If you didn’t read my last post, DO IT!

If you don’t feel like it, let me sum up – The fitness industry has OCD!  It needs behavioral/psychological intervention, and possibly medication.

Why do I say that?  Well, the obsession with measurement that has taken over the fitness industry is completely out of control.  Justify it any way you want – “tracking,” “liability,” “periodization” – it’s out of control.

People come in to gyms to get healthy.  They want to look like a supermodel.  They want to be stronger, to feel better.  What they get from trainers instead are endless, boring, repetitive, hour-long sessions that involve minute and specific muscular activation, strange balancing activities that have no carryover to reality, ultra-low-impact weightlifting, and almost completely useless activity.

The obsession with calories is another part of the OCD puzzle.  A recent Men’s Health article – Uncover Your Abs – says that “The fastest way to look like you’ve packed on 20 pounds of muscle is to lose 10 pounds of fat.”  Well, they’re quoting Alan Aragon, a Men’s Health weight-loss coach.

Here’s Alan’s advice: take your target body weight (what you want to weigh), multiply that by 10, and use that as your daily caloric intake figure.  If you workout more than one hour per week, add 1 to the target body weight for every hour over that first one.

Then, figure out your macronutrient intake.  You should have 1 gram of protein per target-weight pound.  You need a half gram of fat for every target-weight pound.  And whatever’s left over goes to carbs.

Sounds simple, right?  Well, just make sure that all of those nutrients are coming from good sources.  This is the one place the article makes sense -

“Build your diet around whole foods—those you’d find in nature. You should choose mainly meat, eggs, dairy, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, plus grain products that are made with 100 percent whole-wheat flour. Note that typical junk foods—candy, baked goods, and sugary drinks—don’t make the list.”

Sound familiar?

But wait!  There’s more!  Adam (the actual author of the article…I guess Alan was just a consultant) gives specific guidelines for the precise amounts of different foods you need to eat per day, and at what time.  You need a shake (insert ad here), and a turkey sandwich.

Oh yeah, one meal per week…go ahead and splurge.

Then purge.

Come on guys.  Let’s get real.  What is the deciding factor in fitness?  How much you move, how frequently, and at what intensity.  No one (excepting people with serious problems, who should be seeing a doctor, nutritionist, or physical therapist anway) needs to be counting calories (or isolating minscule muscular contractions)!

I don’t like to use my body in this way, but I can’t resist it.  Here’s a picture of me, from about an hour ago.  See my ripped six-pack?

Abs of steel

Yes, I’m posing.  But hey, so are the guys on the magazines!

Here’s what I ate today:

Breakfast – 3 eggs, 3 pieces of toast (with butter and honey), 1 cup of coffee

Lunch – 2 homemade hot dogs (they were incredible), cole slaw, bean salad, chili, 1 beer, 2 pieces of key lime pie, 1 piece of spice-bread

Dinner – haven’t had it yet…

But Josh, you say, that’s not fair!  You work out all the time.

Do I?  I play every morning from 10-10:30 (yes, for 30 minutes, I play…actually, I’m usually watching other people play).  Then I’m training people.  Last week, I “worked out” once.  For 30 minutes.

But here’s the key.  This is what that 30 minutes looked like:

Warmup – box jumps (30″ box), clap pushups, medicine ball throws (up to the 40lb ball), explosive rows on a TRX.  Three sets of each for as many reps as you can get till you start to slow down (i.e., don’t go to failure on this stuff!).

Workout – Dumbbell bench press, Back Squats, Dumbbell bent row – keep going in sequence, working up to a weight that you can only do 2 or 3 times.  Then, do a drop set of each exercise with a much lighter weight, with perfect form.

Supplemental work – Dips, Glute-ham raise, Full situps, Handstand lowering – 3 sets of as many reps as you’ve got, as fast as possible.

By the end of that workout, I was drenched in sweat.  The other trainers were watching me run between stations wondering what the hell I was doing.  Want to know what I was doing?

I was working.

Now, I’m not advocating my bad dietary behavior.  It’s the 4th of July, okay?!  I do usually try to eat lots of fruits and vegetables with all the meat.  The portions are generally that large, though, and that fatty…

On the workout side, anyone can do that workout.  You can do it tomorrow.  You won’t use the exact same weight that I used, or do the same number of reps, but if you follow that sequence, trying to go as quickly as you can, while building up to an intensity level that represents the heaviest weights you can move (SAFELY!), you will get an incredible workout!  Over time, your body will adapt to the stress, and you will see things happen.

DO IT!