Tagged: workout
What Did We Learn From Kevin Ogar?
Apparently there is a certain portion of the fitness community that has learned nothing about the tragedy that took place about a year ago. Kevin Ogar, who was competing in the Crossfit OC Throwdown in January of 2014 severed his spine during the competition and is now paralyzed. A video of the moment it happened went viral and the whole fitness community mourned along with extensive analysis of what happened. By many it was considered a freak accident, unless you consider the fact that he was three workouts into a ten workout regime, likely already exhausted and throwing a heavy weight over his head. I’m not posting a link but it is easily found, and is disturbing.
First and foremost, this is not an article about CrossFit, bashing anyone or doing anything other than taking a look objectively at the situation. From what I have read nobody can seem to properly determine if Kevin’s spine was just ready to snap, or if he was hit by the bar (or both) – either way, it is a horrible accident and my thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family.
However, apparently the people who run the OC Throwdown didn’t learn anything, as this year they decided to have their participants jump over successive hurdles that were set at heights way too difficult to get over, resulting in many competitors falling – it is unknown if any of them seriously injured themselves but judging from what I was watching it was highly likely. There was a video that went viral about it and many people within the community complained that it was irresponsible and idiotic (which it was), and you would think that the organizers of this event would have known better. By the way, if you want to see the video, it’s here.
Maybe if just one person had stood up and reminded them of what happened the year before and simply refused to do something so risky they might have changed their whole workout and everyone could have done it safely. But that’s not cool, and it’s not hardcore, and it’s not something that you can post on YouTube.
This article is about the responsibility we all have towards our bodies, and the stupidity that sometimes arises when people get competitive. I can’t count the amount of people I have dealt with who have experienced major injuries, usually because they decided to “push through it” or they wanted to “suck it up”. Your body sends you signals for a reason, and it usually isn’t to tell you “hey, maybe you should think about stopping.”
I have many people on my Facebook feed who perform (to be blunt) horrible lifts. Absolutely brutal lifts. But they get the weight up and cheer themselves and get tons of likes on Facebook and Instagram of course. One poor girl who is all of 21 regularly hurts herself and almost brags about it, and then two days later posts videos of herself lifting, and the only thing I can see is her knees buckling and her spine ready to collapse. She doesn’t realize that in 20 years – or sooner – she’s likely going to be suffering.
This is way too common on my internet feed.
Tragedy comes in many forms, but to me one of the most tragic things is seeing a mistake made and then doing absolutely nothing to correct it simply for the sake of ego. You only get one body and one life. You have a choice if you want to let yourself live it to its’ fullest for the whole time you’re on the earth, or possibly have that one moment of glory (or one moment of stupidity) and pay for it for years. I’ve fallen victim to it myself when I was younger and stupid. Many of my friends who have “tweaked” things 20 years ago have recently had to have surgery to resolve things and can’t do what they want to do any more. It’s inevitable if you keep treating your body like a punching bag.
I’d rather see people lifting 50 pounds less and able to do it for 20 more years, which is why I run my practice the way that I do. I’ve taught women in their 50’s to lift over 150 pounds, but do they really need to do more than that? My people squat and lift and push and pull just like anyone else, but they do it with care and responsibility to the body, and funnily enough they rarely have a problem, now and ten years from now. I fix people who have had crippling injuries on a regular basis – the only people I’ll refuse to work with are those who haven’t learned the rules of the body and to respect what it tells you and do something about it.
Strength isn’t something that you can easily define. Figure out for yourself what it means. Hopefully it doesn’t mean sacrificing your long term joint health for the sake of making one massive lift, or almost killing yourself to be able to pose on a stage for 30 seconds, or dehydrating yourself so you can have abs just that much more visible for a photo shoot, or doing something idiotic to be able to post an edgy video on the internet. Wake up.
As always, comments are welcome.
How To Get Results – A Tribute to Russell P
It’s never nice when a client has to stop working with you for whatever reason it may be. Recently I found out that one of my long term clients, Russell P had to move to another city. I thought as a result I’d take the opportunity to write a quick tribute to him, because the way that he approached his training made my job really easy, but can also serve as an example to anyone out there who wants results on how to get them with some help from a trainer if you feel you need it.
Listen to and Trust your Trainer
When Russell and I met, he had been training for a marathon and managed to get Achilles Tendonitis. At the time I was working for a chain gym and he asked for someone with a running background and who knew about injuries. As luck would have it, I do well with both. At our first meeting Russell outlined his training program and one of the first things that I did was cut his mileage in half immediately. Now, Russell had eight weeks before running his first marathon so he thought I was crazy.
But, he listened. We strengthen and mobilized his ankle and got him back into a regular running rhythm and eight weeks later he completed his first marathon. It wasn’t fast, but it was done. Russell was simply trying to do too much too soon and his body was fighting back – quite common with runners.
Two years later running the same race (where he beat his old marathon best by over 30 minutes) we had a goal established that he probably could have tried to push more, but he chose to listen and just hit the numbers we had talked about, which is what brought him success.
Russell could have easily done something else or told me that he was doing what I asked and done something else, but that’s not like him. He has always trusted in the process. We do get input from each other, but the whole point of having a coach is to have them tell you what to do to succeed.
Just Show Up
I can probably count on one hand the amount of times Russell and I missed a session with a last minute cancellation. Even if he was hung over, tired or just generally stressed he still always showed up. Sometimes we wouldn’t get the best out of him that day, but what we did was always better than doing nothing. Once he committed to a race, it was there and 100% done. Before he decided to leave we had his goals planned out into 2016.
He was also excellent at following his programs without overdoing it or doing anything silly. If we had an off day planned, he took it – or if he had to make up for a run he missed he put it there. He never did too much again after that first injury.
Over time we even learned that we had to factor in two weeks after any major race in order to let his body rest and gave him time to recover and do nothing for a while. This should never be a problem for any coach because all you’re doing is giving the body what it needs after a big performance, which is recovery.
My point is that 98% of any success is just showing up. Many time it would have been easy for Russell to text me and say he couldn’t make it, but his training and progress were a priority that he made time for and as a coach this is something that makes it a lot easier to get results.
Plan Ahead
Any good coach will be able to plan out a schedule for a client, but Russell was especially good at thinking ahead and long term. Not only would he plan for what he was going to do workout wise when he was away, he made it a priority or scheduled workouts with friends while he was travelling. His family lives in England and even when he was over there for a week he still got his workouts is because he planned what days he was going to do them ahead of time.
We also planned his race schedule year to hear with one big goal (last year it was riding a bicycle from London to Paris, this year it was a ½ Ironman triathlon) and didn’t change it. He already has his priorities scheduled into 2015 and is committed to the process. There are little goals along the way, but the main focus can’t be month to month – it was to be one event and I always prefer if it is an annual goal, not a bunch of them (maybe twice a year at most).
Doing this ensures that your focus is always on the main event you have prioritized. It doesn’t mean that you can’t do a 10k race on your way to a marathon goal of course. And that brings me to my final point:
Roll With The Punches and Be Realistic
Sometimes life gets in the way. Russell and I at the beginning of the season had a ½ Ironman triathlon scheduled for the end of his race season (his first). However, the way that the summer fleshed out and with many work and life changes we both mutually agreed that it wasn’t a good idea to push for the distance when the training he was able to do would have resulted in a less than 100% result. He still completed his first Olympic distance triathlon with flying colours and hit all of his goals along the way.
Sometimes you need to assess if your life can really manage to get you the training that you need. I run into this quite often with fitness competitors who have jobs, families and lots of stress and have a hard time sticking to things. Health and well-being in my opinion should always be the top priority, and things like races and shows aren’t going anywhere any time soon. If you have to put a goal off temporarily due to something getting in the way – do it.
Want to do a ½ marathon but couldn’t get in your long runs? Try setting a PB at the 10k distance instead. You can still get a fantastic result and maintain your training and health, while also lowering your stress at the same time and taking pressure off so that the training that you can manage to get in isn’t wasted.
I hope that this brings some perspective into your own training. I’ll miss working with Russell on a regular basis a ton (we’re going to work together coaching virtually in the new year), not only because we have had a great relationship face to face but also because of all of the reasons labelled above that makes doing my job well so much easier. If you have a trainer take a look at the list and maybe there might be one thing that you could honestly say you can step up and improve a bit. I’m sure your coach will thank you for it and be able to get your results to you that much faster.
Also, if you’re reading this and are interested in coaching, my virtual services are available for the month of December at a 20% discount – five months for the price of four. Contact me for more details. Have a fit and healthy holiday season!
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.
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.
It’s Biggest Loser Time
It’s that time again – I saw the first inspirational commercial yesterday, with two former NFL athletes who are now severely obese starting on their weight loss journey followed by millions of people. Complete with massive weekly weight losses, lots of crying and screaming from trainers, product placement shots from Jenny-O brand ground turkey and Subway and lots of manufactured drama we can look forward to another person losing up to 50% of their body weight whether it be healthy or unhealthy.
You might remember at the end of last season where the winner looked severely depleted on the finale and there was a massive public outcry about her weight loss methods and how unhealthy they were both physically and mentally (and then it was revealed that most of the finale winners do the same thing, she just did it better). So here’s a few revealing notes about this show and some things to think about when approaching your own fitness regime, if this show inspires you to get off of the couch and actually get healthier.
The Winner is pretty easy to pick right away
Here’s the thing – when your body was fit and healthy in the past it really, really wants to get back that way again. Some of the contestants have been unhealthy and overweight their entire lives, and these are the ones that have a hard time once they hit a certain point. The contestants that were formerly athletic and thin (and have a ton of weight to lose) make the final 4 almost every time (unless they get booted due to politics), and almost all of the winners have been fit in the past, either when they were younger or just a few years before. So when I’m watching and I hear that “I was a high level athlete in high school/college” or there is someone who turned 20 and then gained 200 pounds that’s the person you’re going to see going really far unless they sabotage themselves or fall victim to the game politics.
I won’t comment on the trainers except to point out that the workouts they put the contestants through aren’t anything revolutionary or different than what a decent trainer would do – except at a much higher intensity (which isn’t always a good thing) and with lots of screaming and drama for the benefit of TV. And just because they do it – doesn’t mean you should.
Lesson: Your body likes to be healthy – and will try hard to get back there even after you have done awful things to it. It might take a bit longer to do so, but odds are you can get back there as long as you stick with it.
What these people do daily is NOT healthy
Contestants on the show are contractually obligated to burn x amount of calories every day and eat x amount of calories, all of which is controlled. The workouts you see with the trainers are for about 1 hour of the day and are somewhat staged, but they do work out – for hours. People hurt themselves constantly and sometimes you see it and sometimes you don’t, but if you watch you will notice how sometimes things like knee braces and support tape start appearing. When they go home, inevitably their weight loss slows down – because they aren’t working out hours a day and they actually have a real life time management situation with family, children and jobs. If many of you could dedicate 15-20 hours a week to exercise and eating right, you would lose weight too, possibly just as rapidly. Don’t assume that just because they did it, you can too – real, healthy weight loss is much more gradual.
Most of the gains you make while attempting to lose weight are done outside of the gym by eating properly, lowering stress and sleeping well for recovery so that you can exercise again as soon as possible. This is how real gains are made over time.
Lesson: Your body also likes to make change gradually, and will fight back against doing anything forced. Give yourself time and constant effort and the weight will come off.
Why load a leg press with only yourself?
Buyer beware with the products that they push
Please remember that the products that they promote are based on marketing dollars – not the best products. For example, on the most recent episode they were promoting canned soup. Low calorie, certainly – but canned soups are often high in sodium. There are also highly processed ingredients in them, even if they claim to have chicken or vegetables as an ingredient. Subway, which has been a huge sponsor of the show has been shown to not have much more nutritional value than many other fast food places. Things like Lara Bars and other quick snacks are fine once in a while, but should not ideally be eaten over something natural and whole. Ground turkey and chicken are good protein options, but possibly having a whole product from your local farm would be a much better idea (and cheaper). Instead of vegetables cooked in a plastic box, get them fresh from the produce aisle. The trouble is that the general public doesn’t know and will blindly purchase something because they paid the show to be a sponsor – don’t be that person.
Lesson: Just avoid anything processed as much as possible. Eat real food whenever you can. Period.
Don’t get discouraged if your personal journey takes a long time
The main focus for anyone changing their lifestyle should be HEALTH FIRST. In case I didn’t say that emphatically enough. Scale weight coming off is a nice by product of maintaining an exercise program and eating whole foods within your caloric requirements, but it should not be the top priority. In fact, stay away from the scale at the start if you can. Compare how your clothes fit, think about things like energy levels and sleep quality and improve steadily day by day – then step on the scale. Sometimes you get a pleasant surprise when you have had all of these amazing benefits plus you’re down 20 pounds. On the show they do some brief doctors’ visits with lots of tears and crying, especially when people do things like lower their blood lipid values or successfully reverse diabetes onset. The thing is – you can do that too. It’s really not that remarkable if you just start treating your body with respect.
Lesson: Getting started is the hardest part, but pretty much any condition can be slowed, stopped and even reversed if you do things the right way. You don’t have to feel the way you do right now if you’re unhappy – it’s a choice.
Television shows are meant for entertainment, and this show is a prime example. As I have said in the past, if this show inspires regular people to get off the couch and start exercise, eating maybe a bit healthier and changing their lives then fantastic. Obesity is a horrible epidemic that will continue to get worse if we don’t start getting smarter about it. This article simply means to point out some perspective on the fact that what you see (especially in the fitness industry) often isn’t real.
Until next time, losers. And I mean that in the nicest way.
Therapy and Exercise Refined 