When Size Matters

Here's an interesting article in Sports Illustrated about the size of NFL linemen, which is a nice reminder that everyone's goal should not be to look like a fitness cover model. Not that linemen will ever be the ideal for the next Michelangelo, unless the sculptor is an NFL quarterback, but it's a great look at how those who use their body as a tool for employment have vastly different goals than most of us.

Society tends to look at these guys at fat--which anyone starting in the NFL trenches' BMI would confirm--but can a fat guy do this?

"Johnson, a high school QB who played tight end and defensive end for the Sooners before moving to tackle two years ago. Johnson made a pile of money at the combine, deflecting attention from his lack of experience with a series of jaw-dropping efforts, recounted here by Mayock: "He ran 4.72 in the 40 -- at 303 pounds. That's as fast as [49ers wideout] Anquan Boldin ran. He jumped 34 inches, which is [a half inch less than Bengals wide receiver] A.J. Green jumped. And he broad-jumped 9-10, which is what [Patriots running back] Stevan Ridley jumped. That's the freakiest combine ever."


If those of you with power meters start running numbers and see the explosive force required to propel a 300-pound person 34 inches high or 40 years in 4.7 seconds you'll probably think your watch is broken. Exceptional results for a human being of any weight, adding that mass to gravity will yield stats that are off-the-charts.

They are, of course, tools of the trade. When your job is to move (or keep from being moved) a wall of massive humanity in a very small space your livelihood depends on four things: mass, strength, balance, and explosive power.

Warmack freely admits that his February and March weight -- 319 -- is temporary. He dipped into the teens to perform such tasks as the 40-yard dash, three-cone drill and shuttle runs. (About that vertical leap then. ...) By training camp in July he'll be crowding 330. "Right now," he said at pro day, "if I had to block a 370-pound nosetackle, I couldn't do it as efficiently as if I was 328."


There's not really much of a point of today's post, other than there should be more than one ideal of what the perfect human body looks like. Let's face it, those guys in the movie 300 might look good on Men's Health but if I could choose a team to lead me through an army of men I'm picking the "fat" guys with 30 inch verticals.

pic: not only is he big, he's probably faster than you. Michael J. LeBrecht II/1Deuce3 Photography/SI 

Training On The Road

One of our targets at Beachbody is taking the excuses out of working out. All of our programs feature modifications of the movements so that you’re able to do them wherever you are, which have gotten more clever and sophisticated over the years. P90X2’s “hotel room modification” is almost like a different program, that can be done virtually anywhere with a set of exercise bands. All of this makes interruptions for travel in the middle of an exercise program far less daunting.

Unfortunately we haven’t made a training program for cycling yet. My old school bike case meant my bike was in such a state of disrepair that I didn’t want to assemble it for a few days in Calcutta, making finding way to turn some cranks challenging.

On day one I headed down to Guru’s Dream Gym, which I’d written about back in 2007. It was great to see Guru thriving. Fast food and, with it, fat people have definitely come to India. It’s not near where America is but it’s noticeable, leaving Guru on the front lines of defense *

Just re-read the Guru’s post and it’s pretty good. Here’s an excerpt. Click for the whole thing.

Many trainers in the US promote one type of training above all else. Wild proclamations such as “that won’t work,” “you’ll get injured if (insert any type of exercise they don’t teach,” “your body can’t digest (any type of food they don’t subscribe to)”, and so on, fill the health wires. But if we really had all of these answers, and there was really only one right way to train or to eat, why are we still getting fatter? It seems that even the most altruistic of us have become self protectorate. It’s our way or the highway, or else we won’t get your business. But when it comes to diet and exercise this couldn’t be further from the truth.

* we’ve been strategizing a way to bring the coach network over here but it’s hard in a country where ever item (like a dvd) is pirated instantly with no consequence.
pic: romney and ashna go retro at guru's dream gym, calcutta, india

The Chill Pill: The One Drug You Should Be Taking

I review studies almost everyday. Most are on food, exercise, or supplements and how they might better your life. But there’s one topic, far less popular, that’s a constant theme running through many of these, which leads to better results 100% of the time: chilling out.

Today’s post highlights an article from Dan Buettner and NY Times on some of the longest living populations in the world. The main character left the US for his native home on an island in Greece to die when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer nearly four decades ago. The laid back agrarian lifestyle not only cured his cancer but allowed him to out live all of his doctors.

Six months came and went. Moraitis didn’t die. Instead, he reaped his garden and, feeling emboldened, cleaned up the family vineyard as well. Easing himself into the island routine, he woke up when he felt like it, worked in the vineyards until midafternoon, made himself lunch and then took a long nap. In the evenings, he often walked to the local tavern, where he played dominoes past midnight. The years passed. His health continued to improve. He added a couple of rooms to his parents’ home so his children could visit. He built up the vineyard until it produced 400 gallons of wine a year. Today, three and a half decades later, he’s 97 years old — according to an official document he disputes; he says he’s 102 — and cancer-free. He never went through chemotherapy, took drugs or sought therapy of any sort. All he did was move home to Ikaria.

It’s an amazing story that’s less unique that you might think. I can’t recall how many instances I’ve noticed the common theme of improvement in a study is linked more to a lifestyle change than whatever was being studied, especially when that change led to less stress.

Of course we can’t all move to an island. We can, however, chill out. It’s entirely within our scope, no matter what we do and where we live. Remember the Seinfeld (the show about nothing, aka everything) when George becomes the “opposite of every man you’ve ever met” and his casual dismissal of a car cutting him off turns on the woman he’s with? That was more than self-deprecating humor. It was a lesson.

We’ve become a nation of control freaks in the world that can’t be controlled. It’s a no win scenario. We look for distractions to ignore it but these things, like sports, TV, political nonsense et al, make it worse as they too are uncontrollable. We need to focus inward, on our day-to-day lives and what makes them rich, which is not money but our relationship with others around us. "It's not the end of the world," is a cliche we too often ignore. What are we in such a hurry to do, anyway?

In Samos, they care about money. Here, we don’t. For the many religious and cultural holidays, people pool their money and buy food and wine. If there is money left over, they give it to the poor. It’s not a ‘me’ place. It’s an ‘us’ place.”

You don’t need to move to an island to do this. All you need to do is find a way to relax. Exercise and diet, both major elements in the story, are the best place to start because they force your body into a more relaxed and healthy-functioning state. The rest is completely within your control and you can start right now, by reading the article, which sufficed as my daily dose of chill. Now maybe I'll unplug my clocks.

Seeking to learn more about the island’s reputation for long-lived residents, I called on Dr. Ilias Leriadis, one of Ikaria’s few physicians, in 2009. On an outdoor patio at his weekend house, he set a table with Kalamata olives, hummus, heavy Ikarian bread and wine. “People stay up late here,” Leriadis said. “We wake up late and always take naps. I don’t even open my office until 11 a.m. because no one comes before then.” He took a sip of his wine. “Have you noticed that no one wears a watch here? No clock is working correctly. When you invite someone to lunch, they might come at 10 a.m. or 6 p.m. We simply don’t care about the clock here.

stamatis moraitis tending his vineyard and olive grove on ikaria. andrea Frazzetta/LUZphoto for The New York Times

Is 30 Minutes of Exercise Better Than An Hour?

An article claiming less is more when it comes to weight loss and exercise hit the wires today. And while it’s decent if you read the entire thing it requires some explanation because the title is misleading. The details as to why are mainly left out, which come down to two physiological factors that I’ll go into today.

30 minutes exercise 'better than an hour of training' for weight loss

It’s important to first note that it’s not saying less exercise is better for weight loss for everyone. The title indicates this but the article shows it’s only better for the study’s demographic, which was both over weight and out of shape. So let’s look at why.

1. The first ten minutes of exercise is the key for most of us. This has been known for a long while but it’s been getting a ton of play lately. A recent study showed that 10 minutes of exercise can be better than an hour if it’s constructed correctly.

These 10 min studies highlight the importance of high intensity work and its effect on hormonal changes. While this study did not going into such depth, all exercise burns more calories in the first few minutes than when you settle in, no matter what you do. This means that you get the effect of high intensity training for a few minutes even when you aren’t exercising hard. This is because you burn muscle glycogen when you begin exercising until your body is warmed up. Once warm, your body starts to conserve; using fat stores for low intensity movements and saving glycogen for high intensity outputs.

A strong hormonal response (triggered by glycogen-sucking anaerobic work) is what you want in order to make the quickest adaptations to your body. You always get one at the beginning of a workout but it's harder to induce them once you’re warm and moving easily. However, high-level athletic training reverses this so the most important period becomes the push you make towards the end of the workout when you are tired, which can create an even greater hormonal response provided that you are fit enough to handle the workload. So, while short exercise is better than longer exercise by some measurements, there are also times, especially in conditioned populations, where the end of longer exercise is what matters most.

2. Exercise is only as effective as your ability to recover from it. Hence the cliché that you only get stronger at rest. If you overtax your body more than you can recover from you get worse before you get better. This is more than anything else the key to this study. By choosing a deconditioned population they were ensuring success because over the course of the study those doing more exercise became overtrained and had to recover from that state before they probably saw a lot of weight loss.

What this study doesn’t tell us is that if you lengthened it, at some point, those doing the longer workouts would outpace those doing the shorter ones. The laws of progressive overload mean that continual stress must be placed on the body in order to keep fitness progression moving forward. This is why if you run 5 miles everyday it will have less an effect as you get fitter. 30 minutes isn’t better than 60 for everybody, but it certainly is better for some. But in fitness is a moving target. As you get more fit you require more stress in order to continue to get fitter. This is why P90X is harder and longer than Power 90.



any excuse to post the 'torture test' works for me.

I’ve written on this subject before from many angles, such as how to choose the right exercise program , but important to address it from many sides. We don’t all need to be able to do Insanity in order to look great and call ourselves fit. For some of us Hip Hop Abs would be the better choice. Less can indeed be more. The only constant is that the human body needs exercise to function properly and some is almost always better than none.

Special thanks to Denis over at the Fitness Nerd for inspiring this post.

Just Another @#$%! Video Chat

Video streaming by Ustream

Me n' Denis' latest ramblings on fitness and nutrition. Today for some reason we had an all-star cast of names. Even if they were all made up I'm giving the crowd props for creativity. Enjoy!

Tips For Fast & Efficient Coaching

“I can’t know all this stuff so I let you guys do it for me.”
- Superstar Beachbody Coach Tommy Mygrant

Every time I speak with a group of coaches I’m reminded that many aren’t aware of Beachbody’s vast array of educational resources that can help you train your customers more efficiently. As a coach you’ve got plenty of things that take up your time without having to try and also be a personal fitness trainer or nutritionist. Beachbody already has a bunch of those so why not use them?

Of course you can’t call or email us personally (which you know if you’ve tried to email me). With millions of customers our trainer customer ratio is decidedly low. But we can still help. A lot.

Over the years we’ve probably experienced every scenario that you’ll encounter as a coach, and many many more, all of which have been answered somewhere in written format. Once you learn where to search you can become the coach with all the answers, most likely spending less time than you do now. By following this quick reference guide to smarter coaching the above pic can be you!

Teambeachbody.com

This should be your home page. It’s populated with popular subjects and content is rotated regularly. As opposed to, say, digging around Yahoo health or some other popular site, the information on this page is directly placed to help guide and motivate Beachbody coaches.

Newsletters

If you aren’t signed up for the newsletters than you’re missing out. Over the last 12 years our content has been praised again and again to the point we’ve had letters from people stating we are the only fitness resource they use. This is because our articles are written specifically to you. When we strategize what goes into each newsletter our primary concern is what our customers have been asking about on the Message Boards. Essentially our newsletter archives are one giant FAQ.

Unfortunately they can be hard to search and 12 years is a lot of pages to scroll through. Here’s the trick that works best for us when we need to find them for reference. Google “Beachbody newsletter and the subject you are looking for”. If you know who wrote an article, like me or Denis Faye, you can add an author for more specificity but Beachbody newsletter generally is enough to weed out the masses.

Blogs

A Team Beachbody blog will be up and running shortly but, for now, we’ve got some more specific blogs that should be on your radar. Carl Daikeler‘s will keep you up to date on the latest happenings at Beachbody. Denis Faye’s “The Real Fitness Nerd” casts a critical eye on what’s going on both good and bad in the nutrition world. And where you are right now, The Straight Dope, is what I call tertiary information—meaning it’s advanced reading for those who want a deeper understanding of fitness and nutrition than what you’ll get in our diet guides and newsletters. And, while less frequently updated, Chalene Johnson and Tony Horton’s blog, as well as Tony's Huffington Post site is always worth a read. All of these should be on your favorites list and checked regularly.

Message Boards

If you’re not using the Team Beachbody Message Boards where have you been? Once the hub of everything Beachbody, this is the place where we’ve specifically answered all of those weird questions your customers hit you with. No matter how bizarre you may think a question is there is a very good chance we’ve heard it, and answered it, before. Our staff has cataloged these answers so they’re at their fingertips, meaning they can shoot you an answer a lot faster than it would take you to search PubMed and try and make sense out of a bunch of hard to decipher abstracts.

Another big plus of the Boards is that it puts us all on theme. Re-purposing FAQs to your customers keeps your coaching message consistent. As Beachbody grows our messaging grows too. The more consistent it is the easier everyone’s job gets.

For the most actively monitored Forums go to Info and Education. That's where the experts spend most of their time.

It should be noted that the boards' popularity once took a hit when coach phishing was rampant in the early days of TBB. That issue is now praciclly nonexistent as we monitor heavily for trolls.

To add more to Tommy Mygrant’s above quote, he also told me that the Boards were a massive time saver for his coaching, enabling him to focus motivating and selling instead of trying to fix issues that were better handled by others. He summed up by saying “I don’t know how any coach gets by without them.”