Category: fitness

I’m getting lots of emails from people that aren’t members of our facility asking if they can come in and film the 13.1 WOD for the Crossfit 2013 Open. The answer is unfortunately going to be no and I’m going to tell you why. When a gym owner and senior trainer takes the time to explain why he isn’t allowing something, I hope the effort is appreciated and I hope you carefully consider what I’m saying.

First, here’s the WOD;
17 minute AMRAP of:
40 Burpees
30 Snatch, 75 / 45 lbs
30 Burpees
30 Snatch, 135 / 75 lbs
20 Burpees
30 Snatch, 165 / 100 lbs
10 burpees
Max rep Snatch, 210 / 120 lbs

Right away we see a bad workout design. You get exhausted with burpees and then the weight on the snatch goes up? So you take a technical movement that tends to degrade with fatigue, pair it with burpees so you fatigue even faster, AND increase the weight on the snatches as the workout progresses. Brilliant. No one will get hurt that way, will they?

Even someone proficient in snatches will see their form degrade right at the point where the weight gets heavier, greatly increasing the likelihood of getting injured. And for what? So you can have your video up on Youtube?

Second, this is the first Open workout, meaning it will be done by the broadest swath of people interested in Crossfit. It will be done by all kinds of people that don’t know how to snatch, that are self-taught from Crossfit videos with no precautions whatsoever, and who are likely to hurt themselves. Seriously, how many novice men will be doing safe snatches with 210lbs. (95kg) after all those burpees? How many novice men will do good snatches without doing burpees? And we’re just gonna pretend this is risk free?

Let’s take a look at an example:

This gentlemen is certainly sincere and I applaud his interest in fitness. But his “snatch” is a rounded back deadlift with an “two hands anyhow” over his head. The last set of snatches is around 16:39. Seriously, who thinks this is a good idea? Thousands of beginners will be doing this all over the world in their basements and globogyms and Crossfit HQ is directly responsible for promoting this nonsense. Chiropractors will rack up booming numbers starting this week.

Also, it’s guests that are asking if they can do this. Guests haven’t been exposed to our rational fitness philosophy, haven’t heard why we think the average “go for broke” Crossfit workout isn’t so smart, haven’t been coached in how we think a reasonable snatch should be done, nor had their burpee form looked at by our staff. The chances of someone coming into our facility and hurting themselves while doing this ill-advised workout is really high, a risk that isn’t worth the day pass fee for me. Telling people that they got hurt in our facility doing something we would NEVER recommend is also a risk I’m not willing to take.

Finally, let me make a personal appeal to you based on personal experience: injuries happen when you least expect them and even to people that think it can’t happen to them. You THINK you’re using good form, you think you’re being careful, but often times people aren’t as careful and correct as they might think, especially when doing a workout that was specifically designed to make your form break down like this one. With dynamic exercises like burpees and snatches, you’re often injured before you even know it. There isn’t always a slow build up of pain showing that something is off. You’re doing a hormonally charged workout that can leave you with a sudden injury because you were doing something that you shouldn’t have been doing in the first place. At that point, it’s too late.

Having to take two months or more off training because you wanted to show how tough you are on Youtube and Facebook isn’t worth it, trust me. Instead, slow things down, study exercise form, constantly work on quality and not just see how fast and hard you can do something, and you will be healthier and fitter for it in the long run. And if you’re really smart you’ll extract yourself from a fitness community that doesn’t care how many people get broken along the way and instead look into joining a program that can get you in great shape while not breaking you — like the one we offer at Formosa Fitness.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and stay safe.

P.S. If you want to test your fitness, please join us for the Tactical Strength Challenge on May 4th or join the TSC nearest you!

The equipment that a gym provides either expands or limits what you as a gymgoer can accomplish there. For a trainer, the equipment in the gym will determine what you train clients with, what you know, and will either expand or limit your knowledge and growth as a trainer. I can’t think of a single piece of equipment that limits and retards both client’s and a trainer’s growth more than the worthless Smith machine.

The Smith machine was invented so that people who had no idea how to really lift weights would feel safe and comfy while doing things their bodies aren’t ready and capable of actually doing with a real barbell. The bar on a Smith machine slides up and down on two rails, stabilizing you in both the side-to-side plane and in the front-to-back planes of motion. While this provides the illusion of safety, there are numerous drawbacks to this.

First of all, this is NOT real weightlifting. Real weightlifting involves having the barbell on your body, not having a machine stabilize the weight for you. Barbell squats as done by real strength athletes like Olympic lifters and powerlifters place the force of the barbell totally on the body — meaning that you have to stabilize the weight 100% with your own body, not the machine. The amount of muscle used in a barbell squat is much greater than that used in the Smith machine, and the more muscles you use, the more calories you burn. Smith machines rob you of the results you’d get by using real barbells — whether you’re looking for fat loss, muscle gain, general fitness, or athletic performance — because the machine is doing a lot of the work for you.

A REAL barbell squat:

Second, Smith machines are dangerous because they allow you to “squat” (if I can call it that) using a form that is totally dictated to you by the machine. People place their feet too far forward, put their backs in the wrong position, use a “tampon pad” because they don’t want the mean old bar to hurt their spines, fail to engage their cores properly and do dangerous amounts of weight — all because the machine allows this. Here’s what can go wrong:

Not as safe as you thought, right?

Third, people make all these mistakes because they were never taught how to lift properly and they weren’t taught because their trainers don’t know how to squat either. What the trainers know and what the gymgoers can do is limited by the equipment in the gym and the equipment found in a typical gym is pathetic. Power racks, which actually allow you to learn how to lift, are few and far between in the typical big box gym. Without a power rack, you’ll NEVER learn how to barbell squat properly. You’ll never learn that you don’t need the tampon pad because if you squeeze your shoulders together and down, you create a shelf of muscle that prevents the bar from sitting directly on your spine. With the pad in place, you won’t tighten the upper back, preventing the squat from being a full-body exercise. Let me guess, you thought squatting was only a leg movement, right? Check out his clip:
That’s a full body movement if there ever was one. He’s using everything he has to lift the bar, something that is impossible on a Smith machine.

Trainers that work in gyms that only have Smith machines are really screwed as far as their knowledge is concerned. Squatting is an art and a science, as are all of the barbel lifts. The placement of the bar, tightening up the back and the core, wearing a belt, foot placement, the angle of the back, squat depth, etc. all are the types of knowledge you can gain from squatting in a power rack. This is the type of knowledge you want people to pay you for, but you won’t have it if the clients use a machine to quarter squat and get about one-quarter of the results they would get from barbell squats.

I actually feel sorry sometimes for such trainers and that’s why I opened Formosa Fitness in the first place — I wanted a place where I could get the equipment that would allow me to be the type of trainer that actually knew something. As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t know how to barbell squat, deadlift, bench press and press a barbell overhead, you have no business calling yourself a personal trainer to begin with. Those of you in big box gyms need to realize that the typical gym environment is designed for skill-less exercise in the first place and will prevent you from developing the very skills you want people to pay you for.

Whether you’re a gymgoer or a trainer, skip the Smith machine and find that lone power rack in the corner that everyone does barbell curls in and use it for what it was designed for. Learn how to squat and do the other barbells lifts correctly and you’ll have a base of knowledge that you can mine for the rest of your life. Don’t have trainers at your gym that know how to lift without a Smith machine or don’t have power racks at your gym? Time to switch gyms!

One of the great things about living in Taiwan is that so much stuff is made here. A lot of the fitness equipment that people enjoy is designed and/or manufactured in Taiwan so occasionally you’ll bump into someone that has experience with that design or production and they can give you some insight into how things work.

Below is quote from a treadmill designer and engineer who I asked about treadmills and how they calculate the calories you supposedly burn in “basic mode” where you get on the treadmill and just hit start.

“There are two different accepted calorie calculations, one for walking and one for running. We have to guess where the switchover is, and personally I calculate both values and then “fade” from one to the other either side of 6kph. The calculation gives a burn rate in ml per kg per minute; millilitres being oxygen and kg being bodyweight. Divide that value by 3.5 and you’ve got METs. This estimate is surprisingly accurate, especially for grade running; it’s about +/-10%. To estimate calories, you can assume 1 litre of oxygen represents 5kcal burned, but that’s only true for aerobic respiration. The metabolic reactions change throughout a long workout, so although the METs estimate is good, the final calorie value probably isn’t. And of course if the machine doesn’t know the user’s weight, then it’s even less accurate; in that case, I just use 70kg if the actual weight is unknown.

Distance is just measured as speed x time, which must (when you think about it) be completely accurate as long as speed is accurate. Speed is always slightly off though (a couple of %), especially with AC motors, but it will be a constant error, so you can compare distances with confidence.”

Here was my response:

“So 70kg is the guess of the average weight, meaning women under that weight are way off. So a 45kg women would be burning significantly less calories than a 70kg man.

I noticed we’re talking about body weight but METs don’t take into account body composition. So someone with higher than average lean body mass would also find their calorie count off, yes?

You’re point about it measuring aerobic respiration is well taken. I’ve long noticed that cardio machines don’t appear calibrated for anaerobic conditioning like Tabatas. This type of conditioning burns calories pretty well but the machines don’t reflect that fact. Naturally though, they can’t account for EPOC, etc. It’s just that clients are used to seeing a number and having that reflect everything when it actually doesn’t.

Finally, (and this is a more general comment) I’ve long noticed that “350 calories” burned for a beginner doesn’t seem to equal “350 calories” for someone fitter for the same length workout. Most machines don’t take into account efficiency and adaptation, which the body acquires as you do it more often. Most people don’t think about what they’re doing and use the exact same setting at the exact same speed for the same length of time and take the calorie count they get as a fact, even though they’ve been doing that same workout for a year. The 350 calories they might have burned the first few times seems to be much lower in reality even though the numbers are the same a year later.”

Sometimes goals get in the way. Maybe we follow a strength program in order to get to the novice level or the intermediate level only. Why? Because we can’t see beyond that. But why can’t we? How do we really know where the program might take us? Will we only follow the program to the novice or intermediate level? I think a lot of people lack faith and commitment. They won’t put in the effort and they won’t stick with it for the long term. They’ll be sidetracked by something on Youtube or something that they see somewhere else. This “new thing” might seem like a short cut to our goal, but the problem might have been the goal in the first place. The fact is, we don’t realize our own potential and place too many limits on ourselves. Sometimes we need to throw the goals out and just follow the plan where it leads. But that assumes you have a plan in the first place. Do you?

Hello and welcome to what we hope will be an annual event — Taiwan’s first ever Tactical Strength Challenge (TSC)
Here’s what the competition part of the challenge looks like:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ODDVcHMOz8]

The challenge has two parts: 1. you agree to make the deadlift, pullup, and kettlebell snatch a part of your workout from now until the first weekend of May 2013 and keep us updated on your progress, AND/OR 2. if you feel so inclined, you come compete at the TSC competition on 04 May 2013 at Formosa Fitness.

On the morning of May 04, we have weighins at 10am and the competition starts at 10:30am. Everyone gets three chances to pull a deadlift max. When everyone has pulled, everyone (guys and gals) does a set of max pullups. You’re done when your feet hit the floor. After that, you do a set of max kettlebell snatches in 5:00 with the 12kg (women) or 16kg (men’s beginner), or 24kg (men’s open division). The winner is the one who gets the most points in the three events.

AND ALL PROCEEDS GO TO CHARITY! We’re supporting Chinese Taipei’s deaf athletes.

If you’re interested in joining, please signup here.

We’re excited to be bringing this type of competition to Taiwan for the first time. It’s your chance to participate in an international fitness event.
I can answer any questions folks might have.

Hope to see you there!