Personal Trainers Exposed – Part 1
Personal trainers pride themselves on being students of fitness, promising results using the latest and greatest secrets from nutrition and exercise science. Most personal trainers, however, exhibit substandard knowledge of strength and conditioning training, prescribe ineffective or unsafe training protocols, and justify their methods with pseudoscience or “experience.” As a trainer, I shudder at the [...]
How a pen and paper could improve your fitness
Ask almost anyone who works out regularly what they do in the gym and you’ll usually hear, “Well, I usually do some chest exercises, some arm exercises and then I go for a run. On other days I do leg presses and some ab work and I go for a swim.” Just a simple description [...]
Nonsense
The fitness industry is one of the most nonsense-filled marketplaces in the world. Most training ’secrets’ can be summed up in a few sentences: Be active several times a week, strength train by moving heavy weights around, don’t eat too much, eat whole foods, and get plenty of sleep. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make anyone much [...]
What is Olympic Lifting?
Every four years, the Olympics come on television and between the 100m and archery you come across something like this:
This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.
The Olympic lifts are the Snatch, and the Clean and Jerk. Despite their incredibly unfortunate names, these [...]
Strength Training or Cardio for Fat Loss?
Alan Aragon has a ton of great resources on his website and he’s a fantastic writer on fitness, nutrition, and training. In an issue of his Research Review from 2008 he brought attention to a study done in 1999 comparing strength and endurance training for obese dieters. You can read the abstract here. If you [...]
Two Personal Training Myths
1. Do High Reps to Tone Your Muscles
Usually aimed at women that want to get tighter midsections and more toned arms, these workout programs usually prescribe lots of reps (hundreds of crunches) with very low weights (20+ dumbell curls with 5lbs). The fact is, a muscle’s appearance (on both men and women) is a [...]
Self Myofascial Release (SMR)
What if I told you there was a way to improve your flexibility, reduce injury risk, pain and inflammation in joints and muscles, and improve strength and performance – all in only about 10 minutes a day? Usually at this point I’d have a 1-800 number on screen next to “$19.95 + shipping and handling.” [...]
Two Fat Loss Myths
Two training myths explained today, both dealing with fat loss.
1. Targeted Fat Loss
This is a great one. For men and women it’s getting rid of that extra bit of fat around the midsection to reveal their abs. For women it’s the bit of fat on the underside of their upper arm. Everyone wants to get [...]
On Bootcamps
Bootcamps are all the rage these days, with the parks of Toronto and elsewhere filling with sweaty bodies and drill sergeant instructors every morning. While there is much to like about these programs, ultimately I find them lacking as a long term answer for most people.
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