The University of Fitness

Resolution Time

First off, I hope everyone had the happiest of holidays. Also, apologies for being MIA for the past few weeks. You know, finals and all.

With 2009 coming to an end, we all know what time it is. December is a month of indulgence, and as soon as that’s over comes just a slight bit of regret for letting loose at parties and family dinners and allowing yourself to loosen your belt one notch [though there's no need for the guilt since it's good ol' homemade food]. So, either because of the indiscretions of December or because you put it off all year in 2009, January 1st is the time to make those resolutions to get into shape.

The point of today’s post isn’t to discourage you from making a fitness-related resolution because they’re either stupid, misguided, failures, or any combination therein. Resolutions can work, but you have to make them the right way. The problem with normal resolutions like “lose 10 pounds by February” or “have a six-pack by the end of 2010″ is that they focus on the ‘what’ and not the ‘how’. I’ve been guilty of this for the past several years [yeah, that second one in the last sentence was my resolution 4 years running]. Inevitably, I got through a week of running on the treadmill or doing an hour of crunches a day, and then missed a few days and let it slide because, hey, I’ve got until the end of the year.

I like the third one.

The thing is, saying that you will accomplish X by the date Y seems fairly simple, specific and straightforward. But it’s a very deceptively vague way to set out a resolution because you just ignore all the real specifics. So, as much as I hate to use a tired old saying, failure to plan is planning to fail in this case. Speaking of tired old cliches, has anyone seen Avatar? I’m pretty sure the old, evil ex-Colonel talked entirely in them. He actually said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore” at one point. No shit, Colonel, it’s another planet. But I digress.

So how do you make a New Year’s resolution and avoid the pitfall of making a vague resolution that is riddled with ways to fail? Simple: forget the goal. It seems a bit counterintuitive to set a resolution without a goal, but it may be the easiest way to reach one. Instead, resolve to follow a behavior that will eventually get you to your goal for the first month of two of 2010. For example, if you want to lose fat, resolve to stop drinking soda and sugary drinks for two months. If your goals are a bit more ambitious, resolve to go to the gym at least 3 times a week in January. Then, set your actual goal at the end of the first or second month, AFTER you’ve completed your initial resolution.

Wait, what’s the point of that?

Resolutions fail because people start strong and put them off and give up on a plan early.  As dumb a strategy as doing an obscene amount of crunches  was, if I did it for a while it would likely have gotten me somewhere eventually.  But I put it off until “later” in the year because I could rationalize that I could still fulfill my resolution.  However, if the resolution is to go to the gym 3 times a week in January, you can’t really fool yourself into thinking you’re still following it if you skip a week.  This way, it’s more of a conscious decision to break your resolution so early in the year.

Also, I like this resolution style because a habit takes about two months to form depending on the habit and the dedication to forming it.  The idea is to form the habit of going to the gym regularly before you decide what you want to focus on once you have established that regular gym schedule.  The same thing applies to a dietary habit like not eating fast food or drinking soda.  Obviously you can make some headway on the goal that you’ve got in the back of your head.  If you cut out all your soda, you may end up halfway to that 10 lb lighter display on the scale.

Here are a few of my resolutions for 2010:

• Study twice as much as I did for the MCATs this time than last time
• Average 3 posts a week on here in the month of January
• Do at least 50 pullups a day [this is where doorway pullup bars come in handy]
• Only watch 2 hours of TV a day* [seriously, I'm an addict.  *Playoff football will not count toward this quota.]

So what are your resolution[s]? Any updates of past resolutions?  Or how did you update an old resolution to make it  more likely to succeed?  These adventures an more, in the comments!

Weightlifting 101: Best Tools for the Job

Stepping into the weight room first time can seem a bit daunting. Even if you consider yourself experienced in weight training, it can sometimes be confusing to pick out which tool will best suit your need. There are a bunch of different options out there, so it helps to know the pros and cons of each type of weight to make better decisions during your workout and maximize the effects of your weight training.

Decisions, decisions…

Here are a few basic types of weights:

• Barbells/dumbbells
• Kettlebells
• Bodyweight
• Weight machines
• Odd object weights

BARBELLS/DUMBBELLS: These are the most common weights in the gym, and pretty much the most often used by people who do any sort of weight training, and with good reason.   Using barbells [BBs] or dumbbells [DBs] allows a huge number of exercises targeting any muscle in the body with very precise amounts of weight.

• Pros: BBs and DBs are best suited for muscle growth and strength gains.   Barbells allow you to use the most weight, which allows for the best stimulation of muscles for strength and size gains.  Dumbbells can add another level of benefit, because even though you can’t use as much weight as with barbells, the added challenge of handling dumbbells individually activates more stabilizer muscles than barbells, and may come in handy for working some smaller muscle groups.  They’re also the most easily adjustable weights, and a steady progression of weight is key to gaining strength and muscle.  DBs and BBs are the most versatile tools, and can often be used in lieu of the other tools for other purposes, like conditioning, endurance, or fat loss.
• Cons: BBs require less stabilizing work than DBs and other weightlifting implements overall.  Though muscles can be worked with heavy weights, this type of lifting can sometimes be hard to carry over to real world application, especially if the wrong exercises/movements are being used.  For DBs, the common 5 lb. jumps between weights can be too much of a weight increase, especially for women or when working smaller muscles.

KETTLBELLS: Kettlebell training has become more popular recently in fitness circles, and it deserves the attention. Though it may have seemed like a fad, it is one of the few products that merits the hype it has achieved.  These have been used for ages by the Russians, and we all know those crazy Russians know a thing or two about training.

• Pros: Kettlebells are great for full body work, because many kettlebell exercises are explosive movements that use the body as a whole rather than just a part.  The explosive nature of exercises also creates a high workload for the body in a short time, making KB exercises great for conditioning and fat loss.  They can be used in place of cardio, which keeps workouts more interesting and engaging.  The unique shape of KBs also makes them less balanced in your hand than dumbbells, which works even more stabilizer muscles, imagine doing an exercise with a loaded suitcase, and activates the core.  The use of the full body coupled with the stabilizing function and large range of motion of KBs makes them much more applicable to real world strength than barbells or dumbbells.
• Cons: Kettlebells lose their comparative effectiveness if used as dumbbells/for dumbbell exercises.  They are also less available in commercial gyms, and more expensive to buy for a home gym since they come in set weights and can’t be purchased in variable weight units like adjustable dumbbells.  There is also a higher risk of injury with certain exercises if proper form isn’t observed since the heavy portion of the KB is not as highly controlled as a DB.

BODYWEIGHT: Regardless of where you are working out, you body is always there.  This eliminates the possibility of being limited by resources and, subsequently, allowing yourself to get caught up in excuses not to work out.

• Pros: Aside from convenience and availability, bodyweight exercise uses the whole body as a unit, much like KB training.  Unlike freeweights, using bodyweight never involves sitting down, so more muscles are used as the body is supported in some way off the ground.  Maneuvering yourself in different ways and controlling your body in space also teaches kinesthetic sense, or body control and awareness.  This is a huge benefit in sports and most other real world physical activity.   Bodyweight exercise can work any muscle in the body, requiring at most a sturdy branch and a nice hill, and it also tests your creativity by finding out novel exercises and routines. It’s also perhaps the safest mode of weight training.
• Cons: It’s hard to find fault with bodyweight training.  One of the few drawbacks is that after the initial beginner stage, it may not be challenging enough to increase strength and muscle without adding weight to exercises [like a weighted backpack once regular pullups are easy].

WEIGHT MACHINES: Now entering stormy waters.  Most knowledgeable trainers and coaches won’t even touch weight machines, and for the most part I tend to agree with them.  They aren’t pure evil, however, and we’ll see why.  This time, I’ll switch it up and start with the cons.

• Cons: They work less muscles because all the stabilizing is done for you, you only move the weight in one set path.  The “weight” you use is artificially high because it takes your weaker stabilizing muscles out of the equation.  There is no carryover to the real world, even less that with barbells, because of the grooved single dimension of motion.
• Pros: Cable pulley machines allow freedom in 3 dimensions, so they are exceptions to the above.  Traditional machines can be useful to completely exhaust a muscle – near the end of a workout after it has been already been trained hard by freeweights – to maximize muscle growth.  During a diet when muscles may be weaker, machines can be used safely instead of heavier compound exercises.  [Guys with big egos can't stand using less weight when they're weaker during a diet, and can hurt themselves by trying to lift a weight they can't.]

ODD OBJECTS: This category includes tools most likely not found in your gym.  Odd object training uses often homemade tools that aren’t traditional weights.  Sandbags, sledgehammers, huge tires, weighted sleds, heavy ropes: these are all odd objects.

• Pros: These tools are basically the definition of real world, so no worries about practical carryover there. They’re often much cheaper to buy or assemble than traditional weights.  These tools are FUN, creating a motivation to workout and a high adherence to a program that incorporates them.  They are also good for a variety of functions, such as conditioning, practical strength, and athletic carryover.
• Cons: They take a little extra legwork to track down or put together.  Also, the purposes and exercises for each object may be a little specific, so a combination is necessary since they can’t be the cornerstone of a program.  Sandbags can be messy, you need room to swing around ropes and hammers and push tires and sleds, you may need a tire for sledgehammer swings: means are a limiting factor.

I left a few things out on this list, but most of what you’d use for weight training is here.  You could find a tool for almost any job from the things mentioned above.   A good workout program should use a combination of weights, since using only one will neglect some of the benefits of the others.  A combination of two or more should be used to cancel out the disadvantages of using just one method of training.

Can you think of any other advantages/disadvantages to using the weights mentioned above?  Want to know more about something I may have left out? Share in the comments.