The Risk vs. Reward Scale…are you using it??
Irony? Advertising a new NBC show called “Do No Harm” while glamorizing regurgitation….yup.
I wrote about the Biggest Loser Years ago and how we really have things mixed up in our minds….how we have an obsession with seeing people suffer and how some training methods are NOT meant for some populations.
Well, I did it again and watched a new episode (well, about 20 min. of an episode) of The Biggest Loser but in this short time period, I was baffled at what I saw. I immediately saw about 5 examples of training methods that would fail on the risk vs. reward scale.
Let’s look at a few:
What!? Someone fell while running backward on a treadmill? SHOCKER!
Jumping up onto a hard box = dangerous. Adding a weight plate on top and having an overweight, out of shape client to the equation = downright diabolical
Are heavy tire flips the best exercise you can come up with? With THIS population??
Lastly, I saw one of the contestants struggling to perform heavy tire flips. Tire flips (in general) are a tough exercise to perform with sound form. We incorporate them with our stronger, experienced athletes and have several sized tired to scale with…The tires on the show look to be ‘one size fits all’. I have just one question about using this exercise with this population: WHY? What benefit does this exercise hold for these contestants? They have access to every form of strength training equipment known to man on this show. You can’t think of a better power/strength/strongman style exercises than a heavy tire flip? This is where TV trumps common sense/sound training. Flipping a tire looks ‘cool’, we get to see people struggle for their lives trying to move this thing, and despair and anguish = RATINGS (see the regurgitation photo at the top of this post).
I know, I know, I have said before that we often focus on the negatives in this industry instead of celebrating the positives. I posted a terrible Gold’s Gym instructor kettlebell video a couple of weeks ago on my Facebook Coaching Page just for entertainment sake. When I posted it it had around 300 views in 3 months, within an hour or so it had over 5000+ views and was shared hundreds of times on Facebook (it has since been taken down by Gold’s).
I realize that I am once again focusing on the negative as I am sure that this blog post will also be shared hundreds of times as we tend to be fascinated with how bad training can be…with how uncommon common sense really is. My hope though is that we can actively EDUCATE the general public, those who don’t really know that this stuff is ridiculous, and that we can arm them with a bigger filter from all this terrible information/entertainment.
Remember, common sense really isn’t very common…sigh.
DO WORK! DOS
Join the forum discussion on this post
Coach Dos,
I think this is one of the best blogs that I have read in a while! Every trainer should read this and ask themselves what is my purpose of this exercise!!!! Yeah Yeah! Do Work
Karri Snow
Prana Fitness & Yoga
Casper, WY
i have shared that gold’s gym video, with the caption “this is how you DON’T do kettlebell exercises…
i see a lot of people in commercial gyms now using the KBs the place offer … with no clue whatsoever how to. they do it exactly the way it was presented on that video.
Nailed it right on the head, and it is instances such as these that I cannot watch the show. I get physically upset knowing that people watching this show are going to use this as an example of the industry, and that is very upsetting.
Would it be such a bad thing for the producers of the show to have some footage of some responsible training, movement screens and assessments, and how anything other than body weight is being monitored?
Amazing how common sense is just not so common in our industry. This show does a remarkable job of displaying this!
I couldn’t agree more, Dos.
Thanks to the Biggest Loser and a certain fitness trend that shall remain unnamed, I feel that the expectations and quality in our profession have been watered down by unqualified trainers viewing these two sources as “the way.” It’s disturbing. The general public EXPECTS this type of training right now, and this “go hard or go home-puke or die-injuries are a part of the process” should not be tolerated! When’s it gonna stop? I would have to sell my soul to the devil if I were to give in and go with it. I would probably make a ton of money doing so, but obviously that ain’t gonna happen! Keep preachin’!
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Great blog Coach! I blame Bob Harper and his love of CrossFit…
It is sad how many people I have to convence how important it is to have a “risk vs. reward” scale for their workouts. I blame Crossfit, biggest loser, and others for this. Thank goodness I do get it stuck in most of their heads that it is o.k. to focus on form. Teach clients to judge the difficulty of their workouts on how they feel when they walk out the door right after their workout, NOT on how frikin sore they get the next day. Great post.
Amazing. I stopped watching this show a long time ago because it gave me training anxiety….I can’t stand when I see stuff like this on TV and in the gym. Our job is not about tearing people down but building them up with a solid biomechanical foundation.