What's Wrong with Modern Fitness?

I mentioned back a few weeks ago that I had no problems with weight but I have huge problems with those who teach others how to use them. I could easily extend it to the entire fitness world in general. It's a horrible shame because nearly 2/3 of the country is overweight and of that slim 1/3 that are a healthy weight may not be working out properly. What is so wrong with the fitness world? Well, here are the things that grate on me most of all:

1. THE DEPENDENCY! Once, my wife had a personal trainer. She was definitely an intriguing personality. Charming, but California-style pushy. She definitely didn't believe in my BW-only approach to fitness. Apparently, I just couldn't get big and strong with this stuff. I NEEDED weights. Well, I wasn't in the mood to debate at the time and I just posed the question to her: I travel a lot. What am I supposed to do, not do anything? No answer.

That's just a piss-poor way to look at getting fit. Truth is, you don't need anything outside of your own body to get into shape. If you like weights and machines, more power to you. The question is, what are you going to do when you don't have access to either? Are you destined to wither away to soft flesh because you can't get to your precious gym with your scared equipment? The key to being successful in anything is being able to improvise and adapt. Getting fit is no exception.

Let's be real here: These people pettle dependency. They make a lot of money keeping people dependant on them for fitness. I'm not against anyone making a dollar (I'm a hardcore capitalist and Conservative Republican) but I have a huge problem with people doing with detrimental lies. Their job is to get people healthy. It's not to sell them dependency.

2. NO MIND-BODY CONNECTION! I mentioned this earlier too in the Bobby Pandour post as well as alluding to it in other posts. If you read most fitness and muscle magazines, you'll come across endless routines that do certain things for certain body parts for certain times of the year, blah, blah, blah. 80 years ago, the bodybuilders and weight lifters (physical culturists, as they were called) were actually very intelligent people who put great thought and effort into the exercise that they did. They realized is that if the mind was directed towards the muscle(s) that they wanted to work, their strength was unlimited.

Those days are long gone. The modern bodybuilder will pile dozens of pounds of iron on in order to force the growth of their muscles rather than direct their mental energy to force growth. Their blown rotator cuffs, arthritic knees, and ruined backs reveal the results (Joe Weider had to have his back reconstructed). The legendary George Jowett never worked out with dumbbells heavier than 25 pounds and I doubt few, if any, could replicate is famous anvil-lifting stunt (For those of you that don't know, he lifted a 168 lbs anvil off the ground by it's horn, placed the flat top on the palm of his hand, an pressed it overhead with one hand. It was his signature stunt. He was 5'8" and 210 lbs at his peak.) I rarely ever read about the mental connection to exercising in any magazine that old-timers like Jowett preached regularly in their writings. This is key to effective exercising and the fitness world threw it away years ago.

3. CHEMICAL ENHANCEMENT! This is the biggie. One thing that Charles Atlas managed to do was to preserve the holistic nature of the old physical culture in bodyweight exercising. This may have been to the detriment to BW since the supplementation and steroid use in weight lifting propelled it to the mainstream and helped relegate BW practically to the dust bin of the fitness world. Trouble is, the health and longevity associated with the the old physical culture days was lost in the process and that is the most troubling thing about the fitness world.

The Modern fitness world sold everyone on their style of working out with these chemistry experiments gone bad and convinced that world that was the image of health and strength. The world has reeled back some from the Arnold-style bulk of bodybuilding but the damage is done. Performance enhancing drugs and supplementation is firmly entrenched in every athletic endeavour. It's not healthy, it's that simple. Still, the world looks to it as a physical ideal and it pushes people to buy such witches brew such as HGH, Creatine, branched chain amino acids, winstrol, andro, myoplex, and the list goes on. What is supremely ironic is that these poor bastards are dropping dead in their late 40's and early 50's. 80 years ago, when the average life span was 47-50 years old, the weight lifters/bodybuilders were living into their 70's and 80's!

To be continued...