Personal Trainers

I'm going to say it right now: the majority of personal trainers suck at their jobs. The ones that don't are usually expensive. If you're a personal trainer and reading this, I'm not attacking you; I'm speaking in generality here. Of course there are plenty of good ones, but statistically speaking they are in the minority.

Certifications of personal trainers are mostly arbitrary, like a college degree is to a Starbucks barista. Just because you have a fancy piece of paper, it doesn't automatically make you special. Heck, I just saw an ad for this certification that can be done completely online.

However, real certifications, especially anything geared toward strength or conditioning or athletic performance, such as the CSCS certification, are very good. There are several good undergraduate degrees that can get people started in the right direction as well.
 
I should know because I've had a personal trainer in the past; turns out that he didn't really know what he was doing. He was a good guy and all, fun to be around while working out, but didn't exactly get the job done after the first couple of months. And it wasn't just him. I know people who have employed the help of trainers and gotten much less than their money's worth. And I see trainers having their clients do the stupidest stuff sometimes.

LOL.

Now, that's not to give trainers a bad rap. There are plenty of good ones out there, and even the mediocre ones can be worth it in the short term. My trainer put a good bit of muscle on me in the first couple of months, simply because I started lifting weights on a regular basis and ate a lot more protein. It worked for a while, until my body adapted. I ended up on a plateau that lasted for the last several months I was with him. Sure, it was hard work all the way through, but you have to train smart, and not just hard, if you want continued progress.

Then I went to college and trained the same way I was taught, because that was all I knew. I also decided that I plateaued earlier because I wasn't eating enough, so I fixed that.
It didn't work.

The next semester, I stopped kidding myself. It was obvious that what I did in the Fall was a complete failure. I was not happy with the way I looked. I needed to do something new.
So I did P90X. And I got some pretty decent results. And I realized that I had wasted so much time and effort in the months before.
But that was OK, because I was finally moving forward again.
And that was the beginning of what led me to learn a lot of things through research and real-life experience, and eventually start this blog.

Currently, I'm halfway training, halfway working out with a friend of mine. I am sure I will get some good results out of him because, unlike most personal trainers, I am continually learning more and more about fitness and nutrition, and a lot of times the hard way. Plus it makes going to the gym more enjoyable for both of us.

In the end, most trainers that are subpar tend to overcomplicate things. As a rule of thumb, if a trainer has clients use the swiss ball a lot, he or she doesn't know what the hell they are doing.

 This is retarded.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Energy and Metabolism

Foreword

A lot of topics in this post are complementary to (and some unavoidably redundant with) my post On Weight Loss in general. This is more geared for troubles you may encounter while doing so, and what you can do about it.

A common problem

For most of us normal people, energy is not something that comes by easily. A lot of the time, it's what prevents people from working out in the first place because day-to-day life is draining enough.

I've been in that situation many times; I usually fall off the proverbial horse at the waning time of each semester, and

just not having enough energy to exercise on a regular basis, so some knowledge in this post is stuff I learned the hard way.

I'm a pretty low-energy person most of the time. I'm very susceptible to "the blahs." I believe I have a naturally subpar metabolism, and as a result I'm a bit more lethargic and lazy than the average person. If you're like that too, I hope some helpful things from this post that I figured out the hard way.

Energy and metabolism go hand-in-hand. A higher metabolism means your body uses more energy, and therefore makes you more energetic. That explains why most naturally lean people seem to never run out of juice, and it seems a bit unfair at first considering that the ones who really need that energy are the ones who aren't naturally thin or athletic. However, there is good news: our metabolisms are not set, and fortunately we can do a few things to fire them up.

Sleep

 I'm a night owl but I love to sleep. I'm definitely not a morning person; it takes forever to get going in the morning, and I will sleep 10 or 11 hours a night if I don't set an alarm.

Sleep is a huge factor in regulating energy levels. Not only does it need to be sufficient (it varies individually; some people only need 8 hours or less), but also somewhat consistent. This has a lot to do with hormones. When things get out of whack, your body will do what it can to fix that, usually by making you tired all the time.

Artificial light can really confuse your brain. So can a timezone shift. Ever had jet lag?

When I "fell off" the horse so to speak near the end of the semester, my sleep schedule and biorhythms were FUBAR. Some days I had 8 AM classes, and on others my day started at noon. I ended up staying up late all the time but taking naps on a regular basis; I discovered later that these long naps were ultimately not helping to regulate my hormones (the all-nighters didn't help, either). Power naps (< 30 minutes) are usually great because it gives you a boost of energy to help you take on the rest of the day without sending you into deep sleep and subsequently messing up your hormonal cycle.

Stress (the hormone cortisol) can be a real problem if it gets out of control. Having a regular and adequate sleep schedule can do very well to prevent this from happening, because cortisol is a really bad thing to have too much of. If you have chronically high levels of it, it can do a bunch of things to make you feel bad and kill your metabolism.

Nap minimally and sleep at fairly regular hours if you want to work with, rather than against, your hormones. To facilitate this goal, keep artificial light to a minimum when it gets late. It is worth noting, though, that getting in shape will often improve chronic medical conditions of all kinds.

Exercise

The ironic thing about exercise is that it actually increases your metabolism by a substantial amount for at least a day, but people (including myself) will still avoid it if they don't feel they have enough gas in the tank to do so. This explains, in part, the phenomena of getting on "the horse" or "the wagon."

Or, you can do both!

 
The degree of metabolism boost varies with type and intensity of exercise, but generally anaerobic (e.g., weightlifting) activity is much more effective than aerobic (e.g., plain cardio) exercise. This is tied to the fact that anaerobic exercise is superior for weight loss; a higher metabolism means more fat can be burned for energy. I've talked about this in detail in my past posts.

Food AND Exercise are crucial to success

Food is energy. It shouldn't surprise you that if you don't eat enough and don't exercise, your energy levels will drop. Your body likes to conserve energy, because it's a survival mechanism: eat less, burn less. It's quite good at conserving energy when there is a scarcity of food. "Calories in - Calories = Calories Lost/Gained" out is still valid (thanks to thermodynamics), but Calories out is a function of Calories in, among many other things. This is why dieting without exercise isn't very effective most of the time, and why "weight loss calculators" based on calorie intake almost never work. The energy balance becomes useless for calculations when you can't easily determine Calories out. Your body doesn't care that you want to lose weight; it just does its thing and isn't going to burn fat unless it has to. So if you diet and don't exercise, your metabolism will slow down. And when that happens, your energy levels will drop, you may feel like crap, and eventually it will get to the point where you won't have the energy to exercise, and your diet will ultimately "fail."

Fortunately, exercise will force your body to pump up your metabolism in spite of low energy intake from food. This is why both diet and exercise are needed for substantial fat loss.

On the flipside, too much exercise and not enough food will cause you to "burn out." Eating very few calories is not really "dangerous" but your body can only surrender so much fat in a day. When the caloric deficit becomes too large, your body will slow down and your energy will drop.

Consistency is key. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Livestrong.com's MyPlate is an excellent food tracker that I HIGHLY RECOMMEND if you're having trouble losing weight, or want to do things right the first time. If you're doing some form of exercise but not making progress, chances are that your diet needs work. Don't forget that protein is #1. Sometimes, meat is better than fruits or veggies as far as looking better is concerned.

Stimulants

So, let's say you're doing everything right, but you just don't have the drive to work out. If all else fails, stimulants are a surefire way to increase your energy and/or metabolism. Some people need them all the time; others just need it as an occasional boost.

 Stimulants in a nutshell.

Of course there's the #1 drug in the world, caffeine, that some people depend on almost every day to get their day started. Sometimes, that's all it takes, but there's always more out there if it's not good enough for you.

As a lazy college student, I don't even bother:

200 mg pills are not recommended on an empty stomach.

Weight-loss supplements work by either increasing metabolic levels (Calories out), giving you enough energy to work out, or both. Some are better than others, and some (usually the overpriced ones that are advertised with outrageous claims) are crap. Some "pre-workout" stimulants (e.g., Jack3d, which I love) are great for shifting your metabolism into turbo mode; they do double-duty by making your workout more productive, and boosting your metabolism in general. The fat-loss stimulants which make a substantial difference are inevitably very powerful, and erroneously seen as dangerous in most cases. The infamous ephredrine was banned because it was effective and subsequently abused once it became popular; not because there is something inherently dangerous about it.

There are some other mental hacks you can do that help you to make exercise not a drudgingly painful experience; I'll talk about that and some relevant psychology in an upcoming post.

TL;DR

The key to energy and subsequently improving your body? Get your sleep, balance your food and exercise, and take stimulants if you need or want an extra boost.

Skinny Genes

If you're like me, you're not one of those naturally skinny people who can get away with eating whatever they want. While it's true that these people are genetically gifted with hyperactive thyroids, and it seems unfair to the rest of us 'normal' folk, way too many people take it the completely wrong way and figure that because they're genetically 'inferior,' it's not even worth the effort fighting DNA destiny.

To be clear, virtually no one is 'genetically fat.' Metabolic rates may vary a lot between individuals, but that really shouldn't matter as far as goals go. 'Predisposed' fat people just don't need that much food to subsist. What gets them there is when they eat the same as everyone else (or more, of course)-- living in a sedentary giant-portions culture doesn't help. So 'naturally' fat people are so just because it's easier for them to get that way, not because they are doomed to that existence. There is nothing keeping a 'genetically fat' person from achieving the body of a Greek god, or making that goal overly difficult.

Yes, I did recycle this picture-- it's so apt.

However, a lot of overweight people aren't that way just because of their hypoactive metabolisms; some simply put way too much coal into the furnace, but I believe most are victims of the high-carb and high-fat (yes, they're terrible together) modern diet.That's compounded when carbophiles become insulin resistant.

Relevant links:
Infographic
Relevant Fat Head video
Livestrong article on being doomed to be fat

I'll close with one of the most amazing transformation videos out there:

Why I Don't Like Crossfit

What it is

Crossfit. Chances are, you've seen some commercial or t-shirt or someone mentioning it on a social media site. It has become some sort of weird phenomenon in American fitness culture.

Personally, I hate it. Well, maybe 'hate' is too strong of a word. I strongly dislike it, and I'll show you why.

Firstly, it's a cult. Yeah, you read that right-- a fitness cult. Men's Health thinks so. Heck, crossfit even admitted it themselves. It's a widespread organization that tends to suck people in. It brainwashes them (no, seriously) to a certain extent and makes them blind to everything else. What do I mean by that? Well, first off, crossfitters think of themselves as totally awesome and the rest of the world sees them as insane. It turns people into sadists. The workouts are ludicrous and they love it. I remember a while back seeing someone on Facebook who used "puked" and ":D" in the same sentence.

Why it's retarded

People actually pay lots of money to do something in a group setting they could do on their own. Like, $100/month minimum, on top of gym dues (if applicable).

"Forging elite fitness" is their slogan (which is parodied in this blog). They consider themselves elite "athletes," when, in fact, their haphazard and unfocused crazy workouts leave them as jacks of all trades, and masters of none.

Most crossfit locations follow a "Workout of the Day," or WOD. It's typically a random combination of at least 3 stations, it has a rigid structire, and is done for time. Everyone does the same exact damn thing, regardless of skill level. As if that wasn't bad enough, good form is not emphasized, which is just begging for injury.

And then there are the kipping pullups.

Kipping (exploiting momentum to get one's body up the bar) pullups have a special place in crossfit hate, for obvious reasons. A kipping pullup might as well be called a "cheating" pullup, because all it does is enable you to do an arbitrarily large number of the exercise with ZERO practicality. YouTube videos of the exercise have incredibly low ratings-- and just look at the comments.

And for good measure, here's another blog post that roasts crossfit.


Devil's advocate

What it will do is get you into shape, and it does tend to make people look good, though it's definitely one of the most painful paths to accomplish this. Sometimes it goes too far with women's bodies, though.

Crossfit can show you your limits, and make them grow. Self-discipline and tenacity carries over to the real world. It teaches you how to overcome mental barriers, and if you're not a self-motivating type, it can show you how easy your "workouts" are in comparison. Good stuff can come out of pushing yourself so hard, as long as it doesn't burn you out (which is ultimately inevitable, anyway). Building character and what doesn't kill you and all that.

P90X

Chances are, you've heard of P90X, the most popular DVD workout program ever produced. It's commonly featured in late-night infomercials, and knowledge of it has spread to many by word of mouth. As the name implies, it's a 90-day program designed to whip you into shape, and it works. It was produced by a company called Beachbody and it is led by none other than Tony Horton.

Tony Horton. Richard Simmons, eat your heart out.

P90X is not for everyone, though-- those who are too out of shape will find that they won't be able to keep up. For these people, P90, the less-extreme predecessor of P90X, would be a better choice, along with several other programs that Beachbody has to offer. For extremely out of shape people, you can never go wrong with the classic tried-and-true weight-loss program: diet and walking (or even jogging).


The Right Stuff

Tony Horton is extremely encouraging and does not fail to motivate you. He's ridiculously full of energy and gets you excited about the program, especially from the start. That builds momentum and makes it easier to stick to the program even if the workouts are not easy. Somehow, Tony manages to make those as fun and entertaining as theoretically possible while still kicking your butt. He nudges you out of your comfort zone without you realizing it a lot of the time.

 Tony is very spontaneous. 

The difficulty level seems to be just about right. Most workouts are intense enough to be productive and efficient, but the nature and pace of the workouts makes them very flexible and allows the user to adapt according to his/her own skill level. What do I mean by that, exactly? Time management.

As far as the regular resistance-based workouts go, a lot of the exercises are done on a time basis. You do what you can, and often there's time left over for you to catch your breath before the next movement. This works great because those who are in not-so-good shape are weaker, thereby finishing sooner because they cannot do as many reps, allowing them more time to rest. When an exercise is based on the 8-12 rep scheme, it still works well for the newbies because less resistance or weight means a smaller cardiovascular demand.

The program goes with you; once you get over that initial adaptation phase, each workout pretty much has its own difficulty level that stays constant. The ability to do more reps or more weight puts a greater cardiovascular demand on you, so you progress with the program and it doesn't get much easier or harder.

 Eventually, you too can master levitation.

This goes for the hardest video, Plyo X, as well. Tony puts emphasis on pressing pause and taking a break if you need it on all the videos, but this advice is especially pertinent for this one. The plyometic workout is hard. It never gets easy. It pushes your limits. Tony Horton recommends a heart rate monitor. When I'm in the middle of a cycle and not taking a break (There were less than 5 times when I got through the whole thing without hitting pause) my heart rate tends to be in the range of 160-180 BPM. The upper limit of 180 and into 190 territory is a ridiculous amount of exertion. I've broken 200 BPM on rare occasions-- that is almost literally maximum effort.

Plyo X: Hardcore training. 
Also, the "weight control" range is BS; it's arbitrarily named.

On difficulty

P90X is tough, especially "the X in P90X," Plyo. However, there comes a point where workout difficulty becomes more self-torture than simply a physical challenge. I am not an advocate of exercise that is this intense. I am not masochistic; I believe that difficulty has a place, but sustainability is much more important. Exercise should not be unenjoyable to the point of suffering.

Very entertaining, but it's really not that bad.

Speaking of celebrities, Isaiah "Old Spice Guy" Mustafa does P90X as well.

Structure

P90X works very well because it mostly follows the general structure of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and resistance circuit training. These are extremely effective ways to lose body fat, and they also happen to be very good for building muscle on new trainees. This often results in a recomposition of body mass, which is often termed as the "transformation" that is so heavily lauded in the advertisements.

The program has a great amount of variety with over 10 different workouts, some of which are very unique. The 90 days is split into 3 three-week phases with a "rest week" after each phase. However, "rest weeks" are mostly "let's do something different" weeks instead of actually taking it easy during that time.

Not all videos were created equal. Some are easy, some are hard, one in particular is hard in another way: yoga. At an hour and a half long, this workout made me run out of patience after a few weeks, in spite of Tony's assertions that it is worth it. But it is great for developing flexibility and non-traditional strength; it is an aspect of fitness that should be appreciated, though some people take yoga too far and use it as their primary form of exercise, thereby neglecting more important things.

 

Trust me, this is harder than it looks.

Learning by Doing

There are a lot of educational and psychological benefits to P90X, which are just as good as the physical changes that the program makes, if not better. The program is great for introducing the uninitiated and the directionless into having a solid fitness regimen.

• The nutrition plan helps to change your perspective on eating and food if you've never followed a real diet before.
• It pulls you away from the common misconception that "cardio" on a machine or otherwise is all you need to lose weight.
• It teaches you the correct way to lift weights, and shows women that resistance exercise should not be avoided.
• It demonstrates that you don't need a gym to get in shape.
• It emphasizes flexibility, something that is often overlooked.
• It proves that you can change your body for the better if you want to.
• It builds character, to some extent
• It improves discipline and self-control
• It toughens you up
• Etc.

The program is great for building mental endurance and toughness. It teaches you how to "bring it"-- to transcend mental blocks and give a serious effort, focusing on the task rather than your comfort. It teaches you how to set a goal and achieve it. And it does all this without being too difficult.

P90X does not require you to be this intense and inspiring.

Words of Wisdom

Sorry for being cliché, but the journey is more important than the destination. The journey never ends; those who reach their goals and fall back to their old ways are defeating the point. I don't like saying "fitness is a way of life" because that sounds a little too serious. Rather, it's more of a hobby. A hobby does not control your life-- it's something you do. If you want to live longer and look and feel better than everyone else your age as you get older, you're going to need to be active. But that doesn't mean you have to do P90X, or try to look like a fitness model. 

Problems with the Program

The nutritional plan is fairly decent. It's outdated and not very flexible, but it works for the most part. It throws around some broscience (workout/gym "bro" + pseudoscience; false assertions made by those who look good but don't necessarily know what they're doing) which is harmless on its own aside from spreading falsehoods and ignorance.

Some of its marketing is misleading, specifically the term "muscle confusion" which is a load of pseudoscientific crap:

 Broscience and steroids. I'm dead serious on the steroids accusation-- the results on this guy were not remotely possible without them.

The program is great for getting into better cardiovascular shape and losing body fat. It is not very good for building muscle, unless the user is fairly new to resistance training. However, it does improve muscle conditioning and endurance, and even strength in certain metrics.

Also, it includes static stretching before certain workouts, which turns out to do nothing but weaken your muscles. Dynamic stretching is much better for warming up, and static stretching should be reserved for afterwards.

While most of the equipment for the program is easily justifiable, for-profit Beachbody tries to make as much money off of you as possible. The "recovery drink" mix is mentioned a lot, and is really not much more than powdered protein and sugar that is ridiculously overpriced. The equipment you do need often costs a good bit more from Beachbody than elsewhere. But I guess that's just capitalism at work.

By the way, P90X 2 is (finally) due out in December. I'm not buying it. Too much equipment, and too expensive. Tony Horton is well into his 50s and still going strong. He really is this generation's Jack LaLanne.

My Experience

My whole story is somewhat long, so I'll try to not start too far back. When I came to college, I stuck with mindset my trainer gave me, but decided all I needed to do to gain muscle was to eat more. In the end, I ate lots, gained minimal muscle, and got fatter. Next semester I decided I needed some serious change and committed to doing P90X. I ate a lot less food and worked hard, and started seeing progress pretty quickly. So without further ado, here are my before and after pictures:

This was actually more than 90 days. 

It's been a while since my "after" picture.

One Last Thing

I leave you with this gem of a parody:

Green Eggs and Bacon

I'm sure you're familiar with the classic kids' book:

If your parents didn't read you this book as a kid, they didn't love you. 
They probably would have read this book (NSFW language!) instead.

However, as you have probably guessed, I'm talking about "green" eggs and bacon here in a metaphorical sense. Public opinion would have you believe that these are both fairly bad for you, and you are better off eating a "balanced breakfast" of cereal and fruit juice, and maybe some low-fat sugar-yogurt. This is tied to the whole "fat phobia" but also the "cholesterol phobia."

I recently talked about the ignorance surrounding fat, but as for cholesterol, I'm not going into great detail because Fat Head (and the supplementary lectures) cover it adequately. Long story short, the important thing is this: dietary cholesterol intake has an insignificant impact on blood cholesterol, and total cholesterol levels are bad indicators of cardiovascular health anyway.

The Incredible Edible Egg

Chicken eggs are the classic breakfast food staple. They're pretty awesome when you think about them-- you can mass produce them without directly killing anything (Ohai, ovo-vegetarians!) and are cheap (I tried really hard to not make a pun right there), they are [relatively] durable and seemingly never go bad, and they are one of the most nutrient-dense foods ever. Vitamins, minerals, and tons of micronutrients like choline, on top of 6 grams of protein a pop, make them really good for you on top of leaving you satiated. After all, it's everything a chick needs to develop to the point of breaking out of its own shell. Oh, and if you haven't realized it, an egg is one giant cell. How cool is that?

 Om nom nom nom nom

One of the worst offenses that the health fitness industry has committed against mankind is to spread the idea that yolks are bad for you, to the point of throwing them away so all you have is the egg whites left. The yolk is the best part, and to toss it is idiotic. There's a saying that goes something like this: "Mother Nature cries every time a yolk hits the wastebasket." If you want so badly to eat only the whites, go buy a carton of them at the store instead of whole eggs. That way the yolks don't go to waste and it's easier on you, since you don't have to strain out the whites.

Eggs are good for weight loss, and the calories (yolk-inclusive) are very much worth it. If one wants to cut calories, they should do so elsewhere.

Bacon (AKA meat candy)

Did you know that cooked bacon has roughly the same amount of fat (of which only 1/3 is saturated, by the way, if that even matters) and protein in it? That's probably a lot better than what you were led to believe. Bear in mind that cooked bacon is very different from raw bacon in terms of fat. It's a good, solid meat that's much better for you than sausage (although that tastes good too; I'm a sucker for bratwurst). Plus, it's delicious.

 Remember this viral video? He was right all along!

It also turns out that turkey "bacon" is not better or worse for you, so you might as well eat the non-kosher stuff.
I love real bacon, but not as much as Ron Swanson:

And of course I have to mention EpicMealTime. To not do so when speaking of bacon would be a sin.

Bacon + Eggs = Win

"Bacon and eggs." It's like one unit. The archetypical epic breakfast combo:

More Parks and Recreation. This is obviously a good show.

And again, EpicMealTime, with a side of Tourette's Guy. Oh, and this song.

Drawbacks

Since they are loved so much, bacon and eggs have to be mass-produced to keep up with demand. With that comes less-than-ideal products. Not to worry though, because they can be dealt with.

Bacon is usually cured with nitrates or nitrites. I don't know much about this, though, so here's a nice scholarly article if you're so inclined to read it. From what I gathered from this and other research is this: don't worry about it if you don't eat tons of bacon at once. If you do, it would benefit you to ingest some vitamin C (e.g., orange juice-- it just so happens to go perfectly with breakfast) or other antioxidants (I try to take some green tea extract every day. It's really good stuff.) to offset any possible bad effects of nitrites/nitrates.

It comes down to personal choice. I've eaten this exact kind before.

It tastes the same as cured bacon.

As for eggs, they are generally fine, but it should come as no surprise to you that the standard, inexpensive variety come from hens that spend most of their lives in a tiny cage in dreadful conditions. They are fed low-quality grains, which are probably infused with antibiotics and other great stuff. But that doesn't make the eggs bad, just sub-optimal.

Eh, it's not like they have feelings.

They're better off than the wee little piggies anyway.

Freakin' watermarks.

If you want optimal, buy the organic/free range eggs. Now, I'm not on the organic bandwagon (I actually buy the huge 36-egg value carton of regular eggs because I'm a college student) but if you're serious about putting only the best stuff into your body, buy the good stuff, because there is a difference: organic egg shells aren't all white, and their yolks are orange.

Not a huge difference, but it's obvious. 

Presumably, more color = more nutrients.

Not all "cage-free" eggs are produced quite like this, though.

So now you know almost everything you could possibly want to about bacon and eggs. Don't avoid them; they're good for you, despite what many would like you to believe.

Silliness, Ignorance, and Gullibility

This post is more or less an amalgamation of many different things that I find annoying, unfortunate, and (sometimes) entertaining.

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.

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!"

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