Written by Dr. Carlon Colker, MD
30 October 2006

Cirque Du Fitless

            Last week I was training down in San Diego at Frog's Gym in Del Mar, a seaside So-Cal club north of the border. This sub-Venice bodybuilding pitstop has been a favorite of muscleheads over the years. Frog's is kind of a scrappy little place by the sea, but it has pretty much everything you need to get huge and for that reason remains a favorite of mine when I'm in the area. But the truth is that what was once a local bastion of high-intensity training and gut-busting sweat from mass monsters like Nasser El Sonbaty, Jim Quinn and Garret Downey, has changed. Frog's, like so many cool, hardcore haunts around this great country, has been overrun by lost organisms performing what amounts to circus tricks on balance boards and Bosu balls. Epic workouts have given way to stupid little equipment and fitness toys that now litter our gyms. The thought makes me want to puke.

 

            From Another Planet

            I don't know what planet these humanoids come from, but they seem to fit a relatively consistent description and always engage in pointless routines. The guys tend to be a little older and in horrible shape. They always carry towels around the gym slung over their sloping shoulders. They put them down on the machines and occasionally use them to wipe non-existent sweat from their brows. They wear small T-Shirts and even smaller shorts pulled up high, revealing disturbingly pale stick-like arms and legs. This presentation always comes along with a paunch or below-the-belt spare tire.

            Their mindless routines involve things like trying to do quarter squats with the bar while balancing on Bongo Boards or Dyna Discs. They do some free weights, but their form is invariably dreadful. Also, they have a penchant for chatting and engaging in the gym social scene, often taking long hiatuses between sets to cluck it up with their brethren. Swiss balls, rubber bands and yoga mats- you name it- they love gimmicks. Any new toy or skill that's fun or challenging to do in the tricky sense, but requires no real genuine physical effort along the lines of what's needed to appreciably improve the physique, is welcome. They remind me of gerbils perpetually looking for a new thing to play with, always failing to realize that all this shit doesn't matter with respect to the kind of condition they should be striving for. In other words, unless you are doing something akin to working in the circus, balancing on a Swiss Ball is not a workout that will change your physique or significantly improve your quality of life.

            That's not to say stuff like this is not a challenge to master. In fact, these items are actually challenging and tough, and therein lays the trap. Lost souls have gotten caught up in this pitfall of thinking that just because something is a physical challenge to master, it must mean they are working out in a way that's going to burn off the fat from their guts or add enough muscle to create a strong and visually appealing physique. That's of course, bullshit. These droves of knuckleheads and the trainers that have misled these legions have confused farting around with true functional training.

But the men are a relative minority. The female humanoids occupy the vast majority of vacuous visitors from planet Fitless. Almost always accompanied by some equally vacuous trainer, they cover every inch of some gyms like ants on a cracker. These womanoids usually have big fat asses or thighs squeezed into the latest fitness apparel. From the rear, the two I saw in the gym this morning sharing a trainer looked like a couple of very fashionable rhinos. Like their male counterparts, they always carry towels and pretend they need to use them, lest they get some vinyl-borne illness from coming in direct contact with the bench. A hallmark that sets them apart from the men is the perpetual need to carry big water bottles to repeatedly quench their non-existent thirst. They love long periods of lying on floor mats and stretching out. In fact, gyms have had to accommodate this demand by providing larger stretching areas for these beached seals to congregate. Most evident is their affinity for gym toys and gimmicks. Their workouts are filled with empty, sweatless movements.

 

            The Experiment

            Amazingly, credible expert trainers have perpetuated this confusion. They've embraced silly physical tricks and funky movements that, while perhaps able to marginally benefit a very small sector of highly advanced athletes by fine-tuning some subtle aspect of physical skill, won't do anything appreciable for the average person. These few qualified, but misguided, expert trainers have done a great disservice to the masses. Somehow, the primary goal of burning fat, building muscle and improving conditioning has become lost in their perpetuation of gym tricks over real physical work. Their figurative stamp of approval has in a way legitimized the substitution of quirky little stunts in place of hard, sweaty workouts.

            In fact, it's gotten so bad, my training partner Gregg and I came up with a hilarious experiment (which we'd never be caught dead actually doing) to test how bad things have become. We figure we should start coming to the gym on a daily basis with a bunch of sticks and plates and, instead of our regular workout, begin spinning the plates on the sticks for about an hour. We'll have towels and water bottles. Then when we're done, we'll walk out but leave the equipment behind. We figure that within a few weeks some idiots thinking they found some new way to work out will pick up the crap and start spinning plates.

            But the real point is that these morons would not be so annoying if they were just fixtures of the gym like the hardcore set and not rudely in the way everywhere you turn. You see, what ends up happening is that some woman doing dumbbell shoulder presses while balancing on a Swiss ball unnecessarily sets herself up in a squat cage for an exercise she could literally do anywhere. If you're fixing to do heavy squats that day, you get bumped and have to just wait. Worse yet, some guy will come along and take up one side of the cable crossover just so he can perform what looks like mock batting practice while balancing on some kind of squishy thing. Again, you get bumped and wait. And of course, there's the ever-present dude who thinks he's really improving his physique and conditioning by doing curls while negotiating a balance board and standing under the chinning bar you want to use.

            What these humanoids and their trainers have done to our gyms is a slap in the face to anyone who takes their workout seriously and really throws out sweat in the gym either doing conventional bodybuilding, hardcore cardio, or true functional training. These unwelcome fitless misfits pollute our midst and disturb our sanctuary.

 

            Post This!

            For lack of any real way out of this and purely as a futile exercise to vent my own frustration for your entertainment, here are 10 mindless and irrational solutions from Dr. C to post in your gym:

  1. Anyone performing any movement whatsoever that looks even remotely like a circus act will be immediately removed from the premises.
  2. Water bottles, towels and lifting gloves are strictly banned along with the people who have convinced themselves they need them.
  3. Unless you are asking for a spot, cracking a joke, or hitting on a girl, no small talk whatsoever.
  4. Apart from the bars, free weights, benches and cable machines, if a potential piece of gym equipment looks anything like something your puppy would play with, it must be incinerated.
  5. Any supposed piece of exercise equipment made of wood, plastic or anything inflatable must be tossed in the street and run over several times by your car.
  6. While I'm at it, if you're a man wearing your shorts above your belly button and your socks pulled all the way up, you're banned from the gym until you figure out how to dress yourself.
  7. Similarly, if you're a women over 40 insisting on wearing the ever- popular spandex pants covering mounds of cellulite in combo with the jog bra top revealing folds of belly skin and fat, you're banned from the gym until you can tone it down a bit.
  8. Apart from abdominal training and a little stretching, if you're caught doing any exercise you could easily perform in the middle of your living room, you'll be tossed from the gym.
  9. If you claim to be a personal trainer yet you have not trained your own body consistently for at least five years and/or you do not look like you work out (i.e., at least better than average muscle tone and low body fat), you are banned.
  10. Finally, and most importantly, if you don't break a sweat, you're banned from the gym.

 

Okay. I feel better now.