'Crossfit'! is the latest craze in 'fitness' and we have been receiving a lot of queries about how it compares to what we do and what everybody else does.
For those who haven't heard of it, Crossfit is a brutal program comprised of an incredibly wide variety of exercises from olympic lifting to running to boxing and absolutely everything in between. It is designed to cover every aspect of endurance, strength and conditioning. It is described on the Crossfit website as being the "principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units..." etc. They even say that their "specialty is not specializing"!
So how good is it? Well, that depends on the context in which that question is being asked.
Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of creating an incredibly rounded athlete who could take on almost any physical challenge and do it better than average? Obviously yes!
Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of developing the base strength and endurance capability necessary for serious ass-kicking as a martial artist, police officer or soldier? Obviously yes!
Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of helping a person develop a better figure or physique than the hopelessly ineffective rubbish that consistutes 'training' in every gym across the world these days? Absolutely yes.
Is Crossfit the most efficient and effective exercise program for the most rapid and/or extreme improvements in body composition? Absolutely NOT!
Is Crossfit the best choice of exercise for a person who doesnt want to spend almost every non-working hour of their week performing sickeningly painful, yet totally arbitrary exercise that has no direct relevance to how their body looks? Absolutely NO!
Crossfit is DESIGNED to create very broad athletic ability for people serious about broad athletic ability. And for this it is AWESOME. And people who become awesome athletes tend to have pretty awesome bodies, generally!
BUT Crossfit is not DESIGNED to create a great LOOKING body! So if a great LOOKING body is your priority, Crossfit is NOT the BEST choice. Compared to a proper body recompositioning program Crossfit will waste huge amounts of your time, effort and comfort for a much lesser result.
That said, if you don't 'like' the best way of creating a good body (ie strict dieting with measured, planned, HEAVY weight training), then proper application of Crossfit SHOULD wind up creating a far better body than any easier, softer and less demanding exercise program. The real question is: if you are willing to work THAT hard on that MUCH stuff, why wouldnt you just focus the same effort on just training for the body you want?
Wednesday 21 July 2010
Protein Bars
Protein bars are a delicious and convenient way of getting a good dose of very bad protein plus all the mysteriously textured, flavoured, colourised and perservatised toxins a healthy diet avoids. Unfortunately, many people are fooled by the very clever nutritional panels that present protein bars as a source of quality nutrition.
Really, I shouldnt even have to blog about how bad these bars are. And nobody should be surprised to hear that whenever any of our clients have substituted quality nutrition in their diets for the exact same nutrition from a protein bar, the diet immediately stopped yielding fat loss or muscle gain results.
You'd think that "Snickers bar" appearance would tip most people off that protein bars CAN'T be good dieting tools? If not, then surely the mysterious dry but slimy texture these bars leave on the roof of your mouth might suggest that something is amiss? No? How about reading beyond the nutritional panel to discover that 'Soy Protein' is the first listed ingredient in the 'Proprietary Protein Blend' section with 'hydrogenated' stuff almost invariably listed somewhere in the middle of the misleading label? Or maybe you'd think people would notice that the 'chocolate coating' is, in fact, the same basic, garbage chocolate you find in the nastiest chocolate bars in the supermarket? The nuts in protein bars are always peanuts which no serious dieting person ever chooses. Even worse, the 'peanuts' are often listed in the 'protein blend' as a source of protein!
Then there are the 'sugar alcohols' which are listed as "non-impact carbs" because the body... can't use them like carbs. Quite honestly, I cannot find an intelligent explanation of how sugar-alcohols are metabolised or what mess they make on their way through your body? It appears that nobody really knows. You'd have thought people would ask: "if they aren't like carbs then what does the body do with them then"? But it seems nobody asks obvious questions anymore. Nobody asked about the Gaussian copula function; they just swallowed it whole and next thing you know we had the greatest financial crisis in over 70 years!
In recent years, protein bars have come to resemble some of the most amazing chocolate indulgences imaginable while their nutritional profile still resembles something that you might think belongs in a quality diet. But like so many things these days, the headline specifications belie the garbage you are actually buying. Protein bars are to food what those fake chinese iPhones are to the Apple iPhone. They look the same, the memory is the same, the screen is the same size; but every element of the functionality is awful to the point of being unusable!
The fact is, protein bars are something you HOPE you can GET AWAY WITH. No matter how limited your dietary knowledge, you KNOW you would never design a diet of sugar-alcohol, hydrogenated oil, chocolate and soy protein to create a lean, healthy, athletic physique. But that IS the nutrition a protein bar is providing and that is the reason it absolutely should not make up a part of anybodies diet!
Protein bars are no better for you than any other junk chocolate bar from the supermarket. In fact, a properly made chocolate bar based predominantly on cacao would be much, MUCH better for your health and physique than any protein bar you will find in a supplement store!
Really, I shouldnt even have to blog about how bad these bars are. And nobody should be surprised to hear that whenever any of our clients have substituted quality nutrition in their diets for the exact same nutrition from a protein bar, the diet immediately stopped yielding fat loss or muscle gain results.
You'd think that "Snickers bar" appearance would tip most people off that protein bars CAN'T be good dieting tools? If not, then surely the mysterious dry but slimy texture these bars leave on the roof of your mouth might suggest that something is amiss? No? How about reading beyond the nutritional panel to discover that 'Soy Protein' is the first listed ingredient in the 'Proprietary Protein Blend' section with 'hydrogenated' stuff almost invariably listed somewhere in the middle of the misleading label? Or maybe you'd think people would notice that the 'chocolate coating' is, in fact, the same basic, garbage chocolate you find in the nastiest chocolate bars in the supermarket? The nuts in protein bars are always peanuts which no serious dieting person ever chooses. Even worse, the 'peanuts' are often listed in the 'protein blend' as a source of protein!
Then there are the 'sugar alcohols' which are listed as "non-impact carbs" because the body... can't use them like carbs. Quite honestly, I cannot find an intelligent explanation of how sugar-alcohols are metabolised or what mess they make on their way through your body? It appears that nobody really knows. You'd have thought people would ask: "if they aren't like carbs then what does the body do with them then"? But it seems nobody asks obvious questions anymore. Nobody asked about the Gaussian copula function; they just swallowed it whole and next thing you know we had the greatest financial crisis in over 70 years!
In recent years, protein bars have come to resemble some of the most amazing chocolate indulgences imaginable while their nutritional profile still resembles something that you might think belongs in a quality diet. But like so many things these days, the headline specifications belie the garbage you are actually buying. Protein bars are to food what those fake chinese iPhones are to the Apple iPhone. They look the same, the memory is the same, the screen is the same size; but every element of the functionality is awful to the point of being unusable!
The fact is, protein bars are something you HOPE you can GET AWAY WITH. No matter how limited your dietary knowledge, you KNOW you would never design a diet of sugar-alcohol, hydrogenated oil, chocolate and soy protein to create a lean, healthy, athletic physique. But that IS the nutrition a protein bar is providing and that is the reason it absolutely should not make up a part of anybodies diet!
Protein bars are no better for you than any other junk chocolate bar from the supermarket. In fact, a properly made chocolate bar based predominantly on cacao would be much, MUCH better for your health and physique than any protein bar you will find in a supplement store!
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