The Modern Fitness Industry is Broken.

Bring back these badboys...

My introduction post on steemit is here if you want to check out I'm the same guy (check photos!) and see what I'm up to of late which is in stark contrast to the fitness industry! 

I decided to post this article on #fitness and #gym related topics are Steem seemed thin on the ground in regards to this content. I have spent the last 15 years as a personal trainer and you can check my credentials here

I originally wrote this article a year or so ago for another gym that I owned but enjoyed it so much, I though I'd give it a re:up. This post is about the term functional fitness. It's a 5 minute read and you don't need any prior fitness or gym knowledge to understand it. 

Overview

The modern fitness industry, for the most part, has been intently pursuing superficial and temporary rewards gained by improved physical appearance.  Though having a good looking body may be an indication of fitness to some degree, to be “fit” goes well beyond how good you look.  

In the first place, being fit means you are physically and mentally prepared for the demands of the real world, which range from the basic situational demands of daily working and family life, to exceptional and extremely challenging circumstances. Just last month I overheard a conversation between two clients that they needed more energy and strength to keep up with the demands of his two children when he returns home from work each day. A perfect example

The Big Con

The general population has been consistently conditioned to believe that “true” exercise must be compartmentalised, addressing either strength or cardio, and that it should target specific muscles independently and regardless of real-life applications. Heaven forbid we should complete a workout that combines the two. It’s a sad tale of 20 minutes of cardio, followed by 20 minutes of machine weights and out the door. Big chain gyms count on professing this ideology as it keeps them in business. 

"Patrons remain fluid by taking up minimal floor space and you don’t get results so you become trapped in a cycle of renewing your membership until you realise how absurd it has all become. Then you can’t break your 12 month contract or you get stung with an early exit fee". 

Oh dear. It’s deeply saddening that this approach to exercise and fitness that prevails in today’s fitness industry and this hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years, if at all.  Most of them stem from the body-building trend which started in the late 70′s.  This reductionist thinking leads to mechanistic, segmental muscle-isolation drills that provide very little benefit to our day-to-day life.

One Unit

The truth about fitness can be found in the reality of our biology: the body is not meant to work in isolation, rather, it is designed to work as a whole.  One unit all working together to find solutions to natural problems. The psychological reality is that current isolation drills are boring, because they are significantly different from how nature wants us to perform physically. A perfect piece of equipment for this is a kettlebell. 

Complicate to Profit

From a marketing standpoint, we may find ourselves buying into the supposed benefits of  ”cutting-edge science” fitness protocols, but working out while attached to a machine by a series of pulleys and chains is almost comical, to me anyhow.  From an evolutionary standpoint, such drills make no sense, and at a subconscious level, our primal body and mind know they are being tricked. 

"I don’t know anyone that has ever felt comfortable in an inverted leg press or a seated hamstring curl."

Something has to give. Functional Training.

Real fitness is functional.  But you must understand “functional” as practical capability and ultimately action.  It is an essential distinction.  We need a functional body in order to perform a practical action. The problem with functional fitness is that it is mostly focused on performing drills that have little practical application. Remember the BOSU? Two fingers to that contraption. Swissballs? When on earth will I need to kneel on one and perform squats?. It is no wonder most people don’t stick to these irrelevant workouts, as they reflect a profound ignorance of our real fitness needs and potential.

Practical Outcomes

Now, when you focus on the practical outcomes – let’s say the various ways to clear a particular path or to manipulate a particular object – you are going to move and perform in the most functional way, because your exercise will be entirely focused on operating with the most efficiency and adaptability possible, i.e with the greatest competency.  I need to be able to deadlift and clean and jerk to be able to lift my child up when hurt and to lift a very heavy piece of hand luggage off the floor and store above my seat when travelling long distance. 

Training for practical goals means you’ve got the most direct and objective way to assess if your physical action works or not in each specific, practical application you aim for.  This is a powerful source of motivation. A client once today told me about having to move a piano (a cumbersome 300kg hunk of iron and wood) when he assisted his parents moving house and how much hard work it was. I can’t imagine it being easy, even with four people but gives me food for thought about his strength programming.

An individual possesses functional fitness only when he or she can effectively and efficiently execute a broad range of physical actions needed by real life demands and participate in a directly useful manner. 

If ‘functional fitness training’ does not result in the development of highly practical movement abilities and the specific conditioning associated with these abilities, then this ‘functional fitness training’ is devoid of significant practical benefits.  This journey should be an never ending cycle of trying to become stronger and faster everyday and speaking from my own personal journey, it is what keeps me always coming back to training hard and often.

Get re-connected (and not via technology).

Many of us find ourselves increasingly disconnected from nature and our ancestral needs. Boxed into cubicles and cars, viewing the world through a flickering flatscreen on the wall, exercising on eliptical machines in corporate big chain gyms, we feel dissatisfied and stressed, our senses dulled, we are prisoners of the human zoo. I hope 2016 is your time to break out and rediscover your true nature.
 

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Any questions, I'm more than happy to answer in the comments below.