Debunking the Devil's Workout: Coach Kevin Don unravels the seemingly enticing 'Devil's Workout’, contrasting it with enjoyable, tailored exercise practices. Discover whether this notorious workout is a generic trap or a heaven-sent solution for fitness seekers.
Debunking the Devil's Workout: Coach Kevin Don unravels the seemingly enticing 'Devil's Workout’, contrasting it with enjoyable, tailored exercise practices. Discover whether this notorious workout is a generic trap or a heaven-sent solution for fitness seekers.
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. This is coach Kevin Don. When I opened my laptop to work on this week's episode, I noted that this is episode 666 of Get-Fit Guy. So, I thought I would do a google search for ‘the devil’s workout’ and see if anything popped up. The top result is a workout designed by the personal trainer of ‘Thor’ actor, Chris Hemsworth.
As you would imagine, with all these arbitrary workouts, the thing that makes it so devilish is the number scheme. 6 exercises, 6 reps, 6 rounds.
The workout is:
6 reps and rounds of:
So, there you have it, and far be it for me to critique something….oh wait, that’s exactly what I’m going to do…
But, what is the point here?
Let’s take the first exercise, deadlift to overhead tricep extension. If you are deadlifting, the purpose should really be to get stronger and make your back strong. Now, taking myself as an example, I reckon I’m probably only tricep extending 55-65lbs but I’m deadlifting 555lbs. So, if I can only use one tenth of the load that I can move…why do it? We have talked before about adaptation. To create an adaptation, you need to create a stress that is on the top end of capacity. Adding exercises onto other exercises is like those cookery shows on TV where the contestant cooks themselves off the show by not knowing when to stop. Adding more and more ingredients doesn’t make you a better chef. It makes you an insecure chef. Same thing goes for training. Squat on a BOSU ball while doing resistance band flyes? GET IN THE BIN.
As for the other exercises in the 666 workout, they are given too generally and are encouraged to be done to an unhealthy degree. More on that in a second.
This workout brought me to thinking again about the arbitrary nature of training and the bamboozlement of clients. I saw a post recently from a ‘top’ CrossFit coach talking about the science behind the rep schemes and exercise variations. To say he was misinformed would be understating things. I have it on good authority from people who WERE THERE back in the early days, with the founder himself, that there was no ‘science.’ Two things happened when it came to writing the workouts. First off, a hopper was used to select exercises. The exercises all went into a big red metal hopper (I know this because I’ve seen the hopper myself, it’s on a ranch in California), the handle was turned to mix them all up, and then the number of exercises for that day were pulled out at random. The second part of this highly scientific process was that dice were thrown to determine the reps.
Now, we have people who weren’t even doing the sport back then, retrospectively making up some ‘science’ about why. There was no why. It was RANDOM. That isn’t to say that nowadays, many great CrossFit coaches aren’t applying sports science to workouts, because they are. But you can’t try to fit history into your narrative. Just like you can’t make everyone do the same training for different goals, different body types, different capacities. If you try, then you are indulging in what I call ‘Procustean’ coaching. I named this for the Greek mythological character, Procustes. Procustes was a son of Poseidon, who went awry. He owned an Inn on the road into Athens, where weary travellers could stop and rest. He had an iron-framed bed there and if one were too short for the dimensions of the bed, he would stretch their limbs and if they were too tall, he would amputate body parts to get them to fit.
Procrustean coaching is like this. You can’t be stretching clients out to make them fit your program. Eventually this results in a negative outcome. In Procrustes’ case, it was being killed by Theseus in the manner in which he tortured so many travellers. I have a client right now who is a coach in a CrossFit gym and the owners have told her they are very unhappy that she has a coach and that, at a minimum, they want her to train their gym workout once a week. The fact that they are angry at someone having training that respects their goals and their capabilities and want her to join in with things that are the exact opposite tells you all you need to know.
Anyway, circling back to ‘the devil’s workout.’ I couldn’t possibly give my listeners something like this, firstly because I don’t believe in general exercise prescriptions. Secondly, although I do believe that we need stress to adapt, I do not believe that training should be some kind of evil punishment that only Satan himself could prescribe. I’m sure everyone has heard of RPE, which in fitness parlance, stands for ‘rate of perceived exertion’ but I have another meaning for this acronym: Rate of Perceived Enjoyment. If things are not fun or enjoyable, then people won’t stick long term. Exercise should not be a chore or punishment. And yeah yeah I get it that the ‘primal living’ brigade will say that our ancestors didn’t move to enjoy, but to survive, but hey, our ancestors also didn’t annoy the life out of podcasters on email either.
In fact, this idea of punishment is itself mentioned in the ‘devil's workout’ article I read. Hemsworth himself says you can rest for one minute between sets or “just throw up and power through.” FALSE. If you are throwing up in the gym, you have pushed beyond your capacity and this is not ok. We should not be glorifying vomiting intra-workout. That’s terrifying that anyone would do that. Please don’t.
Anyway, on to an email I received from a listener, who does not want to be named. I am always happy to address both positive and negative feedback. I’ll put this one in the negative bucket and give my response.
The listener claims that in my episode last week, where I debunked the 10,000 steps a day myth, I did not mention the benefits of walking, which include:
And this is quite correct, I did not go into a list of benefits of walking. The reason for this was that I mentioned METs. The benefits of walking to your health will depend upon several factors, one being your current capacity. If you walk 20,000 steps a day, let's say a mailman, then you most likely have an adaptation to the movement, so going to walk as your exercise is not going to improve things much more. Secondly, it depends on your intensity (METs). If you go for a walk at a very sedentary pace, compared to a pace on the upper end of capacity, the outcome will be very different. I also noted that the main hallmarks of aging, sarcopenia and osteopenia, will not be overcome by walking. Therefore, I think there are better choices.
So, to be clear and fair. I agree with the email, that there are indeed health benefits to walking. But I think we need to define walking further in terms of effort and current capacity before we can make a broad claim that it would help everyone.
Next, in the same email, the listener said that “I know you like to give lectures on logic with a Latin-English translation. I’m skeptical of the usefulness of this to listeners and think it tends to be pedantic.” Well, firstly, I appreciate you listening and providing feedback on the advice I gave and how I do that. By way of explanation, I don’t like to give lectures. It may seem that way ona podcast because it is single-sided by virtue of its own qualities. I’m not sure how I could change that with the limits of the situation. But also, I don’t explain logic with Latin expressions because I particularly enjoy them. I do that because the terms are in Latin. I can’t change that, I’m afraid. A modus ponens has no translatory equivalent.
In terms of the usefulness to listeners, I guess that I can only do what I see is fit. In this podcast, I make the decisions and I think that paying on critical thinking skills to listeners is incredibly valuable. Regular listeners will know this because I have mentioned my reasons on the show before. There are many fitness charlatans and a huge amount of disinformation out there. I therefore think that helping people to apply critical thought to things they may see or hear is a great way to help others, rather than me just spoon feeding them.
I also wanted to note that using Latin terms, by definition, is not pedantic. Pedantic means ‘someone who annoys others by correcting small errors.’ Which I thought was quite ironic, given the email you sent me. I’ll sign off simply by saying ‘Gratias tibi’ or ‘thank you’ for the non-Latin speakers in the room.
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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