Blog : InForm Fitness

You Must Be Insane

The overly commercialized fitness industry is forever trying to accommodate society’s never-ending quest to get fit, be healthy and to live forever. Without fail, the body of our dreams is always just one next ‘big thing,’ celebrity diet secret, or magic pill away.

The Insanity Workout is yet another promise for the delivery of miraculous results. Claiming to burn an astonishing (and convenient) 1,000 calories per hour, this 60-day, “max-interval training” uses a technique of “long bursts of maximum-intensity exercises with short periods of rest.” In my opinion, no matter how the workout is packaged and marketed, it’s just another gimmick.

First of all, rarely is anything genuinely new, just discovered, or for the first time being revealed to the general public. At best, it is a spin-off from something that has been around for a while, been tried and tested, and if you read their fine print, “yield results that are not typical.”

P90X, a workout similar to the Insanity Workout (and coincidentally owned by the same company, Beachbody LLC), in 2003 bombarded the market. P90X is a 90-day program that combines a variety of exercise techniques, including various calisthenics, cardio, yoga, plyometrics and stretching. Both the Insanity Workout and P90X emphasize the unproven training method known as ‘muscle confusion.’ The theory behind ‘muscle confusion’ is that by continually varying exercises, the muscles in your body are prevented from adapting to a predictable routine over time and thus hitting the ill-fated plateau.

Nonsense! Muscles can’t be ‘confused,’ duped or even bewildered. Muscles don’t predict, anticipate or get bored.

Every muscle in the body can do two things, and two things only; contract and relax. That’s what muscles do. When you flex your elbow, your bicep contracts, and when you straighten your elbow, your bicep relaxes. So it makes more sense that if you want to avoid that dreaded plateau, simply lift the heaviest weight you can to reach muscle failure for each muscle group and then rest long enough to allow the muscles to rebuild.

Now which theory seems more plausible – muscle confusion or muscle building?

Additionally, P90X and the Insanity Workout claim to burn a thousand calories an hour. Think about that – it just doesn’t make sense. We were never meant to burn calories at that rate – if we were then we would have never survived as a species! Even if we could expend calories at such a magnificent rate, our hunger would be insatiable and our ravenous appetites would replace those lost calories. And, if the calories weren’t replaced, our bodies would compensate for the calorie deficiency with drastically lower metabolisms. The low carbohydrate diets endorsed by these programs and recommended in conjunction with the training regimes are more likely the responsible component for the fat loss reported rather than the insane workout.

That said, what is truly insane about these workout programs are their recommendations to work out six consecutive days a week. That’s six hours a week – or nearly a full working day every week. And with only one day of rest!

Although I agree that an exercise program should be intense, I maintain that rest and recovery are essential for results. The five to seven days of rest recommended by the Power-of-10 protocol is the minimum time required for the body to grow stronger. The building of muscle is the desired adaptive response to the exercise stimulus. Following the correct application of intensity level, the real ‘magic’ takes place during the recovery time.

The frequency, duration and high-force nature of the Insanity Workout and P90X, as well as countless other training methods, often result in injury. These injuries will not only prevent you from being consistent with your workouts, but also from living your life with ease, without injury-related pain, on a day-to-day basis.

The Power of 10 is a safe, efficient, once-a-week exercise program. You’ll achieve the same results safely, while gaining an extra five plus hours each week to do things you actually enjoy!

And there’s nothing insane about that!

Sharing in Mother Nature’s Bounty

As often as possible, I peruse my local Farmers Market in search of fresh organic fruits and vegetables. And, yes, as often as possible, I capitalize on those excursions as opportunities to observe my fellow health-conscious shoppers. My wife calls it staring. Regardless, I think people are fascinating.

So, in a collective pursuit of superior health and nutrition, we, for all appearances, are engaged in a discerning search for chemical- and pesticide-free produce, while at the same time supporting the local farming community. Wonderful! But, why then do some people seem so disapproving of the head of leafy greens riddled with holes?

The irony is that we simply can’t afford to be so picky.

Supermarket conglomerates dazzle the consumer with rows of completely intact, waxy, perfectly symmetrical and vibrantly colored produce, at an enormous cost to our health. Sadly, though, we have grown aesthetically conditioned to desire that still life, picture-perfect bowl of fruits and vegetables, and are thus prone to dismiss the less “attractive” cornucopia of offerings we find at the open market.

Produce will grow strong and beautiful in the absence of heavy pesticide sprays and chemical-rich soils, but the sometimes ugly truth is that insects will also thrive and most likely be the first to partake.

Those little holes in the lettuce leaf – that is the evidence that insects have lavishly fed there before – and is exactly the proof I am looking for to authenticate the organic labeling! Logically, hole-free skin and or leaves tell me that my fruits and vegetables were most likely treated with poisons designed to kill life – a notion I find far less appetizing than a few remnant signs of insect feedings, or even the darned insects themselves.

So, I encourage my fellow organic shoppers to relish the opportunity to share in Mother Nature’s Bounty, and reap the pleasures and benefits of contaminate-free produce. And, as the old joke would assure you, they won’t eat much.

Breaking Down Barriers and Crossing Borders

We’ve entered into a new era here at InForm Fitness.

Let me share some background first so that you can understand why NOW is such a pivotal time at InForm Fitness.

I was a science geek – not your typical profile for an exercise maniac. I followed strenuous exercise programs and was dedicated to being fit. Some would say that I was an arrogant evangelist about it as well, and I just couldn’t understand why my fellow lab technicians didn’t want to get with the program. Then, one day, my boss told me the truth: “Adam, you are always nursing injuries and you look like crap – so why would I want to exercise the way you do?”

That was the moment. You know – that ah ha moment. So I set a new course to discover a safer, more efficient way to exercise. That’s when I discovered the work of Ken Hutchins on slow resistance weight training. While I wasn’t in agreement with all of Hutchins’ work, I did see the premise as being sound. I dug deeper to learn more, found studios that were practicing slow resistance weight training, and became a convert. I believed that this would change the whole fitness industry.

Fast-forward a few years after more research, practice and testing, and with absolutely no business experience; I started InForm Fitness in a Massapequa basement. The business began to take off and so we expanded to a studio in midtown Manhattan- our headquarters today. I also co-authored the book The Power of Ten with my good friend Bill Schley, and it hit the New York Times Best Seller list. I was now getting closer to my dream of being interviewed by Oprah and changing the way the world looked at exercise.

Well, the whole industry didn’t change, and I didn’t get invited to speak to Oprah. But I haven’t wavered one inch from my mission. While Oprah didn’t call, Leslie Stahl and Barbara Walters did. There have been several news programs and articles about The Power of 10 and InForm Fitness so I know it is catching on – but it seems that when we say ‘this workout isn’t for everyone’ – it really isn’t. Not because it can’t or won’t work for them, but because people become very invested in their beliefs – right or wrong, scientifically sound or mystically based – they oppose change.

So back to the point I started with – Breaking Down Barriers and Crossing the Border.

The first barrier: getting found. With several lackluster attempts at a website, we finally found the team to work with that delivered a new website that is already improving our ‘findability’ on the web and delivering a better experience. We’ve also begun a new marketing and communications program – so stay tuned!

The next barrier: getting our vacationing clients back in the gym. While we recognized that many of our New York City clients spend their summers in the Hamptons, coming back to the city for their workout was inconvenient. This sparked my idea of taking the gym to them – in a custom-designed, full-workout gym-on-a-bus! We rolled out InForm Mobile in the Hamptons this past summer. And we’ll be making ‘fit stops’ throughout Long Island and New Jersey all year long.

The third barrier: Crossing the Border. As you probably have picked on up by now, I believe that the Power of 10 workout should be the norm. And to make that happen, we have to aim beyond New York. We are excited to announce that in addition to our New York City, Massapequa, Lehigh Valley locations, and our bus, we now have a new location in Los Angeles, California. We are close to adding another location in Santiago, Chile – and another in Virginia!

After much delay, we are at a point in our journey where we have a great team and the right platform to consistently share our ideas and information that I believe will help improve your quality of life.

If you haven’t signed up for our newsletter, I invite you to do so. You might also want to check out our new Tumblr site and to join us on Facebook, where we plan on having some lively discussions. See you online!

Cardiac Damage From Endurance Exercise

From MedPage Today, Dec 6, 2011:

Intense endurance exercise — such as running a marathon — may induce cardiac damage confined to the right ventricle, a small study showed.

Highly trained endurance athletes had reductions in right ventricular function immediately after a race, although it mostly returned to normal about a week later, according to André La Gerche, MBBS, PhD, of the University of Melbourne in Australia, and colleagues.

However, a handful of the athletes had signs of subclinical myocardial scarring on cardiac MRI, “suggesting that repetitive ultra-endurance exercise may lead to more extensive right ventricular change and possible myocardial fibrosis,” the researchers reported online in the European Heart Journal.

Action Points:
* This study of 40 endurance athletes found evidence of right ventricular effects after an endurance event that largely resolved by six to 11 days later.

* Also, no concomitant left ventricular effects were observed.

There were no changes in left ventricular function, which “provides further circumstantial evidence for the emerging concept that the right ventricle may be more susceptible to exercise-induced injury [than the left],” they wrote.

The study included 40 athletes (mean age 37) who were participating in a marathon, an endurance triathlon, an alpine cycling race, or an ultra triathlon. All trained for more than 10 hours a week and had finished in the top quarter of a recent endurance race. None had cardiac symptoms or risk factors.

The researchers evaluated the athletes two to three weeks before the race, immediately after the race, and six to 11 days after the race.

Compared with baseline, right ventricular volumes increased, and all measures of right ventricular function worsened immediately post race. Left ventricular function was unaffected.

Levels of two biomarkers of myocardial injury — cardiac troponin I and B-type natriuretic peptide — significantly increased following the race (P≤0.003 for both). The changes were associated with reductions in right ventricular ejection fraction (P≤0.002 for both), but were unrelated to left ventricular ejection fraction.

Lower right ventricular ejection fraction was significantly associated with longer race duration and increasing peak oxygen uptake (P≤0.011 for both).

By six to 11 days after the race, most measures of right ventricular function had returned to normal, with the exception of right ventricular strain rates, which remained lower.

In the 39 athletes who underwent cardiac MRI, five had delayed gadolinium enhancement confined to the interventricular septum, indicative of subclinical myocardial fibrosis. These athletes had been competing in endurance sports longer and had lower right ventricular ejection fractions compared with those with normal MRI findings.

Because the study was not powered to assess clinical outcomes, the significance of the MRI findings requires further study, according to the authors.

The study “begs the hypothetical question whether repetitive longstanding bouts of arduous exercise result in the development of an acquired form of arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy,” Sanjay Sharma, MD, and Abbas Zaidi, MBBS, of St. George’s University of London, wrote in an accompanying editorial.

“The results provide food for thought and the data should be embraced to galvanize more detailed and longitudinal assessment of large groups of endurance athletes,” they wrote. “The potential for such projects is enormous considering the colossal increase in participation rates in endurance events such as the marathon.”

The Happiness Project

We really enjoyed this book and wanted to share it with you. True, Gretchen Rubin, talks about us in her NY Times Bestselling Book, The Happiness Project, which we might add is now in paperback.

She makes a resolution to “Exercise Better” and reveals the importance of exercise as one of the stepping stones toward a happier life. Certainly that is no surprise to any of us here at Inform Fitness or to any of our clients, but she talks about how she has tried strength training and weight training in the past and was never able to stick with it. Then she discovered Inform Fitness and explains how the Power of 10 slow motion method changed her life.

We are thrilled to have another happy client and well, as you can imagine, ecstatic about her sharing it with the world in her book. If you would like more information about The Happiness Project or to buy Gretchen’s book, please visit their website.

Inform Fitness Featured In Marie Claire

We are really excited to share that The Power of 10 Workout was featured in the November 2011 Issue of Marie Claire @ Work.

The article mentions Inform Fitness as one the options for the busy executive who only has a short lunch period to fit in a worthwhile workout. We couldn’t agree more.

You can read the article in our press section or at Marie Claire where they have the full article online.

You Must Be Insane

Sharing in Mother Nature’s Bounty

Breaking Down Barriers and Crossing Borders

Cardiac Damage From Endurance Exercise

The Happiness Project

Inform Fitness Featured In Marie Claire

We are really excited to share that The Power of 10 Workout was featured in the November 2011 Issue of Marie Claire @ Work.

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