\nNot that I haven\u2019t wasted time at the gym like everybody else, sweating dutifully three times a week, \u201cworking my core,\u201d throwing in the odd after-work jog. A few years ago, newly neck-deep in what Anthony Quinn describes in Zorba the Greek<\/em> as \u201cWife, children, house\u2026the full catastrophe,\u201d I signed a 10-page membership contract at a corporate-franchise gym, hired my first personal trainer, and became yet another sucker for all the half-baked, largely spurious non-advice cobbled together from doctors, newspapers, magazines, infomercials, websites, government health agencies, and, especially, from the organs of our wonderful $19 billion fitness industry, whose real knack lies in helping us to lose weight around the middle of our wallets. Not that all of these people are lying, but here\u2019s what I\u2019ve learned: Their goals are only marginally related to real fitness — goals like reducing the statistical incidence of heart disease across the entire American population, or keeping you moving through the gym so you won\u2019t crowd the gear, or limiting the likelihood that you\u2019ll get hurt and sue.<\/p>\nWe\u2019re not innocent. Too many of us drift into health clubs with only the vaguest of notions about why we\u2019re actually there — notions like maybe losing a little weight, somehow looking like the young Brad Pitt in Fight Club<\/em>, or just heeding a doctor\u2019s orders. Vague goals beget vague methods; the unfocused mind is the vulnerable mind, deeply susceptible to bullshit. So we sign our sorry names on the elliptical-machine waiting list — starting with a little \u201ccardio,\u201d like somebody said you\u2019re supposed to — and then spend our allotted 30 minutes in front of a TV mounted a regulation seven to 10 feet away, because lawyers have told gym owners that seven to 10 feet minimizes the likelihood that we\u2019ll crane our necks, lose our balance, and face-plant on the apparatus. After that, if we\u2019ve got any remaining willpower, we lie flat on the floor, contract a few stomach muscles with tragic optimism, and then we \u201cwork each body part\u201d before hitting the shower.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nEven in my minimal-exercise routine, I’ve often been told to start with some stretches. Uh, no, apparently I shouldn’t do that:<\/p>\n
\nHow many times have you been told to start with a little stretching? Yet multiple studies of pre-workout stretching demonstrate that it actually raises your likelihood of injury and lowers your subsequent performance. Turns out muscles that aren\u2019t warmed up don\u2019t really stretch anyway, and tugging on them just firms up their resistance to a wider range of motion. In fact, limbering up even has a slackening effect on your muscles, reducing their stability and the amount of power and strength they\u2019ll generate.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
On the economic incentives of health club owners:<\/p>\n
\nCommercial health clubs need about 10 times as many members as their facilities can handle, so designing them for athletes, or even aspiring athletes, makes no sense. Fitness fanatics work out too much, making every potential new member think, Nah, this place looks too crowded for me. The winning marketing strategy, according to Recreation Management Magazine<\/em>, a health club\u2013industry trade rag, focuses strictly on luring in the \u201cout-of-shape public,\u201d meaning all of those people whose doctors have told them, \u201cAbout 20 minutes three times a week,\u201d who won\u2019t come often if ever, and who definitely won\u2019t join unless everything looks easy, available, and safe. The entire gym, from soup to nuts, has been designed around getting suckers to sign up, and then getting them mildly, vaguely exercised every once in a long while, and then getting them out the door.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve never really been able to get into the idea of joining a health club — the few times I’ve tried, the interest hasn’t gone beyond the “free trial” period. I find exercise for the sake of exercise to be not just boring but actively repellant. What little exercise I get, outside the minimal physical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,18],"tags":[598,369,39],"class_list":["post-8683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-sports","tag-aging","tag-interesting","tag-junkscience"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2g3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8683"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8685,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8683\/revisions\/8685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}