As I write this, it’s been 3 full weeks since I began my MRT program at the local chiropractors office. MRT stands for Myofascial Release Therapy. It is also commonly known as ART or the Active Release Technique. It has done wonders for my hip, glute and hamstring flexibility and I am forever sold on the therapy. As for the details…
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May 4, 2009 By 23 Comments
Myofascial Release Is Saving My Life
April 13, 2009 By 27 Comments
Eat to Live, Don’t Live to Eat
photo credit: permanently scatterbrained
The title sounds easy right? Eat to live, don’t live to eat. Simple enough. So why do I go to the park and half of the people I see are overweight or severely obese? Why are their kids fat? Why do my coworkers have fat rolls that hang off the back of their chairs? It’s a question I have asked myself over and over again. There have been many theories as to why people are fatter today than they were 100 years ago. Now you can choose to believe the BS about good calories and bad calories or that we are fatter because we don’t eat like our ancestors.
April 6, 2009 By 40 Comments
Fitness Fundamentalists
Photo Credit: schizoform
I recently viewed the movie Religulous after reading quite a bit about the film, particularly how controversial it was. In case you haven’t seen it yet and/or know nothing about it, the film is a particularly biased documentary about how religion, in general, has it’s fair share of fanatics and zealots. The documentary touches on how many religious fundamentalists dispute some of the most widely known and accepted scientific evidence(on many topics such as evolution, earth age, etc) for a religious belief that has been passed down over time. Many of the religious zealots interviewed in the movie do not seem to be very educated or knowledgeable on the subject matter they so firmly “believe” in(much less the opposing viewpoints) as Bill Maher points out with his probing questions. Many folks are interviewed and asked “why” questions, many of them simple questions that they should be able to answer. The sad reality is that most freeze up mid sentence when they are attempting to explain themselves. It’s almost as if they are pausing for a moment to ask themselves “why do I believe what I believe?”
READ:
I am not trying to start a religious debate as I am not particularly interested in what your spiritual beliefs may be. Starting a debate is NOT my intention whatsoever.
I simply want to point out the similarities between religious fundamentalists and fitness fundamentalists. The plain and simple fact at hand is people will accept something blindly without taking the time to research and “prove” it to themselves. They take the advice of someone who has some supposed authority and by taking their word as gospel, they don’t think twice about it.
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March 26, 2009 By 14 Comments
I Was Only Doing What They Told Me To Do?
I was training on a Monday before lunch time. The gym was packed as it was a holiday and everyone had the day off. As I was wrapping things up, I noticed a guy I had never seen at the YMCA before. He looked a little confused and out of place. I glanced over and saw he had somehow attached a chain to the weight belt he was wearing. That sucker was so tightly wrapped around his tiny waist and I was unsure of how he was breathing so easily. The chains being attached the way they were couldn’t have been remotely comfortable. In the midst of this mess, he was attaching a few 10lb plates to do some chins. I was impressed as I had not seen anyone else besides myself in the gym doing weighted chins before. Bravo.
Quick Fix
I pulled him aside and said “you know there is an easier way to do this right?” He looked at me kind of cockeyed and confused. I went over and grabbed the dip belt and attached the chain links for him. “See?” I said. He then attempted to detach the other chain from his newbie-rigged piece of equipment. He was grateful that he would no longer have to bear the pain of chain links being indented into his flesh in his attempt to build his physique. “Since I am bearing no more pain, does this mean I am not hardcore?” He asked. I laughed out loud.
Disappointment
After I finished a few more sets I asked him if he were new here. He stuttered a bit and explained he and his wife recently moved to this side of town and while he was a member of the YMCA, he hadn’t been to this particular location before. I welcomed him and asked him how he got started. He told me had been training for three years and briefed me about how some trainers from his old gym put him on a routine. After his sessions ran out they told him to tear out the workouts from (insert your favorite muscle magazine here) and follow the advice in the publication. He then admitted that he had been at it continuously without much progress. Whatever he had been doing the last three years was obviously not working as you could tell by his skinny arms, legs and lack of body mass. He honestly looked like a cross country runner. While he may have been a runner, I could tell he was utterly disappointed. He wanted to look great naked and was full of anger that he had been misinformed. Deep down, his desire was to at least look like he worked out. He knew that his physique should look somewhat different after training hard for the past three years. As conversation progressed, he admitted to gaining some strength but that was it. In his head he was saying “I was only doing what they told me to do, so why isn’t it working?”
Entertainment Only
This is why I don’t advocate using bodybuilding or fitness magazines as a source of reliable training information. Sure, there are a few articles now and then that are decent and worthy of reading, however most of what I have seen published may as well be in a comic book because the advice is almost never truly applicable to the general population. Sure the 6 day split may have worked for 1 out of 1000 people but they make it sound as if it it’s going to work for everyone. Guess what? It wont, and these fancy fitness magazines keep all of the newbs in newbie land forever more. I guess that might be the point though, as it keeps them coming back for the next best workout they can spin their wheels with until they start something completely different the following month. Oh yea, they sell a ton of worthless supplements to the newbs in the process. I digress.
I hate to see people being mislead and I equally hate it when people are unable to reach their goals due to having so much invested in ideas/methods that are ineffective. I am very confident that if he gave me 6-8 months, I could give him a much thicker, stronger and un-anorexic frame.
