Enter the NURU reference cards. These cards are aimed at “the man or woman who wants to look good and feel great without having to hit the local gym”. It’s a pack of cards with exercise pictures, descriptions, and workout instructions for low-tech exercises.

The first thing that appeals to me about these little doodads is the price. They’re cheap. For $10 you get a stack of 30 little cards that clip together like a keychain. You can stick them in your purse, pocket, or workout bag.

The second thing that appeals to me is their design. They’re well laid out, attractively presented, and manage to stuff a whole lot of great, useful information into a tiny package. Most cards have some kind of thoughtful illustration of muscles, exercises, or exercise concepts. There is a glossary of common exercise terms, and some guidance on staying motivated.

The cards cover the basics of strength training, with some surprisingly informed advice, such as an emphasis on interval training. This isn’t the usual dumbass muscle mag crap: they debunk myths about women getting too big, and spot reduction (I was disheartened to see, however, that they do reproduce the “only squat to parallel” myth but hey, it’s probably too much to hope for.) Muscle groups and their functions are depicted and described well. There are suggested variations for different ability levels.

I even found an idea for something I’d never seen before: using a towel wrapped around one’s foot for a resisted row. Clever! I also liked the table chin-up, which was something I’ve used with clients; nice to see that other people don’t find the notion totally insane.

There are also ideas for low-tech cardio — I was gratified to see that burpees made the list, horrid yet brilliant creatures that they are.

If you’re looking for a handy portable reference, I’d definitely recommend them.

One of the main things that beginners need to learn is to trust their instincts. If you feel like something is wrong, and I don’t mean a general “Gee, this squat makes me feel kinda funny barfy-like” sensation, but rather a sudden, “Uh-oh, that ain’t right” insight, then STOP immediately! See the injury page for more on distinguishing between good and bad pain. Luckily, most problems in the gym are not really about injury, but more about not getting optimal results.

The second thing beginners need to understand is the importance of learning from mistakes. It’s not stupid to make a mistake, but it is stupid to make that mistake again and again and again without ever trying to use that mistake as an opportunity to do better next time. I once heard someone say that there is no failure, only feedback. Use your performance as output and evidence that guides you to make better decisions in future.

Finally, beginners benefit from setting short- and long-term goals. If you don’t know what you’re trying to do, how do you know if you’re succeeding or not? You need to be able to monitor your progress on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. I like to work in short cycles of 4-6 weeks. This is a long enough period for me to make noticeable gains, but not so long that I go on doing something mediocre forever without ever clueing in. At the end of each cycle, I look back on what I was doing, and evaluate it. Did I get the results I wanted? If so, what was I doing right? If not, what could I have done better? What changes could I make both for variety and improvement? What did I like and not like about the exercises, split, schedule, etc.? I also check my progress within the cycle itself, noting during workouts how I felt, which exercises didn’t really work very well, and so forth. For example, one day I might have a bad workout because I didn’t eat properly beforehand; I can see that immediately and remember that for next time. Or I might have felt a certain exercise was causing bad pain, so I can amend it for next time or strike it altogether and substitute something else. Your goal is to find a good balance of consistency and change. You want to stick with something long enough to see if it works, but you also want to notice what things can be altered in the short- or long-term.

Now that I’ve given you a nice lecture, have a gander at this handy troubleshooting guide and see if you can find a solution to your problem. If you don’t see anything useful here, drop me a line and I’ll do my best to help.

problem: strength gains slow or stalled

solution:

1. Diet. This is always the first place you should look. Are you eating enough? Don’t underestimate how much you need. Try eating a bit more for a week or two, particularly concentrating on getting more protein and fat, and see if you notice any improvement.
2. Overtraining. Are you weight training heavily more than 4 days a week? Are you trying to do too much in every workout? Weight workouts should be no more than 45-60 minutes, and the intensity should not be maximal every time.
3. Routine. Are you using compound movements such as squats and rows? Are you lifting heavily enough to challenge you but not so much that you can’t control it, or end up lying on the floor afterwards? You need a weight range that is neither too heavy nor too light. Are you focused on what you are doing?
4. Rest. Are you getting enough sleep? Have you been sick recently? Is there stress in your life, whether mental, emotional, or physical? Your body can only devote so many resources towards strength gains, and if it has to allocate energy to solving various other problems, your workouts will suffer. You can either decide to eliminate or minimize the stress somehow, or if that’s not possible try to give yourself more rest and allow yourself to be mediocre in the gym till the stress has passed.
5. Change. Have you varied the intensity of your training in the last 2-3 months? Have you been doing same-old, same-old for ages now? Intensity variation and progressive resistance (adding weight/difficulty over time) are important. Change one or more of these variables in your program: weight, rep tempo, number of reps, number of sets, rest intervals, exercise type, or workout split.
6. Timing. How slow is slow? As a beginner you will make gains with every workout. As you progress those gains will diminish, but they should still be occurring every 1-3 workouts, whether those gains are an extra rep or two, an increase in weight, a fuller range of motion, an ability to handle a slower tempo.

problem: fat loss slow or stalled

solution:

1. You may not actually have a problem. Fat loss is usually no more than 0.5 to 2 lbs weekly. Some weeks you won’t lose anything. The body is just like that. It doesn’t operate using nice mathematical systems. Faster weight loss will often happen if you begin at a higher bodyfat level. The closer you are to your ideal bodyfat level, the slower your fat loss will be. If you are trying to do more than that you will chew through muscle, lose mainly good lean body mass, and put your body into starvation mode (which will come back to bite you on the ass when your appetite hormones kick in to compensate). Understand that the scale is not always the best guide to fat loss. Since muscle is denser than fat, you may register a weight plateau or even a slight gain despite an actual fat loss. For a more accurate gauge of progress, use calipers, measuring tape, and a mirror. Take your measurements once every 1-2 weeks, not daily, and take them in the same way each time (I always do mine first thing in the morning since at the end of the day I’ve added about 2-5 lbs of water weight). Allow also for the temporary water weight fluctuations of your menstrual cycle.
2. Diet. Try cutting out all simple sugars and starches such as pasta, bread, potatoes, rice, sugar, pastries, etc. Fill in the gaps in your meals with more lean protein and fruit/veggies. You want to keep your caloric intake at about 9-12 x bodyweight. If you are sure that you have not dropped your calories too low, try eating slightly smaller portions more frequently. Do not try to purge fat from your diet; rather, try to get fat in the form of essential fatty acids like flax seed, hemp, or Udo’s Choice oil (believe it or not, eating these can actually help you drop fat).
3. Cardio. If you’re doing regular, low/moderate-intensity cardio, change 2-3 of those sessions per week to interval training.
4. Incorporate a regular “refeed” period where you eat 14-16 x bodyweight in calories for 24 to 48 hours. This helps “reset” the hormonal mechanisms that are responsible for preventing what your body perceives as starvation. The leaner you are, the more frequently you’ll need to refeed, but in general, once a week is probably OK for most folks. Usually it works best to pick a day or two on the weekend to do this, since it also fits with many people’s lifestyle.
5. Timing. Fat loss generally begins to happen quickly, especially (as I note above) if you begin at a point which is much higher than your ideal bodyfat level, then tapers off the longer you do it. Very overfat folks can lose up to 5 lbs. per week in the beginning with no ill effects, because 5 lbs. represents such a small amount of their overall mass. Later on, as bodyfat levels drop, 5 lbs. becomes a larger piece of the whole. It’s not uncommon to plateau for a couple of weeks too, then see a sudden drop. Have patience.

problem: squats make you want to hurl your cookies/roll into the fetal position/cry for mommy

solution:.

1. Don’t panic. First of all, this is normal.
2. Have patience. Squats become relatively easier as you get better at them. Stick to them; they are the grandmammy of all great exercises and have major benefits.
3. Sip (don’t chug) a sports drink during your leg workout. This will help keep your blood sugar level at a reasonably constant rate.
4. Eat beforehand, or don’t eat beforehand. Some people say that doing squats with anything in their tummy is barf city. I find it the other way around: if I don’t have a small meal within 60-90 minutes of squatting, it’ll be a terrible workout. Figure out what works for you.
5. Have a couple of antacids before the workout. This seems to work for some people.

For more ideas, see the Effluvia page.

problem: this exercise hurts in a bad way!

solution:

1. Always, always, always check your form! It is the first place you should look to determine why an exercise doesn’t feel right.
2. If after following my suggestions below, the exercise still hurts, don’t do it. Find a substitute. And if difficulties persist, check with your doctor/physical therapist to see if you have an underlying medical problem. Don’t try to work through serious pain. It will only make things worse.
3. Stretch around the joints that are giving you difficulty. Sometimes this can make all the difference.
4. Try using a lighter weight for the exercises. Not all exercises are optimal with lower reps.

problem sites:

Shoulders

Main culprits:

1. Bench press. If it hurts your shoulders, try switching to dumbbells instead of a bar or machine. Do supplemental shoulder exercises to strengthen the muscles around the joint, and don’t forget to include rotator cuff exercises.

2. Behind the neck presses or pulldowns. Just don’t do them. Pull in front of your head instead.

3. Dips. Try using a narrower set of bars (many gyms have a V-bar instead of bars that are parallel, so that you can use whatever width you like). Don’t go down below a 90-degree elbow bend. Use lighter weights (if you are using weight) or an assisted dip machine to allow you to work in a higher rep range.

Elbows

Main culprits:

1. Triceps extension. This includes lying presses, cable pressdowns, etc. If it hurts your elbows, don’t lock them.

2. Bench press. Same advice: don’t lock elbows.

Wrists

Main culprits:

1. Upright rows. Switch to a wider grip and a lighter weight. Or avoid this exercise.

2. Pullups/Pulldowns. Try a wrist wrap for the time being, and incorporate some grip work into your workout to strengthen wrists. Avoid, if you can, movements that jerk or pull at your wrists suddenly. Try to keep wrists straight as much as possible.

3. Biceps curl. Try using an E-Z curl bar (the zig-zaggy bar) and making sure wrists stay straight.

Knees

Main culprits:

1. Leg extensions. These are a double-edged sword. They can be a good exercise for healing knee problems, and for causing knee problems. They can help build the vastus medialis, which if it is weak is a prime cause of knee problems like patellarfemoral syndrome, chondromalacia, etc. To use them remedially, only use light weight and only work in the top 1/3 of the rep (from about 120 degree bend in knee to straight). If you are prone to knee problems, never begin a leg extension with leg bent more than 90 degrees, and use lighter weight.

2. Squats. As I said above, and on my injury page, problems here are usually a result of strength imbalances. Try varying your stance, including the degree of toe turnout, and building up the vastus medialis. Also check to see that your knees are not drifting out over your toes. If squatting deeply really hurts, then don’t do it. Front squats and/or stepups are usually good alternatives.

Lower back

Main culprits:

1. Squats. Lift with your legs, not with your back. Use lighter weight, and try to keep your back as upright as you can with a natural arch (women often have to lean forward a bit more). Do not round your upper back as you come up.

2. Deadlifts. Same advice. The drive comes from your legs, hips, and glutes. Back should be as straight (not necessarily upright) as possible with a natural arch in the lower back. At the top of the rep, squeeze your hips and glutes in a sort of pelvic tilt to drive the hips forward. As the hips come forward, the back straightens on its own. Use lighter weight till you get used to this sensation. When the weight is too heavy people are tempted to haul with their back too much. Think of your arms are just hooks from which to hang the weight. They should do nothing but keep the weight from falling out of your grip.

3. Weak lower back. Try adding in some extra lower back work and cutting back on squats and deadlifts for a little while until your weak link catches up. Don’t use good mornings if you are prone to problems; instead use slow, controlled back hyperextensions. Also make sure abs are strong. A strong abdominal and lower back column is your preventive measure against injury.

4. Lifestyle factors. Do you sit slouching at work? Do you work out immediately after getting up in the morning, when the tissues of the back are more sluggish in their response and prone to injury? Do you perform household lifting tasks with poor form, including rounding the upper and/or lower back? Examine risk factors outside the gym.

problem: boredom, lack of motivation

solution:

1. Check out my page on getting motivated as well as on setting goals and try some of the tips there.
2. Are you overtrained? See above.
3. Plan ahead. If you just go into the gym and wander around waiting for inspiration to strike you’re going to have a difficult time maintaining a consistent effort. Make a detailed plan of attack and stick to it. Get into the gym, train hard, then get out. Eliminate distractions and workout destroyers. Pack your gym stuff well in advance of hitting the gym so you can’t use the “oh-well-I-forgot-my-gym-stuff” excuse. Keep some extra stuff in the trunk of your car, or your locker, or under your desk at work, if you can.
4. Are you having fun with your workouts? If each trip to the gym is pure unadulterated torture and ennui, then you’ll have to rethink your plans. Find an activity that you enjoy to supplement your weight workouts and to give those workouts some meaning. If you like cycling, for example, remember that squats will help you when you hit those hills.
5. Get involved in learning a new and challenging skill, sport, or activity, such as Olympic lifting or kick boxing. Try a new exercise. Experiment with different kinds of workouts. Novelty is the enemy of boredom.
6. Get a workout partner. Sometimes just having to be somewhere to meet someone can get you going. A good partner can motivate as well as entertain you between sets and make the gym a positive experience. It can be lonely being one of the few, or even the only woman at your gym who trains seriously with weights. Find a supportive community wherever possible.
7. Some people absolutely swear by their iPod or mp3 player. Having music that makes you want to tear up the gym with your teeth is always a plus. I think any alternative to the cheese they play in most gyms is an improvement.

problem: bad workout

solution:

1. Don’t get discouraged – get angry! Transform frustration into creative energy. Finish the workout as best you can. Sometimes workouts that start badly manage to end on a good note.
2. Figure out why you had a bad workout. Are you under stress, did you eat enough, did you get enough sleep the night before, etc.? Then take steps to eliminate these factors next time. And there WILL be a next time… bad workouts are like falling off a horse: you just have to get back on again.
3. Bad workouts happen to the best of us. Sometimes the mojo just isn’t working. If this happens once in a while, get through it as best you can, then try to avoid it next time. If it happens often, look at possible overtraining.

problem: fear and self-doubt

solution:

1. This is the biggest, most evil bugbear in the gym. We doubt our capacities and skill, particularly if we consider ourselves nonathletes. The gym is full of large scary guys who seem to know what they are doing, and who we fear will laugh openly at us if we screw up. Remember that you have a right to be in the gym, and claim your space.
2. If you can afford it, get a trainer to show you the ropes. Familiarize yourself with the equipment, including the squat rack/cage and deadlift platform. Keep your eyes open and observe what others are doing, but don’t be deceived–the majority of people in the gym aren’t doing things quite right, and many are screwing up substantially. Hit the bookstore or local library and get out every book on strength training you can find. I particularly recommend anything by Fred “Dr. Squat” Hatfield, Stuart McRobert, and Bill Pearl (Dr. Squat and Bill Pearl also have great websites). Look at ExRx too; they have an excellent section for beginners.
3. Try hitting the gym when there are few people there. For my first attempt at squatting, I went to the gym early in the morning when it was nearly empty. This made me feel less shy about possibly messing up and I was able to concentrate on attempting the exercise.
4. Celebrate each small success. Did you add 5 lbs. to your bench press? Did you lose 0.5% bodyfat? Did you try something new? Each workout affords the opportunity to celebrate achievements. You are only competing against yourself, so don’t get down about how much you’re not doing. Get excited about how much you can do already, and by how much you’re going to do in future.
   Once you’ve done your homework, trust yourself. Allow yourself to make screwups, but know that you’ve done some research and know what you’re doing. Knowledge is power, after all.

Usually the secret to us doing something is that we want to get it done. So we’re “too busy” to scrub out the toilets or balance our chequebooks but never too busy to read the comics. It’s a question of where we choose to direct our efforts.

But here’s something else. We often assume that intent precedes action, and sometimes it does. In other words, we imagine that we’ll be sitting there thinking, Wow! I feel super-energized! Time to get me to the gym! Well, it doesn’t work like that. With many tasks, feeling follows action.

Think, for example, of when you exercised even when you weren’t all that into it. Maybe it was cold outside but you went for a walk anyway. You get out for that walk, grumbling to yourself a bit. Five minutes later you’re feeling pretty good. Ten minutes later you’re feeling awesome. Fifteen minutes later you feel like busting out into a run. Twenty minutes later you get back home and feel fantastic. When it comes to exercise, the action comes first, then the feeling.

The same incorrect assumption exists about art and writing. We imagine that genuises sit around and wait for inspiration to strike. Then they run to the keyboard or canvas and start pounding something brilliant out. In reality, good work only comes from hours and hours and hours of tedious, rather uninteresting work. Incredible novels and paintings aren’t just explosively crapped out like last night’s burrito. They came from sucky first drafts and revision and spending an hour reformatting the Word style sheet, and above all a commitment to doing the same thing over and over until it’s right.

Personally, I don’t believe much in motivation. I believe in structure and routine. If your life is structured and organized so that physical activity is just part of your daily existence, then you’ll do it.

Here are some tips to help you get that corpse of yours into the gym. None of these are lazy-proof, since it only works if YOU want to do it anyway. But hey, they can’t hurt.

make working out a priority

First off, you have to decide that working out is an important part of your daily and weekly routine. Often it’s not that people don’t have time for working out, they just put other things ahead of it. Decide in advance how much time you have available. Don’t overestimate it—be realistic. Can you find 4-6 hours a week? I think you can dig those out of somewhere. Establish these hours as your own and assign them top priority.

keep a workout journal

Keeping a journal of your workouts not only contributes to a streamlined and organized workout, but it also helps you organize your time and keep thinking ahead about your next workout. Planning workouts in advance gives them kind of an official stamp like an appointment you have to keep. Once you have an idea of what you’ll be doing for each workout, you can get in and get out with maximum efficiency.

make it fun

Activity should be fun. The body loves to move. Try a bunch of activities and see which ones you like. If you don’t like one, try another one. There are a zillion choices, from archery to… uhhh… zamboni chasing. Who knows, you could uncover a secret talent for windsurfing, belly dancing, or unicycling. Make a point of enjoying your exercise time. Work out in a pleasant space either by yourself if alone time is important to you, or with a friend if you prefer. Laugh between weight sets. Put on music that gets you going. Get outside if you can. Enjoy yourself!

surround yourself with motivational things

Find a muscle or fitness mag that you like, from Girljock to Flex and read it. Put up a really unflattering photo of yourself struggling to open a jar while wearing a giant muumuu. Buy nifty new workout clothes that you enjoy wearing and leave them lying around. Paint “NIKE” across your fridge next to the articles you snipped out from the newspaper about fitness helping you live longer. Whatever! Keep motivational things around to remind yourself of why you took this weird hobby up. Often all we need is a small external cue to give us that little push.

have someone else motivate you

Like many things in life, working out is sometimes best done with someone else. If you have a workout partner you can motivate each other, or you can motivate yourself through sheer shame of public failure, heh heh. Deciding not to go to the gym when no-one knows or cares is like that tree falling in the forest… Also, get involved in a Usenet newsgroup such as misc.fitness.weights or misc.fitness.misc or another online forum. Talking to other like-minded people helps keep you interested in the subject and you can learn plenty of new things. Get to know the person at the gym’s front desk. Think about how they’ll miss you if you don’t show up (or how they’ll be really happy they took all your money and didn’t have to do anything for you).

keep a routine

When I was a kid, Saturday mornings were for doing housecleaning chores. I dreaded those Saturday mornings and even now the idea gives me the willies but at least the house got clean. Now that I don’t bother to assign a day to it, the house gets cleaned less often, which is fine because I don’t care. But the lesson here is that even unpleasant things get done if we assign them a place in our routine. Doing the laundry, taking out the garbage, doing our tax return, etc., all have a place in the routine cycles of our lives. Why shouldn’t working out have the same status, especially because it’s NOT unpleasant? Organize your day and week so that you know Wednesday at 7 p.m. you should be ripping apart the gym, and even what specific pieces of equipment you should be leaving smoking in your wake.

mess with your head

In this endeavour we call all learn from Homer Simpson, a man who doesn’t let his brain push him around. I like to tell my brain one thing then do another. For instance, I get bored easily when doing cardio. So I tell my brain that we are only going to walk for 30 minutes. What I don’t tell it is that I’m going to walk in one direction for 30 minutes, and then somehow I have to get home. Ms. Brain goes along happily with the idea of a 30-minute walk and never really minds when she discovers she has to do 30 more. Tell your brain you’re just going to the store so it lets you get out of the house. Then take the long way there with your legs in charge of the action. Get off the bus two stops ahead so you have a 15-minute walk home.

Your brain being, well, smart, likes to think in terms of numbers and time and quantities. If you tell it that you expect to do only 6 reps with a certain weight, it’ll cash out after 6 right on schedule. So don’t approach your lifting with a number in mind. Just get in there, and when your brain says, “Well, that’s six; time to stop!”, you tell it that when you said six you meant eight. “Oh, my mistake!” your brain will say, and out come two more reps. Then tell your brain, “Look, I just bet some biker guy a hundred bucks that I could do TEN reps on this! Do you want to get publicly mocked??” “Fine,” says your brain, “Ten reps it is.” There are a lot of mind games you can play with yourself to get that stick-in-the-mud brain out of the driver’s seat. When I am about to approach a particularly scary squat, I simply tell myself calmly that I have a choice: either get the reps I want or fail at the bottom and leave it on the safety rails. 99% of the time, I get the reps I want, because I’ve given myself a safe option for failure if I need it, as well as a clear course of action: either do the reps or leave it on the bars.

keep yourself free of injury

Nothing takes the wind out of your sails like a nagging injury. It can take down even the most diehard athlete and send them into a depressive slump. Be careful with the activities you choose, and learn how to do them intelligently and proficiently. Increase your workload gradually. Increase either intensity or duration, not both together. If you feel bad pain while training, stop immediately. Don’t ever push through an injury thinking it will get better. Most of the time, it won’t. Keep yourself whole and you’ll keep yourself motivated.

consider the alternative

In response to the question: How do you stay motivated? Charlie Moody wrote on the newsgroup misc.fitness.weights:

I look in the mirror: if I see any trace of the sad, exhausted, pale, weak, fat, whipped wage-slave desk-jockey I used to be, I’m ready to lift some weight. I’m reminded of my sister (nothing personal), who’s spent her life doing all the stuff other people want her to do, and all the stuff she figures she should do. A couple of weeks ago, she asked me with tears in her eyes when would it be her turn to have a life and do what she wants? All I could tell her was, “It’ll be your turn when you get off the hamster wheel and take a fucking turn.” It’s up to you. No one else. You’ll find the time to work out when you DECIDE you’re gonna work out. You’ll eat and rest and take care of yourself because you decide you deserve it, you need it, you want it, and NO ONE is going to keep you from it. Not even you. I’m a beginner, too, and no-one’s gonna watch what I eat for me, no-one’s gonna lift an ounce of my weight. I can make up any story I want about it, but stories are bullshit: I can be a warrior, or I can be a victim. For the warrior, no excuses; for the victim, only excuses.

In my case, my family history is a ticking time bomb. Between the osteoporosis, colon cancer, cardiovascular disease, hypothyroidism, joint troubles, back pain, and stress/cognitive/anxiety disorders, I have a full slate of potential genetically linked disasters.

On the plus side, all of these things respond to and can be controlled or even prevented by exercise and good nutrition. Watching family members succumb to these things is difficult, especially since many of these conditions did not have to occur, or could have been reduced in their severity. To be perfectly frank, I am going to be in seriously deep shit if I don’t take care of myself. I don’t have the kind of genetics that allow me to smoke a pack of unfiltered Gauloises a day, chase it with a rasher of bacon, and live to 120. The writing’s on the wall: unless I want a premature and probably unpleasant demise, I’d better get off my butt and keep moving.

Now in my thirties I find myself considering my own mortality more and more. I watch people around me get consumed in their careers to the detriment of their relationships and own wellbeing. I see them park themselves at their desks for twelve hours a day, popping anti-inflammatories to control the RSI and the backaches. I watch them drink, smoke, and live on takeout food. And I watch them start to crumble, piece by piece.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to die until I’m damn good and ready. I’ve also decided that every year of life that I am generously granted is going to be spent pursuing optimal health: physical, mental, and emotional. No job, no lifestyle is worth the damage that inactivity and poor eating causes. Am I drinking seaweed juice and living in an oxygen chamber? Hell no. A good quality of life includes pleasures like tasty food and getting out of the house, getting dirty, getting a few scrapes. But it also means constant maintenance in the form of self-care. This is a small rent to pay for getting to live in such a cool apartment!

The alternative to exercise is sedentary living and inactivity. The alternative to eating well is cheating the body of what it needs. The alternative to a healthy lifestyle is self-destruction. The alternative to feeling fit and energetic is feeling like a bag of reheated dog poop. The alternative to growth is stagnation. Which one sounds better to you?

By the way, don’t you have a 3 pm appointment with a chunk of iron?

Either way they get bored and don’t achieve what they want. Many quit as a result. One of the main reasons for this problem is a lack of clear goals, which leads to a lack of focus, which leads to a disorganized program, which leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suuuuffering. Oh wait, that was the being-a-Jedi advice.

Anyway, an important part of success in whatever fitness endeavour you choose is setting goals. Ostensibly this is easy. You can just say, “I want to be in better shape.” Well, frankly, that’s kind of like saying, “I want to get a good education.” At some point you’re going to have to start figuring out specifics, like what you want your education to be in, what school you want to go to, what things you want to study, and so forth. Then you have to break it down even more, into what courses to take, whether or not you can handle the Monday morning calculus lecture (a no-go unless it’s taught by the buffest calc prof I know, Tom Morley), and where you can get one of those cute Britney Spears kinderwhore schoolgirl outfits.

Every big goal must be broken down into smaller goals or the project will be so enormous and vague that you won’t be able to achieve it. Trust me, I’ve written a PhD dissertation. I know.

Since folks seem to like easily memorizable acronyms, here’s one to help you figure out the process of goal-setting. SMART (not to be confused with “smrt”, a la Homer Simpson) is a model you can use to determine your fitness goals. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time limited (yeah, so I ripped it off one of those corporate motivational-speak brochures… hey, at least it’ll be more useful to you than Chicken Soup for the Downtrodden Glass Ceiling-Meeting Paper Pusher Soul). Let’s explore each of those in greater depth.

Specificity is important in goal-setting because it lets you know exactly what it is you have to do. Do you want to lose fat? Gain muscle? Improve strength? Are you training for a particular sport or activity? Get a general sense of your aim, and then narrow it down further. What is your target bodyfat percentage? By how much would you like to improve your strength, and on what exercises? By how much would you like to increase your vertical jump? And so forth. Be as specific as possible about your goals.

Measurability refers to the degree to which you can quantify your goals. Saying, “I want to lose some fat” is not a particularly measurable goal. How much is “some”? A better goal is, “I would like to lose 1 lb. of fat per week for the next 8 weeks,” or, “I would like to decrease my caliper measurements by 5 mm over 2 months.” Another example might be: instead of saying, “I’d like to get stronger,” say, “I want to improve my squat by 10 lbs. in the next month.” Get some numbers and units of measurement in there.

Achievability is the third part in goal-setting. Don’t try to do too much at once. Small changes are lasting changes. You can make it a goal to make one small positive change every week. For example, for a complete beginner, Week 1 might mean joining a gym and getting familiar with the equipment; Week 2 might be committing oneself to at least 2 days of gym attendance; Week 3 might be trying to eat one less piece of junk food per day; Week 4 might be trying to eat one more portion of lean protein, Week 5 might be starting to add 10 minutes of cardio to each workout, and so forth. Make small goals that you are able to achieve, and reward yourself for meeting each one. Nothing succeeds like success.

I’d also make that “A” stand for “Accountability“. Tell someone else — better yet, a few someone elses — what you’re going to do. It’s a whole lot harder to wimp out when suddenly you stand to lose face. (Or make a bet, so you’re losing money, too.) And you’ll benefit from their support.

Realistic doesn’t need much explanation, I think. Don’t set unrealistic goals for yourself, like losing 10 lbs of fat per week, or increasing your bench press by 100 lbs. in a month. You’ll be disappointed and lose motivation.

By the way, I firmly believe that process can be a goal too. In other words, you can make it a goal to simply commit to a fitness plan, rather than worrying about achievement. When I first set up a home gym, I didn’t worry about making any great progress. Instead, I made it my goal to commit to regularly working out first thing in the morning. Once I had consistently trained in the morning for a month, I concerned myself with other things. Making a process-oriented goal is extremely realistic, and accomplishing it is a significant achievement. For most people, the pressure NOT to work out is significant. Simply having an ongoing and consistent fitness plan is more important than accomplishing a kickass squat. Of course, having both is even better.

Time limited refers to setting, well, time limits on your goals. I suggest you make a variety of goals for yourself for each day, workout, week, and month, with varying expectations. So, a goal for the day might be to get through without eating any junk food, or drinking 8 glasses of water. A goal for a workout might be to lift 5 lbs more than the workout before. A goal for the week might be 1 lb. of fat loss. A goal for the month might be 20 lbs. of improvement on a particular lift. A time limit is like a report card on your progress.

Ideally you should come up with several goals which vary from quite short-term to more long-term. The details are as important as the big picture.

So, once you’ve taken the first step and come up with goals, the second step is to make them concrete. Write them down. Nobody has to know if you don’t want them to, though you may find it helpful to recruit the support of friends and family. (See above.) Use a diary, a calendar, a series of post-it notes, whatever works to remind you and helps you keep a record of progress. Periodically review your goals to see if you’re achieving them, and if you’re not, figure out why.

The third step is to take action! Shit or get off the pot, as my granma would say. Figure out what action has to be taken to achieve each goal. Again I suggest you make this as specific as possible. “Eat less” is not as useful as, “Calculate optimal daily caloric intake, then distribute it into 5-6 small meals daily” or “Make shopping list and stick to it.” “Get stronger” is not as useful as, “Note weak points in squat strength, and include more hamstring work to address this.”

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, reward yourself whenever you achieve a goal. Some folks I know indulge in a Krispy Kreme donut when they set PRs (personal records) in a particular lift. Buy some fabu new piece of clothing when you knock off 5 lbs. of bodyfat. Have the zebra-pant-wearing mulletboys at the gym kneel before you and kiss your massive biceps when you do your first pullup. Whatever works. As every dog knows, a cookie makes it all worth it.

Download progress tracker sheet in PDF

The second type of email takes the opposite approach. These folks feel that I am not sufficiently rigorous in my scientific approach and chastise me for my woo-woo health options that include chiropractic care. And yet, although I am often willing to try new things, I always do my homework first. Before I walked into a chiro clinic, I made sure that there was clinical evidence that it might be worthwhile. That being said, if you suffer from chronic pain, once you run out of standard medical options you will definitely begin considering crystals and incantations. Trust me.

The third type I’ll call the pseudoscience whackjobs. These are rare yet amusing and generally concern the enthusiastic endorsement of some type of bizarre physiological fallacy. Also they have a tortilla chip that kind of looks like a religious icon if you squint a bit and hold it sideways. They say things like, “People laughed at Einstein!” Yes, well, people also laughed at Tom Green and the only discovery he made was that high school age males will be amused if you spray milk through your nose. I used to rebut such things with a gentle reminder of basic anatomical facts and the laws of physics, but these days I usually just hit “delete”.

How do we know what the “truth” is? When it comes to health and fitness, people are often confused by what seems like conflicting research reported in the media. It seems like everything conflicts. Eat this. Don’t eat this. This will give you cancer. This will cure cancer. And so forth.

So how do you, an average schmoe, figure out who to believe? Well, a scientific background is helpful, but if you don’t have one, you use your common sense. Here are some helpful tips about how to read and interpret scientific research.

Let’s say, perhaps, you are interested in a particular supplement – let’s call it Sloth-B-Gon. Perhaps you heard about Sloth-B-Gon from someone in the gym, or you see an ad for it, and you want to know more about it.

Rule 1. DO YOUR HOMEWORK. If you found an unmarked pill in the parking lot, would you pick it up and eat it? Unless you are a recipient of a Darwin Award, or under three years old, probably not. So why would you take a supplement with unknown ingredients and effects?

Rule 2. COMPANIES LIE. Supplement and fitness companies are under no obligation to demonstrate that any of their claims are true. They can lie like rugs. Also there is no Tooth Fairy and he’s never going to leave his wife for you.

Rule 3. ALWAYS GO BACK TO THE ORIGINAL SOURCE. You know how when you talk to your family about An Issue and Sister A says one thing and Sister B says Sister A is a liar and then Mom says they are both full of it? Possibly this is just my family. In any case, the truth is usually in between somewhere and nobody’s interpretation can be fully trusted. If possible, go and look at the study that’s cited as evidence. You may find it’s been misquoted or too broadly interpreted. You may even find that it doesn’t exist.

When I was a child, my father sat me down and gave me some fatherly guidance about the world. Being a university professor, his advice was, “Always cite the primary research.” Thus far, dad’s sage words have never steered me wrong. But how do you go about even understanding the egghead mumbo jumbo?

reading tips

Who is the author and where was the study done? Look at where the study was performed. Was it for a company? Was it at a university? Go and look up the research on the university’s website. Again, in extreme cases, you may discover that the person doesn’t even exist.

Where was the study published? Is it a scholarly source? Scholarly sources are peer reviewed. This means that other academic and clinical researchers in the field review the study critically before it makes it to print. They are usually journals, not magazines, newspapers, or websites. Journals have titles like Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, not TightBodz Quarterly. Look up the journal. If you work at a university you can often get full text versions of the original article but even if not, searching on PubMed or Google Scholar will yield the abstract.

Who was studied? Animal studies can suggest things about humans, but aren’t always directly applicable. People aren’t mice, or fruit flies, or fish, or even our closest relatives, primates. In an extreme case in March 2006, six human subjects of a drug trial in the UK ended up in intensive care with massive organ failure. The drug had been tested on animals and researchers were shocked – previously, everything had gone swimmingly and there were no indications that humans would experience such an effect. But in practice, they did. Even if the subjects are humans, not all humans are the same. For example, untrained subjects show much different results from a training program than experienced athletes. For the purposes of testing an exercise protocol, they might as well be different species. Women may differ from men; older subjects may differ from younger ones; groups may differ by ethnicity. Many studies are done on college age students because that’s who’s close at hand for university-based researchers.

What was the study looking for? How was the question asked? Imagine if you wanted to study the similarities between apples and oranges. Well, they’re both round, they’re both considered fruit, they both contain vitamin C. What if you wanted to study the differences? One is citrus; they tend to grow in different climates, and you eat one’s peel but not the other’s. The answer to “compare apples and oranges” is different, depending on what you’re looking for.

What was the sample size? Is the study generated from individual anecdotes? If I said to you, “I’ve owned three cats and all of them were black, so therefore the only colour for cats must be black,” you’d think that was dumb, both because you know that three cats isn’t all cats; and you know that my experience isn’t everyone’s experience. As stats profs are fond of saying, the plural of anecdote isn’t data. If some guy in the gym swears that XYZ worked BIGTIME!!!! for him, that’s not the same as a controlled scientific study involving 1000 people.

What does the evidence say? Is there a strong case? Something might be statistically significant, which means that it’s enough of a blip to make us go hmmm, but on the other hand, sometimes results aren’t all that. If I said to you, “Taking this drug makes me 3% less likely to want to kill you with an axe,” you’d still probably want a restraining order.

How was the study done? Was there a control or comparison? Speaking of controls, that’s another important thing that sets good studies apart from sucky studies. Let’s say you are testing a supplement on a group of people. You could just give them the supplement, send them off to the gym, and see what happens. Six weeks later, they’re all stronger. How do you know it was the supplement and not just the effects of six weeks of training? Answer: you don’t. For one thing, the placebo effect is really strong. People come up with all kinds of wacky reactions to fake pills and imaginary stimuli.

When I was 12, I went away to sleepover camp. One night, we thought it would be cool if we rolled up pine needles in toilet paper and smoked it. We called it “bumwadda”. We all swore we were getting high as shit. Well, maybe we were – who knows. But the point is, we all wanted to see what it was like to be high and we were damn well going to convince ourselves that we were. Second, you need to be sure that the thing you’re studying is what’s responsible. If people are getting better after that six weeks of training, you need to have another group doing the same training who isn’t taking the supplement, so that you can compare. The gold standard of research is the double blind study. This means that people don’t know what they’re taking, and neither do the researchers. The study bias is reduced because neither the subjects nor the researchers know for sure which is which until the results are tallied.

What conclusions do the authors make and are these logical and appropriate? One of the worst offenses in bad research or bad use of research is inappropriately generalizing or explaining study results. For example, when a study gets published about fruit fly behaviour, the reporter may speculate about how this applies to humans. The worst example I ever saw was a study about aggressive behaviour in wasps – the newspaper headline for the story read, “Are Men Born to Hockey Fight?” (this may be a Canadian thing – for all I know, Canadians are born to hockey fight – ya gotta get that sweater up over their head first so you can nail em with the kidney shots) Another way to screw this up is speculating on reasons for things that aren’t supported by evidence, e.g. that men are more likely to hog the TV remote because Man The Great Prehistoric Cave Hunter liked to hog rocks with dots on them. But basically, ask yourself: does the evidence support the conclusions? Do the conclusions raise more questions?

What is pseudoscience and how can I recognize it?

Skeptic

From The Onion: Revolutionary New Insoles Combine Five Forms Of Pseudoscience

The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science

By Robert L. Park

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is investing close to a million dollars in an obscure Russian scientist’s antigravity machine, although it has failed every test and would violate the most fundamental laws of nature. The Patent and Trademark Office recently issued Patent 6,362,718 for a physically impossible motionless electromagnetic generator, which is supposed to snatch free energy from a vacuum. And major power companies have sunk tens of millions of dollars into a scheme to produce energy by putting hydrogen atoms into a state below their ground state, a feat equivalent to mounting an expedition to explore the region south of the South Pole.

There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?

Before 1993, court cases that hinged on the validity of scientific claims were usually decided simply by which expert witness the jury found more credible. Expert testimony often consisted of tortured
theoretical speculation with little or no supporting evidence. Jurors were bamboozled by technical gibberish they could not hope to follow, delivered by experts whose credentials they could not evaluate.

In 1993, however, with the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. the situation began to change. The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects.

In ruling that such testimony was not credible because of lack of supporting evidence, the court instructed federal judges to serve as “gatekeepers,” screening juries from testimony based on scientific nonsense. Recognizing that judges are not scientists, the court invited judges to experiment with ways to fulfill their gatekeeper responsibility.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and a group of them asked me how to recognize questionable scientific claims. What are the warning signs?

I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs — even a claim with several of the signs could
be legitimate.

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus,
   scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work
   is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists. One notorious example is the claim made in 1989 by two chemists from the University of Utah, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, that
   they had discovered cold fusion — a way to produce nuclear fusion without expensive equipment. Scientists did not learn of the claim until they read reports of a news conference. Moreover, the
   announcement dealt largely with the economic potential of the discovery and was devoid of the sort of details that might have enabled other scientists to judge the strength of the claim or to repeat the
   experiment. (Ian Wilmut’s announcement that he had successfully cloned a sheep was just as public as Pons and Fleischmann’s claim, but in the case of cloning, abundant scientific details allowed scientists to judge the work’s validity.)

   Some scientific claims avoid even the scrutiny of reporters by appearing in paid commercial advertisements. A health-food company marketed a dietary supplement called Vitamin O in full-page newspaper
   ads. Vitamin O turned out to be ordinary saltwater.

   The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the
   balance of wealth and power in society. Often, the discoverer describes mainstream science as part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government. Claims that the oil companies are frustrating the invention of an automobile that runs on water, for instance, are a sure sign that the idea of such a car is baloney. In the case of cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann blamed their cold reception on physicists who were protecting their own research in hot fusion.

2. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Alas, there is never a clear photograph of a flying saucer, or the Loch Ness monster. All scientific measurements must contend with
   some level of background noise or statistical fluctuation. But if the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved, even in principle, the effect is probably not real and the work is not science.

   Thousands of published papers in para-psychology, for example, claim to report verified instances of telepathy, psychokinesis, or precognition. But those effects show up only in tortured analyses of statistics. The researchers can find no way to boost the signal, which suggests that it isn’t really there.

3. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. If modern science has learned anything in the past century, it is to distrust anecdotal evidence. Because anecdotes have a very strong emotional impact, they serve to keep superstitious beliefs alive in an age of science. The most important discovery of modern medicine is not vaccines or antibiotics, it is the randomized double-blind test, by means of which we know what works and what doesn’t. Contrary to the saying, “data” is not the plural of “anecdote.”
4. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. There is a persistent myth that hundreds or even thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew that blood circulates throughout the body, or that germs cause disease, our ancestors possessed miraculous remedies that modern science cannot understand. Much of what is termed “alternative medicine” is part of that myth.
   Ancient folk wisdom, rediscovered or repackaged, is unlikely to match the output of modern scientific laboratories.
5. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood’s science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.
6. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. A new law of nature, invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with what is already known. If we must change existing laws of nature or propose new laws to account for an observation, it is almost certainly wrong.

I began this list of warning signs to help federal judges detect scientific nonsense. But as I finished the list, I realized that in our increasingly technological society, spotting voodoo science is a skill that every citizen should develop.

Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and the director of public information for the American Physical Society. He is the author of Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press, 2002).