The New Gym Culture and Why I don’t like it

November 24, 2011 By 2 Comments

It’s funny isn’t it how one day you realise you are starting to sound more and more like your parents? All of a sudden things just ‘aren’t as good as they used to be’ and ‘I used to go places when they were all just fields’. I’m only 36, yet already I can reflect on the health and fitness industry and see changes that I am not so sure represent the so-called progression and innovation that everyone blathers on about on fitness websites and blogs. Every year we hear about emerging trends or how fitness is ‘evolving’, yet I don’t see this transferring to the average gym user. In fact, I see some stupid shit being done now that years ago didn’t exist and for a good reason.

Not an elliptical machine in sight

I grew up in gyms, mostly dirty, messy, weights rooms. One of which was at the back of my dad’s coal yard and the other at Bury St Edmunds sports centre. They were a long way from the plasma screened, functional zoned, cardio packed, health chains that are on every corner basement here in London now. There were no BOSU’s or ViPR’s and terms like ‘core stability’ and ‘functional training’ hadn’t been invented yet. I’d sit and watch my dad lift weights with guys who had mostly all finished a day in a physical job, lifting coal, bricklaying, or digging, and see the camaraderie that ran among them. People would share training routines, spot for each other, encourage and motivate, and take pleasure in seeing others achieve. They would squat, bench, row, and overhead press, typically rotating a few key exercises to build size and strength. Newbies to the gym would be given guidance freely by those who had been lifting longer and were keen to share their knowledge. Sure, it wasn’t always the best advice, after all we all know that being REP’s level 3 makes you competent these days right? Heck, you can have never lifted a weight yourself and still get insured to ‘teach’ others how to do it. Is that what we consider evolution or progression?

Meanwhile, the gym culture of the past five to ten years has moved to iPods and ignorance. Gym banter is practically non-existent. The proliferation of stupid information and advice that is so complex that the general public misinterpret or misapply it to their own detriment has led to many people getting hurt at worst or seeing little or no results at best. Training with barbells and dumbbells in the movements of squatting and pressing has become pejoratively termed as being ‘old-school’, ‘non-functional’, or too ‘sagittal plane dominant’ while advocates of more ‘modern’ training methods, albeit unsubstantiated by evidence or any real anecdote position themselves to look down on those they consider too stupid or ignorant to understand their methods.

It seems a lot of the time now that the acquisition of ‘training knowledge’ is used more often as a tool to mock others than it is to actually help them. I’m not sure this is a positive improvement in gym culture, or whether this trend is being driven by a demand from the consumer or by the marketing of the equipment suppliers and procurers within the health clubs? Either way, I miss the weight room culture of old where it was less about impressing or having a laugh at others expense and more about helping and inspiring others to achieve. Am I looking at it with rose-tinted glasses? Maybe so, but then it’s just my opinion after all.

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Should your grandma be worried about cholesterol?

November 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Cholesterol and heart disease is becoming somewhat of an obsession for me. With a big talk coming up in the next week at a major investment bank I know questions on the topic will be popular, particularly given the evidence and opinions I present.  I can often hear the intakes of breath and see eyebrows raising when I suggest why you shouldn’t be so worried about saturated fat or indeed your cholesterol being ‘slightly elevated’ and why you should be concerned if your doctor suggests a statin as a solution.

So, I was interested to hear that my grandmother was worries after her GP had recently expressed concern to see her cholesterol elevated. While I don’t have time for a diatribe on the whole diet/heart hypothesis and the complexity of the evidence surrounding heart disease, it is worth just exploring why the doctor would be worried.

I can understand why the public at large still believes cholesterol to be nothing more than an indicator of impending death.  It is drummed into us both directly and indirectly by products that line the shelves claiming to lower it (despite a stunning lack of evidence to show that consuming these products will actually have any impact on your life expectancy).  These products are often aimed at women, who seem more concerned about this issue despite the fact that there is very little reason for most women to be worried about their cholesterol level (heart disease is after all only one cause of death and doesn’t become the leading cause of death in women until after 85 years old).

Very few people realise that far from being a dangerous risk to health, such as cigarette smoke or air pollution that have both been shown to increase a woman’s risk of death, cholesterol is essential for a healthy life.  Without it we couldn’t manufacture vitamin D or bile acids, and it is critical for a range of functions; from nerve transmission to cell structure and formation. It is so important that if we don’t eat enough of it our body manufactures it to compensate. It’s worth mentioning that it is also an essential component of breast milk, which would seem strange if it were such a noxious disease-forming substance. Nature is rarely so errant.

Unfortunately, or indeed perhaps fortunately, it really isn’t as simple as a raised cholesterol level indicating impending doom. Firstly, we have to realise that heart disease (which is after all what all the fuss is about when it comes to cholesterol) should not be considered in the same context for men and women. Death rates are wildly skewed with women in the UK suffering a third of the amount of deaths from heart disease as men. It gets even more confusing when you consider that in study after study results have actually shown higher cholesterol to be linked to living longer in women and that a higher level may actually be healthier than a lower one. So, hold back on the Benecol and the Flora Pro-Active ladies, you may just find that eating butter isn’t so bad after all.

A study from the Lancet is one of many to conclude that older women with a lower cholesterol level may be at a greater risk of death. They found that those with a level of 4.0mmol had a death rate five times that of those with the highest levels of 7.0mmol.  Although this study was on a relatively small population group it’s not the only one that has failed to show that there is any real evidence for older women to worry about their cholesterol levels. The Framingham Heart study, which is the longest running study to look at heart disease, concluded that low cholesterol significantly increased risk of death in people over the age of 50 from all causes, while studies from Italy and Austria both concurred, finding that high cholesterol was actually associated with greater longevity and less cardiac events in older women. Disturbingly the Austrian study found lower cholesterol to be linked with increased death rates from cancer, liver disease, depression, and mental illness.

In fact, there is a surprising amount of evidence that runs contrary to what most of us believe, which is that even the most modest of increases in cholesterol levels is harmful and that we should all seek to obtain lower levels in order to improve our health. Despite this fact, cholesterol still remains the arch villain of heart health perhaps due in no small part to the ability of the pharmaceutical companies to produce drugs that are able to modify this apparent ‘risk factor’ so effectively (again with little efficacy in older women without existing heart disease).

So, at the tender age of 87, what does my grandmother have to fear about having an elevated cholesterol level? From the evidence it would seem not much and more to the point, how much harm can you do by telling someone that they should be worried about their health when in fact they may have no reason to be concerned at all? While we would all do well to reduce our risk of ill health, we cannot afford to look at these issues in such simplistic fashion. Risk factors are many and varied and the data is complex and often confusing. So, many people trust their doctors to be guided on what is and what isn’t ‘healthy’.

With cholesterol-lowering statin sales in the tens of billions of pounds per year worldwide and doctors bombarded by the PR from drug companies, it is perhaps no wonder that so much of this evidence goes unnoticed by the general population. Lets hope our health professionals speak from the evidence in the literature and not just from the propaganda that the statin manufacturers circulate.

If you are interested to know more about this topic you can find the links of the aforementioned studies below and an entertaining and thorough dissection of this topic in the books The Great Cholesterol Con By Dr Malcolm Kendrick and Trick and Treat by Barry Groves.

  • Tikhonoff V et al, “Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and mortality in older people,” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2005; 53:2159-2164.
  • Forette et al Cholesterol as a Risk Factor for Mortality in Elderly Women. The Lancet Volume 333, Issue 8643, 22 April 1989, Pages 868-870
  • Ulmer H, Kelleher C, Diem G et al. Why Eve is not Adam: Prospective follow-up in 149,650 women and men of cholesterol and other risk factors related to cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. Journal of Women’s Health. 2004; 13(1):41-53.
  • Albert CM, Chae CU, Grodstein F et al. Prospective study of sudden cardiac death among women in the United States. Circulation. 2003; 107:2096-2101.
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Why politicians can save us from obesity, drugs, alcohol, smoking, crime and the energy crisis

October 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Today’s insight into popular exercise literature and culture comes courtesy of that bastion of health, wellbeing, and physical par excellence that is the House of Lords. Tory Peer Lord Macoll of Dulwich was able to single-handedly provide us with a solution for the growing obesity in our country. His insight? Simply for us all to eat less.

The path to weight loss enlightenment??

There you have it, although heaven knows how they will fill the remaining years of a dietetic degree now that has been revealed. Not content with enlightening us all as to the real reason so many people are overweight, he went on to say that politicians are in fact misleading you all by stressing that exercise is the solution.

I am sure Lord Macoll means well, indeed he has served a long and very distinguished career so this is in no way an ad hominem pop at him. I do though take a few issues with this rather facile and trite mantra, which is perhaps a little disappointing coming from someone who must understand the complex issues behind the challenge of tackling obesity. We must get to grips with why people get overweight rather than just how if we are to find a solution to this problem. Simply telling people to eat less will not work and in this short post I’ll try to explain why.

Tobacco adverts before the health warnings

Let’s take smoking as an example, which has been absolutely and positively linked to causing lung cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer also states it can cause cancers of the pancreas, liver, kidney, bladder; in fact stick a pin in an anatomy chart and there is a good chance smoking can be linked to developing cancer there. If you smoke you’re also twice as likely to have a heart attack.

Cigarettes are widely recognised as being bad for your health. They have for years carried many explicit and evocative health warnings on their packaging to that effect and have been the target of multiple media campaigns to target both adult and child smokers. Tobacco companies have been banned from advertising or sponsoring sports and been liable to increasingly higher rates of taxation. Even social media is being used to try and combat smoking as a socially undesirable risk to health.

Yet, despite all this, around 1 in 5 adults in the UK smoke, which is only marginally less than the amount of adults who are obese (gender differences for smoking are now virtually non-existent while 2% more women are obese according to BMI). Despite all the evidence, death, illness, and proven risks that smoking carries, the advice to ‘smoke less’ or ‘stop smoking’ still goes unheeded by the same amount of people who are currently obese.

nutrition fat loss london

Supersized for the 2012 Olympics

Perhaps the futility of these strategies combined with a fear of a ‘nanny state’ is why we have so far not seen levies on junk food or health warnings on crisp packets? It may help explain in part why the world’s biggest* McDonald’s will be opening on the site of the London 2012 Olympic games as well? Commercial interests of major food retailers will make legislating against less healthy food very difficult, a topic often written about by the excellent Felicity Lawrence.

The fact is that many overweight and obese people are very aware that they eat too much, but the reasons why they do this are far more complicated and, in truth, are still not really clear. They are also aware that the food they eat is not conducive to reducing bodyweight. It is hardly news that pizza, chips, and sugary drinks make you fat after all. Eloquent writers such as Gary Taubes will argue that calories are almost an irrelevance and that the over-consumption of fattening carbohydrates is the issue, while the dieticians will continue to promulgate the calories in/calories out theory, which they cling to despite it clearly being far too simplistic to explain why obesity is rising or how to fix it. It is likely that this debate will continue to clog up numerous blogs and websites for many moons to come. What is clear is that simply telling people to eat less is about as effective for treating obesity as telling an alcoholic they should drink less.

I don’t have a lot of room to comment on the exercise aspect, which is where Taubes got it wrong in my mind and where Macoll follows suit, dismissing exercise as an almost pointless endeavour despite astonishing amounts of data to the contrary. It is though both proven and pertinent to say that those who combine exercise with a weight loss nutritional strategy achieve the following:

  • Greater success in maintaining weight lost**
  • Better retention of muscle mass and increased amounts of fat lost
  • Improvements in many markers of disease risk whether or not any weight was actually lost

These reasons alone are powerful arguments for the inclusion of some form of exercise as part of any intervention aimed at reducing obesity.

So, there you have it. Next time you are at a dinner party debating the complex reasons behind the London riots and how they could have been prevented, take a similar approach and you will be able to succinctly end any debate with the advice that people should simply riot less. Alternatively you could try advising an alcoholic that they should drink less or a gambler that they should bet less. Good luck with that.

Of course, the debate in the House of Lords went on to point out that we also eat too much saturated fat (another nutritional pariah still vilified despite the considerable weight of evidence against the flimsy data presented many decades previous), too much salt (despite the Cochrane Collaborations conclusions that reducing salt intake wasn’t worth the effort), and too much sugar (the elephant in the room perhaps?). You may well also contend that it really isn’t the role of politicians to try and tell us how to eat. Indeed many of them could take a look at their own health before advising others. Instead the advice on nutrition and health should come from an independent body free from lobbying by food suppliers or political interests, and garnered from a group of people who have an understanding of the complexity of the issue and the evidence around it.

 

* Overtaking the McDonalds in Orlando, Florida. It seems we have finally out-supersized America.

** Many fitness and nutrition writers continue to declare exercise (in particular the use of aerobic or ‘cardio’ work) redundant for obesity, choosing to cherry pick evidence that supports their product, certification, or personal training beliefs. The evidence however tells a different and entirely more complex story. As with nutrition, the responses to exercise are individually widely variable. Many authors blithely disregard the many health benefits, which seem consistent irrespective of actual weight loss, and look at only mean results for weight loss where the individual variations are lost in data. Despite this the Cochrane Collaboration certainly support the inclusion of exercise as part of any weight loss/health improvement strategy. http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab003817.html

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“Expelliarmus School Sports Fundus”

December 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

***In the latest in the WikiLeaks saga, it appears our drafted blog post discussing Michael Gove’s School Sports Funding Policy must have been…maybe…possibly…perhaps not…leaked to Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport as it appears the Tories are already considering a U-Turn on the issue*** http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/9247522.stm

Should kids do Latin or Sport in School?

Dave Thomas rugby

Without school's rugby where would our own Dave Thomas be now (and would his nose still be straight)?

It would be safe to say that many of us working in the fitness industry have our roots in sports from as far back as our school days (and for some that is further than for others). This is particularly true at The Foundry, Personal Training London, where just about all our trainers and therapists played competitive sport, including rugby, skiing, football and Commonwealth Gymnastics.  Whether injury, poor fortune, or just pure lack of ability stood between us and superstar status remains a hot topic of debate. However, the one thing we do all agree on is the importance of sports in schools and the effect it can have on developing an active lifestyle in our ever-expanded younger population.

You will understand then our disappointment when recently the Schools Secretary Michael Gove announced the withdrawing of a previously ring-fenced government budget for School Sports Partnerships, an initiative started to give kids access to sport in schools without trained staff to deliver it.

Laura Hogg The Foundry

Some of us (Laura) competed at a slightly higher level than others

It seems time and time again these government plans over the decades seem to fizzle out without making any real impact. Instead the government plans to replace SSP’s with a national ‘olympics’ in schools – a return to the sports days of old perhaps? Egg and spoon anyone? This competition will in theory see the best kids from each school progressing to a national level by competing in leagues against local schools. It has been allocated a paltry £10m of Lottery money to fund it, which is meagre compensation for the £162m that is being taken from the budget of SSP’s that gives kids the opportunity to join in sports consistently, irrespective of ability.

No mention at first, but was it already on the cards?

Interestingly this decision seems to have been on the cards back when they announced the national competition in June. Jeremy Hunt’s speech on the initiative makes no mention of SSP’s at all, even though Denise Lewis said “This is a fantastic opportunity to build on the excellent work that is being driven by School Sport Partnerships across the country to develop and encourage competitive sporting opportunities for young people. Competitive sport, when delivered well, can benefit young people in so many ways – from developing social skills and breaking down cultural barriers to providing a platform for self-expression and a sense of achievement. As a naturally competitive person, I’m delighted that more opportunities are being created for young people to compete in sport at school.”

Gove assures us that this decision replaces an ineffective scheme that hasn’t been able to increase the amount of kids taking part in competitive sport. He also suggests that it might stimulate a revival in some team sports. Unsurprisingly his comments have seen stern and vitriolic rebuttal from advocates of the scheme who credit it with making significant improvements in getting more kids into sport at school over recent years. The ramifications is that school spending on sports will now be determined by headteachers and that they will now have to balance the books while still providing opportunities for kids to get into sport at school. While this will possibly create some opportunity in the private sector for firms to compete on the provision of sports coaching, it is going to put a real squeeze on those schools already struggling to make their budgets stretch and it is hard to see how this is going to help get our kids more active.

Sport or Health first?

Aside from the sporting implications, there is an even more worrying threat to our children’s health. We are a nation second only to the USA in our consumption of breakfast cereals, obesity is spiraling, and the prevalence of diabetes is expected to double with the next generation. If we don’t start getting to grips with this at grass roots level then it is only going to get worse. For many kids, whose lives out of school exist of computer gaming, facebook, and other sedentary activities, school provides the ideal opportunity to help them discover exercise and enjoyment through sport and we believe that the government should be doing far more to encourage this.

Tyrone London Strength Coach

As far as we know Latin hasn't helped trainer Tyrone London in his quest to be the first Bond...Black Bond

Instead though, Bonkers Boris Johnson and a host of other luminaries such as Ian Hislop and Joanna Lumley are pushing to see Latin worked back into the schools curriculum. This seems ad absurdum to me. Latin is a dated language with little practical application and grammatical concepts that are only used now by the most pedantic of grammarians. I can hear the teacher now  ”Quentin, split infinitives are not allowed. To go quickly see the headmaster you must!”.  An Oxford think tank also recently lent their weight to this suggesting learning latin is practically essential for the fabric of our very society. Boris goes even further citing the kind of examples only he could create for its use in the Telegraph (such as being held on a remote island by a group of latin speaking cannibals and having to convince them you are a deity in order to survive).

Which would you rather your kids did? Played sport or learnt Latin?

All this may well be true, although as far as I can tell the only real practical application children have for latin is to decipher Harry Potter chants. I agree with the esteemed Professors that the history of Britain is important and should be taught more in schools, and latin could well form part of that. However, to try and crowbar that into the curriculum at the same time as we see sports and exercise in danger of disappearing completely would be laughable were it not so tragic.  Sport teaches concepts that an old language still can’t. It builds confidence and self-esteem, it improves health, teaches values of teamwork, practice, and achievement, and offers the less academically gifted the chance to experience success in an environment where they may sometimes struggle.

Graeme Marsh The Foundry

I may not have made the Winter Olympics but Sport enabled me to travel the world

Olympic Legacy, or future health of the nation, in jeopardy.

Personally speaking, I am less concerned about olympic legacies or future sporting successes.  This seems more like the national ego worrying that we may see our sporting power go the same way as our political power on the global stage than a real concern for the health of the nation. So few kids achieve the kind of success in sport that will allow them to make it a profession, and while that ambition should not be discouraged, our real concern is on the millions of kids now obese, inactive, addicted to sugar and junk food, and getting ill. This is the more sinister issue that is in danger of being missed and I find it disturbing that while our health secretary finds it necessary to consult with the likes of Macdonalds and Pepsico on ‘food responsibility’ we are continuing to reduce the ability for kids to discover the fun and rewards of sport for themselves.

As George Benson sang “I believe the children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way”. Let’s hope that common sense wins out here and that we see SSP’s preserved.

Boris http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/7445850/This-lunacy-about-Latin-makes-me-want-to-weep-with-rage.html
Speech http://www.tabletennistalk.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?3148-Government-Plan-a-New-Initiative-Reviving-Sport-In-Schools
Latin think tank http://politeia.co.uk/sites/default/files/files/Latin%20for%20Language%20Learners(1).pdf
Gove http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11805413
Gove http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/School-Sports-Schools-Secretary-Michael-Gove-Defends-Cut-In-Funding-For-Sports-Programme/Article/201011315820894
Lansley http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/12/mcdonalds-pepsico-help-health-policy

Filed Under: Articles, Blog, Fitness, Football, Health, Performance, Rugby, Snowsports, Sport, What Grinds Graeme's Gears Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Big food businesses to solve big society’s big waistlines?

November 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Mr Lansley has been at it again…….

Andrew Lansley

Andy 'let them eat cake' Lansley

Health secretary Andrew Lansley came up against the acerbic reparte of the Foundry’s own Dave Thomas back when he was in opposition. His disparaging and needless remarks on Jamie Oliver’s attempt to encourage healthier eating in our kids though didn’t stop him taking up his new role as health secretary when the new government was formed (despite Dave’s best attempts). Private Eye hinted at close links between the then shadow health secretary and the Tesco Corporate affairs director, who certainly won’t have minded Oliver and hence Sainsbury’s taking a bit of a bashing. He was also a key player in seeing the eradication of traffic light labelling on foods via the European parliament, much to the dismay of organisations like Diabetes UK and the British Heart Foundation and allegedly at a cost of 1 billion Euro to the lobbying groups that so vehemently opposed it worried it might actually help people to select healthier options (or put them off buying the high margin crappy ones). Significant lobbying from the food industry probably shouldn’t be terribly surprising given that up until the end of 2009 Lansley himself was a paid Director on the board of Profero, an agency that represents (amongst others) Pepsi, Pizza Hut, and Mars. This man knows what he’s doing when it comes to representing the food industry, but the question is ‘does he know what he’s doing to improve public health?’

Mr Fox, would you mind watching my chickens for a while?

nutrition personal trainer personal training fat loss londonThis week the excellent Felicity Lawrence, who has authored two investigative books on the food industry, revealed Lansley’s latest decision to take advice on deciding government policy from the likes of Unilever, PepsiCo, Mars, and other leading nutritional luminaries. This has been analogised in the article to putting the tobacco industry in charge of policy on smoking. Except it isn’t. It is much, much, worse. The Department of Health’s reluctance to legislate in favour of voluntary agreements is hard to reconcile with the overriding commercial interests of companies such as Macdonalds or Tesco. Really, this is letting the fox mind the chickens. You can be confident that the moment your back is turned the fox will be unable to resist its evolutionary nature and start laying into those tasty organic, free-range chickies.

Are we to believe that supermarkets and junk food retailers will behave any better? Will they truly subscribe to Dave Cameron’s message that we are ‘all in this together’ and put profits on the line for the greater public good ? It would seem that several of those involved in these ‘responsibility deals’ that Lansley has formed are worried they might not. Both Professor Ian Gilmore and Professor Tim Lang are cited as having real concerns about this union and I can’t say I blame them. Given that the responsibility group for alcohol is being chaired by the head of The Wine and Spirits Association, it is hard to see anything meaningful coming from this. Cutting down the problems with drink related illness, and the serious social issue of younger children abusing alcohol is diametrically opposed to the interest of the WSA members. As an interesting aside the Fitness Industry Association are involved, who according Ms Lawrence ‘represent personal trainers’. Well that is news to me and am sure it is news to the many fitness instructors in London currently earning beneath the London living wage, while their employers enjoy multi-million pound profits. However, that is a story for another day…

No nanny state for us, the truth though may be far more sinister….

Clearly Lansley is reluctant to look at legislating to improve public health, believing instead in personal responsibility. You have to wonder, does he have such incredible faith in human nature that everyone will just start ‘eating healthily and exercising more’ or does it suit the agendas of those who while paying lip service to healthier eating will continue to promote the obesity, illness, disease, and drink-related conditions that are overburdening our already creaking NHS? Clearly though the supermarkets and big food giants already have a strong link with those who decide food policy as DEFRA records clearly show in the meetings between civil servants and the PR machines of these companies. So, maybe it is as naive of us to think that government can set policy free of influence from the industry players, as it is to think that people will just magically change their dietary habits overnight. Personal responsibility of course must form part of the solution, after all, we can’t force people to eat more or to up their exercise. This is where the tobacco analogy does carry weight. When the public health risks of tobacco became clear the government took steadily more draconian measures to reduce it, taxing them more, controlling advertising methods, printing health warnings, and making it socially unacceptable to partake.

Something drastic needs to be done and this seems like more ‘quangos’ (wasn’t there something in the manifesto about getting rid of these ‘think tanks’) to sit around working out how to pay Paul without robbing Peter. Contrary to the Health Secretary’s stance, it is about a whole lot more than simply encouraging everyone to eat smaller portions and increase their activity levels through their strong moral sense of personal responsibility. These facile strategies alone simply don’t and won’t work.

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How to sort fact from fiction in health and fitness

October 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Smoke this and be happy

Sigmund Freud is a name that is at least familiar to most of us these days as a brilliant pioneer and doctor of such topics as dream interpretation and psychoanalysis. What you may not know is that he was once paid by pharmaceutical company Parke Davis of Detroit to endorse what was later to become a very well-known drug. Freud was not a fool, he had looked into the research, citing seven papers supporting the drug in his own academic review of its many applications. Unfortunately, all those papers were published in the Therapeutic Gazette, a journal that was in fact owned by Parke Davis. The drug was cocaine and Freud’s endorsement (and personal use) of it was to overshadow his career. Parke Davis was at the time America’s only importer of cocaine (to be soon followed by Merck), and they gained tremendous commercial advantage by writing ‘credible’ scientific articles and associating them with reputable figures. This story and the emergence of cocaine as a medical treatment and elixir for many ills is a glorious example of how smart people can believe daft ideas (one of cocaines prime early uses was to ‘cure’ addiction to Morphine, later to ruin the career of america’s most brilliant surgical pioneers William Halstead).

It would be safe to say that there has been an explosion of information available to the trainee and the trainers in the fitness industry over recent years. A quick search of the net also reveals that it is very rare to see this information presented in a balanced format, and all too often it is blatantly used inaccurately or misleadingly to support a particular point of view. This Daily Mail style of reporting the facts, while often well-meaning tends to muddy the waters for those with an enquiring mind or serve as gospel for those who will believe just about anything they are told. Harmless enough? Maybe yes, a lot of the time it is. Very little research supports several well-known urban myths (eight glasses of water a day anyone) yet little harm would come from following them and indeed many will actually benefit. However, when that information strays into medical benefits, supplement claims, or other areas where there is money to be made things aren’t quite as innocent. While it is not likely anything quite like the cocaine story above is likely to happen again, it is a reminder that we should always try to gain a balanced point of view when reviewing the claims made for new products and medicines…

Now, if you really want to get a handle on this research then there are some fairly arduous books that you can pick up on the topic, but here are a few things to ask when you see the next claims for why a very specific intervention can radically cure or prevent a condition or why it is the next miracle answer to fat loss. This is by no means an exhaustive guide to reviewing scientific claims (there are people out there who do this for a job and it is far better to let them do it! See below) but it should help you avoid some common mistakes.

supplements

The red pill or the blue pill?

Commonality versus Causality:

Here is a mistake we see in the papers and on the net all the time. Recently I highlighted a recent Daily Mail piece on bootcamps where they showed some stunningly good examples of confusing the two issues. Cum hoc ergo proptor hoc is the latin for this mistake and it is all too common. So, how to spot it? Well the common use of this is observing a general outcome (for example that many former soldiers suffer from back pain) and then attributing that to a very specific cause (for example their style of fitness training) while failing to account for other factors (such as the drill movements performed, loads carried, job roles, etc etc). This is also often seen by people accounting for the superiority of a particular training or nutritional approach when used with a beginner, assuming that the success was entirely attributable to the system used when in fact they simply made an observation rather than measured an intervention. Without ruling out other variables it is difficult to establish direct cause and effect, yet this happens all the time. Commonality can be a reason to look closer for possible reasons behind the observation but on its own, it doesn’t indicate cause and effect. The European Food Safety Authority has recently spent several years addressing the many claims for food supplements and has seen around 80% of them not approved by failing to show cause and effect. Next time you see a claim look for concrete proof of causation not just commonality.

Human or Animal, in vitro or in vivo:

Another thing worthy of consideration is the study group. Often nutritional products are supported by a real lack of evidence in human subjects. Observing the interactions of a nutrient isolated in a test tube or petri dish does not guarantee that these actions will be reproduced the same in humans – again so many other factors can prevent this (digestion, absorption, interaction with other foods, cooking methods etc). Now, this doesn’t mean of course that this sort of evidence should just be disregarded or that it won’t uncover valuable information, but it does mean that if the results have not been replicated in humans that they may well not actually occur. While looking at the population, it is also good to look at whether or not the population group studied is relevant to your own. For example, if a study only looked at those with a certain condition then the results would only really be applicable to those with that condition – not necessarily to the general population. Similarly if a research study showed a method of training to be effective in experienced trainees who are male and between the age of 19-24 then it may well not be suited to an post-menopausal female and may even be harmful to other population groups.

Cherry picking and who pays the bills?

Sounds cynical doesn’t it, but as our example at the start of this piece goes to prove, people will often go to all sorts of lengths to establish an evidence base for their products. Large commercial business will often fund studies and this can inevitably lead to questions over how information is gathered and interpreted. Pressure or a desire to achieve a given outcome can sometimes lead to selection bias where unfavourable findings are not included, this was beautifully demonstrated by Gary Taubes dissection of the Ancel Key’s research that led to the development of a 30 year obsession with low-fat diets. Alternatively, studies are often selected to support a product where not all the research has been flattering, something known as cherry picking. So, how do you find out the truth without trawling the journals yourself?

A good place to start is the Cochrane Review, an independent group of academics and scientists who look at the many various claims and findings and then do all the hard work for you by assessing all the evidence (being sure along the way to rule out those studies that don’t match up in the strength of their research methods) and putting together a tidy conclusion for you. They even write it up in non-scientific lingo so that you can forward it to your non-geeky clients and friends without just confusing them further!

There is a great saying that you should not believe all you hear, or only hear what you want to believe and this is particularly true when reviewing spurious claims for products or pills that sound a bit too good to be true. With all the overwhelming information that is in the media about what pills or foods cure which illness it is all too easy believe the claims at face value when the reality is all too often just a little bit more complicated. Now at least you will be a little better prepared to ask those questions and make those decisions for yourself.

Filed Under: Articles, Blog, Health, What Grinds Graeme's Gears Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

What Grinds Graeme’s Gears – To Tabata or not to Tabata

September 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Fads, we love them. They come and they go – and normally what happens is that the internet spreads them faster than cold on the tube. Every once in a while a study comes out with some interesting results, and BAM, everything we used to do (which worked) gets chucked out the window in favour of this new way of training.
What grinds my gears

One such study to come out and have this effect was by Izumi Tabata and his team that was originally published back in 1996 in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. A jolly good read for those of you so inclined. There is also an interesting follow up to this in 1997 (http://static.scribd.com/docs/i5jot8izlddl8.pdf).

Lately, there has been a lot of trainers talking about how ‘cardio’ (by which they tend to mean steady-rate sub-maximal work) is a waste of time and intervals are the way forward for, well, just about everything. Since this study showed that a short-burst, high intensity protocol that took place over around 4 minutes, it seemed to offer the golden rivet that everyone seems to constantly be searching for. It has spawned endless articles, protocols, and training programmes – 99% of which are quite a leap from the original research!

Since then the Tabata protocol has come to mean just about anything but what it actually was – you can pretty much find articles and workouts in everything from pilates to kettlebells based around the Tabata format of 20s work and 10s rest.

However, the original research is actually worth looking at in a little more depth, because as the saying goes, it tends to be a little bit more complicated than that…

The first study used 14 young male students and was done on a cycle ergometer (note: not with resistance training exercises) – a favourite due to the low reliance on technique making it suited to supra-maximal efforts such as needed in this study. The study choose to measure Vo2 max for improvements along with anaerobic capacity (note: no body composition data was taken at all).

While one group carried out fairly normal aerobic training for an hour a day, the Tabata group were exercised for bouts of 20 seconds at a percentage of 170% of VO2 max, with only 10 seconds rest. They continued this to exhaustion (as defined by being unable to maintain a set pedal cadence). Now, if you haven’t tried exercising at this level, let me tell you it is seriously difficult to both attain and sustain, as evidenced by his 1997 study where 3 out of the 9 subjects were unable to even complete the eight bouts of 20 seconds. In fact this level of VO2 would be realistically impossible to attain doing a free weight movement, due to technique requirements, local muscle fatigue, and practical safety considerations.

So, what happened? Well the aerobic group got fitter, but didn’t improve their anaerobic capacity. The Tabata group? Well they got a bit fitter too, and also managed to improve anaerobic capacity by 28% (note: the Tabata group did not improve their VO2 max beyond the aerobic training group). What all our Tabata fans fail to mention is that the Tabata group stopped seeing much in the way of improvements after the fourth week, suggesting that the adaptation to this kind of routine is quick.

However, the real thing to notice here is the level of exercise and exhaustion required for this. It simply cannot be achieved doing conventional free weight exercises let alone some kind of ‘core’ workout involving planks, crunches, pressups, etc. Calling these kinds of workouts ‘Tabata protocols’ is a bit of a misnomer and a long way from the reality of what this protocol really involves. I’d be as bold as to suggest that if you can do ’rounds’ of 8 Tabata intervals then you aren’t actually doing Tabata’s at all. The use of this approach for fat loss is an even greater distortion of what the original study looks at, yet a Google search reveals endless articles based on this? Why? I’ll tell you – because the idea of fat loss in four minutes is appealing, even though the reality of anyone overweight completing more than one or two 20 second bouts at 170% of their VO2 max is a fantasy. You are more likely to stimulate some type of cardiac event than you are help them lose weight. There is even research suggesting that the actual metabolic adaptations of this type of training are different between genders, another fact worth considering.

So, where does that leave you? To ‘Tabata’ or not to ‘Tabata’ that is the question?

Well, high intensity supramaximal intervals done with very short rests are practically difficult to implement due to the technique requirements and safety issues, but they are a good way to improve specific anaerobic capacity over a period of a few weeks (note: they were NOT however shown to be superior to regular aerobic training for improving VO2 max, as many wrongly assume). As a fat loss tool, I’d say four minutes of intervals with weights is not likely to be much use. There are a ton of Tabata type routines out there but none that I have found on YouTube look even close to creating the kind of cardiovascular stress needed to actually see the results produced in the study. Most seem well suited to improving local muscle endurance and little else, while some look flat out dangerous and others just pointless.

It may really only come down to a case of semantics and pedantry to suggest that all these Tabata workouts are only a Tabata in name rather than content, and while some may be tough routines, they are a world apart from what the original workout actually was and hence are unlikely to yield the same results.

So, I’m off to the gym to do some 20/10 interval training!

Filed Under: Blog, Fitness, What Grinds Graeme's Gears Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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