I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought to invent a device like this:

The iPosture.

Questionable claims?  Yes (”Waist size is reduced an average of 2 inches in women who improve their posture”?).

Exercises of questionable value?  For most, yes (although very deconditioned people will see improvement doing exercises of even little or questionable value).

Dubious fashion sense?  Indeed (a “stylish pendant”?).

But it is definitely a nifty idea.  Hope that MSRP goes down a little, though.

Seen today in the local sporting goods store:

A mere $60 for the “travel” version.

I’ve got a better idea – how about you do some honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, non-accessorized pushups in your hotel room and save yourself $60?

Every year, hundreds of gizmos and gimmicks are invented to purportedly improve fitness and make exercises more effective – and most of them fall far short of expectations.  One thing is certain: Good ol’-fashioned hard work on the basics works – no need for a money-back guarantee, either.

Are you the type of person who’s not a self-starter? Do you need someone breathing down your neck, constant reminding, a push to get the ball rolling?

For clients who’d chronically forget to eat, miss workouts, or not drink their water, I used to suggest creating an “event” in Outlook (if that’s what you use for scheduling) or in Google Calendar, so an e-mail alert would pop-up on your desktop, PDA, or cell phone at the specified time.

“It’s time for your 10:30am feeding, Mrs. Jones.”

Today I Stumbled on a neat site that proposes to do the same thing, except it’s express-built for that purpose (and if you’re a tech-phobe, even better – it’s easier to figure out than Google Calendar’s reminder feature). It’s called HassleMe, and it’s exactly what it sounds like.

This site would work best for an office worker who finds it difficult to execute “the little things” on a daily or weekly basis (i.e., drink sufficient water, go to the gym, etc.) Unfortunately, it appears that they don’t yet support recurring daily nagging (such as bugging you to eat a snack every three hours or dinging you at 4pm to take fish oil – Google Calendar’s Event Reminder feature stills reigns supreme for this as far as free public software is concerned). I think the best part is that HassleMe’s reminders are given at random times, so as to reflect the unpredictability of a well-meaning friend or loved one nagging you about something.

HassleMe still appears to be in the beta stages, so its options are limited to a random daily, weekly, or longer reminder. If you need more structure or a shorter time frame, an application like Google Calendar’s Event Reminder or Outlook Reminders is definitely superior.

Quick, what do you get when you cross a marketer with a psuedoscientist and a willing design team?

Answer: Dubious equipment!

I do have one good thing to say about The Ultimate Burn Machine – it sure is pretty. Someone had a good time designing it.

Clients often ask me about these various exercise contraptions, as some are in vogue, some have had their hey-days, and some just should never have made it off the drawing board. The problem with these machines is an issue of “half-truth.”

You see, most of the time, it’s not that the manufacturers are lying about what the machine does (ok, maybe they are), but that they take a physiological fact and divorce it from the bigger picture, making it only “kinda true.”

For example, a client asked me once about “Cortislim”, a fat-loss supplement that proposed to eliminate fat by reducing the amount of cortisol released in your bloodstream. Cortisol is your body’s main stress hormone, and chronic release of cortisol in the bloodstream is implicated in fat storage, especially around the belly. Cortislim, the ads promise, will help reduce belly fat by controlling the release of cortisol. Sounds reasonable…

…until you realize that in order for cortisol to mobilize fat to be stored in the belly, there has to be a source of all this excess fat – i.e., excess food calories from eating more than your body requires. Hence, you can’t just take Cortislim and lose belly fat; you have to control diet and (hopefully) exercise (*ahem strength train) to ensure there are no excess calories running around to be stored as fat. So while it is true that cortisol release does these bad things, you don’t get the whole picture.

Here are some gems I picked out to share with you all:

1.) “Regular weightlifting actually discourages use of the stabilizing muscles, tendons, and ligaments.”

…because lifting big, heavy, unwieldy barbells and dumbbells doesn’t require any stabilization whatsoever – of course! How could I have been so naive to think my rotator cuff muscles stabilize my shoulder under a heavy bench press?

2.) “By forcing the body to control the weight, without the added support of isolating the working muscle, you end up utilizing the deeper, harder to work, stabilizing and supporting muscles. What you end up with is functional, practical strength.”

The term “functional strength” is thrown around nowadays so much the mere sight of it makes me want to throw up. “Functional strength” used to mean “usable strength; strength that enhances ability to perform coordinated movement.” Its current definition, however, is something more like this:

Above: Circus, I mean, “functional training.”

3.) “By shifting the weight you can perform the same movements that you may do with regular weights, but by changing your center of gravity, you now force your body’s deep stabilizers to work to counter act the asymmetry in weight. If you know and understand your body’s weak side, you can actually strengthen it while not over strengthening the strong side.“(emphasis added)

Well, if you know and understand the body’s weak side, you can simply address this issue with weights. One can perform exercises with dumbbells only to the ability of the weaker side, therefore allowing the weaker side to catch up to the stronger side. On fixed bar (barbell) movements, one can emphasize pushing with the weaker side to create a greater stimulus for improvement for the weaker side. Point being, if you’re unaware of your body and it’s imbalances, having a nifty spinny machine isn’t going to help much.

When viewing the Burn Machine in motion, the counterweight swings around randomly. I don’t see how that’s providing for improving a weaker side while not overstrengthening the strong side. If anything, it would further exacerbate any preexisting imbalances (since your strong side would try to compensate for the weaker side and handle the majority of the randomly sliding asymmetric load). So what is this person talking about?

I still can’t figure it out either.

4.) “Whether you are a baseball player, golfer, tennis play, soccer player or ping pong player, all sport is asymmetrical.”

One of the tried and true arguments of “functional trainers” is “imbalances will inevitably cause injuries.” So if Maria Sharapova strengthens her right arm (her hitting arm) 200% more than her left, does that mean that her left arm is going to fall off or something when she volleys? Of course not. Muscular imbalances do not doom you to an early immobility (I’ve yet to hear of a “functional trainer” finding a client who wasn’t imbalanced, yet somehow, the client continues to get up and go to work in order to fund training sessions with said functional trainer). Muscular weakness, however, will result in impaired function.

Incidentally, Dr. Burn seems to have forgotten that the weightlifting she ranted about earlier is one of the few sports that is symmetrical. Whoops.

Here’s the bottom line: when presenting a new gadget, marketers often use a hint of the truth in order to legitimize the product to the customer. I say: Caveat emptor – let the buyer beware. Become educated in the world of fitness, or ask a professional you trust (or his colleagues, all of them) about products and services that seem too good to be true. Make sure you get the whole picture, because a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Being that August is drawing to a close, naturally Sairalyn and I start thinking about snowboarding – what else?

That we received our ‘06-’07 season passes in the mail last week may have played no small role in that.

Although she bought a new board last season (the K2 Luna 146), my lovely wife is pining for the brand-spanking new, never-before released K2 Dutchess 144. The Dutchess is K2’s newest high-end board (previously their Mix line, of which Sairalyn has an ‘02-’03 148 model).

The special feature of the Dutchess is the S-Class technology it is imbued with. You can read about it here:

In brief, the snowboard vibrates when you ride fast over rough terrain. The S-Class technology cuts down on these vibrations, reducing leg fatigue and letting you ride longer.

When Sairalyn told me about it, I immediately thought, “Egads! I’ve been riding a Whole Body Vibration machine for the last 6 years!”

Of course, if I hadn’t been feeding my legs a steady diet of squats, deadlifts, and Superslow leg presses and leg curls, I might have felt the obligation to retract my earlier inflammatory statements about whole body vibration.

Whew…good thing I like to squat.

I’ve been sitting on this post for two weeks…

Not literally “sitting”.

A client of mine told me about an ad that was placed in the New York Times by Soloflex. They were advertising their new version of a Whole Body Vibration machine, the SoloflexWBV. Advertised as a less expensive version of the institutional models (the Power Plate), the WBV platform is available for 1/3 of the cost ($395 vs. $12,000).

I’m about done with this New Wave of Whole Body Vibrating Machines. This is an exercise fad I’m surprised took off, and can’t wait for it to subside.

Not to mention that the whole idea of a vibrating platform to do exercise on is bogus anyways. The ads state as much – “If you’re not training with weights regularly, here’s the next best thing.” Well, at least they see the value of weight training.

Soloflex apparently likes this thing so much, they’ve placed pdf files of the WBV’s advertisments on the webpage – now that’s devotion. Alas, the list is conspiciously missing the original ad that my client saw that sparked this entire post topic altogether.

She brought it in for me today. The headline reads:

*ahem*

“OUR NEW CONTRAPTION BEATS YOU INTO SHAPE!”

This is not a joke. I’d scan it and post it if I wasn’t worried I’d get sued by Soloflex Corp.

Well, I guess I’d seen bad ad copy for exercise machines, but this one is my current favorite.

I think I’ll have to pick apart the research for vibrating machines one study at a time. Not that I can access any of the research from their citations page – heh.

What would I do without my clients? I mean, how else could I possibly keep up to date on all the latest and greatest fitness trends (*cough cough no sleep cough)?

From today’s New York Times:

In This Workout, A Machine Does (Almost) All the Work.

I’ll give you a moment to think it over after having read it. Go on, take two. I’ll still be here.

…

The article mentions a product called the Power Plate. Manufactured by Power Plate USA, it comes in two models, one for home use, and one for gyms. A quick trip over to the Power Plate USA website shows that (unlike many other exercise gizmo manufacturers) these folks have done their homework.

An impressive study list.

As is the case with most things in exercise, vibrating platforms such as the Power Plate have been shown to provide significant fitness benefits to the user. However, the issues I raise here are:

• Are those benefits significant above and beyond what one can derive from traditional methods?

From the look of the studies, it appears that while the results one can derive are statistically significant, they do not exceed the benefits potentially derived from traditional strength training.

• Is the modality safer or less safe than traditional methods?

It is my opinion that standing on a violently vibrating platform while doing lunges and squats increases the injury factor considerably over doing said exercises on stable ground, but no studies have been conducted that would support my contention.

Incidentally, I’ve got to think that having a machine shake the shit out of your bones can’t be too good for you.

• Are there any other additional issues associated with the exercise modality?

There are two that I can think of right off of the top of my head – first, the machines cost a tad more than a barbell and a couple of hundred pounds worth of plates. Even if you were to spring for a shiny, new, antiseptic Eleiko competition barbell, complete with bumper plates, you would just about equal the cost of the cheaper unit. Second, I am told by users of the machine that it is extremely loud. That just about rules out use for anybody with neighbors in their building (effectively all of New York City).

I suppose if it doesn’t cost you anything and you’re otherwise healthy, it can’t hurt giving something like this a try. I think New York Sports Club might be doing something with these machines in the future, but who knows how that’ll work out.

Why people try this kind of stuff and avoid nice, safe, harmless sports like snowboarding and Brazilian Jiujitsu is beyond me.

Just as a disclaimer, I am not a sports fan – never have been. I suppose I was born without the gene that compels one to root for your favorite team or watch sporting events. Even now, when I watch events such as Pride FC, UFC, the X-Games, Olympic weightlifting events, etc., I watch them to see technique, or to learn something, or to compare and contrast performances based on trainng routines. So the subject of this posting is not something near and dear to my heart.

BUT…

I realize that in any given sport, there are outstanding individuals or teams. Any given person may have their favorites. For example, I greatly enjoy boxing’s featherweight superstar Manny Pacquiao and his fights. However, could he have beaten a true great of the sport, such as Willie Pep? Can one even make such an apples-to-oranges comparison?

You hear arguments like this all the time:

“When Jordan was with the Bulls, they were unstoppable.”
“Oh yeah, I bet the ‘72 Lakers could’ve beaten them.”
“No way!!!”

And so on and so forth.

Well, now there’s a clever way to “settle the scores” impartially, thanks to mathematics and a clever little matrix devised by the guys at What IF Sports – a website that allows you to create matchups between any teams in their database, from recent lineups (2004-2005 season) to the greats of yesteryear. They’ve got an easy-to-navigate site and a well-designed interface.
Their current options are limited to baseball, basketball, football, and hockey, but with the inevitable torrent of web traffic they’ll be getting soon enough, more sports may be added.

Just for fun, I simulated an NBA game between the ‘04-’05 Knicks and the legendary ‘96-’97 Bulls. Final score: Bulls 105 – Knicks 73.

Hmm. I’m surprised it was even that close. I think the program needs some tweaking.

Thanks to Rob Cherry for another amazing find:

The Windjector-Pro

This incredible device allows one to simultaneously cool a room and work the abdominal wall. But in all seriousness, this sort of thing (ridiculous inventions that barely mimic a valid joint motion) has to come to an end. Not to mention that anyone whose core is so weak that they’d actually benefit from this contraption would: 1) injure themselves due to the ballistic nature of the movement or 2) move in such a restricted range of motion that they would not adequately cool the room.

At the mere weight of four pounds, and the low, low cost of $85US.

And yet, the gadget geek in me wants to get his grubby hands on one and jump off a high ledge to see if it will slow my fall (even though TDC’s Mythbusters have already proved that a similar device will not protect one from bodily harm).

From the designer of Bowflex (a good idea), another bad fitness idea.

I’ve been doing a lot of media trolling lately to find interesting, unique, and sometimes absurd articles on health and wellness lately. Of all the articles I’ve ever come across, this absolutely tops the cake, with regards to sheer absurdity.

Vibrating Machines Make a Comeback.

It’s alright, you’re allowed to do a double-take.

Yes, those are those silly vibrating machines that feature prominently in turn-of-the-century movie reels and clips. If there was one thing that I could single out as heralding the brainlessness of the fitness industry, it would be the resurgence of whole-body vibration. It was foreshadowed several years ago by the invent of the Body Blade(tm), a piece of flexible plastic that offered one a bit of resistance as you wiggled it back and forth. It was purported to effectively work your core musculature by forcing your ab muscles to contract to stabilize your torso against the resistance of the furiously wiggling “blade”. Incredibly, it continues to be a modality that is accepted and used by the physical therapy community.

Anyway, that the health and fitness community has taken this idea of body stabilization to its unfortunate logical completion should be of little surprise, since anything that one can make a buck off of is heralded as “the next big thing” (remember the Ab Roller, Thighmaster, etc.?). But the funniest part is the article reporting William Kraemer doing studies on the efficacy of whole-body vibration.

In the past, I’d criticized Kraemer and the NSCA as being completely stupid, irrational, dogmatic, and a host of other things, without considering the few viewpoints they held that I did agree with. Ultimately, as a consequence of considering those points (and some subtle intellectual prodding by Dr. Warden), my opinion of the NSCA changed enough that I decided to get their CSCS certification.

I believe that Kraemer’s actions have once again caused my opinion to swing in the opposite direction. Kraemer is a moron; end of story (Ok Fred, you win).

At any rate, check out the article, have a few laughs, and don’t take it as seriously as I do. It’s not good for your health, you know.