Still Learning about Fitness

I still remember the first time I walked into a gym, about 25 years ago. The sound of metal hitting the floor. Large alienating machines. And the smell of steel in the air. I hurt my hand that day. My fingers got trapped between weights of a Lat Pulldown machine. The gym environment signaled keeping your issues to yourself. Even then, the macho look on men busy moving weights around, was not conducive to discussing the crucial topics of safety, injury, and recovery.

Fast forward to now, and sport science and popular fitness trends are still mysteries to me. The gym world then was obsessed with larger and larger machines. It has since settled on the two extremes of HIIT (high-intensity interval training) classes and budget fitness chains (currently led by Planet Fitness).

For example in my observation, almost none is able to fight the temptation of picking the ‘one thing’ that always trumps all other elements of fitness. Take how Christopher Sommers, the accomplished founder of GST, thinks that for a high quality life, mobility and joint health are more important than core power. And that our core’s abilities are more important than arms and back. Dan John, another respected voice in the fitness world has a different belief, “strength is the glass and every other quality (mobility, flexibility, cardio, and all the glorious rest) is the liquid. The bigger the glass the more liquid you can hold.” And Pavel Tsatsouline, known for successfully popularizing Russian Kettlebell in the West, thinks that unless you lack symmetry, it is strength that should be your focus — his current company is called StrongFirst. Additionally, Tsatsouline thinks that the popular HIIT method of training is counterproductive.

Chris Sommers for example breaks down his Foundation GST program into improving upper body (Push Strength, Pull Strength, and Shoulder Articulation), core (Bodyline, Sideline, Compression), and lower body capabilities (Leg Strength and Mobility). Each of these are then trained individually and in groupings towards mastery.

I like these classifications, not because defining the goals of physical exercise stops with them. But because honest learning and exploration of fitness gets started by them.

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