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Fitness Saboteurs; Part 2

Those people in our lives who are threatened by our desire for success are our saboteurs. They do not want for us what we want for ourselves. They will, either overtly or passive-aggressively, work hard to discourage us.

Saboteurs can be coworkers, friends or family who are threatened in large part because they have always thought of themselves as being superior in some regard. Relatively few people are secure enough to pursue as potential friends others who they feel are superior to them in important ways. Most people want friends who they feel comfortable with, their so-called “equals.” But in many instances if not most, that comfort is in fact about their feeling slightly superior — smarter, better looking, more talented, from a better family, etc. — than their friends. 

Most people have someone in their lives who is uncomfortable with others’ ambition. As a fitness trainer and author I have found this most commonly true when it comes to weight loss and fitness. The common term many use to describe these people is “jealous.” I feel the term jealous is too simplistic. One dictionary definition of jealous is “feeling resentment against someone because of that person's rivalry, success, or advantages.” The term “threatened” is nowhere to be found in any definitions I looked up, but “threatened” is the key component to jealousy. Threatened in this case meaning “You’re making me look bad in comparison, and I won’t tolerate that.”

Many people suffer insecurities which result in their being more attracted to those over whom they feel some measure of superiority. So when the supposed inferior individual breaks out of that mold, when he or she pursues or accomplishes something admirable or impressive or ballsy that they themselves have not or cannot, like losing weight or getting fit, this is interpreted as a threat:

1 — Failure. Your success brings into sharper focus their failures as they pertain to the way they view themselves, and how they perceive themselves as being viewed and judged by others.

2 — Balance of Power. Your success upsets the dynamic. You are accomplishing something impressive that they have not been able to.

3 — Abandonment. You were once in solidarity with them, they believed, regarding a shared lack of interest in weight loss or fitness. But now you've broken out of that alliance by pursuing an unshared goal. You are leaving them behind and they are upset with you for that. It doesn’t matter that you may well have invited them along with you. They don’t want to go along, or are not ready to go along. Because you went ahead anyway on your own they interpret that as having been left behind.

Calling someone “jealous” rather than the more accurate “threatened” minimizes the real problem. Often our saboteurs are those we are closest to and love the most, which makes coming to terms with the phenomenon painful. 

The bottom line is this: don’t allow saboteurs to get under your skin. 

Bad Genes vs. Bad Jeans

There are two guys at my gym, both in the Social Security age range, who came into the gym a few minutes apart last Friday wearing jeans. The difference between the two really struck me, as does the fact that so many guys of any age, but especially those over 50, are so clueless about clothes.

One of the gym guys never works his legs, which for an old guy is crazy. He has a decent upper body for his age, but is shriveled from the waist down, with a paunch that proves he doesn’t work his abs either, and he has no ass whatsoever. He was wearing ill-fitting thin droopy dad jeans which greatly accentuated his overall frail appearance.

The other guy looks like he’s been hitting the gym all his life; on leg day he goes at it heavy for well over an hour, going from leg machine to machine with a minimum of rest between sets. He walked into the gym wearing the classic Levi’s 501s, a style well over 100 years old and still the world favorite. He looked amazing because he filled up his jeans - his thighs and buttocks are better developed than most guys half his age, and dressed in a roomy but well-fitting polo shirt, his 501s, and boat shoes with no socks, he attracted a lot of admiring eyes. Also, because he works his legs and has impressive muscle, he WALKS like a young guy, while the other guy SHUFFLES along like he's ready to topple over at any minute.

It has only been in recent years that men’s fashion media has made the obvious point that clothes look a hell of a lot better on guys who are in shape, no matter their age. But even more so for older guys who work hard to build muscle, this means that they will be treated more respectfully in all kinds of social situations — in restaurants, the DMV, at the airport, etc.

People who don’t give a damn about how they look are sending the world a very negative message, and then they want to complain about being disregarded, or “invisible.” In the computer age, with endless blogs and websites to instruct and inspire, there’s no excuse for not searching online for role models. Although when it comes to our looks we might be tempted to blame bad genes, there’s no excuse for bad jeans. Lose the belly and go try on some 501s at Sears. 

Looking Old Unintentionally?

Here's a nifty cheap (99 cents) eBook with a lot of good advice on how we unintentionally give off the geezer vibe. I would have added to their list that having a pot belly is the absolute best thing a person can develop if they want to really look old and over the hill, but hey, that's just me. Lots of good advice here:

http://amzn.com/B013D9AZEA

Surgery is OK, but Substances Are Banned?

“Blink” author Malcolm Gladwell applies his unique reasoning and questioning to ask, in athletics, why is “this” allowed but not “that”?

It is a fascinating discourse and can be found by clicking here.

Gladwell provides examples of athletes genetically predisposed to excellence due entirely to the providential gifts they have inherited, then he discusses the multiple legal surgeries that are allowed professional baseball players in order to up their game, while questioning why pharmaceuticals, at the same time for the very same purpose in professional baseball, are not allowed.

I personally have always been fascinated by the rabid emotional outbursts of people expressing their outrage and bile toward medical testosterone replacement therapy or the administration of steroids under a doctor's care, not just among athletes, but even within the general population. Only fear makes people scream, so it would be interesting to know what they are so fearful of.

I also question, with so many psychologists running around, why we don’t hear their take on this from their professional perspective. What makes a screaming anti HRT or anti-steroid lunatic so unhinged about something that has nothing to do with them personally? Going one further, as an aside, the media is crammed full of opinions about Donald Trump, yet none of these assessments are coming from mental health professionals who are disturbingly silent on what should be a lively discourse on the emotional / mental stability of this candidate, as well as the sort of people who are so excited about having such a vengeful, lying, thin-skinned whiny man-baby as their leader.

Anyway, take a flying read at Gladwell’s New Yorker piece and see if it doesn’t expand your reasoning.

Jim Morris - 78 Year Old Vegan Bodybuilder

Jim Morris operated a gym I attended with my friend Danny Stone in West Hollywood CA in the 1980s. He's a true inspiration. Watch the video.

OK, All You “Experts” — Take Your Shirt Off.

Never Do These Exercises Again! Get A Complete Workout In Six Minutes! Clickbait is the bane of the internet in the form of provocative headlines. What we never see from the wise and all-knowing sages freely spouting their gym advice and fitness/nutrition counsel at us is their photographs.

The guy who writes that leg presses are dangerous, and that isolating your biceps muscles is wrong (!!) — as GQ’s Bill Bradley warns — doesn’t include a photo of his arms, legs, or any photo at all identified as being himself. This is always the case in the mainstream online magazine and faux-news world. The proof is in the pudding as they say, or in the case of the “experts,” not.

I will consider advice provided by guys who have built exceptional bodies, knowing that even some of these guys exhibit very poor form or have whacky ideas in some instances. But I never consider advice from the online know-it-alls hiding anonymous behind a by-line whose photos are nowhere to be seen. And don't get me started on women writers who spout muscle-building advice aimed specifically at men. As I learned working at the Los Angeles Times, some people think the most straightforward strategy to making themselves relevant to readers (and their bo$$es) is to just be contrary.

Squatting Ass To The Grass: BIG Mistake

Photo courtesy Matthew LeBaron

If you experience knee discomfort/weakness/pain when working legs, it’s most likely because (1) you’ve been careless or clueless in the past about doing your leg exercises properly and/or (2) you’re currently being careless and/or clueless.

There is no shortage of people at the gym who believe that their way is the only way. They have found security in their workout regimen and cherish the sense of control that strength training provides them in an out-of-control world. They have come to believe that they know all there is to know about working out. Some of these I-know-what-I’m-doing people are very resistant to the idea that their workout form might need improvement.

Our knees are HINGES only. They are badly designed, weak little mechanisms not meant to bear weight or to power any exercise whatsoever. They are not muscles: they are merely bone, cartilage and tendon. Their purpose is singular — our knees exist solely to allow our legs to bend, period.

When doing squats or leg presses, the engine for those exercises resides in your BUTT, or gluteus maximus — the MAXIMUS part providing the clue that this is a very powerful muscle designed to do the work that many people mistakenly assign to their knees. Next time you do squats or leg presses, pause immediately before you lift off to first flex and tighten and squeeze your butt, and keep it flexed through the entire set. Power up from the butt — not the quads and not the knees. Keep your mind in the muscle. Power up (the positive) using the butt and power down (the negative) using the butt to drive the entire exercise — both the negative and the positive — and every muscle from your core downward will benefit with minimal strain on your knees. 

Despite what the many know-it-all lunkheads on youtube tell you, never sink below parallel when you squat, as this puts enormous strain on your knees that will greatly shorten their life. The ass-to-grass dive-bomb advocates and those who encourage bouncing up from the bottom of the squat are not only idiots, but they are all young and inexperienced. You’ll never see an older bodybuilder demonstrating such form because those who have advocated doing such crazy shit blew out their knees long ago and are now hobbled. No more gym for them.

Happily most young men grow out of the all-or-nothing, Jackass-stunts mentality without a disabling injury. A lot of those younger guys who used to think they ruled at your gym, but all of a sudden are “too busy” to work out? They’re hiding injuries caused by very poor workout form and an ego too weak to own up to their mistakes.

Don’t be that guy. You still want to be doing squats and leg presses well into your 70s and beyond, safely and sanely. copyright2017RichardSullivan

Mountains Out Of Mole Hills

Getting in shape or staying in shape or not bothering to be in shape are all purely voluntary decisions. No one can force us one way or another. The choice is up to each individual, 100%. Yet this ongoing absurdity in the media that has given rise to such ridiculous and damaging catch-phrases as “real women’s bodies” and “unrealistic beauty standards” continues unabated.

To claim that women who are in shape are not “real” women is not only staggeringly insulting to those millions of women (and men) who do stay in shape, but is absolutely revealing as to the claimant’s own self-loathing. To claim that getting in shape or staying in shape is “unrealistic” is so preposterous that you’d think the speaker couldn’t possibly be that Palin-stupid to say any such thing publicly. Our society’s overall dumbing-down crusade shows no sign of waning, and this particular issue is a great example of that.

To my recollection it all began getting out of control back in the 1970s with the idea that every kid who played on the soccer team should be awarded a trophy, rather than just those members of the team who genuinely excelled. This lunacy has left us with two generations of entitled nobodys and non-achievers who now think the world owes them because mommy convinced them how very special they are, despite all obvious evidence to the contrary.

Rather than our society raising up and praising those who reach their personal goals, those who excel, those who show perseverance and dedication, the dark side instead seeks to denigrate them as unrealistic, based on their view that most people realistically will not go to extraordinary lengths to get what they want. So therefore, those who do excel can be safely dismissed as unrealistic. All the while presenting this "logic" while whining about episodes of “fat shaming.”

They claim that shaming someone who fills their gullets with excess food to the point of creating a physical disability is wrong, but shaming people who stay in shape by publicly and disdainfully dismissing them as not being real, or that such an achievement is unrealistic, is somehow perfectly acceptable.

And don’t get me started on those morons who claim sexual attraction should have no connection to one’s intentional sabotaging of their own bodies (“He should love me for who I am INSIDE!”).

Get in shape or don’t; I don’t care. But whining how unfair it is that people you are attracted to sexually have no sexual attraction to you — well now you're  just embarrassing yourself, so stop it. Stating as fact that those who do stay in shape are not “real” but those who do not bother to stay in shape are “real” only reveals the speakers’ mortifying insecurities and their day-to-day failure at achieving something they would love to achieve for themselves, but somehow can’t get up the gumption to.

It's Our Choice To Be, Or Not To Be, Someone Else's Victim

While not directly related to strength training, the tenets behind this post, personal responsibility and taking charge of one’s own fate, definitely are. Also, having worked in Hollywood for 35 years, the subject matter hits close to home.

With the insane hoopla surrounding the 2015 Academy Awards’ so-called “rebuff” of blacks going full tilt and the Academy capitulating to the childish demands of the likes of Pinkett-Smith, my acerbic elderly neighbor Marie said, “Silly me, I didn’t realize Affirmative Action applied to the Academy Awards.”

Every day I am grateful that I was born white. Whenever I flop or flounder, whenever I am not provided the opportunity I feel I deserve or get hired for a job I am uniquely qualified for, I am not additionally burdened by the self-defeating handicap of being provided permission — either by myself or the society I live in — to blame my personal disappointments entirely on others due to my race.

Black people have had to shoulder some terrible burdens throughout history, from their own people in Africa colluding with white Europeans to sell their brothers and sisters into slavery to their wholesale executions at the hands of the KKK and the police. Perhaps the heaviest burden of all, the burden that keeps blacks stalled and rooted and mired in the mud, is their enthusiastic and opportunistic embracing of the label of victimization. Identifying one’s self as a victim is one thing; celebrating it, appropriating it as a lifestyle, using it to manipulate and control, is self destructive both personally and racially. It is a cancer.

Every year entirely deserving people and films are not nominated for an Oscar. Always following the nominations the media has a field day decrying the amazing performances or projects overlooked or “shut out” by the Academy. Because these excluded individuals are predominantly white there is no convenient group upon whom they can shift the blame in order to justify their own disappointment; they have no easy out, such as the advantage of claiming they were shunned due to their race. Only black people stoop to this tactic, because black people have learned they can systematically blame all their own personal shortcomings and failures and slights real or imagined on others’ racism. During years past when black actors were nominated, but ultimately did not win, even then we were treated to crybabies like Spike Lee claiming "discrimination."

It is troubling how many compliant white people immediately and without applying any critical thought to the claim jump on blacks’ victimization bandwagon in knee-jerk fashion to facilitate and promote this travesty. It is troubling how many whites respond like trained monkeys to support and amplify the first rumblings of black victimization. These enabling self-proclaimed allies have done far more to hinder the cause of racial equality than any Southern politician ever has. And in a Machiavellian sense, perhaps that’s the whole idea.