music and that was all they ever pretended to be. As an aerobics teacher I had to select my music, design a routine, learn it, try it out and then, finally deliver it to my class. 4 weeks later the process was repeated. Now, from New bloody Zealand we have Body Training Systems and their cookie cutter routines. Instructors (many of whom hold very minimal levels of qualifications) are shown a class, given a DVD and an instruction booklet and return to their clubs to teach the new routine to their clients.
Now, it’s not the concept of group exercise that bothers me, or the cookie cutter approach to exercise that BTS and their ilk promote, or even the fact that the costs for licensing, DVDs, training days, apparel and so forth are so high, it’s the fact that you have essentially under qualified instructors teaching things they have absolutely no experience in. For example, as a weight lifter, I spent years learning and perfecting my clean and jerk. I was coached, I learnt the lift in stages, had yet more coaching and finally got to a point where I could clean and jerk reasonably well and recognise good technique in others. If only I’d known, that instead of years of practice and coaching, I could have just gone to Body Pump and been doing clean and jerks (to music no less) within minutes! I feel like such a fool...all that wasted time. The big problem is with mass participation weight training classes like Body P ump is, that to make them interesting they have to be technically demanding but not every instructor has the skills to teach good technique and only a few participants can do the exercises correctly without constant coaching – it’s literally the blind leading the blind.
Martial arts based classes are just as guilty of gross shenanigans. I’ve studied a few martial arts – karate, judo, tae kwon do and kick boxing, and I’ve never EVER done a reverse spin kick or anything similar. My instructors always said that those kinds of Hollywood kicks were pointless and more dangerous to me than my opponent so we never did them. If only I’d gone to Body Combat! I could have been spinning kicks all over the place at my first class! And I could’ve dressed up in hand wraps, elbow pads and even my head guard! (Not sure why the instructors wear protective gear as these classes are non-contact!) And who teaches these classes? Quite often, someone with absolutely no martial arts experience. I did a straw poll of all the all the Body Combat instructors I know and asked them had they ever had injuries they attributed to their classes and they all said that they had suffered knee problems. I put this down to the spinning kicks which put tremendous rotational force through the knees especially if you aren’t ever taught how to do these moves properly.
Bottom line – if you aren’t qualified to coach a particular sport, you shouldn’t be teaching other people how to do it...even if it is to music!
That’s it for now but fear not – I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more infuriating health and fitness fads and fallacies to rant about!
About the Author
Pat and this magazine were made for each other. Pat writes a blog - NoFrillsFitness, trains his ass off and loves what we call ‘proper fitness’. He is a highly experienced fitness lecturer, running solar-fitness in Cyprus. What a place to go to qualify as a personal trainer! Pat will use this mag to let off a little steam – to talk fitness without the need to hold back or be polite. If you don’t like it….don’t use the squat rack for Bicep Curls! His site Solar-Fitness.com
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