Target Focus Fitness

When it comes to getting started on a fitness program, most beginners hesitate about getting started, fearing painful, punitive “Biggest Loser” type workouts and diet regimens that will render them sore, hungry, and miserable.

It’s an absolute shame that most beginners have this impression, because the truth is, it’s much easier and far less painful for beginners to see rapid improvements than it is for more experienced trainees like myself.

In a moment I’ll explain why this is so, but first, I’d like you to consider this question: why are most popular fitness programs and classes so focused on pain and punishment?

There are at least few different reasons:

The first of these reasons is that drama is an absolute, irrefutable, and perhaps singular requirement for successful television ratings. One network that understands this fact implicitly is truTV, whose tagline is “Not reality. Actuality.” One night several months ago, I stumbled upon TruTV’s Lizard Lick Towing, which is portrayed as “reality TV” (I.e., rather than featuring actors who follow a script, a camera crew follows real people around as they do whatever it is that they happen to do). A few minutes into the show, much to my surprise, I recognized one of my Facebook friends on the show, who was identified as the ex-girlfriend of one of the show’s main characters. I subsequently messaged her, whereupon she explained that she had been hired as an actress for the program for a few weeks over the previous summer (I guess that’s the difference between reality and “actuality,” just in case you were wondering).

As it turns out, other truTV programs feature process servers, repo men, and property eviction specialists who are shown in highly dramatic confrontations as they do their jobs. The truth is, people working in these professions rarely get involved in violent confrontations, for the most obvious of reasons — it makes their jobs more difficult to do. Incidentally, my girlfriend happens to be a process server, and having gone along with her on several occasions, I can assure you her job wouldn’t make good TV at all — like most process servers, she carefully avoids, and therefore rarely experiences significant confrontation from the people she serves.

A second reason many popular fitness programs are focused on discomfort is this: inflicting pain on clients is the automatic fallback for incompetent trainers and coaches. Literally anyone can make a client hurt, and designing a grueling workout is extraordinarily simple to devise. I’ll write a few right now to make the point:

Grueling Workout One:

1. Go to a high school or college stadium and run up and down the stadium steps as fast as possible for 20 minutes nonstop
2. Immediately perform 10 alternating sets of 20 on pushups and sit-ups, performed back to back with no rest.
3. Carry a 20 pound weight overhead as you do 2 laps around the a 400-yard track

Grueling Workout Two:

1. Put 95 pounds on a bar and squat it for 100 reps, or until failure, whichever comes first.
2. Perform 100 squat-thrusts for time (as quickly as possible), followed by…
3. Perform 10 sets of 10 lunges on each leg, no rest between sets

I could go on and on here, and so could you. Thinking up very difficult physical tasks is terribly easy, regardless of how little experience you may have, and also regardless of how fit your client is. Literally anyone could quickly overwhelm the most hardened Marine or the fittest professional athlete with a brutal (if not dangerous and idiotic) workout.

On the other hand, designing a training program that (safely) helps someone lose unwanted bodyfat, or makes them faster, or stronger, or more flexible, or more resistant to injury, is a job for professionals, not actresses masquerading as fitness experts.

The same goes for nutrition: designing a diet that causes weight loss is the simplest possible task — simply have your client eat less than they’re eating currently, and they’ll lose weight — EVERY time. It doesn’t even matter what they eat — that only comes into play if you’re interested in permanent fat loss program that improves, rather than jeopardizes ones health. Which again, is a job for professionals, not television actresses.

Finally, most people, especially Americans, expect and demand pain from their personal trainers (this third point has a tautological relationship with the second one, since incompetent trainers, in large part, shape their client’s expectations). Americans tend to view fatness as a character flaw and a moral failing, rather than what it really is — a series of unfortunate nutrition and lifestyle choices. The two most egregious of these choices are low protein diets and low movement lifestyles incidentally. This nearly universal consumer expectation of pain as a key feature of fitness programs fuels the popularity of television shows such as the aforementioned Biggest Loser, as well as well-known fitness products such as P90X and Insanity.

The Truth About Fitness Makes Bad TV…

Now that I’ve explored why television producers and incompetent trainers give consumers the wrong impression about what it takes for an out-of-shape beginner to get into great condition, let’s return to the question of why it’s easier for a beginner to make progress than it is for a more experienced gym-goer.

Whenever you experience any form of physical stress, your body initiates changes that better enable it to handle a similar stress, should it occur again in the future. A familiar example would be the changes that occur in your body when you lay out in the sun at the beach: upon being exposed to the UV light in sunlight, your body’s melanocytes produce a pigment called melanin. Melanin actually absorbs UV light, protecting the skin in the process.

Now, imagine that it’s springtime and your goal is to have a nice, healthy-looking tan for summer. Your skin is ghostly white from being inside all winter. How long do you think you’ll need to spend lying in the sun before you get a sunburn? Not very long of course — you’re a “beginner” to the sun, if I may use that analogy. Your skin hasn’t experienced UV stress for months, so it only takes a little bit of sun exposure each day for you to get darker without getting burned. By mid-August however, you’re now “experienced” from lots of beach time over the summer. At this point, even long periods of lying out don’t have much impact on your (by now) deep tan.

If that explanation seems obvious to you — good. Now simply substitute “exercise” for “sun” and “muscles” for “tan” and you’ll fully understand why beginners don’t need to be (nor should they be) subjected to brutally painful workouts in order to make great progress. Later on, sure, they’ll have to work harder to continue their progress, but by that time, they’ll understand the value of their efforts and will be more than happy to put in the work.

If I take a hypothetical beginning client (who is say, 35 years old and aside from being obese, is relatively healthy) and teach him how to deadlift, he’ll improve his strength in that exercise by perhaps 10-15 pounds every week. Within 6 months, he’ll go from deadlifting 95 pounds for 5 reps to perhaps 300 pounds for 5 reps. Along the way, my client’s body will undergo a number of very beneficial changes: his muscles grow in response to the mechanical stress, which, among other things, will increase his metabolism, optimize his hormone production, improve his flexibility, reduce his susceptibility to low back injury, and in general, make him leaner, healthier, and happier.

Over time of course, my client’s rate of progress will slow — if it didn’t, in two short years he’d be deadlifting over 1000 pounds for 5 reps — a feat no human has ever accomplished.

As a personal illustration, last year, at age 52, I performed 36 deadlift workouts — most of them were very difficult by the way — and you know how much progress I made?

None.

My best deadlift in 2011 was 501 pounds, and my best in 2012 was also 501.

(Here’s me deadlifting 485 a few weeks ago):

But I keep doing these workouts anyway — why? For starters, most of my peers in their 50’s are rapidly declining — I consider maintenance to be an attractive alternative. Also, I enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out how to get better, even if I never quite manage to do it. Finally, over the years, I’ve come to enjoy the process (and rewards) of challenging myself physically. (I wrote about these rewards in more detail in THIS article.

Enjoy Being A Beginner!

The most effective workouts for beginners are short and only moderately challenging. Certainly, no television producer will be interested in featuring you in their new fall lineup.

Over time, more effort will be required, but by then, you’ll be ready — even enthused. Because by that time, you’ve seen the payoff. That’s why fitness beginners often become fitness “fanatics.”

If you’re a beginner who needs to start making some changes, I hope I’ve made an impact on your thinking. Over the coming months, I’ll be posting more content designed to make your journey easier, safer, and result-producing. If you’d like to be informed of these new articles and offerings, please take a moment to subscribe to our newsletter at the upper right side of this page, and I’ll send you a free report called “The 7 Secrets Of Functional Fitness” just for signing up.

–Charles Staley
   TFT/TFF Strength & Conditioning coach

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