February
8, 2001
Super
Slow Workout for Today's Fast Food Lifestyle
by Raphael Picaud
Absolutely every one I have seen in
the last 48 hours has asked me about the "super slow workout"
that they saw on the news. Of course, I have a lot to say about
it. That's why they asked ME. It is with my three different hats
that I will answer their question.
First of all, I am a trainer. I'm one of the top guys here in
Hollywood- trainer of the "A list", known for my ability
to transform people. That would be my first hat, the one with
the Body Maxx logo.
Then I have the Fitnessology hat. Here,
I am also training people, not one-on-one, but teaching everyone
how to be his or her own trainer. For this effort, I have created
a Fitnessology book describing the laws of fitness as the body
dictates them, as well as a best selling video of the same name
on Amazon.com. I also lecture though seminars and e-mail, instructing
people how to take their personal fitness into their own hands,
without having to hire a personal trainer. With Fitnessology,
I have developed a unique teaching method; my hat here has a similar
logo as Body Maxx, but the colors are different.
Finally, I am the Fit 4 Free founder
and president. Fit 4 Free is a non-profit organization dedicated
to providing vital health information to people around the country.
We want to teach everyone the basic hygiene laws of life in order
to create a "politically correct fitness world". Our
goal is to provide free and easy access to fitness facilities
for people at work as well as in the community; to have fitness
education at school; and to have a marketing force capable of
competing with the junk food dealers' marketing campaigns.
For our first project, Fit 4 Free is
creating pilot fitness community called the "Fit Village",
in an Indian reservation. The Acoma pueblo in New Mexico will
be the first community in the country to benefit from a "fitness
compatible" society.
So, having said all that, let me slide
my big head into the first hat…
The super slow? Oh, it's nothing new.
We have been training like that for years, but there is nothing
magic to it. It's a valuable workout alternative. When actors
work on a shoot, they have a very limited amount of time available.
Their day starts at 4 am, and they need to sleep at night, so
saving time by working out for 10 min instead of 60 is not a bad
thing. Will their body go through a metamorphosis on this regime?
No. But if they are cautious with their diet, they'll maintain
muscle mass. Sometimes I train beginners or injured people by
using the slow count. It allows them to protect their joints and
remain focused. It gives them the confidence and assertiveness
to graduate to a larger volume of work later on.
One study (referred to in a Newsweek
Web Exclusive article by Geoffrey Cowley, as quoted below) was
used to suggest that people who used the super slow method gained
more muscle strength than those using traditional methods, but
the actual results of this study need to be clarified.
In 1993 and again in 1999, Wayne
Westcott, fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in
Quincy, Mass., assigned untrained, middle-aged volunteers to one
of two regimens. Both groups performed the same round of exercises.
But while one group did 10-rep sets, spending seven seconds on
each repetition of the exercise, the other group did five-rep
sets, extending each rep for 14 seconds. Both groups put in the
same amount of time, but over periods of eight to 10 weeks, the
slow lifters gained 50 percent more strength than the controls.
Wayne Wescott and I discussed this
study in 1993. He was quite specific in stating that the initial
response was good in the first few weeks of progress, but then
it evened out. Strength is not the only criteria used to measure
the success of a weight training regimen. Endurance, power, and
explosiveness are just a few of the other factors to be considered.
What can one expect to learn in 20
minutes a week, anyway? I have developed a teaching method that
enables people to learn how to workout in record time. It's clear,
efficient, and concise, but I need three hours to teach it. It
takes longer if the person is disconnected from their body. I
am laughing at the idea of anyone capable of teaching it faster.
Teaching muscle coordination and neuro-coordination takes time.
It takes availability. Twenty minutes a week is a tempting idea
that will mislead people. You can work 20 minutes a week trading
stocks, if you think that's a good idea. (As long as you trade
the right ones, I'm sure you could earn a living.)
I am changing hats again... It is the
Fitnessologist that is talking to you now.
Become your own trainer- working out
is not complicated, but it takes focus, determination, and availability.
The sentence to remember is this: "It's the muscle contraction
that leads to the movements, not the other way around." So
it's not about throwing the weight around but flexing the muscle.
Every time you flex it, you kill it. (So far no beef with the
super slow.)
As your own trainer you must manipulate
or control your metabolism. The metabolism is the sum of all chemical
transformations in the body. The food that you eat is transformed
in nutrients; the nutrients are carried by the blood and dispatched
where needed. The protein will rebuild the muscles that have been
destroyed, as well as the normal wear and tear of the body's cells.
The heart will power the blood. All those steps are chemical transformations,
and the sum of them is what makes the metabolism.
Which metabolism is going to be more efficient- the one that does
20 minutes of exercise per week or the one doing one hour of exercise
3 times per week? It seems to me that the sum of the 3 times one
hour is going to be more efficient.
Besides, it makes you feel good to exercise. I want to feel good
more then once a week. And if cardio supposedly slows down the
progress of muscle gain- as proponents of the super slow claim-
then would you say that it's bad to walk to work? What if you
were to go shopping at the mall and had to walk a lot, would that
be bad too? How about sex- is that bad for muscle growth?
Exercise, and knowing to take care
of your health, is merely the sum of the equation above. In the
equation you've got food, cardio, and weight training. If you
remove cardio, you must be extremely vigilant with caloric intake.
And you also take the chance of not having a heart that's powerful
enough to dispatch nutrients throughout the body and therefore
repair the muscle. If you do not repair the muscle, it will shrink
instead of growing.
That's a big risk to take.
I am taking away the last soft hat
and I am strapping on my Fit 4 Free HELMET- the warrior hat.
Ken Hutchins, the Florida-based trainer
who "founded" the Super Slow method, and patented the
name, adamantly claims that 20 minutes a week is all that a person
needs to stay healthy.
How irresponsible it is to make such a claim, especially for a
supposed fitness professional. It's a shame that, while we are
trying to encourage and inspire people to exercise, others are
trying to tell them that 20 min weekly is enough. That's all that
people will remember, and the shameless appeal to our lazy, impatient
nature will ring in their ears: "20 MIN PER WEEK IS ENOUGH."
Last year Billy Blanks lead people to Subway, and now a fitness
guy from Florida is telling people that exercise is overrated
and his formula is just as efficient. Can't these people exercise
any responsibility? Who will tell the 8-year-old boy, whose father
died of a heart attack because he didn't do cardio, "Sorry
kid, he thought it would hurt his muscle mass."
Imagine a dentist telling his patients
that brushing is not necessary, and a good rinse after a meal
is enough! Soon we would all have British teeth. We'd be a country
of fat people with bad teeth. What a great example to set for
our children.
I find the media irresponsible for
publishing the story. It is dangerous, and the data is not indicative
of anything. Take these personal accounts from the same Newsweek
article, for example:
When Rona Ostrow took up slow-motion
training 14 months ago, she had battled breast cancer for nearly
five years. The treatments had damaged her thyroid and sent her
abruptly into menopause, leaving her weak, overweight and discouraged
about restoring her body. The 52-year-old librarian couldn't face
the gym scene, so she signed on with Adam Zickerman, founder of
an individual-training studio called InForm Fitness, for a brief
weekly dose of slow lifting. She has since lost four inches from
her chest, waist and hips and regained some faith in her body.
On a recent icy morning, she slipped and fell on the sidewalk.
"I just jumped back up like a hockey player," she marvels.
The woman lost inches off her waist,
but she was menopausal, and had been battling cancer for 5 years.
Wouldn't these other variables be confounded with the results
of her 20-min/week-exercise regime? Wouldn't going from no exercise
to some exercise- no matter what it is- also be responsible for
her results?
For 10 years Dr. Philip Alexander
ran 60 miles a week-and on days when he didn't run he would put
in time on his bike. Then, five years ago, he really got serious
about physical fitness. The 56-year-old internist now spends just
20 minutes a week exercising, and he rarely soaks his shirt… "When
I was running," he recalls, "the next day I would feel
I was run over by a truck." The new routine never leaves
him bonked…
This doctor- was he weight lifting
before? Did he know how to flex his muscles? Did he change his
diet? We don't know much about his background. He's also not a
very typical example: the good doctor was doing way too much exercise
in the first place. Of course he feels better now, he was so over-trained
before. As you can see, these examples are far from convincing.
As you've heard before, it takes a
village. We all must help people to be responsible for their health.
As a nation, we are suffering the consequences of lack of fitness.
The benefits of exercise should never be questioned; it should
only be encouraged. There is no short cut. We have to stop gaining
weight, and 20 minutes a week is not going to cut it.
The junk food dealers are in part responsible
for the obesity epidemic in the country. So are the video game
distributors, and the weight loss industry for telling people
that it's easy to lose weight. ("Just drink this shake and
the pounds will melt off!"). The fitness industry is also
to blame for being dominated by giant chains that sell memberships
to people that they hope won't come, and for not providing guidance-
affordable guidance. We have got to create a politically correct
fitness world, where people wouldn't bring donuts to a business
meeting just like they wouldn't bring cigarettes.
