At the start of the New Year, I share some strategies for success this first week of January and beyond.
At the start of the New Year, I share some strategies for success this first week of January and beyond. Plus listener emails!
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hi and welcome back to Get-Fit Guy, I’m your host Kevin Don and this week, I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon of the New Years stuff, although I will say Happy New Year to all my listeners. Thank you for listening to the show all 2023 and I hope we can keep this true for 2024. Why wouldn’t I give everyone success strategies for New Year, New You? Well, because it’s totally arbitrary. January 1st as the new year didn’t even have any meaning until 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII revised the calendar and the date was then gradually adopted across Europe and then beyond. The point being that you can make a positive change any time you want. In fact, from moment to moment we make decisions that impact our health and wellbeing. Go for lunch: burger or chicken salad? Go to the store: park close or park further and get some steps in. At the mall: take the stairs or the escalator? You don’t need to wait for some arbitrary date to make a better choice about anything. So I am not on team New Year. I’m on team proactive. That being: make a change any time you want.
So, instead of that nonsense, this week I want to share an experience I had this past month in a training setting and that might give you some takeaways that could inform choices you make in the New Year or any time really. On to the story! This month, a new gym opened very close to my apartment. So close that it would be very convenient to train there. About 250m away. So I dropped by to check it out. This is why my red flags started. I wasn’t able to look at the gym, instead, I would have to go back home, go to their website and book a ‘free, no obligation discovery call’. I figured that although I hate stuff like this, it would, at the very least, make a great episode of Get-Fit Guy. I was right.
So, later that night, one of the trainers called me up and asked me about my goals and explained how their gym worked. Apparently they weren’t like other gyms and were running a model where you can only use the gym with a trainer and in their ‘small group personal training’. Now, this is where I really started with the eyebrow raising. Studying philosophy, I have to say, I have a great insight into the meaning of ‘personal’. That being that it is unique to a person. Personal identity, cannot belong to an object, for example. It is also numerically identity, that being that there is only one of that thing. You are you because, even your identical twin, if they were biologically identical in every way, would not have your memories and experiences, they do not have your personal identity. Therefore, personal training will be uniquely individual to me. If I booked a personal tour of a museum and there were 5 other people on the tour, it’s fairly obvious this is NOT a personal tour. It’s a group tour. Likewise, if training occurs in a group, it's group training. It’s not group personal training because those two things are mutually exclusive.
Regardless, I asked what makes a group training session personal and apparently: “Training people in small groups allows us to make Personal Training more affordable, more flexible, more fun and, honestly, more effective. The group dynamic provides support, camaraderie, and banter that combine to create a results-yielding furnace”. Honestly, I still don’t see the difference between this and any group training. The trainer assured me that things would be modified for my ability and level.
This led to my next question: If this personal training happens in a group, which group member is the program based on? Because how personal training works by nature, is I ask your goal, I assess your abilities and then I write a program to get you to your goals based on your ability. So, what is the program based on? Apparently, it’s not. There is a program for the day that every single person in every single small group personal training session does. Ok… so the program isn’t reflective in any way of my personal goals, it’s written for the gym as a whole and it is taught in a group, not one to one. At this point now, I’m wondering how on earth this can possibly be marketed as ‘personal training’. It’s literally, by definition, the complete opposite!
Anyway, the next step, apparently, is a movement assessment so that they know how to personalise things in the group for me. So, I booked my 45 minute free movement assessment, 15 minutes of which, the trainer spent telling me all about himself, before asking me to do some squats, telling me they were great, ditto a strict press and a Romanian Deadlift and I was done. If you are a regular listener, you’ll know there are multiple movement patterns and energy systems as well as directions we can do these movements in. Core engagement, lunging, pulling weren’t tested, everything I did test was on the spot on two feet and nothing assessed my ability to remain aerobic or what my work capacity was. I was now ready for a membership! Cost? 350 USD a month. Absolutely unbelievable.
What’s the moral of this story? That in order to differentiate themselves in frankly a saturated market, gyms and fitness providers may resort to bamboozlement to stand out from the back in as many ranges of motion, in as many patterns as possible in multiple time domains (that is, train short sprints, train moderately and train long, steady state) and you’ll develop a well rounded state of readiness. Group training happens in a group and personal training must be, well…personal. Don’t fall for tricks and look at whether or not something really has the ability to help you reach your goals. Can group training with a program written for nobody at all, help me reach my individual goals? No. It’s also massively overpriced. 250m in the other direction, I can attend CrossFit, which is where a workout of the day is modified for people in a group class (sound familiar?) For 100 bucks a month. Don’t fall for this stuff.
Ok and lets do a listener email!
Hi Kevin,
Jim, from Massachusetts here.
I've got a question about the efficacy of Collagen supplements. I'm in my early 60's and always have one joint or another stiff, sore and achy. Several people have suggested taking Collagen supplements. I understand that collagen is a protein, although not complete with all 9 essential amino acids. Therefore, wouldn't simply eating adequate amounts of complete protein provide any benefit gained by collagen supplementation?
Thanks for your input. Keep up the good work.
Hi Jim
You are absolutely correct. Collagen supplementation, as far as I am concerned, is a total waste of money. The collagen will be broken down into amino acids by protease enzymes in the small intestine. Whether or not your body uses those amino acids to repair collagen degradation is anyone's guess.
You would be just as well eating foods containing the specific amino acids related to collagen production: glycine, proline and hydroxyproline. These would be the usual suspects of meat, poultry, fish, eggs,(and a lesser extent) legumes and soy.
Eating collagen to replace collagen reminds me of ancient medicine where people ate tigers penis to alleviate impotence. No surprise the only thing that came out of that was an endangered species.
Save money, eat more real protein.
If you have a question or just want to say hi, then email me at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com and you too can be featured on the show. Don’t forget to share the podcast with your friends!
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, Davina Tomlin, Kamryn Lacey, and our new Director of Podcasts, Brennan Goetschius. I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the shownotes in your podcast app