Proper exercise is one of the most beneficial things a person can do to improve their quality of life. Proper exercise will improve your ability to perform any physical activity and your enjoyment of it. Proper exercise will improve your health and longevity and can even reverse some of the effects of aging. Proper exercise will make you look better –especially in combination with a healthy diet – which can have many positive effects on social interaction and self esteem.
However, when exercise is not performed properly, when a program is poorly designed, includes poor exercises, and encourages a poor method of performing them it can be counterproductive for these goals. A poor exercise program can waste your time, cause overuse and acute injuries, and undermine your long term health and fitness and negatively affect your quality of life.
I’ve been teaching people how to exercise and instructing workouts for over twenty years now, and I am not exaggerating when I say I have seen people’s lives transformed and even saved by proper exercise. I have also seen a lot of people who have suffered because of misinformation, wasting years of their lives and sometimes absurd amounts of money on inefficient, ineffective nonsense that caused them more pain and frustration than results, nonsense that wreaked havoc on both their bodies and their self-esteem.
Exercise is about more than being able to stand out at the beach; it is about people’s physical and mental health and the quality of their lives. So, I get more than a little pissed off when I see outright bullshit being sold as exercise.
When I see fitness and bodybuilding publications like Men’s Health post bullshit on social media I call them on it. Of course, nobody likes being called out for promoting bullshit – especially when it threatens the interests of their advertisers – so they promptly banned me and I can no longer “react to” or comment on any of their posts.
What kind of bullshit? Promoting a variety of nonsensical and relatively ineffective and inefficient exercise programs with the promise they will help you lose fat, build muscle, and get six-pack abs or huge arms in a matter of weeks. These workouts will do no such thing and are actually far less effective than a proper exercise program, while requiring far more time in the gym, and are nowhere near as safe. The only thing most of them will do for your abs is overtrain them.
What is true then? Here are a few truths you won’t hear in Men’s Health and most mainstream fitness media because it doesn’t help sell bullshit programs and products:
No exercise program or diet produces results that are as fast as the magazines promise. It is not realistic for most people to expect to lose more than two pounds of fat per week on a consistent basis, or to gain anywhere near one pound of muscle per week beyond the beginner stage. You can not “get ripped abs” or “add two inches to your upper arms” in a matter of weeks.
No exercise program alone will get you ripped abs, and it is utterly stupid to perform 30 to 45 minutes of abdominal exercises when only one set of a one or two is all you need for most muscle groups. If you want to be lean you have to also follow a proper diet. I have been ripped and I have been fat and through it all my workouts never changed; just my diet. If you want to be lean you have to eat properly for the goal. There are no shortcuts.
There no “secret techniques” or “weird tricks” bodybuilders and fitness models are privy to that allow them to look the way they do – the majority of them just have very good genes for building muscle and losing fat and use drugs that make it even easier to do so in spite of training programs that are ineffective at best and would be counterproductive for genetically-average, drug-free trainees.
There is no easy way to build muscle or lose fat. Proper exercise is very hard and it is not fun or entertaining or sexy. It is called a workout because it is supposed to be work.
Why, then, do they promote the opposite? Because most people would rather buy a lie they want to believe than a truth they don’t, and publications like Men’s Health put money before people. I’ve got nothing against making money, but I believe the way to do that is to give people something of objective value, not telling them what they want to believe or promoting unrealistic fantasies as truth.
If you like exercise fantasy fiction you’ve come to the wrong place. If you like your exercise and nutrition information without all the bullshit, I’m glad to have you as a reader. Thanks to all of you long-time readers who have helped me get the word out about proper exercise over the past twenty-years since I started writing online, and welcome to all the new people.
To better understand where I’m coming from with all of this, please read My Philosophy of Exercise. If you want to learn more about proper exercise there are currently almost three hundred articles here, several books currently available, and a few more coming soon in the book store.
Comments on this entry are closed.
But what about my “one weird trick”? Seriously though, great stuff. It’s always good to come here to stay grounded. I’d love to see the cover of a magazine if you wrote it, the headlines would certainly be a bit different….
Well said Drew. I wouldn’t buy this publication but there is always a copy to look at in my dentist’s waiting room when I go for my 6 monthly check up. It is full of the same old crap which they try to promote as new and exiting and sadly lots of people buy into it. It’s not that complicated to get in shape but it is hard work. I suppose it’s not easy to fill magazine space in between supplement ads and ads for expensive aftershave.
Thank you for the integrity that you show Drew.
You could be out there with the rest of the hucksters trying to sell the hip exercise trend of the week, but instead you remain grounded in the fundamentals. I even have quote written down that you posted somewhere a while back: “Be repetitive, repeat yourself, and use repetition.”
It’s great to have a place on the web that I can direct people to, where I know they won’t get advice that will be ineffective, or worse, get them injured.
You’re welcome, and thanks for letting people know about this site. I’m glad to be able to help them get the results they want from exercise more safely and efficiently.
Well put Drew….some of what I read in that magazine borders on criminal. Shame on them and shame on it’s readership who blindly follow snip-its of misinformation.
I am often amazed that well educated professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers) who work out at my gym seem to carry a Men’s Health (or other BB mags) and follow verbatim the routine described. No critical thinking from the very people who should know better.
Unfortunately there are many highly intelligent and well educated people who do not apply the same level of critical thinking to subjects outside of their area of expertise, but they are not entirely to blame. Even if someone thinks logically about a subject they can arrive at the wrong conclusions if their premises are false. Due to the combination of ignorance and dishonesty in the field of exercise the public has a lot of false premises.
Great post Drew!
Regarding the fact that calorie control ( or calorie budget as I like to think about it) is the most important
part to being fit you made me think of places like Barry’s Bootcamp which we have here in NY.
They promote the number of calories you can burn in an hour of random exercises
at the same time let you pre-order a 300 calorie smoothie for post workout. I think they charge $50 a session…
Getting a little protein and carbohydrate before and after a workout isn’t a bad thing, but it’s silly for them to do this if they’re also telling people they should exercise for the sake of burning calories.
Best thing ever written Drew. Loyal follower and practictoner of your principles. Show the odd friend I like enough to spend my time on, the training system, and they are blown away with the short very hard workouts. All say it is the best workouts they have had….. but yet they all go back to 6 days a week for an hour of weights and then some ” cardio”. Their minds stuck on the principle of economics where more is better and applying it to their training. Then they watch as their bodies don’t change year after year and the joints get injured.
Keep posting because your words are good and people will find you when they are ready
Thanks Scott, hopefully they come around eventually, and if they do I hope they find my site helpful.
Shocking …… that it took this long for them to ban you. Reason cannot be allowed in an environment built on lies. They sell the idea that endless hours of cardio and ab exercises sculpt the bodies of their models (and not the drugs and Photoshop), and you come along with boring and difficult old reality. This is a badge of honor for you. Now, create a sock account, and get banned again! I’m joking, sort of.
Actually, I buy MH for the recipes, at least I did back when they were still doing “Cook This, Not That”. Matt G. was a very good food writer.
The workouts they published were ridiculous. And when someone like Dan John had an article, you could tell they had altered it.
yes, I didn’t get why all those magazines put such unrealistic and long workout programs in them like 4×12 for front delts, etc. It’s ridiculous. People buy into the fantasy. It reminds me (although on a much more serious level) of the cancer industry and big pharma. Because they are vulnerable and scared, people buy into all those poisonous treatments like it’s the only way to heal when it’s not. It in fact doesn’t cure anything. BIG money is behind their agenda like in the fitness industry.