Tagged: canada

Overweight Teens Helped by Weights and Cardio – And Man Lands on the Moon.

A recent study in the Journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics found conclusively that for teenagers between the ages of 14-18, a combination of weight training plus cardiovascular work is the best way to “fight teen obesity”.  This is the headlines that went up all over the country and internet saying that the amazing findings of this study were that if teenagers did strength training and cardio work combined instead of just one or the other, they would lose more weight.

This is news?

I hate to say it but that was my first reaction.  However, when I took a closer look at this study I found that there were in my opinion some flaws in the methods used to determine this conclusion.

Basically this study, which you can read HERE took 304 overweight teens and put them into four groups, one of each doing only strength training OR cardio, one doing nothing, and one doing a combination.  They did this program for 22 weeks (almost six months!).  They were also given diet counselling.  At the end, the group that did the combination of both was found to have lost less body fat overall (compared to the strength training group), but their waist size decreased the most – by a whole centimeter.  That’s not even one whole pant size.

Therefore this shows that a combination of aerobic exercise and strength training is better than strength training alone or cardio alone.  Again, this isn’t news to anyone (I sincerely hope).  This has been proven time and again to be the best approach for those of you out there who are looking to drop inches and pounds.

But when we look a little closer, the criteria for what they consider “overweight” has some flaws.  They cited overweight as at or above 95th percentile of BMI or 85th if there was one or more risk factors or health condition already existing (like diabetes).  So this means that a teenager with a BMI of above 28.5 (the cutoff for 95th highest BMI percentile according to statisticians) is overweight or obese.

Do you know what that means?  An 18 year old who is 5’10” and 180 pounds qualifies for this study as an “overweight teen”.  A BMI of 24 actually falls into the 85th percentile of qualification.  So if my daughter is 5’3” and weighs 135 pounds according to this study she is overweight.  Oh, and another note – when she turns 18, even if she is the same height and weight suddenly she has dropped to the 74th percentile.  Does that make sense?

Pretty much any athletic teen is going to weigh at last that much and sometimes more.  Using BMI as a method of overweight is a highly flawed criteria in my opinion.  There’s a lot of other flaws.  They obviously weren’t all following the same diet.  Who knows how many workouts they actually completed on their own.  It didn’t indicate if any of them were athletes previously, inactive or high level performers.  It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for a 16 year old football player to be 5’8 and 160 pounds but have very low body fat and high muscle mass.

This football player is overweight according to this criteria.

This football player is overweight according to this criteria.

So this made national (actually international) news because we heard about it up here in Canada.  I guess it was a slow news cycles, what with war in the Middle East and a deadly epidemic spreading around the world.

The simple fact is that kids today don’t get enough exercise.  Currently 59% of adults in Canada are overweight or obese in Canada (as of 2012).  We can blame a lot of things here.  Increased screen time, lack of physical education and after school sports programs, deteriorating nutrition both at home and at school and simply the fact that overweight parents tend to have overweight children because kids learn many things from their parents, not the least of which is eating habits.  The medical industry unfortunately can’t or won’t help because many doctors have no clue about proper diet and exercise habits themselves.  Many doctors I have worked with or attended have been relatively clueless about these things because it really isn’t their job to know about it even though they are expected to.

However, if you do have a young teenager or someone younger at home then the good news is you can keep their weight down.  Guess what’s a great way to get both cardio and resistance exercise without a gym?

Sports.

Whether your kid is an individual sport kid (like I was – I ran track, did cross country skiing and played all racquet sports) or a team sport kid (like my sister who played basketball and hockey) there are a couple of dozen options available for each type.  And even if the cost is prohibitive to a budget for things like hockey, there are tons of community resources available in any city for parents who want affordable exercise for their kids.  Even something like martial arts isn’t ridiculously expensive, teaches really great fundamentals of coordination, discipline and uses lots of strength at the same time.  Finding time as a busy parent can be hard, but what’s the priority – a healthy, happy kid or a promotion at work?

The sad thing is that I have trained kids as young as 8 and 10, and they could barely balance enough to walk slowly on a treadmill.  Kids just simply don’t learn these things when they are developing any more.  I could go on a rant about parenting and education these days but I’ll save that for another time.

So if you have a teen that is struggling with weight, maybe a good option is to get them to put down the Ipad, register them for a few sports or activities to see what they enjoy doing and get them being active and moving around more.  Long term they will be much better off for so many reasons.  Maybe even do it with them if you need help as well.  Things like martial arts or even group exercise are easy to do with your teenager.  Take your kid for a run or a bike ride on the weekends instead of staying inside.  Take the whole family out for a long hike without any technology.

Like I said at the beginning, it isn’t news that kids need more exercise, or that a combination of things is likely to help them lose that extra centimeter.  But it starts with actually getting them involved with exercise.

Feel free to comment, subscribe and share this post.

Is YouTube Making You Dumber?

Recently I was provided with several examples via clients and just various internet sources of people who are “fitness experts” on YouTube throwing up videos on various topics.  Most of them centred around exercise and technique for the best possible application for whatever body part they are focusing on.  I’m not even going to get into the amount of nutrition videos that exist (and have information that would make you laugh) because we would be here all day.

Just as an example, one was provided by an IFBB Figure Pro and was talking about changing the angle of the leg press in order to “isometrically” stimulate the glutes.  Not only did she realize that isometric doesn’t mean isolation when it comes to exercise, but she also stated such gems as “this is all glute – no quad and hamstring at all” (hmm, I wonder what was helping your knee extend and flex during that press?) and also had you positioned on a leg press lying on your side – something that is not only risky, it could also be really harmful for somebody’s back if the load was high enough.  A gimmick position designed to take a regular movement, and make it fresh and new – and potentially dangerous.

Another was a video about bicep curls.  Very slick, very well produced and of course full of buzz words like “kinesiology” and “biomechanics” and “concentric” but at the end of the day, it was about bicep curls.  Barbell bicep curls.  And it was over 6 minutes long.  The person who produced it used pretty much every buzz word they could pronounce, and made it seem like something as simple as using a barbell to perform elbow flexion was something that required a ton of attention from the average gym person.

Pretty much every YouTube fitness “expert” has videos of the “best [insert body part here] workout”.  These videos will typically show you a circuit of exercises that you could find in any magazine on a shelf this month put in an order that isn’t anything new or different than has been said 100 million times previously.  Movement is movement, and Arnold was talking about bicep curls about 40 years ago – surprisingly, the movement hasn’t changed.  If anyone ever tells you can that they have come up with a brand new way to stimulate a joint, they are full of it.  I’ve read papers written over 2000 years ago about human movement – odds are, things haven’t changed that much.  Elbows are still flexing exactly the same way.  Force is force.  What changes is the way people try to repackage fundamentals so that they can sell it to unsuspecting people who don’t know any better.

Now, before people jump on me for being critical, I’m not saying that these videos are wrong or that they don’t provide some good information for exercise variety for the average person.  I’m saying that there is a TON of inaccurate information out there, and you have to be aware of it in order to be able to sift through all of the crap.  Just recently a study was done on Wikipedia articles that dealt with medical information and it was found that across 20,000 articles, 90% of them had false information in them that could potentially lead to misdiagnosing an illness.  Since most people these days get their information via the internet this could be fairly serious.  I’m sure that I can spot inaccuracies in over 90% of videos on YouTube as well, making it also a potentially dangerous source of knowledge, especially when you consider that people will hop on there, watch a video and then try a movement without any real coaching.  Many of these videos also encourage people to run through a very challenging circuit that likely they have no business performing at that stage in their fitness evolution.  I’ve written before about people who push way too hard way too soon, and YouTube is a great place to get ideas for that.

I know that when I have a client come in and they tell me about something they read on the internet, my answer usually is that it wasn’t wrong – it was misleading and not totally accurate.  Part of my job is to provide accurate information to people and explain exactly how things work – then it is up to the person to make their own decisions.  One of my mantras is that there is no “good” or “bad” – there are varying levels of appropriate and how things are applied to whom, where and why.  Are leg presses sideways bad?  Probably – but it depends on who is doing them.  Is there a better, safer way to do almost exactly the same thing?  Yes.  Are bicep curls being done wrong in every gym across the country?  I have no idea.  It probably didn’t require a six minute video to explain, but obviously this person thought that it did and is using it to market themselves as a “fitness expert”.

You also have to consider the motivation behind the videos that you watch.  Are they just marketing fodder, sponsored by a supplement company and starring an attractive figure model?  Are they telling you that a “revolutionary” new technique is going to get your results to you even faster (especially if you take/wear/drink their product at the same time)?  98% of the time that person is there to market themselves or a product that they sponsor and the more hits they get, the more money they make.  Some of the videos know that sex sells so their model is wearing next to nothing.  Again, more hits = more money.  And a lot more people who might just believe that lying sideways on a leg press is a great way to isometrically use your glutes.

With all of this information being thrown at you, it is really not easy to pick out the accurate information from the inaccurate without having someone to point out what the truth is.  If you sit and watch videos long enough, suddenly you start to believe that if you just try this new technique that your results will change drastically and that you will vault into the stratosphere of fitness without putting in the appropriate time and effort.  That’s what makes you dumber.  I’ve had fellow trainers message me asking “is this right?”.  The point is that this inaccurate information makes people question if what they are doing is actually what they should be doing.  This applies to both trainers and people who are looking to get fitter.  Then someone watches a video, gets on a leg press at a sideways angle and wrecks their back (or hip or both) and wonders why.

Here’s my suggestion – get off of the internet and start reading books.  NOT Dr. Oz books.   Textbooks, manuals, journals with published research, things written by people with track records and credentials to match their publishing history.  Odds are they are going to be a TON more accurate than somebody who looks great in a pair of tight pants or tank top and is showing you a nice booty exercise.  There are actual web sites where you can open source whole courses on anatomy, mechanics and movement or at least the textbooks for reference – for free (if you want to know some feel free to message me).  Be a little more proactive about your knowledge.  Read books on workout routines written by actual coaches and people who have been doing it for thousands of hours with hundreds of people.  Not someone who only has a fitness following because they are on TV or look really hot in a set of tight pants.   And if you have a question – find someone who knows the right answer and ASK THEM.  I’m always happy to answer questions for people even if they aren’t my client, because part of my job is to help people, and to me that means providing accurate information to the best of my ability.  And if I don’t know the answer I can direct you to someone or somewhere who does.

The fitness industry is full of marketing ploys and terrible information and it can all be found just a click away and make you dumber as a result.  Please, don’t fall for this stuff and don’t allow the internet to dictate what you do or don’t do in a gym or to your body (yes I realize the irony of writing this on a blog).  Find an expert, consult with them and get it right the first time.  Don’t let anything that affects your body be as simple as believing someone with a slick video on the internet is anything close to an expert on the body and what it does.   I’m happy to help if you need it.

Feel free to like, share, but please don’t publish it on YouTube.