Dispatch #38
Two exercises I avoid (along with two much better alternatives); how to stay strong as you age; will Diet Coke give you cancer?; why commitments are more important than goals…and more!
Brain & Body
Here’s my latest piece for The Globe & Mail (and here’s a PDF version from PrintFriendly for anyone who’s not a G&M subscriber).
I don’t hate on exercises very often. For the most part, I feel that as long as you have a good reason for performing a particular exercise go right ahead and do so. What bugs me is when folks simply default to the bench press (or lunges, or squats, or even dips for that matter) without considering more effective alternatives.
Think things through. There should be a reason other than “because” for every exercise in your program. Can’t find a good reason? Ditch that movement, find another.
Here’s a startling fact: humans lose between 3-8% of their muscle mass every decade after reaching 30. And once we hit 60, that muscle loss accelerates.
That’s the bad news. The good news is, a healthy diet and regular resistance training can prevent a lot of this muscle-loss. Who would have guessed!
Did you hear that Diet Coke causes cancer?? This is what the World Health Organization (WHO) says anyway, or at least that’s what the media is reporting that the WHO said. The actual findings of the WHO report are less alarming than the newspaper headlines—an adult weighing 154 pounds would need to drink between 9-14 cans of artificially-sweetened soda to exceed the acceptable daily intake of aspartame.
That’s a lot of soda! And while I’m sure some devotees easily crush that many cans on a regular basis, I’m just as sure that those people are outliers. Now don’t get me wrong—I’m not advocating for the inclusion of pop in anyone’s diet. But indulging in the occasional fizzy drink likely won’t cause your insides to rot.
Heart & Soul
It’s important to question established conventions. In the world of health and fitness, there are many sacred cows that need to be put out to pasture, chief among them being the obsession with goal-setting. There are all kinds of reasons why I hate focusing on goals, but for the sake of brevity I’ll focus on one: stating you want to accomplish something really doesn’t mean anything.
Sure, making a solemn vow to run 10K in under 30 minutes may inspire you to take action on Day 1, but unless that statement is backed by an iron-clad commitment to change yourself as an individual, that goal is nothing but a pipe dream. Abstract notions won’t motivate you to hit the asphalt four or five months down the road. A more effective tactic for long-term success is to reframe your identity so that the goal you have in mind is a natural expression of your personality. Think “I am a runner, and runner’s run”, not “I have to run today or else I won’t reach my goal”.
Pity the poor Boomers. After living high on the hog for decades, this most fortunate of cohorts has encountered an enemy it simply cannot defeat—death itself. Not that these old-timers are going down without a fight, though. An entire industry devoted to extending life for as long as possible has sprung-up over the last decade or so, and as you can guess this industry is fuelled by some questionable theories.
Pushing back against the indignities of aging is essentially what exercise is all about, so I understand why reasonable, intelligent people would fall for these seductive sales pitches. And while it should be apparent that no amount of money can deter Father Time, reason seems to go out the window when you’ve got a fat pension to burn through.
Let’s set aside the unsavoury (and entirely subjective) moralistic aspects of wanting to live forever. Here we have two very sound arguments against the anti-aging movement: outliving your brain, and outliving your bank account. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe painting a picture of a broke 110-year-old with Swiss cheese for a brain is how the gurus sell their patented programs. Who’s to say?!
Social Spotlight
With nearly 250 articles, 10 book-length tutorials, 1000+ blog posts and 3000+ citations, Pain Science is basically the Wikipedia for aches, pains and injuries. The creator and curator—Paul Ingraham—has done an incredible job of collecting the most accurate and up-to-date information on just about every ailment you can think of, and the content is presented in an easy-going manner that everyone can follow.
For real, Pain Science is one of the few websites I actually have bookmarked and refer to on a regular basis…unlike all those other sites I bookmark and then forget about immediately after the fact.
That’s all for this week. As always, I thank you for lending me some of your precious time and attention. If you have any questions, comments or concerns please send them my way. And if you found any of these articles helpful, consider sharing this newsletter with your family, friends and/or social networks. I’m sure they’d appreciate the thought. I know I will.
Until next time.
- P