Formosa Fitness

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!

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. :)

Naturally, friends are great and I hope you have at least a few. We all need them. But when you need to lose fat or get in shape, friends can sometimes get in the way. Do you spend more time chatting with your friend than working out? Does working out with your friend lower or raise your intensity level? Does the presence of your friend keep you from doing new, more challenging movements? These are the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself if you're working out with someone and you haven't seen results for some time. Relationships like these can help or hinder your progress and it's best to be honest with yourself. Are you sacrificing results for conversation? Don't do it.

Let's get this straight: You DO NOT KNOW something because you read about it or heard about it. You KNOW something because you've lived it, experienced, or can actually DO IT.

I can't stand it when some 20-something coach tries to talk about being in shape or losing fat that they never had in the first place. Look, being in shape when you're in your early 20's is a breeze. It's as easy as it will ever get. If you aren't in shape in your early 20's then you're not even trying. Listening to trainers in their 20's talk about how hot they think they are because of their six packs makes me want to puke.

Show me someone that actually TRAINS!! Don't show me someone that's naturally thin because that's too easy. Show me a coach that personally lost 100lbs. and I'll listen to what they have to say. Show me a coach that went from 100lbs. soaking wet to 200lbs. of muscle and I'm all ears. Show me a coach in their 40's or older and that looks 25 and I'll learn from them.

I came across two fantastic quotes this past week: "You can't give what you haven't got" and "You can't teach what you don't know." Excellent advice but that "knowing" part needs a new definition, which I will gladly provide tomorrow.

When I look at a coach, I don't expect to see perfection but I do expect to see results. Does the coach embody what they preach? If not, then move right along.

Perfect form is a journey, not a destination. Form is fluid and depends on the weight used, the training protocol, etc.

We hear a lot about using perfect form because it's important to work on your techniques. But let's have a little honesty by saying you never actually get there 100% of the time.

Weight lifting and how it works on the body isn't always clear. Let me use a pyramid to explain a little about how progressing in lifting happens and how we reach mastery of the movement and the weights.

Let's say a female client wants to deadlift 50kg as an medium term goal and she's never lifted before. I start her with a lower weight perhaps around 20-30kg and watch her lift. I make corrections on form and adjust the weight accordingly. It turns out that 35kg was a good starting weight for her. I had her do four sets of 10 (4x10) to give her practice in the lift.

She deadlifted 35kg a couple of sessions along with the other stuff we do just to get used to the exercise and when she was comfrotable with it, I moved her up 2.5kg to 37.5kg. We then did 4x10 at 37.5kg for two sessions and then walked it up another 2.5kg., etc. etc.

I'm teaching this client how to lift so once she was comfortbale with 45kg, I threw a twist into the training. I had her do 45kg for one set of ten, then 47.5kg for a set of six, then 50kg for a set of four. I got her to her goal much quicker than she tought possible.

The training in pyramid form looks like this:

           50kg  3x

         45kg   6-8x

       40kg   10-12x

Training high reps at the bottom of the pyramid gives a great foundation. High reps allow for a lot of practice. Breathing can be coordinated, the nervous system can adapt to the training, form can be ironed out, confidence is gained, etc. We spend a lot of time with beginners in this range.

Once the foundation is laid, we learn to play a new song by moving to the lower range of 6-8. The form is usually off just a bit, or maybe not. The client struggles a little but not too much. Most people handle the stress well.

Eventually we move to a shorter rep range of 1-4. At this point, form is hard to contain as is breathing. The effort is intense and this range has a lot to teach folks. But honestly I often overtrain folks to reach that point just to make sure they have a successful attempt at the lift. I want their lifts to give them confidence and I want success to build upon success. I would only be more aggressive with the progression with someone who's more advanced.

Here's something that isn't obvious: the smaller rep range is the tip of the spear (or pyramid) and the higher rep range is the base. The tip pulls the base upward in that once you can do a heavier lift, the whole pyramid moves upward. Using the above weights, once this client can lift 55kg around three times, she should move the 10 rep range upwards to 45kg or so.

One interesting comment I've heard before is that the low rep range of 1-4 doesn't feel as good because the client has not mastered that weight yet. And that's true. But here's an interesting thing: once you've been training for a while and can do the 50kg deadlift, you've made 40kg your bitch. :) The 40kg will fly up. Why? Because you've mastered it at that rep range.

Here's another not so obvious observation: the lower rep range of 1-4 is a step into the unknown.

It's not comfortable. You're unsure you can do it. You might even get injured. It's even a little......dangerous. But because of all that, it also has a lot of potential.

Looking at the pyramid, I obviously don't spend a lot of time in the 1-4 range with most beginning clients. But moving them up the pyramid in this graduated fashion can give them lots of confidence and a new personal record, perhaps for the first time.

Try it out.

EDIT: if this came off as half-baked, that's because it is. I haven't quite found out how to express this stuff. :)

Here's a little circuit I threw together for sandbag training. It make a great change from the kettlebell or most anything else. Sandbags move all over the place. This one is 20kg. Try it out if you're looking for a change of pace.

This isn't a post about theology. Instead I want to talk about what you need to succeed with heavy lifting using kettlebells or anything else.

A while back, I figured out that strength was missing from my clients programs. We've changed that by adding new training protocols and early results look promising. But I've noticed that many students struggle with the harmonization of what I call the trinity -- movement, breath, and mind.

Take any lift you're wanting to do heavy -- that's the movement in question. Before you go heavy, you should have significant experience in the movement using a lighter weight. Form had better not be a major point when going for strength training. You should have that mostly nailed down before training for strength. This ensures the nervous system is prepared and you have the confidence necessary to do the lift. Afterall, you've done it a hundred times before. This is an essential requirement for the two components of breath and mind!!

Breath takes a bit longer to incorporate. With lighter weights, how you breathe is less of an issue. With a 4kg weight, it likely doesn't matter how you breathe, you could still press it overhead. Pressing a 32kg kettlebell changes things. Breathing any old way won't work.

You'll need to learn how to pressurize and slowly exhale as you exert yourself. This takes time and practice. And the mechanical details of the lift should have been worked out before breathing is addressed. Worrying about breathing before getting the hips, elbows, knees, etc aligned will needlessly complicate your lifts and totally ruin some clients' confidence. It's too much to worry about. Form first then breathing.

Mind is a missing component in most everyone's fitness. The only people to have it are atheletes or weightlifters. The entire modern fitness community has told a monumental lie to everyone -- you can completely zone out of your workout and still achieve tremendous results. Total BS. That's why the guy next to you on the treadmill still looks the same as he did 5 years ago.

Before I took the lifting test for the IKFF level 2 cert, I slapped my chalked hands together and said loudly, "All in a day's work." This may have seemed arrogant to some but I was mentally preparing myself to completely succeed. All doubts immediately vanished from my mind and I focused like a laser beam. Long term readers will remember that my training for the taichi form competition produced similar results in my ability to concentrate. That concentration is absolutely crucial to your success!!! 

As an aside, I demolished that test and concentration plus preparation is what got me there.

When you lift heavy, you can't be thinking about your girlfriend, what you're going to eat for lunch, or your argument with the boss. The lift will fail or, even worse, you'll get injured. You also can not let one doubt about your ability to lift creep into your mind. If you do, the weight won't go up. 

Timing is absolutely crucial in merging these three components. I often see clients miss the timing by letting one component slip. Some start the movement while concentraining but before the breathing is there. Failed lift. Others don't have the technique down yet so the other components likely can't make up for that. The most common problem is missing the mental timing.

All three components of the lift most come together at exactly the same moment to make it happen. When they do, it's beautfiul and you'll reach a new height fitness-wise and personally.

I'll talk a little more about that last point later.

I was paid a supreme compliment from a blogging buddy recently. My friend wujimon (who got me started blogging, it's all his fault!) recently tried one of our fat loss kettlebell circuits and measured his calories burned. He burned 525 calories in 25 minutes!! Check out the link above to see his reaction. I think we have a kettlebell convert. :)

Thanks to wujimon once again. He's a real trooper.

It doesn't matter whether we're talking about deadlifts, squats, swings, etc. One cue that has made a world of difference for me is to PUSH THE FLOOR AWAY WITH THE LEGS.

In deadlift and squat, many clients think of just standing up. Or in deadlift, they think of pulling with the low back. Thing is, that rarely gets them using the legs at full capacity. The legs aren't engaged much when they should be 100% engaged.

Instead of just trying to stand up, actually push the floor away from you with your legs. This makes these movements somewhat like the leg press but what you'll find is the movements are MUCH more powerful, they're safer because you aren't straining the low back, and you'll likely be able to do more weight.

One problem is that pushing the floor away vs. pulling with the low back in deadlift or just standing up in the barbell squat doesn't look any different. There isn't a visual difference usually except perhaps for a more powerful hip thrust with the push-the-floor away technique. So people can't see a difference, therefore they think their isn't one.

This is where FEELING comes into play. You can easily FEEL a tremendous difference between the two. So focus on that push and you'll make much better progress.

Have a good weekend, folks!

So this guy comes into the gym and says he wants help gaining some muscle. Oh but he's also training for a marathon so our training can't interfere with that. Oh and he'd also like to work on his inflexibility. Oh and he also has a bad knee and elbow we'll need to rehab. Grrrrrr....

The fact is most people need a coach to tell them what to do because they can't choose for themselves amongst the various goals they have. Most people can't tell a good goal from a bad one and lack a method to choose between competing goals. When you can't tell the good from the bad or the good from the better, you get paralyzed by choice and end up doing everything poorly or nothing at all.

Learn to make decisions or hire a coach who can guide you. But don't spin your wheels because you can't choose.

This is a sample workout that you can do with the powerclubs/clubbells. Working with the clubs is amazing. I've never felt anything quite like it. Each tool definitely has it's own flavor and the club definitely has one. It's hard to describe. The workout is full-body but much easire on my shoulders and elbows. The leg work is surprisingly effective and vaired. I really didn't expect that. And the 3D movement is great. The kettlebell goes foward/back and up/down very well but the clubs add side-to-side motion and full circle movement. Love it.

Our gym is a reflection of our values and thinking. We have a strong dislike for the clutter and useless equipment in modern gyms. Those aspects of this thinking came across clearer to me in the recent pictures of the new gym than in anything else I've experienced recently.

Look at the picture above. Notice the dark green tiles offset by the lighter green walls. Notice the simplicity of the equipment and the ample space that cuts right down the middle of the gym. The space is small yet the possibilities created within the openness are infinite.

Machines and other useless equipment become distractions for the mind. We suffer from too many choices. Do I use the neck machine today? How about the hip flexor machine? The leg curl? All those choices cause the mind to become confused. What's useful and what's not? And look, the gym just got a new piece of equipment. I wonder what it does?

In the midst of all this physical clutter we lose space for the body to move. More, more, more. Where is the freedom and beauty of movement? Is that allowed any more? We allow our fitness purchases to crowd our space preventing movement. Shouldn't fitness tools increase movement and therefore fitness options?

Simplify. Simplify your space. Simplify your tools. Simplify your routine.

Get back to the basics, emphasize quality of motion, and allow the mind to calm.

We don't have to quit our desk jobs and work as peasants to reap the benefits of movement. Instead we need to look beyond the sitting-type fitness that many people are doing. Think about it this way: if you're sitting hunched over a desk all day, why would you choose fitness that also has you sitting and likely hunched over? It just doesn't make any sense. Your fitness makes the problems WORSE, not better.

Sitting types of fitness have many problems. One of them is that the stabilization muscles aren't used. Sitting isolates most muscles except the few being worked -- that means fewer calories are being burned. It's an extremely inefficient way to work out.

Functional fitness, on the other hand, gets you up out of your chair and doing all those movements that you don't do all day long. Using the basic human movements of deadlift, squat, lunge, push, pull, jump, etc. will burn one heck of a lot more calories than sitting fitness, insure that you maintain muscle mass throughout the body, retain quality of movement as you get older, etc.

And let's be honest: sitting-type fitness is extremely boring. Whenever I hear from someone that fitness is boring, I ask what they're doing and it's always some form of fitness that minimizes movement and variety. Running like a rat on a treadmill, sitting on an exercise bike, using weight machines, etc. doesn't provide the variety of human movement that we're capable of doing because it locks you into one movement. That's why they have so many TV's in places that provide this stuff: you need something else to keep you entertained.

Another missing piece is that because movement is minimized, you're limiting your fitness to that single movement or small set of movements. Your body will eventually adapt -- meaning you're going to have to go to further extremes to keep making it work for fat loss or fitness. In order to keep getting results, you'll have to do more, go harder, etc. at something that people likely already find boring.

The alternative is to get outside the box and do movements that you NEVER do. Because you don't do them much, you're likely very weak in them. You'll see very quick results because your body is starving for squatting, lunging, pulling, etc. when all you've been giving it is the same sitting you do all day anyway.

There's a final major reason NOT to choose sitting type of exercises and it's a big one: sitting type of exercises do little to fight muscle wasting associated with age and the concurrent drop in testosterone in men.

Rates depend on who you talk to but muscle loss of half a percent a year in the sedentary starting around the age of 30 seem about right. This loss is cumulative, meaning that by the time you're in your 50's, you're going to be in deep trouble if you've waited that long to start working out. A 10-15% loss of lean muscle (most people have little to start with) is serious business.

Several interesting points need to be made here:
1. Aerobic exercises do little to nothing to preserve muscle mass. This type of exercise does not promote muscle hypertrophy, in fact it does the exact opposite. Muscle wasting happens even to older runners and cyclists. This especially sets women up for osteopenia and then osteoporosis. There's a strong relationship between muscle and bone mass.

2. Quality of movement greatly declines. Once this muscle loss takes place, you're below a neutral point in terms of fitness. Many activities become risky because you don't have the muscle to support the movement, meaning you'll have to exercise to remove the deficiency before engaging in them or risk injury. The older "weekend warrior" is particularly susceptible to this problem.

3. Testosterone production and maintaining muscle mass in men are strongly correlated. Maintain one and there's a strong likelihood you'll maintain the other. Once the sex hormones start to drop, you're more at risk for a host of diseases. Not to mention watching your sex life wither away (yuck).

4. The exercises that maintain muscle mass and testosterone production the most are the compound lifts -- deadlift, squat, clean and press, jerk, snatch, etc. These exercises are the very opposite of the sitting type of exercise.

5. Couple all this with a corresponding decrease in protein consumption for various reasons and you've created a perfect environment for muscle wasting. Lack of sufficient protein leads to loss of lean muscle mass even in younger individuals. For the elderly it can be devastating.

Decreased protein consumption, aging, muscle wasting, engaging in aerobic/sitting exercise only, osteopenia/osteoporosis, decreased sex hormone production, obesity -- every single one of these is interrelated.

Obesity becomes very hard to fight when all these factors are in place.

You have to hand it to Nike. They're one of the few companies that can see beyond common advertising practices. These ads promote solid results beyond just looking like a stick. Thin and sickly is out. It ain't fit. Someone wants to look like that then just do heroin. Shooting for the body type below is both doable and healthier! Just do it! :)