OCD-land

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Josh

I’m convinced that one of, if not the, defining element of current American (US) culture is OCD/ADHD.

It’s everywhere. People want to count calories, count repetitions, count weight, count volume, count miles run, count times, compare times, compare weights, compare reps, compare sets, count cancer cases, count bees, count count count count.

And it doesn’t change anything. In fact, I’m not sure it does much at all, other than to perpetuate the counting.

Let’s take exercise as an example, since that’s what this blog is purportedly about.

Do you burn more calories when playing a game on a playground than you do on a treadmill [most likely]? What is the optimal work/rest interval to burn the most calories (on the playground or on the treadmill) [no such thing exists]? Exactly how many pitches can little Johnny (or Beth) sustain before he (or she) suffers overuse injuries in the rotator cuff [one too many for him/her]? How high must one be able to jump in order to be a pro basketball star [vertical leap is poorly correlated with basketball performance]? When is the best time to start lifting weights [whenever you feel ready]? How frequently should I workout every week [whenever you feel up to it]? How much cardio should I do [as much as you feel like doing]? What type of weight training should I do – bodybuilding, Olympic lifting, powerlifting, corrective exercise, fitness training, Crossfit type stuff [whatever floats your boat]?

I’m still trying to come up with a single answer to all of these questions. I know it’s out there. It’s something like this – “Do whatever you feel like doing.”

Now, there is a problem, in that many people will attempt to do things they have no experience with and get injured. It’s like wanting to do some underwater welding, going out and buying the equipment, and jumping into the lake with it.

“What the heck?! It can’t be that hard to figure out!”

So I’ll give you that one. It is hard to figure out. Especially when you have no experience.

But the solution to that part is simple – find someone who knows, and ask them.

Then you have to do something. You either have to take their advice, and do what they’re telling you (for better or worse), or look for another opinion (for instance, find someone who says you CAN get washboard abs sitting on your couch!!!!), or do nothing at all.

I think what bothers me is that no one teaches THE BASICS.

Here are THE BASICS as I see them:

Understanding your body
Learning to listen to and hear your body
Doing things that are agreeable to your body

That’s it. At any level, you can go as deeply as you choose, getting a PhD in each, if you wish. But you must engage in those three steps in order to succeed – and success here, is being a healthy human being. Beyond that, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to count calories, or miles jogged. You don’t have to have a workout log, or go to a class every week. You don’t have to do anything in particular. But you must do something.

Yes, Josh, but what does that have to do with OCD? Well, once you practice those three things, you don’t have to count anything anymore. You don’t have to obsess. You don’t have to be distracted. In fact, once you do those three things, you don’t even have to do those three things anymore!

Note – This post brought to you by the mother at Jackson Playground this morning who told her maniacal kids “If you don’t calm down, I won’t let you watch TV when we get home.”

Dear playground-mom, the solution to our shared misery is simple – you didn’t run them enough at the playground that you were then rushing to leave, only to sit their unexhausted minds down in front of the boob tube…

Fitness OCD – Counting Calories

Posted on July 4, 2009 by Josh

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!

OCD Strikes the Fitness World!

Posted on July 4, 2009 by Josh

A recent article by Jon Feld in the IHRSA (the International Health, Racquet, and Sportsclub Assocation) online journal (also in their print publication) reveals that the fitness industry has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The article starts off well enough – “Once considered an extra, a special service, in the club industry, fitness assessments have since become a fundamental element for most clubs and their members,” Feld writes.

But then Feld starts talking to Everette Aaberg, manager of a gym in Dallas – “Now, before we even begin to consider cardiovascular readiness and general conditioning levels, and prior to testing any movement patterns, we must first obtain a complete understanding of postural deviations, joint limitations, and functional muscle imbalances,” observes Aaberg. “It’s critical to identify biomechanical abilities before embarking on any other testing.”

Oh. Okay Everette. I mean, if you really think it’s necessary…

“We go through the entire body, joint by joint, to look for any range-of-motion limitations, identify any muscular imbalances, and establish training and treatment priorities,” he says. “This information is correlated with other assessments, such as postural and gait analysis and general movement-pattern testing, to help determine exactly what remedial exercise program and treatment plan should be developed.”

Uh. The entire body? Joint by joint? Depending on whom you ask, there are anywhere between 145 and 360 joints in the human body. How long does this process take?! Isn’t this a little obsessive?!

Oh come on, Josh…I can hear you say…this isn’t really OCD!

Well, let’s talk about that. NIMH defines OCD as “an anxiety disorder…characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Repetitive behaviors such as handwashing, counting [measuring], checking [assessing], or cleaning are often performed with the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts or making them go away. Performing these so-called “rituals,” however, provides only temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety.”

Supposedly, OCD is “caused” by excess serotonin in the body, and is usually treated with a combination of behavioral/psychological, and chemical treatments (serotonin reuptake inhibitors). Serotonin is found predominantly in the gut of mammals (along with the nervous system). That’s funny. Could there be a connection between serotonin levels and diet?!

Lots of serotonin makes animals dominant and/or aggressive, or anxious. Serotonin triggers emptying of the gut, making animals hungrier. Of course, it all goes together – more aggression/anxiety = greater energy expenditure = hungrier animal.

But exercise mediates serotonin levels – especially vigorous exercise (i.e., you get really sweaty). Sad that 1. We aren’t getting sweaty anymore, and 2. Our trainers are just as OCD as we are…

Ultimately, we dont get to find out the answer to that question. The next thing we learn in the article is from another interviewee, more OCD behavior – “‘Specific muscle groups and individual muscles are now tested with an eye toward preventing injuries and improving the overall level of fitness,” indicates Boyd Lyles, Jr., M.D.’”

Ah. A doctor! That sounds good. But…how do you do that, Dr. Lyles?!

The answer, more assessments.

Assessments are so prevalent, they’re overtaking fitness itself. In many gyms, trainers spend each hour with their client doing “functional exercise.” The client barely breaks a sweat! In what way are they becoming more “fit?”

Meanwhile, the client wonders what the hell is going on. Why is there such a discrepancy between their look and the guy on the cover of Men’s Health, or Women’s Health, or Men’s-Women’s-Fitness-Muscle-and-Magazine.com?

It must be because they can just exercise all day. Or because they’re super-strict with their diets. Or…maybe it’s that you aren’t even remotely challenging yourself with movement during the week (OCD trainer or no). Or, maybe it’s that your trainer has you spending so much time perfecting your ability to perform bizarre “functional” movements that don’t challenge you, that your body has no reason to adapt to anything.

Here’s a simple way to get in shape:

Go to your cupboards and refrigerator and throw out everything made with high fructose corn syrup, white flour, white sugar, artificial flavors, artificial colors, hormones, or antibiotics. Go to the store and buy versions of those same foods that don’t have that crap in them. Make it easy on yourself. While you’re at it, buy more fresh (not wrapped in plastic) vegetables and fruits. Stop eating takeout, or at restaurants.

Then, play more. Play much more. Here’s how you do that, because I guarantee you’ve forgotten – go to the playground and watch the sweatiest kids. Write down what they’re doing. When they have to go home for dinner, go out there and do exactly what they did. Find a friend to play with. Play for hours on end. Don’t join a league sports team. Don’t play kickball. Don’t be organized or formal about it. Just play. Run as hard as you can till you can’t anymore. Spin in circles till you’re dizzy. Play.

If your “adult” “sensibilities” won’t allow you to do that, you can go the exercise route. Set aside fifteen minutes and do something as intensely as you can. You can do just one exercise, like the burpee, pushups, situps, lunges, squats, jumping, or you can string them all together – burpees, then pushups, then lunges, then situps, then squats – switching when you get tired. Jump rope, run, crawl on all fours…whatever. Do that every day till it gets easy. Then send me an email and I’ll give you some more ideas.