Obesity manifesto: exercise, part 1
16 September 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Reducto ad absurdum The reduction of a weak argument to absurdity
Reducto ad ovum The presentation of an invincible argument
I hate to start off going negative but it is illustrative and appropriate to reduce to the point of absurdity the approach used by personal trainers in general and the clown trainers on the TV show The Biggest Loser specifically. Everybody wants to make a buck on the plight of the overweight. The Purposefully Primitive approach, to use an old hackneyed analogy, is to teach overweight individuals how to fish rather than sell them fish. There is an obesity epidemic in America. As pointed out in a recent New York Times article, 30% of the population is obese, obesity being defined as 30% (or more) body fat. A 200-pound obese person holding a 30% body fat percentile would carry 60-pounds of fat. If that same individual carried a 40% body fat percentile (not uncommon) they would have 80-pounds of fat to haul around on a daily basis. Hold a pair of 30 or 40 pound dumbbells in each hand to give your self an idea of how much weight this represents in real terms. Body fat is not near as dense as iron so the space on the body needed to carry body fat is voluminous. How to melt off adipose tissue is the subject of great controversy within the fitness community. One element of the obesity solution is the use of cardiovascular exercise to mobilize and oxidize stored body fat. Personal trainers and fitness experts have a huge collective blind spot in that they continually mistake exercise mode for cardio method. What is the goal of cardio exercise? The systematic elevation of the heart rate for a protracted period of time on sustained basis: the benchmarks are frequency, duration, intensity. Fitness experts force clients to become adept at a mode of exercise they are biased towards, despite the fact that the mode, jogging, is injurious, ruinous and unnecessary.
Fitness experts love to jam round pegs into square holes. Most love to jog and run as part of their own fitness regimen. Anytime a groupthink mentality exists a concurrent echo chamber also exists wherein other fitness experts and personal trainers reaffirm to one another that, in this instance, having untrained clients jog, is A-OK. Jogging is an accepted industry standard. This is a classical case of confusing exercise mode, jogging, with the exercise goal, the systematic raising of the trainees heart rate. Lets talk exercise goal: why do we have overweight people engage in cardio? To become adept at jogging? No, jogging is a tool not a goal; the goal is to systematically elevate the heart rate in order to raise the metabolism and burn off additional calories. Digging a little deeper one could add that conscientious cardio improves endurance and additional endurance allows the out-of-shape individual to engage in progressively longer and more frequent sessions. So far so good; no one really debates that fact that cardio exercise is a good thing for an obese individual to practice on a systematic basis. Where the idiocy takes root is when personal trainers mindlessly insist the out-of-shape jog or run. I have a simple question: why? What, specifically and scientifically is the rationale behind jogging? If the goal of cardio is elevate the heart rate (which it is) how high a heart rate is appropriate? Most personal trainers, being mindless followers possessing a herd mentality, couldnt identify an appropriate heart rate for a particular individual.
High impact aerobics is inappropriate for overweight out-of-shape people. They say a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. An out-of-shape person can easily generate a heart rate of 80% of age-related heart rate maximum simply by walking quickly. Is that not enough? What heart rate does jogging inflict on the out of shape person? 90% of ARHR maximum? 100%? 110%? Does anyone see the danger here? Forcing the cardio-challenged body of an obese person to suddenly work at 100% of capacity is asking for trouble. Lunacy is compounded on a show like The Biggest Loser when moronic PTs make obese folks run up the side of a mountain or make 400-pound men (who likely break into a sickly sweat walking up three flights of stairs) run while carrying the trainer on their back! Is this not the very definition of ignorance compounded with sadism? What type of heart rate do you suppose the poor person carrying the prison guard PT was generating while subjected to that level of stress? We havent even considered how high impact aerobic activities like jogging increase the chance of injury to tender body parts. Why are we self-inflicting trauma to cartilage, tendons and ligaments? Imagine the stress on delicate body parts when we go from zero physical activity to pounding the legs and hips, every jog-step resulting in hundreds of pounds of excess bodyweight crashing down on body parts unused to anything more traumatic than walking to the car or around the office. It boggles the mind. How should cardio be administered to obese individuals? Systematically, scientifically and gradually, in an acclimatizing fashion wherein the individual is slowly subjected to ever-greater stress levels using low-impact exercise modes. Over time we can add additional sessions, increase the session duration and jack up the exercise intensity. Cardiovascular exercise has three benchmarks:
Frequency how often do we engage in cardio each week?
Duration how long does the session last?
Intensity how hard is the session?
Frequency is easy to determine, as is duration intensity requires the use of a heart rate monitor. Would you lift weights without knowing the poundage? Of course not, so why would you engage in cardiovascular exercise by definition the systematic elevation of the heart without knowing the heart rate being generated in relation to the stress (exercise) applied? Once you are able to identify the three cardio benchmarks you are able to systematically plot progress
This example is strictly illustrative but provides a template for how an out-of-shape person might gradually improve capacity, ability and endurance. Reducto ad ovum.
More Monday on exercise.
Tags:Popularity: 2% [?]
Related Posts:
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
