IT WORKED FOR ROCKY BUT WILL IT WORK FOR YOU?

Rocky Balboa proved, when beating 7 bells of s*** out of Ivan Drago in Rocky IV that you don’t need fancy machines and technology tracking your every move to become a supreme physical specimen.

But nowadays with nearly everybody wearing a fitness tracker on their wrist, it seems that more of us are intent on following Drago’s technology-driven approach rather than Balboa’s old school approach!

This reliance on technology didn’t work out too well for Drago but will it work for you? 

Fitness trackers (fitbits etc) can be a good way of highlighting an individual’s levels of inactivity and subsequently encouraging them to become more active. Which is great.

But the problem is, fitness trackers are not perfect...

For starters, they are much like much like US Army – inaccurate!

A study looking into the accuracy of seven different wearable activity trackers found that not one of them accurately measured calories burned! The best was off by 27%, the worst by a staggering 93%. (However, the same study did show that the trackers were much more accurate at measuring heart rate). It’s not just the wearable devices that are inaccurate though. Those flash looking cardio machines you see in gyms don’t do a very good job of tracking calories either!

Secondly, they might not be that good at helping you lose weight!

One study found that, people wearing fitness trackers lost less weight than those that didn’t wear them. The two-year study, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh, involved 500 overweight volunteers engaging in a structured exercise regime whilst following a diet found that the group wearing trackers lost 8lb (3.6kg), but the ones who didn't lost 13lb (5.9kg)!

Another problem, is lost motivation

Some of my very own clients have suffered from negative emotions because have failed to reach the calorie, steps, or sleep targets set by their fitness trackers. But it’s not just me saying this, Andrew Lane, professor of sport psychology at the University of Wolverhampton corroborates with this too. In an interview with the BBC he questioned whether such negative thoughts ultimately lead to demotivation "What if we start consistently not reaching goals set for us by them (the fitness trackers)? Ultimately it would lead to us feeling demotivated - the opposite effect they are supposed to have." This is something I have personally witnessed with my own clients. It’s as if the pressure to meet the targets takes the enjoyment away from exercising and some therefore give up on exercising all together!

In conclusion…
Before you dismiss me as a luddite, trying to resist the progress of technology, please rest assured that I’m most certainly not. It’s just that I’m more like a seesaw with a fat kid at either end – balanced. Balanced in my views that is, and I’m well aware that nothing in the fitness industry is 100% perfect (regular readers will know this). Fitness trackers have their pros but they certainly have their cons too and they are certainly not a panacea for solving our nations obesity crisis (which some people think they are). They will suit some people and work well for them, for others they won’t be quite so effective! 

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TO BOOK YOUR FREE TRIAL PERSONAL TRAINING SESSION, OR TO BOOK A PLACE AT MY BOOT CAMP CLASS, PLEASE DON’T HESITATE TO GET IN TOUCH!

 matt@mlrpt.co.uk                 www.mlrpt.co.uk                          07939316401 www.twitter.com/mlrpt      www.facebook.com/mlrpt        www.twitter.com/mlrpt

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WALK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD AND YOU'LL GET RUN OVER!

The man responsible for spearheading the establishment of our much-loved NHS, the legendary Anuerin ‘Nye’ Bevan famously said “We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.” Now, this hard-nosed approach was obviously required to bring about one of the UK’s greatest ever achievements, but is this same approach required in the fitness industry? I think not!

Being an almost obsessed purveyor of all things fitness, I ‘sign-up’ to an infinite number of websites so that I can stay abreast of all the latest goings-on within the industry. Granted, most of the info is downright rubbish and about as useful as Joey Essex on your quiz team but in amongst the heaps of crap there are the few odd gems of scientifically-backed info out there (anyway, I digress).

THE GROUP EXERCISE BRIGADE…

Recently, I received an email from a company who exclusively specialise in group fitness training. As you might expect, and quite rightly, they highlighted the numerous well documented benefits of group training, which, of course there are many. However, they then went on to decry the benefits of highly individualised assessment and training programmes, not personal training in general but just those trainers and training programmes which perhaps have an over-idealistic view of human movement. To paraphrase, they felt that spending inordinate amounts of precious time on achieving 100% perfect biomechanics, and addressing tiny muscle imbalances was daft when most time-poor people would be better served doing more strenuous exercise to stave off the threat of serious cardiovascular disease.

THE MOVEMENT SPECIALISTS…

A day or so later I received an email from one of these aforementioned movement specialists, which as you can probably imagine stressed the importance of the testing and retesting of biomechanics and the need for highly individualised training programmes, heck they were so persuasive in their arguments that they almost got me believing that I’d been using the wrong technique to pick my nose all these years!  

These two approaches are almost diametrically opposed to each other. They are on completely different sides of the road, and neither dares walk in the middle of that road, not even for a second. When, on-balance, a mixture of the two approaches is probably best. Yes, there is certainly a need for assessment of biomechanics and the need for ‘proper’ technique but we certainly shouldn’t get too overly idealistic about it. We are all different after all and the correct technique and biomechanics for one does not necessarily look the same as for another!

UNFORTUNATELY…

Unfortunately, this example is just the tip of a rather large iceberg. The fitness industry is littered with people who are desperate to remain on one side of the road and dare not walk in the middle. It’s as if the leaders or ‘gurus’ of certain training programmes or dietary regimes actively seek to divide us and if truth be told, many of their followers seem to enjoy this division because it somehow induces a siege mentality amongst them, and a misguided moral superiority over other people who dare follow a different diet or exercise plan. It allows the HIIT evangelists to decry anyone who dares go for a long run. Functional movement specialists can snigger at anyone for doing a bench press and the No-carb crew can treat with utter contempt anyone munching on a sandwich.   

IN CONCLUSION…

As with most things in life, when there are two opposing arguments the answer generally lies somewhere in the middle. Be very wary of anyone in the fitness who is a vehement supporter of one particular exercise programme whilst remaining completely blind to the benefits of others. And remember, the irony is that the only common ground that many of these gurus have with each other is an overwhelming desire to flog you their products! 

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TO BOOK YOUR FREE TRIAL PERSONAL TRAINING SESSION, OR TO BOOK A PLACE AT MY BOOT CAMP CLASS, PLEASE DON’T HESITATE TO GET IN TOUCH!

 matt@mlrpt.co.uk                 www.mlrpt.co.uk                          07939316401 www.twitter.com/mlrpt      www.facebook.com/mlrpt        www.twitter.com/mlrpt

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