AmpedTraining Blog
2009 January 1 | 1 Comment »
By Matt
So continuing the list I reserved the right to continue, I want to talk about perceptions. Specifically, how perception and reality can sometimes conflict.
2. Don’t let desire color your perception
Sometimes I get detached from what ‘average people’ think about fitness concepts. I touched on this in the first part, where I talked about how a lot of beginners come in clueless (through no fault of their own, mind you) and end up completely confused.
It really does stun me from time to time, though; some of the ideas that people have about fitness, about looking good, and about exercise just…well, they boggle me.
Case in point. I was recently reminded on a forum I visit that the concept of ‘toning’ or ‘body sculpting’ is alive and well. This ideology falls squarely under the category of misinformation; it’s an ad-hoc patchwork of various concepts and sound-bites that get thrown into a blender. The outcome is rather – well, let’s just say ‘inaccurate’ and ‘grossly misleading’ will suffice.
Point one: Your body doesn’t select from different pre-determined shapes. It’s not like picking out clothes where you can just pick the one you want. Your body reacts to exercise in a way that is almost entirely determined by your genetics. You cannot change this.
In other words, when you start a strength-training routine, your body is doing what it wants to do. If you feel this has made you unfeminine or bulky or whatever icky thing, then that’s a problem with you and your views on femininity. It is not the fault of any training program – that’s what strength training does, and that’s how your body was programmed to respond to it.
If you don’t like it, then stop strength training and stick to cardio.
Point two: Muscle definition is a function of body fat. The more fat you have, the less defined you will look. This also applies to ‘toned’, ‘long and lean’, ‘sculpted’, or any other adjective you care to use. All of these terms come back to one thing: how visible the muscle is under your skin. If you think you need to ‘tone up’ or that you need to ‘lengthen’ your muscles, then have a hard look at your diet. Chances are you’re holding too much fat.
Same goes for ‘getting bulky’. Fat displaces volume just as much as muscle. If you’re a typical woman, you hold fat in your lower body; this means that when the jeans get tight, odds are you need to drop fat. It’s not the muscle making you ‘bulky’.
Point three: Muscle lengthening. Thank you Pilates for this little gem.
Listen. A muscle is attached very securely to the bones in your skeleton. This means that the muscle physically cannot get any longer unless the bone itself gets longer.
Do you see people that do Pilates getting taller? Do you see them getting longer arms or legs? No?
Then why would you give this any thought?
Point four: ‘Eating clean’ means nothing if you’re not controlling for calorie intake and nutrient intake.
What does ‘eating clean’ mean anyway? Most people seem to mean it colloquially, switching to eating ‘unprocessed’ or ‘healthy’ foods. That’s fair enough, and for a lot of people a change in food quality will go a long way.
Part of it is improved nutrient intake, and part of it is because it’s harder to overeat without junk foods. But it is not impossible to over eat. Don’t assume that just because your diet is ‘clean’ that it is optimal.
At the end of the day, you’re not going to beat thermodynamics. Your body has to burn up more energy than you take in with food in order to see weight or fat loss. If you’re not doing this, it doesn’t matter how ‘clean’ your diet is.
These factors can, by themselves, solve 95% of the misconceptions that men and women both have about training. Yet these myths stick around. Why is that?
It brings me back to the point of his post. Marketing, as a somewhat scientific discipline, is based on the idea of catering to emotions. That’s why beer commercials feature women in bikinis – it appeals to the crowd that will buy beer (young men). It’s all about creating a desire by associating a product with an emotional response.
That’s exactly what these myths do – they sell you by promising to give you what you want. The average person isn’t equipped to resist this. S/he doesn’t have either the knowledge or the critical thinking tools to dissect the claims.
For a long time now I’ve been stating that education on logical reasoning and critical thinking will take you much, much further towards your goals than any information on the field itself. The information is not the problem – it’s out there. What you need is the ability to filter it and separate the gems from the vast piles of garbage.
That’s my second gem of New Year’s advice – don’t let your desires rule your perception. Look at things as objectively as you can.
2008 December 31 | 2 Comments »
By Matt
This is cheesy and I almost feel bad for making a post like this. I don’t normally target the ‘average folks’ as my demographic, but I’m told I need a ‘friendlier’ and ‘less intimidating’ demeanor, so why not?
It’s that time again, as we all know. All the New Years resolutioners will be piling into the gyms, swearing to stop smoking and eating crap and making sure to run a few miles a day. It’s a time most of us regulars dread, for numerous reasons. The good news is that by February, most of this storm-surge will be back on the couch eating chips and complaining about how they just don’t have time to exercise.
Hey, they keep paying the bills for the rest of us, so it’s worth a month’s worth of inconvenience in my ever-so-humble opinion. Continue »
2008 November 3 | Comments Off
By Matt
I was recently reminded of one of my favorite articles.
It’s by Isaac Asimov, one of my favorite authors. Mr. Asimov died back in 1992, but occasionally one of his gems will resurface and I’m reminded again why I enjoy his work so much.
This article, titled The Relativity of Wrong, was written to demonstrate a crucial, but still poorly understood, facet of science: the idea that a statement or idea can be less wrong than another. What, you might ask, does this have to do with strength training?
As it turns out, it has plenty to do with it. More specifically, it has plenty to do with the volumes of information (and misinformation) that pervade the industry, and the poor (if any) reasoning ability that comes along with this. Since my schtick in this game involves using principles of logic and critical thinking to tear down idiocy, it’s very relevant.
Mr. Asimov’s frustration and subsequent rebuttal are in many ways parallel to what goes on in the fitness industry.
It’s unfortunate that the mindset that he, and others of his kind, so actively try to discourage is so rampant. It’s not just in the fitness industry; you see this all over. When you can’t even teach science in schools because of superstitious traditions, you’ve got a problem.
With the levels of bro-science and general anti-intellectualism at all time highs, I feel the need to occasionally interject things such as this in order to help chip away at some of the ignorant thinking.
Enjoy.
Continue »
2008 July 13 | Comments Off
By Matt
In the aftermath of the last post I made, regarding Alwyn Cosgrove’s plagiarism of Lyle McDonald’s Ultimate Diet 2.0, there’s been two prevailing opinions.
One side feels that it’s despicable. The other side feels that it’s just undeserved hatin’, and people trolling for the sake of trolling.
Alwyn has since made a semi-public apology for not crediting Lyle, but in the process this has placed a nail in the coffin: he was given no permission to use Lyle’s work, and in light of other events the excuse of ‘conveniently forgetting’ the credit paragraph with the rest of the work is extremely flimsy.
But to those of you that feel it’s undeserved hatin’, I’m curious for the rationale.
The only excuse I’ve seen trotted out so far has revolved around character attacks on Lyle. It seems a lot of people resent Lyle; of course, most of these people aren’t bright and at some point have had their asses handed to them by him, so that’s no real surprise.
The troubling matter is that these folks somehow believe that Alywn’s admitted theft is somehow OK simply on the basis of not liking Lyle.
To those of you that feel that way: Are you stupid? Seriously, that’s a real question. I want you to look at yourself and honestly ask if you’re just dumb.
You can not like somebody all day long, that’s up to you. If you get all butt-hurt because you lose a debate, hey, that’s your character. It says volumes about you, but that’s another discussion.
The point is, you don’t justify theft based on the fact that you don’t like the victim. Simple as that.
To be bluntly honest, if you knew some of the behind the scenes background on this, and assuming you’re not one of these that can’t even understand how Alywn was in the wrong, you’d see things differently. I’ve hinted at some of this douchebaggery in previous posts here.
Point being, this is the tip of a substantially larger iceberg. As my drunken buddy Will Heffernan put it, Lyle didn’t invent fat loss, but the way he’s gone through the research and made it easily-digestible for the average person is pretty well unique, and almost everybody steals from him. The Body Recomposition forums have been a Guru hunting ground for years now, even if the plagiarism isn’t necessarily this blatant.
All of you out there that got high and mighty when you got Alwyn’s explanation, talking about judging before having all the facts, might do damn well to remember that it works both ways.
Going back to our knuckle-dragging friends, we see that any criticism of Alwyn must be unjustified, and Lyle’s just being an asshole. Nevermind that the guy’s had his material pilfered for years, without saying a word. The one time he actually does speak up about a very grievous case, and with someone that’s repeatedly taken material for profit, without so much as credit, he gets jumped on. Nevermind that Alwyn cut off ties with Lyle, for calling BS on his shaky interpretation of research (i.e., saying stupid things).
Explain to me exactly why we’re blaming the victim, again?
Just some food for thought for all of you out there that only see “hating”. You can bury your heads all you want, but it’s not “just hating” if it’s in the right. Yes, there are idiots that troll for the sake of trolling, but it’s a very blatant strawman argument to assume that any criticism of a guru or self-appointed expert is uncalled for.
Many of you single-minded types out there would do very well to remember this. Your heroes aren’t all they seem.
2008 March 20 | Comments Off
By Matt
One of the core problems facing everyone involved in fitness and strength training is how to figure out what is garbage and what is legitimately effective.
This can be difficult because the entire field of exercise science is still made up of a lot of unknowns. Most of the knowledge and things we take for granted today have come in large part from experts in the field, the coaches and trainers that actually work with various athletes.
Even then, there’s a wide disagreement among these practitioners. A lot of it will really boil down to argument over fine details, as the general philosophies will usually line up.
But the devil can often be in the details; how do you know what you should listen to and what you shouldn’t?
Ideally speaking, we should use a rationalist stance in evaluating information. This means being open-minded, but at the same time being critical, logical, and rational in how we look at material.
Due to some weird quirks of human psychology, the rationalist stance can easily be derailed. Humans are emotional thinkers, reactive to the feelings and sensations that different things can elicit in us. This is the basis of much of our culture in fact, from religion to politics. We like ideas, we like charismatic people to rally behind, and we like groups to be a part of.
Marketing is based on the scientific study and application of these responses, in fact. By study and understanding what people will respond to, you can create an entire program designed to make people give you money. It’s elegant, in some ways, while being a little bit scary.
Getting back on topic a bit, the fitness industry in the modern day actually does have some interest in helping you out. The problem is that marketing, and more precisely the emotional responses it’s designed to tap into, has made everybody’s opinion relevant.
Most of us in the know refer to these guys as Gurus. They develop a system of training and/or dieting, codify it and turn it into various products that they sell you, and make money.
There’s nothing wrong with this, I want to add. As long as the information is of good quality, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making money off it. Both parties benefit from the exchange.
There’s one tiny problem that comes up, though.
Gurus can fall prey to their own marketing rhetoric. When this happens, the rationalist stance flies right out the window. Open discussion is closed, disagreement is chided, and censorship will begin.
So how do you operate when you listen to authority? Are you emotional, falling into line based on promises and expectations? Or are you a rationalist, evaluating skeptically, but fairly?
An expert worth listening to will be a rationalist by nature. He or she will be capable of backing up claims made, be it with science or anecdote. He will be able to admit gaps in knowledge, or areas which are speculation.
Gurus tend to fall into three categories, based on level of competence:
- * The Bro – The Bro is a meathead down at the gym that is big, ripped, and probably on drugs. He played football in high school (if he’s American), and works as a personal trainer. The Bro might understand a little science, but it’s just enough to get him into trouble and support his Bro-logic beliefs.
A Bro’s claims can be easily countered with basic logic and science reasoning. Once challenged the Bro will inevitably respond by moving the goalposts with arguments like “hey, look at me!” or “oh yeah, well science doesn’t know everything, look at me!”. Expect to hear inflated claims of bench press numbers or body fat levels, and how those pencil-neck researchers don’t know anything.
- * The Educated Trainer – The Educated Trainer is a guy that works down at the gym that’s a cut above. He may or may not have an impressive physique, but he doesn’t rely on this to get business. Instad, he relies on being educated and knowing things.
This actually does put him a cut above in the Bro-dominant personal trainer industry, but instead of falling victim to Bro-logic, the Educated Trainer relies too much on research topics. This means he will probably have a really good grasp of general fitness topics and how to work with special populations. The drawbacks are that he will tend to be closed-minded with regards to what he does know.
- * The True Professional – This guy is the real deal (no sarcasm implied). He’s actually trained and worked with athletes, may have some higher education, and generally speaking knows his stuff.
So where’s the problem? The True Professional can still be a Guru and fall prey to Guru hubris. Themes here will include getting so locked into a way of doing things and a single thought process that anything outside this becomes worthless.
The common theme here is the argument that science is the best, until science disgrees. Then we can ignore the things we don’t like, cherry-pick the parts that support our argument, and maintain the Guru status of expert. Often enough the goalposts are moved so that knowledge isn’t the measure; we’re instead shown glitz and glamour in the form of high-level athletes. In other words, marketing over substance.
Hey, you can get results, that’s awesome. But if your knowledge is shaky, it’s shaky. If it’s not applicable to certain groups, if it’s not applicable. And for the love of Rama don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your way is the only way; down that path lies total failure.
The rationalist approach is much better. Instead of slavishly sticking to a mantra, you can actually use this contradictory data to either come up with reasons for the contradiction, or use it to update your own thought processes.
But this might require some common-sense thinking, which is apparently hard to come by.
2007 November 1 | Comments Off
By Matt
From time to time (ok, constantly) I catch flak from people for hating on something that has given Person X clear and obvious results. Then Person Y will chime in and say the same. Before you know it, it’s a huge e-fight.
It’ll generally follow this script:
The claim is made: “‘s program gave me in just !”
Basically, pure ad copy.
Then I say something like this: LOL, that program sucks. If I’m feeling extra giddy, I’ll add something like “douchebag” for extra flavor.
Then I’ll get dogpiled by all the faithful that truly believe in the program.
You may ask, “Matt, why do you do such things???”
Besides the pure fun of dominating on ‘tards in an e-fight, there actually is a valid, underlying reason for that.
I like simplicity. In my thinking, simplicity is elegance. The simple and more straightforward something is, the more likely it is to be effective. In my thinking, the best training programs and best dietary strategies embody this.
Simplicity makes things accessible. It makes them easy to follow. But it has one key drawback: It doesn’t sell things.
If something is simple and easily applied, you don’t need an outside guru to guide you along. You don’t need the guru-expert to explain it to you.
The reason I call bullshit is generally not for lack of results. In many cases I’ll even concede that the H.U.G.E. Program or the L.E.A.N. Diet will probably get results.
No, the source of my bitching is not pure efficacy, in itself. I’ll start calling names when any given strategy is needlessly complicated.
The reason is simple. Overly complicated strategies are not necessary. They can be fun. They can be a distraction. They can be a change of pace. All of these are valid reasons.
But they are not necessary.
That is why I will sometimes say a program or a diet is stupid. Because it creates the wrong impression: it makes that particular system into a necessity, instead of expounding on the more fundamental principles. The principles are the necessity, not the particular implementation.
As an example, how many diets do you see that claim if you eat bananas or mangos or some other magical shit that you can lose a phenomenal amount of weight in like 2 weeks or whatever? All of these diets are forming a ring around the real cause of weight loss: eating less damn food. There’s no escaping it. To lose weight, you have to eat less food.
The specific programs are derived from this basic principle. But the program doesn’t tell you that. That doesn’t sell.
The same logic applies to training programs. The focus is put on the “revolutionary” implementation, the “unique” strategy this particular trainer incorporated. No mention is made of the fundamental principles that made the program work, like sound exercise selection, or progressive overload.
I see girls all the time that get told in the “mags” by really stupid people that plyometrics are “da bomb” for thinning out the legs and for making really cool changes to the body. I then try to explain something to them about how plyometrics work (ie, that they target the neural and elastic elements of the body, not so much the muscles per se) and how metabolic work is general (your cardiovascular system doesn’t care what the activity is if it’s of high enough intensity and sufficient duration).
You could be doing any activity with the same relative intensity and overall calorie expenditure, and see the same results. This is an example of how overcomplication can arise in training programs. It’s not the plyometrics, or any specific movement type, that is creating the results. It’s the simpler explanation, not the complex one.
What you’re actually presented with is an integrated re-packaging of a general philosophy. The actual ideology behind (solid) training program and nutritional program design is fairly universal. What you’re getting is someone else’s ideas about how those pieces fit together and actually work in the real world.
Which is ok. I have no problem with that, because it’s a simple fact that in order to even go to the gym at all and have any expectation of results, you have to do this on some level. You can do it yourself, or you can accept somebody else’s ideas.
I call bullshit on things that either 1) needlessly overcomplicate the matter and/or 2) make it seem as if the complication is integral to the process.
I call bullshit because neither is the case. Next time you ask yourself if a program is good, or ask me what kind of criteria I use to evaluate a program, ask yourself this question: Is it as simple as it can be?
If it’s not, you’d be doing good to ask yourself why, and how it could be simplified. Complication only leads to more points of failure.
2007 October 13 | Comments Off
By Matt
Recently a new study was released regarding the characteristics of anabolic steroid users.
The conclusions, while shocking to some, are hardly surprising. Most users of anabolic steroids are not elite athletes, nor do they meet the image of the desperate addict to recreational narcotics. They’re also not the poor children that have been used to justify the USA’s ban on anabolic compounds.
No, in fact, the average steroid user is a different and, to many a surprising, animal: approximately 30 years old, well-educated, earning above average income in white-collar jobs. Most reported that they were not involved in any athletic competition, nor did they use the drugs as teenagers.
The study was published by the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (warning: PDF file), and focused on an Internet survey sampling around 2000 men in the US.
Other findings included the fact that steroid users were almost universally well-educated about the drugs’ effects and risks, far more so than the traditional image of the recreational drug user.
To most steroid users, this isn’t surprising news. But it does go a long way in showing just how distorted the mainstream view is in regards to the realities of steroid use: both in the drugs effects and risks, and in the people using them.
This study comes on the heels of a similar study released by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center in New South Wales, Australia. The Australian study showed nearly identical demographics among the steroid users to the American study.
While it can be assured that studies of this nature will continue to be performed, and the evidence showing the blatant overstatement of the drugs’ dangers will continue to pile up, the reality is both of these studies are just more confirmation of what’s already known: the criminalization of anabolic steroids is not rooted in any sort of scientific or logical basis.
The US government seems to have little if any interest in reality when it comes to such politically-charged topics. However it would be nice is someone could at least acknowledge the body of research instead of the continued burying of their collective heads in the sand.
This article displays the conflicting thought processes quite well:
Exhibit A:
“Although often considered similar to abusers of narcotics and other illicit drugs, non-medical steroid users are remarkably different, following carefully planned drug regimens in conjunction with a healthy diet, ancillary drugs and exercise.
As opposed to the spontaneous and haphazard approach seen in abusers of psychotropic drugs, everything is strategically planned to maximize benefits and minimize harm, the survey found.”
Exhibit B:
“Based on the results, the authors said that targeting at-risk teens and “cheating” athletes for steroid abuse is ineffective. The study concluded that a better group to target would be professional men who are driven, ambitious and dedicated to gym attendance, diet, occupational goals and educational attainment.”
Now, call me crazy, but don’t they just admit in the first passage that the steroid users are by definition not abusing the drugs (you know, since abuse typically implies blatant misuse and haphazard tomfoolery, as opposed to deliberate, intelligent usage), then turn right around and say we need to target these poor lost souls with intervention strategies?
Has it really sunk this low, folks?
2007 September 27 | Comments Off
By Matt
Anabolic steroids are a tricky subject.
On the one hand, they’re illegal, and most of you have been told your entire lives that these drugs are harmful if not deadly, that they have no value, and only cheaters would use them.
Like it or not, you’ve been lied to. About the drugs and what they do, about who uses them, about realistic effects (desirable or otherwise).
You’ve been lied to by a largely uneducated legislature that has given in to the demands of sport. You’ve been lied to by special-interest groups that have a deeply-vested interest, both financial and political, in keeping drug testing as a part of organized sport.
Notice that I said drug testing in sport, not keeping drugs out of sport. That’s the key issue here.
This has many obvious issues with the foundation of America itself, in the concept of individual liberty so long as it does not infringe on the rights of another.
Continue »
2007 September 13 | Comments Off
By Matt
Have your mind right, the rest will follow
When people start weight training, they come in with a lot of pre-conceived notions. For the average raw newbie with the common if ill-defined motivation of “looking better”, most of these notions can be anticipated.
For men, they want a 6-pack set of abs. Women need to tone up the legs and firm up the butt.
Neither the average man or woman wants to get “too bulky, like the guys/girls in the magazines”.
In logic, it’s generally considered that if you start with a false premise, you will invariably end up with a false conclusion. If you’re in the gym busting ass and watching your diet like a hawk week in, week out, under the wrong idea, you’re probably not ending up where you want to be. A false premise has created the expectation of an outcome that doesn’t follow from what you’re doing.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely aware that the subjects of exercise and nutrition can get complex at times. Your job, be you beginning gym rat trying to figure things out or trainer trying to figure things out for people, is to reduce that complexity down to simple terms. It can seem like a daunting task.
The very fortunate reality of the matter is that, at the end of the day, it’s not that hard. While you’re being actively discouraged from learning and improving on your own by a fitness industry that needs your ignorance in order to profit, you can still make headway in this area.
Then we have the other side of the matter: how realistic is any given goal for you? As a newbie starting out, are you even asking the right questions? If your knowledge base is fundamentally skewed, how can you be?
Continue »
2007 July 25 | Comments Off
By Matt
The Difference in Science and “Unexplainable” Results
This piece is being written in response to the proposition that “scientific theory” cannot explain certain results, in the context of the human body’s function.
More specifically, the proposition was to the effect of:
“If science tells us that the body mobilizes fat in a fashion that is genetically determined, and therefore spot reduction is impossible, then why do some bodybuilders note that when they work the midsection harder that it gets leaner?”
Well ok, the astute among you have likely noted some of the problems here, but I’d like to go into some detail just to eliminate any doubt. This is a treatment of real science vs. bro-science.
Continue »
