Common Grammatical Errors
Lose vs. loose:
If you lose a lot of weight, your pants will become loose.
Workout vs. work out:
'Workout' is a noun, and 'work out' is a verb.
I'm going to work out at the gym this evening, even though I'm still sore from Monday's workout.
Regimen vs. regiment vs. regime:
'Regimen' is an exercise plan. 'Regiment' is an infantry division in the military. 'Regime' is a government in power.
The new regime drafted many men into a regiment and put them through a very strenuous training regimen.
BMI
The Body Mass Index is probably the most abused thing in the realm of health and fitness.
The BMI is a population statistics tool, and NOT to be used by individuals to determine healthiness.
It is USELESS as an individual tool because it does not differentiate between lean and fatty weight. There are many body types that make it pointless for use by individuals, such as being "skinny-fat" or being big and muscular. These variations in type tend to cancel each other out, statistically speaking.
BMI is a silly thing that receives an inordinate amount of attention. Ignore what anyone else has to say about it. The most useful tool for determining body type is a mirror.
Ignorant Training Misconceptions
This is the kind of stuff that intersects with some of my other blog posts.
First and foremost is the idea that cardio counts as a full workout and is all you need to do at the gym. Women and people trying to lose weight are the most frequent perpetrators. I'm not going into detail because I've talked about this before, but it is almost always impossible to achieve your ideal body without resistance training.
Intrinsically related to this concept of not lifting weights is the stupid conception that resistance training will automatically make you big and 'bulky.' This is ridiculous. You can never accidentally get too muscular. Even people who try hard to build muscle have a hard time doing so. This is especially true for women, who have nowhere near as much testosterone as men do, which is a powerful anabolic hormone. Women bodybuilders of the grotesque kind invariably take steroids, without which it would be impossible to look the way they do.
By the way, bodybuilding is not so one-dimensional. There are actually 3 major categories in which women compete: full-on bodybuilding (AKA gross), figure, and bikini. The latter usually consists of what women commonly perceive to be the 'perfect body,' but, to be fair, most of them have breast implants.
And this is why women should lift weights.
But just lifting weights isn't enough. You have to do it right, and a lot of people mess even that up. It's not as simple as picking things up and putting them down.
The most widespread training error is using weights that are too light. This accomplishes nothing but wasting time and burning a nominal amount of energy. Often it's under the pretense of "toning." As I've said before, "toning" exercises are not a real thing. You can develop muscle, or you can lose fat (all over your body, that is; spot reduction is not a real thing either) but you generally can't do both simultaneously. Either way, lifting light weights is ineffective for improving your body because it sucks as a weight-loss method too. You can probably burn calories faster by floundering around in a wading pool with a water aerobics class for senior citizens.
Thank God they're not wearing bikinis.
On the other end of the spectrum are the guys who use too much weight. It's extremely easy to spot this mistake because too much weight almost always causes bad form. It's usually counterproductive too, because bad form usually means poor Range of Motion (which means poor exercise quality), and it also means a higher risk of injury. Plus, it makes you look like an idiot.
Aside from lifting too light or too heavy, there's the problem of lifting wrong.
What I mean by this is an overemphasis on machines relative to free weights, and an overemphasis on isolation exercises relative to compound exercises.
Free weights are vastly superior to machines, with a handful of exceptions. In general, machines force your body to do unnatural and artificial movements, and free weight exercises allow your body to move according to its own physiology. Machines also fail to work the many small "stabilizer" muscles that are synergists to the bigger muscles. Machines also overpromote isolation exercise.
The bicep curl machine. What a worthless piece of crap.
Too much emphasis on isolation (that is, working one thing at a time: biceps, triceps, abs, etc.) and not enough on compound movements (working many things at once: squats, deadlifts, bench press, overhead press, etc.) often results in an unbalanced physique and real-world weakness. In addition, compound free weights are superior to those used in isolation for development of many "accessory" muscles.
But I'm not just asserting what I've learned vicariously; I experienced the difference between machines and isolation and compound free weights firsthand, but that is a long story that I am saving for later.
Speaking of isolation, I'm going to go back to spot reduction and talk about that in better detail. This is goes hand-and-hand with the idea of toning, which is why I mentioned it earlier.
The most common toning/spot reduction exercises I see women do are crunches, ab machine work, and flopping legs back and forth on the leg adductor and abductor machines. They spend ridiculous amounts of time doing these and give them so much attention.
Yes, those machines.
People think that if you work a muscle a lot (meaning low weight and high reps) that muscle becomes more "toned" and the fat above the muscle being worked is used, in part, as fuel for the movement. This kind of makes sense, but your body just doesn't work that way.
Your body picks where it likes to have fat. The place where your body likes it most is where it is the slowest to come off. Conversely, the place where it likes it the least is the fastest to come off. You can't cherry-pick the areas you want to be lean. The only thing you can do is to lower your total bodyfat percentage.
(addendum: technically speaking, spot reduction does exist, but only in a technical and not a practical sense)
If there were a video that summarized everything not to do which I just talked about, this would be it.
This pisses me off so much. Yeah, being a model is REALLY TOUGH, alright. Those workouts are sooooo hard! Idiocy and good genetics right there. But it's not entirely her fault-- this personal trainer is an IMBECILE. I'll talk about trainers in a future blog post.
As Seen on TV
If you try to recall the first commercial of some bogus fitness product that comes to mind, you'll probably think of these ridiculous ab machines, or maybe the infamous shake weight:
Facepalm.
By the way, big surprise, "dynamic inertia" is a pseudoscientific term.
(I should know, I'm a mechanical engineering student.)
I liked the parody better anyway.
I liked the parody better anyway.
To people with common sense, it should be obvious that producers hire bodybuilders or models to promote their product. They didn't get ripped from it. Sometimes more 'normal' people are used in testimonials, and their transformations almost never result from the use of one extra product. If something is too good to be true, it probably is.
Speaking of ridiculous ads, there's a rip-off of 5 Hour Energy that has even cheesier commercials. So many things are wrong with this: she's not really sweating, she doesn't appear to be actually working/breathing hard, and she is SWITCHING FROM ONE CARDIO MACHINE TO THE OTHER. DIDN'T I JUST TALK ABOUT THIS!? GAAAAAAAH! POSITIVE FEEDBACK = NEVERENDING CYCLE OF IGNORANCE!
Of course most of these things seen on TV are ridiculous. I mean, have you actually seen anyone use these in real life? Sadly, there are some recent products that are just as ridiculous that have seemed to take off-- namely, toning shoes.
I'm sure you're familiar with those things. You know, the ones with the completely absurd commercials? Yeah, well, people fall for them. Luckily, though, some people have working brains.
I don't know about Skechers, but Reebok paid a hefty price for all that false advertising.
I have nothing to say other than "FAIL!"
These retarded shoes had a predecessor: the Fit Flop. This clip summarizes why either of them don't work. If you want a good butt and legs, you need to do squats and deadlifts.
Pretty depressing, right? Well, these things don't hold a candle to the Power Balance wristband.
This makes me so livid that I'm going to have to bust out the CAPS LOCK (AGAIN):
YOU HAVE TO BE A SPECIAL KIND OF STUPID TO SINCERELY BELIEVE THAT HAVING A PLASTIC BRACELET WITH A SHINY STICKER ON IT IS ACTUALLY GOING TO DO SOMETHING!
But you know what? I'm not mad at the creators of the Power Balance band. In fact, I envy them. They got filthy stinkin' rich off of American stupidity. Capitalism at its finest.
And then there is CieAura, Power Balance's inbred cousin, which skips the plastic and involves putting a shiny sticker right on your skin:
WARNING: May make you lose faith in humanity. Watch at your own risk.
"Put one on your forehead and you'll turn into Dr. Manhattan!"
"Put one on your forehead and you'll turn into Dr. Manhattan!"
To finish, I might as well mention the one infomercialized product that is actually worth it: the famous P90X. I'll do a post on P90X soon.
Not pictured: The Free Version
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