Hating On The Elliptical

While I think Turbulence Training is one of the most effective, accessible programs around, I definitely don't agree with everything Craig Ballantyne has to say on the subject of fat loss.

In his latest blog posting, for instance, he rags on elliptical trainers as if they were the worst thing to hit the fitness world since the adductor machine. He objects to them for three reasons: (1) they tend to overstate the number of calories burned by users; (2) they're too easy; and (3) they're too easy. Okay, that's really only two reasons, but don't blame me, blame Craig, because it was he who said he had three reasons for not liking ellipticals.

Here's where else I think Craig's analysis is flawed:

(1) Sure, ellipticals may overstate the number of calories burned, but that doesn't make the elliptical bad in itself. It just means you need to ignore the calories-burned function, which you should be doing anyway because as we all know what really matters for fat loss is not how many calories you burn during the workout itself, but how many you burn around the clock.

Which brings me to the second problem with Craig's reasoning:

(2) He seems to think that the elliptical isn't challenging enough to create much of an afterburn effect. But as is true of any cardio machine, the elliptical can be as hard or as easy as you like. It all depends on how fast you go, how much resistance you add, how long your stride is, whether you incorporate arms, and so forth. While it's true that I can't push my heart rate quite as high during an interval training workout on the elliptical as I can running sprints on the treadmill, I can still get it high enough to count as HIIT. It's a nice option for days when my joints can't take the pounding of a high-impact workout.

It's perfectly true that there are a lot of misconceptions about the elliptical--that it tones your arms, that it tones your legs, that it tones your butt if you go backward on it, yadda yadda yadda. But that doesn't mean the elliptical itself is bad. It just means there's a lot of misinformation floating around. No sense in throwing out the baby with the bathwater. (For that matter, no sense in throwing out the bathwater if you can use it to water the plants or something, but that's another subject altogether. )

AOS Providence, sort of

That was my workout for the day. I say "sort of" because I was too cheap to spring for the DVD so I got the mp3 version, which does a great job of cueing you through the exercises if you already know what they are and how to perform them, but is no help whatsoever if you don't. So, I had to improvise on a couple of the rounds.

The format of "Providence" is rather like that of Rachel Cosgrove's Get Metabolic workout, in that you work pretty intensely for 2 minutes, then take a 1 minute break. There are 14 rounds plus a 3 minute bonus round, so the entire workout is 45 minutes long.

Here's the exercise breakdown:

Round 1: 2-handed swing, one arm swing, hand-to-hand swing
Round 2: Cleans (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 per arm, repeated twice)
Round 3: Chest presses (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 per arm, repeated twice)
Round 4: Squats/sumo deadlifts--3o seconds 1 side, 30 sec. sumos, 30 sec other side, 30 sec. sumos
Round 5: One leg deadlift (5 per leg, lather rinse repeat until the 2 minutes is up)
Round 6: Windmills into an overhead squat, 1 minute per side
Round 7: clean and press (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 per arm, repeated twice)
Round 8: Flip and squat (I skipped the flip because it makes me nervous, and just squatted for the entire 2 minutes)
Round 9: Tactical lunges
Round 10: Triple crush (this is a curl to an overhead press to a 1-arm triceps overhead extension, and I had to modify because my triceps aren't strong enough to allow me to do very many reps with an 8 kg kettlebell)
Round 11: Sling shot into a figure 8 with a static hold (for some reason the figure 8 eludes me, so I simply repeated round 1)
Round 12: Seated press (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 per arm, repeated twice)
Round 13: One arm row (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 per arm, repeated twice)
Round 14: Pullovers, Russian twists, Sicilian crunch (I had no clue what a Sicilian crunch is, so I did heel touches instead. Turns out it's just your basic extended leg overhead crunch. I think people just come up with these names so they'll sound more badass. "Hey, I did Sicilian crunches with 24 kg today, so show me respect or I'll put a fish in your bulletproof vest. Now that's an offer you can't refuse.")

Bonus round: 3 minute snatch test--1 1/2 minutes per side

I liked it in spite of not knowing what the heck I'm doing on some of the exercises. I mean, I think I know enough that I'm not likely to hurt myself, and I also think that with practice my cleans will get, well, cleaner.

I also worked up enough of a sweat to realize that I absolutely cannot under any circumstances exert myself physically while wearing sunscreen that contains active ingredients other than zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, unless of course I want sore eyes and a bright red nose. Ugh.

The kettlebell drills were a nice change of pace after all the bodyweight stuff I've been doing. I like that too, but it's good to mix it up. In fact, I think I might tweak my workouts to make them more of a fusion of bodyweight and dumbbell/barbell/kettlebell exercises. That format works well at the gym because it doesn't tie up more than one piece of fixed equipment and/or set of dumbbells in any one superset, which is kind of an obnoxious thing to do in a gym as small as mine. I mean, there's this one guy who, every Friday for the last 2 years, has done the same alternating set of bench presses and barbell squats. A great pairing of exercises to be sure, but inconvenient as heck because there's only the one flat bench and squat rack, and he usually does 4-5 sets including his warmup, so it takes him a while to finish even when he keeps his rests short enough that working in isn't really feasible.

Just Say NO To Cardio!

That's the title of Boyfriend Craig's new book. You probably already know that, if you're on his mailing list or the mailing lists of any of his multitudinous affiliates. You probably also already know pretty much what the book says: low intensity steady state cardio in the "fat burning zone" is a crock, high-intensity interval training and bodyweight circuits are the way to go if you want to lose body fat, yadda yadda yadda.

There will also be any number of plugs for Turbulence Training. ("Order now! and upgrade to a Platinum Membership for $197! This is a one-time-only offer that ends, well, never, actually, but for now let's say it ends November 30 at midnight PST. So don't delay--order NOW, and start losing belly fat TODAY!") Not that Craig's system isn't all that and a bag of oven-baked sweet potato chips and you could do a whole lot worse with your money, and you probably have, but even so the high pressure sales tactics get old fast.

Even so, I bought the book. Even if it's mostly one long advertising brochure I'm hoping it'll have some solid arguments I can use to persuade my cardio-queen clients that there's a more effective way to work out if their main goal is fat loss. Also, I wanted the set of steak knives and the world's smallest juicer. What I mean is, I wanted the Bodyweight Cardio 2.0 and Bodyweight Cardio 2008 programs, which Craig is throwing in (along with some other stuff) as a !FREE! bonus for the first 53,014,027 people to order.

I'll post more once I've had a chance to try out the new programs.

Would you fork out money for this?

I'm hoping I can persuade the powers that be at my gym to let me offer small-group express personal training. Participants would have the option of purchasing 3, 6, 9 or 12 half-hour sessions, and what they would get (along with the sessions of course) would be an individual assessment and a personalized program of corrective stretches and isolated strengthening exercises to address any muscle imbalances they might have. Clients would be responsible for doing these exercises on their own prior to the group sessions as part of their warm-up. The group sessions would consist of metabolic-density type total-body circuit training, and basically would follow a template format, meaning that I might have everyone in the group doing some type of squat, but the senior with the low back pain would get stability ball wall squats while the muscleman would get heavy dumbbell squats and the track and field diva would get jump squats. Everyone would do as many as he or she can in a minute, working at his or her own pace and taking mid-set breaks as needed, before moving on to the next exercise. And so on, until a half an hour has gone by.

I think this could be a tremendous moneymaker. Participants will be getting the support and camaraderie of a group ex class, but they'll also be getting programming that's customized to their individual needs and goals, which will make it more safer and more effective than traditional group ex (which is included in the price of membership at my gym ... and you pretty much get what you're paying for IMO :))

Today's workout

Same as Sunday:

The usual warmup, followed by

10 burpees
30 pushups
30 squats
15 mountain climbers per side
rest 30-60 sec.
100 jacks
15 alternating forward lunges per side
15 TRX inverted rows
20 close grip pushups
rest 30-60 seconds

Lather rinse repeat a total of 3 times through the circuit.

It occurs to me that I am freaking sick of pushups. I had the 1-arm nightmares yesterday, plus the 45 pike pushups and the 72 spiderman pushups. Today's workout had 150 pushups of one sort or another, while tomorrow's will include 80 decline pushups. And that's not taking into account the 20 pushups in the warm-up! I actually did 170 today and will do 100 tomorrow. On Friday, however, I will get off lightly with a mere 80 pushups.

I really shouldn't complain, as pushups don't bother my wrists unless they're the plyometric kind. It just seems like overkill, and I feel as though I'm sacrificing quality for quantity. Oh well. That's how you make bodyweight training progressive, I guess: you go from cranking out three sets of 30 varying-quality pushups to 3 sets of 30 really good full-range of motion ones.

Still, I might have a look at the original Turbulence Training bodyweight program, either the intermediate or the advanced version, just because knowing me I think I'll have trouble sticking with this one for four weeks. Or, I might mess with this one a little :)

Oh, and I had a 90 minute ballet class/rehearsal also. My hips felt good because of the yoga I've been doing. Hip flexibility is a huge thing for me because so many of my clients have low back pain that I attribute to stiff hips. Their hips don't move, so when they bend over it's not a hip-hinge movement but a bending forward at the waist, which puts their backs at great risk if they're bending forward to, say, pick up a laundry basket or bag of groceries. Sometimes I feel as though my mission in life is to teach people the right way to pick things up off the floor!

Advanced Yoga with Rodney Yee

This DVD is freaking awesome. The 50 minute total body routine features a bunch of advanced headstand variations and arm balances--flying turtle, anyone?--and some great hip openers that'll get most people sitting comfortably in lotus position in less time than you'd expect. There's also a 25 minute routine exclusively for the hips that I probably should be doing almost daily.

The way the poses are sequenced makes even the most advanced moves more doable than you'd think, although I'm still very far from being able to do most of them. The arm balances come easier than the headstands because I don't really like inversions. I had to take them out of my practice when my blood pressure spiked because of issues with the birth control I was using, and then again when my eye doctor told me he thought I might be developing glaucoma. My blood pressure is fine now, and my current eye doctor thinks my interocular pressure is okay also, but it's hard for me to think of headstands and handstands as being safe and effective moves for me.

Still, I'd like to become more proficient at them, and to that end I downloaded the York Handbalancing Course (http://www.sandowplus.co.uk/Competition/Hoffman/YorkHandBalance/yorkhb1.htm) It's got some helpful progressions as well as analysis of exactly what's going on when you do a handbalance. It really is about finding your balance, not about brute strength, although strong wrists and forearms certainly are useful. In other words, most weightlifters have the physical strength to do a handbalance, but most of them can't because they don't have the necessary proprioception to be able to maintain their equilibrium when standing on their hands. My proprioception, however, is pretty good, so I think if I work at it consistently, preferably with a spotter in the vicinity, I should be able to defy gravity along with Rodney in the not too distant future.

So, anyhoo, Monday's workout was the two routines from the DVD, and Tuesday's workout was Turbulence Training Advanced Bodyweight Workout A (the one with the 1-arm pushups).

I also taught cycling. Since it was Election Day I inflicted the following "fair and balanced" playlist on my class:

Born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen
Don't Stop, Fleetwood Mac
There Goes My Hero, Foo Fighters
Soul Man, ??
Barracuda, Heart
Won't Get Fooled Again, The Who
Even Better Than The Real Thing, U2
I Predict A Riot, Kaiser Chiefs
Long Road To Ruin, Foo Fighters
It's The End Of The World, REM
Landslide, Dixie Chicks
Not Ready To Make Nice, Dixie Chicks

Weekend workouts

Saturday:

warm-up circuit 2x:
10 pushups
10 squats
10 stickups
10 spiderman climbs
10 waiters bows
20 cross crawl

superset: chin-ups (these were supposed to be one-armed but that was so not happening), 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1; split squats, front foot elevated, 4x12 per leg (so sets 3, 5, and 7 were chins only)

superset: pushups, hands on SB, 3x20; 1 leg SB curls, 3x12 per leg

tri-set: TRX inverted rows , 3x10-12; jump squats, 3x6; cross-body mountain climbers, 3x10 per side

The TRX inverted rows were supposed to be regular inverted rows with feet on the ball, but since I don't have a squat rack I improvised. I tried doing the TRX rows with my feet on the ball but that was just a little too much instability, especially after the chins, which I suck at.

Sunday:

Same warmup as Saturday, followed by a fun (?) bodyweight cardio circuit:

10 burpees
30 pushups
30 squats
15 mountain climbers per side
rest 30-60 sec.
100 jacks
15 alternating forward lunges per side
15 TRX inverted rows
20 close grip pushups
rest 30-60 seconds

Lather rinse repeat a total of 3 times through the circuit.

I was not happy about the 30 pushups. I mean, I did them, but by the end they weren't pretty. The close-grip pushups sucked too, big time.

Later, yoga.