No Deadlifting at Planet Fitness

Slate is just the most recent to do a piece on Planet Fitness’s “Judgement-Free Zone Philosophy” designed to help “members can relax, get in shape, and have fun without being subjected to the hard-core, look-at-me attitude that exists in too many gyms.”

I can’t say I disagree with the notion that the current business model for gyms needs rethinking. It’s actually refreshing to hear the Planet Fitness CEO says “We’ll be the only fitness chain that can say we’ll never try to sell you personal training. A lot of people will say we are dead wrong with this historic move. But the world was flat once, and who the hell needs a friend for 50 bucks an hour?” And at roughly $15 per month for members, the price is absolutely right.

Here’s one of their commercials. (I get the joke, but I still find it ridiculous.)

Though I will say this to CEO Mike Grondahl: Keeping bowls of candy at the front counter and doing “Pizza Monday” promotions makes me question this guy’s sincerity. At once he slams big-box gyms for preying on people by actively selling memberships to people they know/hope won’t come (they do) and then preys on his members by encouraging junk food?

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with pizza every once in a while, but I would never expect to be served a beer at an AA meeting. It’s just not the place for it. I don’t expect Piece to install squat racks and treadmills, and I don’t expect Symmetry Center to serve pizza and beer.

But my biggest issue with Planet Fitness? No deadlifting. Here’s why:

Aside from walking, the Deadlift might be the most basic and common of humans’ mutli-joint movements. Learning how to properly brace your spine while you go down and get something off of the ground is essential to longevity and optimal health. How many times per day do you pick something up? How many times in your life will you pick up a moving box? A pet? A child?

Not everyone wants to be as strong as is possible and not everyone needs to. And relatively few people in the gym are actually working on that. Whether they know it or not, guess what they’re working on?

Movement preparation.

Whether you’re at the gym to lose a few pounds, to get a little stronger, to get a few seconds faster, or just because you’re told to exercise for optimal health, if you’re there doing strength training with proper form through a full range of motion, you are training movements. All of the other benefits are secondary to learning how to move properly.

So if you don’t think you’ll be picking up anything off of the floor any time soon, go ahead and join Planet Fitness. Great price, free pizza, no grunting, and it’s “Judgement Free” (as if such a place/thing actually exists).

But if you ever plan on moving or having kids, you should be deadlifting.

(Disclaimer: I absolutely do think a good trainer is worth $50+ an hour. Obviously. Here’s why. If you want experience it firsthand, contact me and come in for a free workout. If you’re unconvinced, I’ll point you to the nearest Planet Fitness.)

Monday Motivation

An Inspirational Community: r/Loseit

Without blabbing too much about reddit (and going beyond r/fitness), there’s a great little (big?) community over there called r/loseit. It’s a subreddit dedicated to bringing together people struggling to lose anywhere from 200lbs to 20lbs. They’re a supportive, helpful, and insightful group. Most of the folks at r/loseit have yo-yo dieted, have failed on multiple accounts to follow through with their goals, and there are countless stories of the resulting (deeper) depression and desperation of “losing”.

If at any point in your life – past/present/future – that sounds like an apt description of yourself (or someone you know), I’d recommend heading over and reading some of the amazing stories. They aren’t exercise physiologists or nutritional wunderkinds. Mostly its anecdotal troubleshooting (not all of which – mind you – is the best advice) but I’d wager that we need to learn most of life’s little lessons on our own. (Read: the hard way.)

Check out some of the incredible stories at the Loseit Before/After Hall of Fame. Dig through their FAQ and get a handle on where to start building a comprehensive beginner’s plan. Or these folks aren’t “you,” just swing by and offer up some praise for the folks working their butts towards healthy and happy lifestyles.

You Are What You Eat: Emotions Edition

Nora Gedgaudas spoke at the Ancestral Health Symposium about Nutrition and Mental Health, and how diet affects your emotions.

It’s important to remember that whatever your emotion or mood, it all comes down to biochemistry. We knowingly or (more often) unknowingly program ourselves to react in certain ways to certain stimuli. It can be a person, a place, an event, or a food (among many, many others) that releases a storm of happy, sad, anxious, etc. chemicals. It’s a double-edged sword, but keep this in mind: You can reprogram these things. It isn’t simple and it probably means facing countless demons, but it can be done.

So… What does this have to do with exercise and/or Personal Training? Well, I lose track of how many times a day I’m told “I can’t.” With exercise, so many people have had their heads filled with stuff they should or should not be doing; with “ways” of training that are right for them and ways that aren’t. Say/read those things enough times and you’ll see that it’s pretty simple to get someone saying “I can’t” do back squats or (relatively) heavy deadlifts. Saying “I can’t” when you really can’t is just fine. Saying “I can’t” when you don’t really know (either because you don’t have the expertise or because you’ve never before walked up to the line of “I can”/”I can’t”) is not okay.

It’s relavant to exercise because the way we’ll train, we’ll reevaluate whether you can or can’t with every set in every workout. We’ll figure out what you really can’t, then we’ll try again next week. And by that time, I’ll bet you can.

Most people who start talking to me about exercise assume I’m in it for the aesthetics or – less often – that I’m in it for the healthy body. Yeah, those things are great, but they’re peripheral benefits.

I’m in it for the mental health. I train hard because every time I do I reprogram what I can and can’t do. I conquer old goals, set new ones, and finish up every day with a clear understanding of what I need to do better next time. Any half-serious trainer would be lying if he/she said they didn’t really dig the “pump” at the end of a great workout, but my addiction is to self-discovery. To pushing the limits of what “I can.”

It makes me think of this quote:

We could argue all day about what does or does not go beyond the physical, but we’re all biochemical machines. We’re products of our environment and creatures of habit. Once you begin to realize that you actually do have some control over the inputs that build our reward pathways and form habit – be they food, exercise, relationships, sleep, etc. – you’ll begin to understand that we aren’t powerless passengers. On the contrary, we’re quite capable of mastering, manipulating, and molding our environment to us.

Seriously. You can.

Quote of the Day

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken adults”

~Frederick Douglass

Modern Agriculture is Newer Than You Think

That’s not to say I’m convinced it’s all bad for all people, but if you’re sick, trying to lose weight, low on energy, etc., it might be worth it to give eating Paleo a shot.

What Can Strength Training Do For You?

We know it helps us get Strong. We know it helps walk up a flight or two of stairs. Maybe strength training makes us a little faster, a little more alert. Strength training improves our health.

But how? Health is such a vague term. “Health” might mean a hundred very different things to a hundred very different people. It’s both a general feeling and a specific condition. And countless things in between. So what are some of the specifics?

Structural/Boundary/Membranes:

• Decreases age-related sarcopenia
• Decreases injuries and falling
• Decreases pain by stimulating endorphins

Inflammation:

• Lowers hs-CRP
• Augments IL-6

Hormones and Neurotransmitters:

• Improves insulin sensitivity
• Decreases body fat
• Facilitiates weight loss
• Decreases risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes
• Reduces stress
• Increases growth hormone
• Increases testosterone

Psychological Equilibrium:

• Improves mood, depression, and anxiety (Strength Training has been shown that it may be at least as effective as many antidepressants)
• Again – Reduces stress (leading to improved attitude and outlook)

Detoxification and Biotransformation:

• Augments lymphatic flow, sweating, and metallothioneins (“capture” free radicals)

Digestion, Absorption, and Barrier Integrity:

• May improve colon motility (Better poops!)
• May improve digestion by decreasing stress

Immune Surveillance:

• May improve immunity to viral infections
• May improve sleep
• May improve overall immune function

That’s straight from the Institute of Functional Medicine – a group that’s exploring new territory by researching and “training practitioners to identify and heal the underlying clinical imbalances of chronic disease, creating momentum toward health.”

I’m guessing they had to throw in so many “May”s for legal reasons, but ask anyone who has been strength training regularly for a prolonged period of time and they’ll tell you there’s no “May” about these points. I get sick less often, have more energy, and more focused and balanced, and while it may not always reduce the stress we impose on ourselves while we’re out making friends, enjoying Chicago, or paying the bills, Strength Training certainly helps to manage the stress.

Tangible health and intangible health, all for about 2 hours a week of High Intensity Strength Training (2-3 sessions).

Sounds hard to beat. Contact me to get started!

 

Robb Wolf’s Stress Checklist:

Or, “Are You Charlie?”

From The Paleo Solution:

1. Do you sleep less than nine hours per night?
2. Do you have problems falling asleep or staying asleep?
3. Do you wake up more exhausted than when you went to bed?
4. Do you get a “second wind” in the evening, and really only feel awake about the time you should go to bed?
5. Are you tired and achy all the time?
6. Do you suffer frequent upper-respiratory infections?
7. Do you work out to exhaustion, and do you crave the “boost” exercise provides?
8. Do you live and die by stimulants such as coffee?
9. Have you gained fat in the midsection, despite watching your food intake?
10. Have you experienced memory problems?
11. Do you have problems with depression or seasonal affective disorder?
12. Do you remember what sex is?

If you’re experiencing any of these things, I’d highly recommend that (as a start) you pick up Robb’s book. Stress is a killer (literally and figuratively), but with some simple lifestyle changes you can really begin to minimize it (and what it’s doing to your mind and body) in a major way. And once you see the benefits of, say, just getting enough sleep every night, you can start to tackle some of the other, bigger, scarier stressors in your life.  

(Long) Quote of the Day:

From Robb Wolf’s “The Paleo Solution”:

Exercise is integral to you being who you are MEANT to be.

 

You are born into this world with a set of genetics, half from Mum, half from Pops. Those genes are expecting you to run, jump, throw, tumble, dance, fight, flee, salt, carry build,  wrestle, stroll, climb, drag, hike, sprint. You are meant to be active. REALLY active. There are few critters on this planet that do not expend significant energy finding food, avoiding danger, or looking for a mate. Well, except us. We can literally do almost nothing physical yet have food, clothing, shelter, and safety. This is fantastic in many ways, as living wild in nature has its pitfalls, but being sedentary can kill us just as surely as beast or foe. Don’t believe me? The Centers for Disease Control list inactivity as the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Add poor diet to that, and we have the second leading cause, behind only tobacco. Cancer, neurodegeneration, diabetes, depression, frailty, loss in general capacity – all these and many other ills await the couch-bound.

 

I might add that since I’m going to Robb’s seminar in Boston next month (and thus finishing/re-reading/re-reading his book), this will probably be the first of many in a series of “Robb Wolf Quotes of the Day”.

Anyway. Get out there and move!

 

Courage Wolf Says:

Not the nicest way to remind you to do your squats today, but it works.