Formosa Fitness

I taught the basic functional fitness movements of squat, lunge, deadlift, push and pull to a great bunch of men and women. Thanks for coming and we look forward to doing it again!

Here we go yet again.

So a study showed a certain percentage of people not only don't benefit from exercise, it actually made them LESS FIT?!?!?!?

So let's see:

-- no dicussion of diet at all. Apparently that isn't important, eh?

-- no mention of the exercises done or not done. Because obviously deadlifting 1000lbs. and picking up a 1lbs. weight is all the same, right?

-- working out TWICE A WEEK. Wow, love the intensity there.

-- giving average people every excuse to sit on their couches and do nothing and then having the nerve to say, "But we don't want people to take this as meaning to not exercise." Idiots. That's exactly how I'd take it if I didn't know better.

And now you have reason one million and one why I tend to ignore "research."

Here's a story. I took graduate research for my masters degree and I had to do a big research project. But after four months, I came to the conclusion that there was no positive coorelation between the two variables I studied. My professor admitted that this was what real research was about. Looking at two or more things and asking questions. But he then shocked me by admitting that if NO correlation is found, that in reality that could get you in a LOT of hot water. Research money and time is spent so you BETTER find something. That is the exact opposite of the meaning of research.

So we get published reports of garbage studies like this that not only don't help, they hurt the field.

Don't be blown this way or that based on a newspapar article.

And today it got me. Heavy squats went well. I even did six sets. But EDT with the double 24kg kettlebells left me wiped out. I finished with three sets of back extensions and 5:00 of bike with heavy resistance. When the workout doesn't go well, just accept it and do what you can. About 1/3 of workouts will be great/good, 1/3 will be okay, and 1/3 will be you just showed up and maintained what you got. That's life and working out is no different.

Don't sweat it. (LOL -- get it?)

We have to be very careful that we don't let one or two exercises upset the balance of our workouts. This happens especially with beginners. They don't know their capacities yet, so they go gung ho over the first one or two exercises then find themselves unable to continue. That's ultimately not a very productive way to workout.

Think of a cannon on a battleship. When the cannon is fired, the ship is fine because it's made of steel and is sturdy. But when you fire a cannon from a canoe, the canoe gets sunk as soon as it fires. The platform can't support the action.

The main problem is that strengthening the whole is impossible without addressing the component parts. The whole IS the sum of those parts so if the parts are all weak, then individual attention will have to be paid to each one. The problem then becomes one of choice -- you have to pick some things to work on today and leave the rest for later. Otherwise the person would collapse if you chose to work everything while emphasizing each part. It just gets too overwhelming.

So break things down first or put them together first and work from general to specific. But always know which is which!

..then nothing will. Go out there and kill it this week. No excuses!

Come learn how to improve your existing workouts by incorporating functional fitness into them. No matter if you train at home or in a commercial gym, we'll show you how to get better results in a shorter amount of time with whatever equipment you already have. The seminar will last one hour.

Cost: NT500

Date: Dec. 04, 2010

Time: 10-11am

Location: Formosa Fitness

Limited to the first five people to sign up!Please RSVP by calling 0912287898 or sending me an email at formosafitness "at" pixnet.net. We have three spots left!

We just had our fourth kettlebell certification in Taipei this past weekend. Here are some pictures from the event:

Congratulations to our new coaches! Anyone that wants to get trained or certified should drop me a line. We'll be scheduling our fifth cert soon and we'll have details on our level two certification coming up!

The range of movement you can do with kettlebells is opening up. The clips above and below show some of the newer ways that people are using these innovative tools.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about functional fitness and as a trainer who specializes in functional fitness, I mostly welcome the discussion. The problem is, like any new thing that comes along, some of the details get lost in the excitement of the discovery of the new thing. When the shiny newness wears off, will there be anything left? This article will hopefully lead a few to look past the outside and understand what functional fitness is really about. Functional fitness is fitness that stresses quality of movement over muscles. We train movements, not biceps. We don’t break the body down into segments but instead use whole body movements. Leg curls get replaced with deadlifts, tricep extensions get replaced with overhead press. For people used to doing bodybuilding training, functional fitness is a very foreign idea. Single joint exercises get replaced with multiple joint exercises in functional fitness. The basic movements of the human body break down into a few simple categories: squat, deadlift, lunge, push, pull, twist, walk/run, and jump. That’s it. Any type of functional fitness must start from these movement basics in order to be considered functional fitness. The potential benefit of this type of training for most everyone is enormous since every movement you make every day is a combination of one of the above movements. People that intelligently adopt functional training often find that knee, back, and shoulder pain clears up very quickly. Fat loss also happens quickly do to the amount of muscle used in these multi-joint exercises. Conditioning rapidly improves due to the whole-body exercises used. The list of benefits could go on and on. Functional fitness really is a revolution in fitness programming. Unfortunately, getting stronger and better in basic movements proved a bit too….well…basic for some trainers. The basic workout template was expanded to include a lot of silly ideas. In the US and other Western countries where functional training started, functional training rapidly drew criticism from strength coaches and athletic trainers who had been using functional fitness training for years, for good reason.

The problem was the introduction of a lot of silly gadgets that somehow had the idea of functional fitness attached to them. A great example is the Swiss or stability ball. In a physical therapy setting, the stability ball helped patients build their stabilizer muscles so they could recover from their injuries sooner. Some trainers made the leap of therefore including it in nearly every exercise they were doing. For example, doing squats on a stability ball.

Or doing curls with 5lbs. weight on the ball.

These examples are ridiculous because the same core stability could be gained from actually doing an exercise like squats but with heavy weights and on a stable surface. Doing weighted squats on a ball makes them dangerous and adds nothing to the exercise. It’s just a gimmick that fools people into thinking they’re working harder. Other current functional fitness gimmicks include shake weights and vibration plates.

These gimmicks supposedly help people lose weight and look great in just minutes a day, but even when they’re used with real exercises, the product actually gets in the way of progress. The gimmick, not the movement, becomes the focus on the program. Therefore, the customers’ movements do NOT get better, nor are they able to lift more weight or do progressively more reps after using these products. In short, these products take away the effectiveness of functional fitness. Functional fitness as a method of physical fitness programming has now become a joke due to the flood of largely worthless gimmicks that seem to come out every month. Body Blade, VIPr, Bosu balls, wobble boards, Body Bar, light weight bands, Wii fit, etc. all promise to get you in great shape and be the only tool you need for fitness. But it never works out that way. You never end up looking like the 20-year-old model using the product in the ads because he or she never used that product to look like that either.

Unfortunately, functional fitness has become nothing but a marketing tool to sell people an endless stream of worthless fitness gadgets. These gadgets actually prevent people from getting into shape by using the simple movements the body was meant to make. If you want to get in shape the functional way, pick up tools that have been around for a long time and that have a proven record of getting solid results. If your trainer talks about the latest functional fitness gadget they think you should buy, then ask them if they themselves got in shape with that gadget. They likely didn’t. Does the trainer even use it themselves to work out? Probably not. We need to take back functional fitness from the marketers who are just out to sell gadgets to the public. Functional fitness has real potential to turn people’s loves around by getting them stronger at the basic motions they do every day like picking stuff up off the floor and putting it over head, picking up their children, moving heavyfurniture, etc. But that can only happen if we put the toys away.

No mirrors? Well, we have one in the bathroom. :) I don't like having to look at myself all the time in the gym. I'm not that in love with how I look. Are you? Probably not. So why is every gym on the planet covered in mirrors? Our gym, Formosa Fitness, is not. We want you to FEEL what's going on with your body. We want you to feel good, not just look good. Our clients don't go around posing in front of the mirrors. Don't you hate it when the 120lbs. geek in the tank top starts posing his puny muscles in the mirror? We do, too. So if that annoys you, don't go there. Come see us instead. Then when you get results with us, you can go home and admire yourself in your own mirror. :)