Random Friday Post: 20 November 2009

I still hate the fitness field.

Yeah. I mean, that’s not news I guess, because let’s be honest, that’s never gonna change.

There’s just so much to hate, from incompetent personal trainers to lame Internet marketing.

Case in point, apparently there really are Type III muscle fibers now, because some guy wants to make a buck. This is considered edgy and revolutionary marketing, and not the horrible abuse of authority that it is, because capitalism is good and he’s just trying to get paid, brah.

Squats are dead, too. I didn’t get the memo, but apparently squatting is useless because…well, honestly I have no idea why, it’s always worked well enough for me. Though I guess if you squat like an idiot, and thus don’t actually get stronger while dramatically increasing your chances of hurting your knees and back, you’d consider squatting outdated too.

This must be why most personal trainers don’t know what a squat is – let alone your average yokel at the gym. I mean they teach something they call a squat, which generally involves loading up a barbell with too much weight and a sissy pad, but then they have their client do a pansy little knee bend instead of an actual squat. I don’t understand what this is supposed to achieve, and I certainly don’t understand why they call it a squat.

This is a squat:

It doesn’t always have to be that low, but dammit you should at least try. If you can’t squat that low, then figure out why. You might have a weak core, you might have flexibility issues in your hips or ankles or both, but if you can’t do it, something’s wrong and you need to fix it. As for the rest of you, just quit being pansies and squat.

Also any of you physiotherapists out there that think squatting through a full ROM is dangerous, you’ve got a challenge: provide me peer-reviewed evidence backing up this claim. If you can’t, then stop telling everyone it’s dangerous.

In some good news, our friend Alan Aragon, lover of chocolate milk, has put a blog up, and it’s already been trolled by those Internet miscreants that feed us all with laughs. Alan’s a good bro and he talks a lot of good sense, so it’s worth adding to your RSS feed. Check out his AARR too, it’s chock full of researchy goodness.