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No right or wrong exercise form? Really?

I really do wonder if there’s any hope sometimes. I take a look at a group of people calling themselves strength and conditioning coaches and I find this question: (Coaches, looking at the content of this video, is this right or wrong?)
And what’s the first answer? (There’s no right or wrong, just what’s appropriate for the person.)
Of course. And the coach saying this looks like he’s never had a barbell on his back in his entire life. I also notice he’s certified by an organization that repeatedly shows very little understanding of anything related to strength training but which unfortunately certifies a lot of trainers. I won’t say which one but it starts and ends with an “A.”
We’ve run across this idea so many times that it just drives me crazy. But let’s go with this ridiculous idea because so many trainers now consider themselves “strength and conditioning coaches” that we need to start pointing out things that should be blindingly obvious.
So there is no right and wrong in regards to exercise form, correct? All form is correct, it’s just that some techniques are right for some and not others correct?
Great. Please take a look at this exercise form and tell me who this is appropriate for?

So who should squat like that? Come on “experts”! There’s no right or wrong, correct?
How about this?

So please tell us who you recommend squat like that? Who should squat with a rounded, hunched over back? Who should barbell squat with the right hand gripping the bar but barely gripping the bar at all with the left?
99.9% of the so-called trainers that tell you this stuff say it because they themselves have no idea how to squat, deadlift, or do anything else heavy. They aren’t experts because they haven’t done it themselves. They think reading a book and taking a weekend course makes them experts and it doesn’t.

Now I ask you this – why on earth would you pay someone for their time when they themselves can not tell right exercise form from wrong? What are you paying for? Why would you hire someone like this for personal training sessions? Would you hire a math teacher to tutor your kid that said there was no right or wrong answers? Does 2+2=5?
If your so-called trainer doesn’t have videos of himself and people he’s trained lifting weights, then don’t listen to one word he or she says about lifting weights. Start demanding more from the people you get advice from or you’ll wind up like the people in the videos above.

The Truth about Tabata

Lots of talk about Tabata lately because it’s the latest fad to come through Taiwan. Next week there will be another fad to distract you from the fact that all the other fads – mermaid line, thigh gap, bikini gap, slideboard, ViPr, etc. – didn’t get you fitness results. What happened to the “armor line”? Unfortunately, that’s all there really is here in Taiwan, fitness fads. But some of us are fighting back. I was glad to see the article this weekend by a trainer named Coach Hank that called the Tabata trend out.

Our gym Formosa Fitness was founded on high intensity interval training (HIIT) through the kettlebell. I used to personally teach up to four group classes and 10 private sessions a day based on HIIT so I have lots of experience with it. Tabata is one version of HIIT.

The first thing you should know is that Dr. Tabata was looking for a way to increase the VO2 max of the Japanese Olympic speed skating team. Think of VO2 max as your ability to quickly exchange a high volume of carbon dioxide for oxygen in your lungs. It’s basically a measure of cardiovascular power and the Tabata protocol did increase that ability but that’s all it did. The Tabata protocol is NOT a fat loss program, a muscle-building program, a strength-building program or anything else. Don’t care about building your VO2 max? Then why are you wasting your time with Tabata?

Olympic level athletes spend more than a decade training intensely for their sport. Have you trained intensely for a decade? A year? A week? Then why are you wasting your time with this? The athletes got results with the method because they had already gone through a ton of regular strength and conditioning training. Their power output was off the charts already. Tabata found that only an all out effort produced the results he was looking for but it takes a highly conditioned body to produce that level of effort. He also found that the exercises which produced this effect are few. Only a few exercises were simple enough and stressed the body through whole body fatigue enough to be effective. Battling ropes and crappy burpees with a sagging core were not used. Tabata used an exercise bike, period. Nothing else was used to my knowledge. Chair dips that only use a single joint were certainly not used and you aren’t being told that.

Tabata is a trend now because fake trainers and Facebook pseudo fitness celebrities are using it to pander to the public because most people hate exercise and they will swallow any gimmick designed to get them to do less work. Three months ago it was the 7:00 workout and that must have worked so well that we needed to immediately replace it with a 4:00 workout. The :30 workout is just around the corner, I’m sure.

The whole point of this, just like everything else these days, is to get you to look at the trainer. It isn’t about your fitness because they don’t care about that – it’s about him or her, the fake trainer. It’s about being popular and when their stupid video with a crappy, poorly designed workout gets half a million hits, then the want-to-be celebrity can sell their popularity to a shoe company or toy fitness supplier that sells you fitness junk. They can be on TV selling “gym drinks” that you can’t actually find in any store and that have more sugar in them than protein. They can tell you that you should buy the Buttmaster 5000 even though they never used it in their lives, but you apparently should.

So are you going to fall for this fad like all of the others that didn’t work or are you ready to do some real training?

High calorie protein or high protein sugar?

We need to clear something up — there is no such thing as high calorie and low calorie protein. This is something that was made up to sell people poor quality products. The impression that you get from the name is that the only difference between the two products is the calories but people don’t realize that if the calories per serving goes up, then the amount of protein per serving must go down. This causes these two products to be completely different. The main ingredient in so-called high calorie protein isn’t protein at all — it’s sugar. A more honest name would be “high protein sugar” since that’s what you’re buying. A steak and a doughnut are not the same thing.
So don’t be fooled by this. In English, we call these products “weight gainers” since that’s what they do and in my opinion, that’s more honest.

More than a gym, a culture

Our gym exists to host our tribe. We all agree on our core fitness values: strength training, high intensity training, high protein. Those are the values of the Formosa Fitness tribe. If you want to join us, then you should agree with those. If not, we are not the place for you.

Having such a clear statement about what you stand for, and what you don’t, is rare these days. Most people don’t like such strong statements, another reason we aren’t for most people. It’s especially unpopular to draw lines between people and say we want this group, but not this other group. That’s “discrimination” and we all know that’s a dirty word these days.

Well we discriminate every single day. Do you eat food that fell on the sidewalk? Why not? Are you a bigot? The food didn’t ask to get dropped there, did it? How about eating at a restaurant where the cook doesn’t wash his hands? Who are we say that certain behaviors by people are more desirable than others? Isn’t that discrimination? Of course, it is. We discriminate everyday but we often don’t have the guts to call it that.

Formosa Fitness is a small gym. I’m okay with saying that. We don’t have the space to cater to everyone. Like what you see here? This is what we do:

We got one new guy a while back that complained on a local message board that we should give him 3 liters of free water every time he comes in. Why? Because he demanded it, that’s why. And if you demand something, you should always get it, correct? Well that’s what a lot of people think. He also complained that it was too hot — downstairs, where it is consistently cool. I just paid NT37,000 for the electricity bill in September BTW. We come to the gym to workout, not get comfortable. I told this gentlemen that we charge significantly less than the local 7-11 for bottled water and do this as a courtesy to gymgoers, but he persisted with his demands two more times. The last time, I told him we would not be giving him free water and if he didn’t like it, he could go work out somewhere else. As the chief, it’s my job to police the tribe. If we let people like that in, then those of us that want to train hard will find it impossible to do so.

This is the kind of thing most people don’t understand. Many of the local gyms give away water and towels because they RIP PEOPLE OFF so their profit margin is much higher. We don’t rip people off so our profits are much lower. Second, NOTHING IS FREE! Someone is paying for that! If my costs as the gym owner go up, then guess what? I’m passing that cost on to the gymgoer. No, I will NOT eat into our meager profit margins to cater to people too lazy to bring their own water from home or buy our reasonable priced water at the gym. Third, we don’t want the kind of people that demand “free stuff” in order to work out.

At the big local gorilla gym, men blow dry their testicles in the locker rooms.
People play on their cell phones on the equipment rather than train hard.
They join the gym just to play in the dirty jacuzzi. “Play” has many definitions, too.
There is a disco ball in the “weight room” at the fancy pants gym down the street.
And people get flashed in the showers.
THAT is the local gym culture that gives away “free stuff.” Is that what you want? Because that is the very opposite of what we do. We are against all that.

If I chose to go down that path for the business, we would go out of business! There would be nothing special about us in any way. We would have people laying all over the equipment picking their noses. We would have to have 20 treadmills for people to walk on while watching TV because that’s what “free stuff” people demand. We don’t have space for that and we are not that kind of gym.

We are a niche gym and our niche is strength, high intensity cardio training, and training with integrity.
The most important two minutes you’ll ever spend regarding fitness is right here. Watch this:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/j8JS3kqUTqM?t-A&start=105]
THAT is what we are about! BTW, Gym Jones are the folks that trained the cast of “300” and “Man of Steel,” etc.

We are not trying to be everything to everyone. We are not the Wal-Mart of fitness. So understand that we welcome everyone to join us, but if you do then you must agree to follow our culture and live by our fitness values. Hope to see you at the gym.

The latest Internet craze! A new “line”!

Everyone in mainstream fitness likes to talk about lines, so here’s the next big craze! Have you heard about it? It’s called the “idiot line.” It has to do with the line that is between someone’s ears. Unfortunately, if the person pays lots of attention to the mainstream fitness industry, this space is often empty. So we can shoot an arrow through this gap and they won’t notice a thing. They’ll be too busy reading about the latest line or gap, forgetting that obsessing over the mermaid line got them nothing, as did the thigh gap, the bikini bridge, etc. But I’m sure the new “armor line” will really get them in shape this time! (not likely)