Tuesday, April 17, 2007

You know what I think when I see Ron Coleman?


Does he have enough range of motion in his arms to wipe his own ass anymore? Seriously! What possible good does having that amount of bulk do other than look good? Well, I use the words, "look good," loosely here. The chemistry-experiment-gone-bad look to his arms is just grotesque.
As previously mentioned in another post, I greatly admire Mark Twight and the work he has done over at Gym Jones. His motto in training is to train like your life depended on it. His words struck me as a breath of fresh air when I first read them on his web site. Upon thinking about it, I had to ponder why they struck me as such a breath of fresh air. Doesn't your life depend on your physical fitness? Shouldn't ALL exercise be done like your life depends on it since it DOES?
That's why I deplore the fitness world and the bodybuilding world in particular. Most of our exercise world exists not for a functional body but one that is visually gratifying in some way. To be blunt, we want a nice looking body that will help us get laid. We don't pay attention to the other reasons for exercising. It's all about getting buff in time for swimsuit season with little concern for how well you can swim.
How about training so that you can perform difficult physical functions when you need to? I can't remember who said them or where they were said but it has been said that someone should be able to swim a mile, run 2 or 3, and be able to carry someone their own bodyweight for some prescribed distance without trouble in order to be functionally fit. Does your training enable you to do that? Are you training so that you could do that if you HAD to?
Being able to physically perform in order to bail yourself or someone else out of serious trouble isn't the only consideration when you exercise. Did you ever realize that movement isn't the only thing your muscles are responsible for? They are also there to provide structural integrity for your skeleton. One of the biggest reasons so many people have severe lower back pain is because their muscles in that region are weak. There isn't the bone and muscle structure in the lower back that there is in the upper back. Hence, the lower back's muscles play a vital role in keeping the spine aligned. When they are underdeveloped, the spine is susceptible to misalignment and PAIN.
Perhaps the best reason for exercising is one that is brought up even less than structural integrity is the stress-reduction qualities to exercise. Contrary to public opinion, life isn't as stressful now as it was 80 years ago (15 hour work days, losing at least one child, no welfare, dying from ordinary cuts, LESS STRESS MY ASS). The trouble is, we have become less capable of dealing with stress. It's no medical secret that an out of shape, overweight body doesn't handle stress as it's in-shape counterpart. One thing that most doctors will reluctantly admit that shortens lifespan and causes poor health as much as anything is... STRESS, or how you deal with it. If you can't deal with it, you're in trouble.
This has got to change. It's bad enough that 2/3 of the USA is overweight and unhealthy but the few that are follow exercise advice that leaves them with a functionally-deficient body incapable of anything else than being a pussy magnet or a cock-tease. Take a good look at "Big Ron" one more time. That guy's "sport" has been guiding physical fitness now for 45 years. If that looks like the picture of functional fitness to most Americans, then there is something seriously FUCKED UP that needs to change in hurry up time. Don't follow along. Check out my links post for some good exercise advice.

5 comments:

Mike Noga said...

I wonder why he has to wear sun glasses INSIDE!

Anonymous said...

Dude, I totally agree with EVERYTHING you have stated. If you take a look at the people from the Golden Age, many of them used weights, but they didn't look like any of the freaks that are around today. "bodybuilding" has become crap, and I think it's mainly because of the supplements and steroids. Look at a bodybuilder from the 50's or 60's, then compare them to some of the guys from the 70's and up. Steroids, I believe came out around the late 60's early 70's (I may be wrong though). Doing things the natural way is the best. It's not what your muscles look like, but what they can do is important.
Daniel

Anonymous said...

I'm with you 100% on this. If those kind of magazines showing those kind of people (ie: Coleman) are the shining examples of fitness and health then is it any wonder why average people have no interest in pursuing health and fitness? Not to mention all these rainforest destroyers do is promote and advertise useless products, junk supplements and hideously over-training (unless on steroids) routines. All resulting in lining their own pockets and the pockets of the pumped up muscle jerks that blatantly lie about the products they are supposedly taking, which just so happen to be the ones that are being advertised (As if they use any of that junk. Only steroids get that result). I've gotten more sensible advice from 5 mins of personal googling then from years of reading those money making, er muscle, magazines.

Mark Winchester Sr. said...

In all fairness to Coleman it is possible IF YOU POSSESS THE REQUIRED GENETICS to develop a freak-like physique 100% naturally. Check out 1971 Casey Viator - 100% natural while being trained by Arthur Jones.

To label advanced bodybuilders as drug using losers is unfair. People accuse me of being on drugs quite frequently which is false. I am totally clean, hell I don't even use protein powder on a daily basis.

Rare genetics combined w/ damn hard work in any field always has & always will cause jealousy.

To go further I am convinced that steroids do not cause elevated hypertrophy, i.e., they don't work. Read The Colorado Experiment by Jones.

Justin_PS said...

It's not possible to produce a freaky, by today's standards, physique like Coleman without heavy steroid use (as well as other hormones). The fact is that some steroids do lead to heavy muscular hypertropy. That was well-known since the mid-1960s, possibly before that. Others aid strength, muscle recovery, or injury rehab. To assume otherwise is naive. I suggest that you check out steroid.com and read up.