Bernie DeKoven, FunSmith – Learning to Have Fun in 3 parts

Bernie DeKoven has been having fun for a long time. He has done all kinds of fun things with all kinds of people in all kinds of places using all kinds of things as toys.

He has posted three entries on his blog designed to help you to have more fun, and I think they’re really good. Check them out.

Part 1 – Start with the fun that is already there

Part 2 – Explores the senses of play

Part 3 – Know what fun is

Enjoy!

FITBUSTERS VOL 1 – the Reebok EasyTone Sneaker

My good friend Charlie Reid and I have put together a little video – the first in the FitBuster series – to discuss the new Reebok EasyTone shoe.

Apparently, the shoe creates “natural instability” by utilizing “exercise ball” technology in the soles.

But here, let a sexy woman tell you about it:

First of all, these claims are total bullshit, and Reebok should be sued for creating cripples. I’ve got an idea, let’s tie chapstick tubes to the bottom of babies’ feet to create more “natural” instability, so they learn to walk faster! Better still if the folks at Reebok installed electrical wires in the seats of their chairs (which they apparently are using far too often) to get some additional “glute recruitment” that way.

Secondly, and just as importantly – I’m not sure what the camerman keeps panning to. That girl has no ass at all. She’s completely ass-less. Her legs go right up to her neck. I’m not saying she’s unattractive, she’s very cute. But when all you have to “tone” is bone, it’s not too difficult. Bone naturally has a nice firm tonus. EasyTone…Bone. EasyBone. Okay…I’m getting carried away…

Chris Witty, Olympic Speedskater

In case you’re wondering how to build/tone your glutes and hamstrings, it’s simple.

HARD WORK

Yes, that’s right. You don’t get toned, firm, luscious buns of steel by walking on “naturally unstable” shoes. You get them by doing lots of sprinting, lunging, jumping, and squatting. Just like Chris Witty does for her sport. Please do more of those things.

The excuse-makers will claim “genetics!” about Witty’s gorgeous physique. But they’re always making claims about what’s impossible for them. Mostly because it’s easier to make claims than to get up and do something. So don’t claim genetics. Claim lots of ice cream and high volume squatting.

Anyway! Here’s the FitBuster Review of the Reebok EasyTone sneaker. Please enjoy:

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Break It Down Again

Go out there, break yourself down, and then recover.

Then break it down again.

Then recover.

Do it again.

Recover.

Yes, this is a poem.

Make it your mantra.

Break yourself down.  Keep breaking yourself down.  Keep going.  Keep tearing away what you think of yourself.  Keep stripping off those layers of expectation, belief, disbelief, fear.

Change.  Push.  That’s all you have to do.  That’s all you can do.  You can do that or stay in your stasis.  Stay stuck where you are now…where you’ve been for the past umpteen years.

Choose one or the other.  It doesn’t matter how big or small the change is.  It doesn’t matter how much or how little you break it down.  Just break it down.

You never go for a walk?  Go for a walk right now.  It doesn’t matter where, or for how long.  Go.  Fight the tendency to do the same damn thing you always do.

Backpedaling and, The Death of Reason

I posted a couple of days ago about Mike Boyle’s claim that people shouldn’t do bilateral barbell (especially, back) squats anymore.

His reasoning is that the back is a bad “transducer” of force from the legs to the upper body.

While I disagree with this use of the word “tranducer,” we won’t go into that here.

Instead, let’s talk about what Coach Boyle wrote on his blog today.  At the bottom, in the post script, it reads:

PS- We haven’t stopped doing bilateral exercises or, lifting heavy weights. We still Trap Bar Deadlift and Olympic lift. I also think that bilateral exercise is crucial for beginners. However, if you have experienced athletes and you want to keep them healthy and get them strong consider the Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat.

Wait Coach Boyle…your athletes still do the Olympic Lifts and deadlifts?!  But I thought the back was a bad “transducer” of force from lower to upper body – the limiting factor in people’s ability to move force with their legs!

What lift requires more “transduction” of power than the Olympic lifts?!  What lift requires more transduction of force than the deadlift?

So you don’t do backsquats anymore, because the back is the limiting factor in gaining leg strength?  So your athletes with weak backs go from their single-leg squats to deadlifts and O-lifts?

I’m confused.

For one thing, it’s potentially dangerous to have legs that are inordinately stronger than your back.  The back is the place where force is transferred from legs to upper body.

As anyone knows, who ever watched “The Weakest Link” – the weakest link goes first!

In this case, the weakest link is Coach Boyle.

I have nothing against you Coach, but it’s this type of thoughtless sensationalist self-aggrandizing bullshit that’s destr0ying the physical training industry in this country and getting people hurt!

So STOP IT.

1. Stop the reductionism.
The body is not a bunch of independently moving limbs connected by “transducers.”  The body is a single unit.  Any effect to one part of it, effects all of the rest of it.

2. Stop the stupid/sensationalist claims for specific exercises.
There’s no “magic exercise” for any bodypart or for the body as a whole.  The body cannot be pigeonholed, as much as you might like to do that.  You have to work the whole thing, you have to do it all, you have to figure it out.  You have to break it down and let it rebuild itself.  Strictly “anaerobic” training (which is a misnomer anyway) will make you a fumbling oaf.  Strictly “aerobic” training will make you a sickly Auschwitz-victim-looking ghost of a human being.

Stop pushing this bullshit information.  Learn the basics.  Practice the basics.  Preach the basics.

In case you don’t know what I mean, I’ll give you a brief outline of what the basics are here:

Basic Human Anatomy/Physiology – learn it.

Basic Biomechanics – force-transfers

Basic Exercise Physiology – things like “progressive resistance,” allo-/homeo-stasis, overload, adaptation, etc.

Basic Dietary Facts – so simple that a child knows them naturally…

Basic Games, Basic Play – if you shut your chattering brain down for a few minutes, you’ll be able to remember these yourself…you don’t have to pay anyone or read anything.

Basic Psychology – Know Thyself.

Six things.  Figure them out.  Take a class.  You can download/view/listen to most of that information for free on the internet (check out Wikipedia, and the iTunes University site).

I think that’s it.  Is there anything else?  Anyone out there in Readerland?

The Difference Between Strength and Skill

While guys like Pavel will claim that “strength is a skill” – it’s true only to a point, and I think that the point is largely misunderstood or misinterpreted nowadays.

Doing strength-building movements – especially and particularly the classic lifts: deadlift, squat, overhead press, clean, chins (weighted), dips (weighted), bench, maybe row – require some “skill,” but I wouldn’t classify them as “motor skills” in the typical sense.

Those are “strength skills.”  They are practiced in a certain way (with ever increasing load/intensity) in order to disrupt homeostasis and create adaptations in the body.

That is, simply repeating the movements involved in strength exercises will not get you stronger.  Practice the movement all you want, but if you don’t add weight (progressively over time), you won’t get any stronger.  You might, however, get more skilled.

The first example that comes to mind that allows for a nice comparison of these two types of “skill” development is the sport of Olympic weightlifting.

In the Soviet Union, and I think in many Eastern Bloc countries with state-funded Olympic training programs, children would be chosen to begin training for their sport at a very young age…perhaps around 5 years old.

For the first three to five years of the child’s training career, they would never touch a real barbell, let alone a weighted barbell.  Instead, they’d practice with a towel, or a wooden dowel.

They’d practice the motor skill of the Olympic lifts – which is a very very specific motor skill (hence those lifts being a sport unto themselves).

Around the age of 10, the child might be allowed to begin practicing with a lightweight barbell, and from there, ever so gradually, progressively add weight – always making sure that they maintained the highest level of motor skill in the execution of the movement.

While a lot of this has to do with children simply being ill-suited for progressive weight training, because they’re still growing at a rapid rate, much of it also has to do with getting a person at a young enough age that they can accumulate 10,000 hours of practice at the skill before they achieve full developmental maturity.

This hearkens back to my old blog posts on skill and skill development.  Skill is problem solving.  It’s the ability to creatively solve problems given the resources available.  “Talent” is what we call “inborn skill.”  And, it seems, that it doesn’t really exist.

While some people may be more uniquely suited for expertise at certain skills (say, because of limb/torso ratios, etc.), the expression of that “talent” is all that really matters.

So, it’s impossible for us to know how real, frequent, or infrequent “inborn” talent is or is not – that is, until every child is given equal access to every musical instrument, athletic sport, computer program, or whatever other skill you want to measure, from the age of 2 on.  Not only that, but they need also be given the freedom, time, money, and emotional support to continue.  Got that?  Great, now tell me how “talented” someone is.

But this post isn’t about talent.  It’s about STRENGTH and SKILL.

The truth is, we all need both.

It’s just that I see so little focus on the real training of EITHER these days.

Most folks in the gym go in and pump some iron to look good.  They don’t try to lift heavy poundages.  They don’t do the classic lifts at all.

They also do bizarre skill-based workouts…things you might do for fun if you were a little kid, but that are treated with unsettling seriousness in an “adult” gym.  Things like balancing on a stability ball on your knees while you move the medicine balls you’re holding in each hand in strange patterns, or while catching and throwing a medicine ball.  Not a lot of laughter…a lot of grimacing.

But what’s the point of that?  I mean what’s the point both of the seriousness with which it’s undertaken, and of the “exercise” itself.  It doesn’t build strength.  There’s no progressing it.  There’s no overload to it.  The body is in too unstable a position to overload.  And it only builds the strangest type of “skill” possible…one divorced from anything you might encounter in life at all.

If you’re going to be performing that trick on a stage, or a streetcorner, for your paycheck, it’s important to practice that.

But if not – what the hell are you doing?

The saddest thing of all is that the trainers aren’t even laughing.  I mean, not the ones who are making the people do it.

Take a look at your programming, ye trainers and trainees.  Return to the basics.

Train STRENGTH with heavy stuff, progressively made heavier, and predominantly with “traditional” (bilateral, barbell) movements.

Train SKILL outside, or wherever you exercise that skill, and try to make it as absolutely perfect as possible…