timwalsh300
Thu, March 6th, 2008, 12:14 PM
I thought you guys would find this entertaining...
My mother is 56 years old and healthy (5'0, about 105 lbs). She's always cared about her health and fitness so she's always been active, but for years it was just light/fashionable stuff like aerobics, Curves, "power walking", etc.
A couple years ago she approached me about how she could improve her fitness, so I got her into strength training. From the beginning I made no compromises. I got her a barbell and I began teaching her how to properly perform squats, deadlifts, standing overhead press, rows, etc. I found that she was remarkably athletic and she acclimated easily to performing these movements.
She's been training like this in the vacuum of a spare room in my parents' house since then, and she's gotten pretty good. Last I saw, she was easily deadlifting more than her bodyweight for reps. She performs front-squats flawlessly. She can power-clean a barbell and press it over her head. I actually had to go buy more plates for her to use.
Anyway, this past week she was invited by a friend of hers to join a gym - a Planet Fitness - because she was interested in using the cardio machines since New Hampshire has been buried under 10 feet of snow for as long as we can remember and she can't run outside.
Well, imagine my horror when she called me yesterday to tell me how excited she was about all the neat-o gee-whiz weight training machines they had there and how she just couldn't wait to get with one of their "trainers" so that she could learn how to use them all. :eek: I mean, she's been doing front-squats with a barbell and she was completely fooled by the idea of taking her fitness to the next level by using the seated leg-extension machine or something instead. She thought it was so amazing that you could just change the pin position to increase the amount of weight. So we had a long talk and I tried to put this all in perspective for her. Among other analogies, I said this would be like regressing from collegiate-level work back to 3rd grade.
In the end, I told her that some of the stuff there could have it's place in her routine: like lat pull-downs (since she can't yet do a pull-up) or a benchpress machine (since she's never had either a bench or a spotter before and pushups are too easy now). But I warned her against these "trainers" trying to completely change her routine into some kind of circuit where she just goes around and uses every machine in the room. I also told her that there probably isn't a single other person at that gym (which, I quote, "doesn't cater to bodybuilders") who can squat properly - let alone do a front-squat with substantial weight on the bar - and that she should challenge any of the "trainers" there to try it themselves if they say anything negative about it.
I just thought this was funny, though, because so many people are now learning and starting to move in the other direction. This is probably the same thing that happened to so many people back in the 60's and 70's who had been training the "old-fashioned way" and were sucked into training with all those new-fangled, high-tech machines that their gyms started putting in.
Tim
My mother is 56 years old and healthy (5'0, about 105 lbs). She's always cared about her health and fitness so she's always been active, but for years it was just light/fashionable stuff like aerobics, Curves, "power walking", etc.
A couple years ago she approached me about how she could improve her fitness, so I got her into strength training. From the beginning I made no compromises. I got her a barbell and I began teaching her how to properly perform squats, deadlifts, standing overhead press, rows, etc. I found that she was remarkably athletic and she acclimated easily to performing these movements.
She's been training like this in the vacuum of a spare room in my parents' house since then, and she's gotten pretty good. Last I saw, she was easily deadlifting more than her bodyweight for reps. She performs front-squats flawlessly. She can power-clean a barbell and press it over her head. I actually had to go buy more plates for her to use.
Anyway, this past week she was invited by a friend of hers to join a gym - a Planet Fitness - because she was interested in using the cardio machines since New Hampshire has been buried under 10 feet of snow for as long as we can remember and she can't run outside.
Well, imagine my horror when she called me yesterday to tell me how excited she was about all the neat-o gee-whiz weight training machines they had there and how she just couldn't wait to get with one of their "trainers" so that she could learn how to use them all. :eek: I mean, she's been doing front-squats with a barbell and she was completely fooled by the idea of taking her fitness to the next level by using the seated leg-extension machine or something instead. She thought it was so amazing that you could just change the pin position to increase the amount of weight. So we had a long talk and I tried to put this all in perspective for her. Among other analogies, I said this would be like regressing from collegiate-level work back to 3rd grade.
In the end, I told her that some of the stuff there could have it's place in her routine: like lat pull-downs (since she can't yet do a pull-up) or a benchpress machine (since she's never had either a bench or a spotter before and pushups are too easy now). But I warned her against these "trainers" trying to completely change her routine into some kind of circuit where she just goes around and uses every machine in the room. I also told her that there probably isn't a single other person at that gym (which, I quote, "doesn't cater to bodybuilders") who can squat properly - let alone do a front-squat with substantial weight on the bar - and that she should challenge any of the "trainers" there to try it themselves if they say anything negative about it.
I just thought this was funny, though, because so many people are now learning and starting to move in the other direction. This is probably the same thing that happened to so many people back in the 60's and 70's who had been training the "old-fashioned way" and were sucked into training with all those new-fangled, high-tech machines that their gyms started putting in.
Tim