CategoriesNutrition rant

Fitness Consumer Choice: Why Pizza Hut Trumps Food Prep

I’m a nerd when it comes to the topic of behavioral economics.1

For those unaware of what it is (via Wikipedia):

“Behavioral economics and the related field, behavioral finance, study the effects of psychological, social, cognitive, and emotional factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and the consequences for market prices, returns, and the resource allocation.”

For those who zoned out reading the above definition and need something a little more simplified, you can also think of behavioral economics as the following:

“Stuff Malcolm Gladwell writes about.”

So anyone who’s read his books The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and/or David & Goliath…has, more or less, inadvertently – or maybe not – brushed elbows with the topic.

And while many consider Gladwell the “big fish in the small pond” on the topic, there are many other prominent authors and books that enter the picture I’m a huge fan of:

– The Heath brothers (Chip and Dan), authors of Made to Stick, Switch, and Decisive.

– Dan Ariely, author of The Upside of Irrationality and Predictably Irrational.

– And maybe most popular of all, the book(s) which kind of popularized the genre, Freakonomics.

I find it all fascinating and wholeheartedly relevant to every day life. Taking a handful of snidbits from various books I’ve read in the past, how could any of the below scenarios not pique anyone’s interests?

– Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat?

– How do companies pave the way for dishonesty?

– Does religion improve our honesty?

– Why do some failures inspire breakthroughs and others breakdowns?

– Why can large bonuses make CEOs less productive?

– Why is revenge so important to us?

– Why does my wife get pissed if I don’t make the bed in the morning?

All are interesting quandaries, no?2

More germane to health and fitness, however, I find behavioral economics to be very insightful. I mean, how else to explain, despite knowing better, and contrary to what their goals may be, why someone would choose to hit up a Pizza Hut buffet after work rather than heading home and preparing a more nutritious meal?

What makes someone prefer to binge watch House of Cards over going to the gym? And then bitch and whine about how they never seem to see results?

Or, I don’t know…if someone’s a hardcore Paleo Nazi and they eat a “paleo brownie,” is it still Paleo? You know, cause Stevia (and brownies) weren’t necessarily part of a cave man’s diet back in the day.

As a fitness professional (I feel), having the ability to dig a little deeper and to peel back the psychological onion as to what prevents certain people from attaining certain fitness and health goals is important.

Because more often than not it’s much more than an “education/information” thing, in addition to it being much more than simply telling someone what or what not to do.

Lets take a passage from the book I’m currently reading, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, by Richard Thaler:

“To begin any discussion of mental accounting, it helps to understand the basic economic theory of the consumer. Recall from the discussion of the endowment effect that all economic decisions are made through the lens of opportunity costs. The cost of dinner and a movie tonight is not fully captured by the financial outlay – it also depends on the alternative uses of that time and money.

If you understand opportunity costs and you have a ticket to a game that you could sell for $1000, it does not matter hw much you paid for the ticket. The cost of going to the game is what you could do with that $1000. You should only go to the game if that is the best possible way to could use that money.

Is it better than one hundred movies at $10 each? Better than an upgrade to your shabby wardrobe? Better than saving the money for a rainy day or a sunny weekend?

This analysis is not limited to decisions that involve money. If you spend an afternoon reading a novel, then the opportunity cost is whatever else you might have done with that time.”

As Thaler notes, “thinking like that is a right and proper normative theory of consumer choice.”

Not to steal his thunder (I totally am), but I’d argue it serves as a right and proper normative theory of (fitness) consumer choice.

Opportunity Costs

Revisiting one of the examples above, there could be any number of reasons why someone would choose to walk into a Pizza Hut rather than head home to prepare a wholesome meal.

It’s certainly more convenient and less time intensive. But maybe they choose to do so because they literally have no pots and pans to cook with. Or any decent knives to perform said food prep.

Hell, maybe they’re like me and can’t use a microwave without exponentially increasing the risk of burning down their apartment by a factor of ten!

The opportunity cost tips in Pizza Hut’s favor because said individual has no resources in his or her’s corner to help set them up for success.

If you, as the fitness professional, do nothing but play the “tough love” card and talk down to your client as weak-minded, weak-willed, or any number of equally non-helpful epithets…are you really doing them a service?

Doing nothing more than telling them to suck it up and to stop going to Pizza Hut isn’t going to solve anything. You’re being lazy, and quite honestly kinda of a dick.

It bodes in your favor to take a step back and to better understand what fuels people’s behavior.

Just something to think about.

CategoriesFemale Training rant

Hey Vogue Magazine, Thanks For Setting Women’s Fitness Back A Few Decades

My wife is angry at you Vogue. And so am I.

The other night as I plopped down on the couch after a long day at the gym to say hello to Lisa and to catch up on her day, she chuckled and said, “oh boy, do I have something to show you.”

She had ripped a page out of this month’s issue of Vogue Magazine (August 2015, pg. 128) and handed it to me.

Knowing it was Vogue I wasn’t sure what to expect. All I knew was that Lisa had handed me the piece of paper with some conviction.

Was it fashion tips for me?3 Outlandish outfits? Offensive accessories? Was neon green named this year’s color of Fall? Shit, no, maybe it was something far, far worse…skinny jeans for men are here to stay!?!?!

Thankfully it had nothing to do with any of those things.

Rather the article she handed me was on, of all things….foam rolling?

At first my wife was like “oh, wow, cool…..I can’t believe there’s an article on the benefits of foam rolling in a mainstream magazine like Vogue!”But then she read it, and noticed the all-too familiar feeling she gets whenever she ends up reading mainstream fitness fiction: Disappointment and the uncontrollable urge to punch a wall.

I couldn’t find a link online, so I opted to take a picture instead. Here you go.

I take no responsibility if a small piece of your soul dies:

Behold: A parfait of fitness fact and fiction, topped with a fluffy yet crisp meringue of bullshit. Toning, lengthening, leaning, bullshit.

Some Highlights:

1. The subtitle:

“Amid the current craze for foam props, Courtney Rubin asks, can they really make you LONG AND LEAN – or is that a bit of a stretch?”

– Is the craze really that current? I started using foam rollers with my clients over a decade ago. I’ll give a pass here because Vogue is a fashion magazine, not a fitness magazine, and staying on top of the latest fitness trends isn’t their strong suit. Plus, Lisa did defend this subtitle, reminding me that foam rollers can now be spotted in gyms, commercial and otherwise, as well as stores like Marshall’s and other chains with popular fitness equipment.

However, after reading on, I wished Vogue decided not to stray from their wheel house.

– Because lo and behold, there they were, those terrible words, rearing their ugly heads again….the dreaded “long and lean” buzz words that mainstream magazines love to use to prey on women and promote unrealistic expectations.

2. From the first paragraph of the article:

“These days, those of us who dream of long and lean (<—ahhh, my eyes) physiques are turning to – or rather, rocking over – foam rollers.”

– LOLLOLOLLOL. I see what you just did there Vogue. Very witty. But come on, can we stop with the LONG AND LEAN nonsense?

Let’s first review a clear and permanent fact you can’t lengthen a muscle without lengthening bone. Muscles have what we refer to as an origin and insertion. This is something you cannot change without some rather extensive (and painful) bone lengthening surgery or a magic spell from Professor Dumbledore.

And lean means fat loss. People become more lean by losing fat. By alluding that foam rolling will lead to lean physiques is somewhat comical and borderline shameful. But hey, catchy titles that use buzzwords sells magazines right?

A defender of the article might argue that a muscle could technically be “longer” (or lie flatter?) after scar tissue, adhesions, or “the kinks” as they refer to them, has been rolled out. Do you think your reader is thinking technically, Vogue? Of course you don’t. You know that when the average reader is reading “longer and leaner muscles” she is not envisioning excellent tissue quality, like this:You know that she’s envisioning this:

So, was this statement made out of ignorance of human anatomy, or a deliberate twisting, or “spinning” of a fact in order to promote magical thinking? Either way, it is offensive to those who know better, and a major disservice to those who don’t, but would very much like to!

Many (not all) women who read this article are going to equate foam rolling with trimming their waist and getting skinnier, which is absurd.

This is why people (women and men) do stupid shit, often waste their time spinning their wheels at the gym, and why many have unrealistic expectations and rarely (if ever) attain the results they’re after.

Foam rolling DOES have a place and there’s a ton of validity to it. Just not in the way it’s being portrayed in this article.

Continuing On

3. From there it’s more blah, blah, blabiddy, blah and then we get into some legit, credible information:

“Rolling key areas of the body such as the hamstrings or hips back and forth for as little as a minute releases fascia – the connective tissue that webs through our muscles and contracts to produce stiffness and pain. Lose the kinks, the thinking goes, and you will improve body function and lengthen muscles, too.”

– Love it! The article did give a loose “background” of the history of foam rolling and how it’s been traced back to the rehab/physical therapy realm, that it targets fascia, and that rolling helps “break up” connective tissue which can (not always) lead to stiffness and pain. Bravo

It’s quick and a bit reductive in it’s explanation, but whatever. It’s not inherently wrong. And I’d imagine there was a word count to be cognizant of.

Unfortunately, this brief little blurb takes another wrong turn – right back to fiction. This is why everyone gets duped. Articles like this toss out a fact as bait, switch to fitness fiction, brimming with magical cures and fairy princesses (or Gwyneth Paltrow. But same difference), and then start to mind fuck the reader.

Cue Revolutionary Magic Pill

4. And right on cue we get introduced to some revolutionary answer/quick fix.

“So and so’s (I’m not going to share the name, you can read it for yourself) foam rolling method is designed to redistribute bulk – her clients, who include Devon Aoki (no idea who that is) Gwyneth Paltrow4 say the elongating effects of six months of biweekly $495 sessions can help trim their waists.”

– What does “redistribute bulk” mean?

Push around problem areas?

What is “bulk”? Is it fat? Muscle? Vital organs? Whatever it is, it’s negative, and when you prompt the average American woman to consider the presence of “bulk” on her body, the resulting thoughts and feelings are not good.

They’re negative, judgmental, and completely fictional. What’s worse, is that the average American woman now believes she has discovered a method of “redistributing” her unwanted “bulk” (again – love handles? Juicy quads? Kidneys?)

So anyone reading this is going to think to herself, “Hmm, I have big thighs and big hips,”(undoubtedly leading to a negative inner monologue about her body) and THEN she’s thinking a foam roller is going redistribute her bulk from her hips and thighs to maybe other areas of her body.5

FML.

– Also, can we do the math? Six month’s worth of twice-a-week foam rolling instruction is costing someone roughly $12,000???? Must be tricky! It must be too complicated/sophisticated/dangerous for someone to perform on her own. For free.

 

Even more ironic is that I googled some videos put up by said foam rolling expert and most of them don’t even show her using the foam roller for its intended use (in the away the Vogue article suggests). I mean, she uses the foam roller (as a prop) to perform various glute bridges, push-ups, rollouts, etc…but not in the way suggested by the article.

Sure, the article says “props” but then discusses rocking/rolling and addressing fascia/kinks/etc. Not the same thing.

To her credit, though, the woman does have several videos demonstrating more traditional uses geared towards self-myofascial release and addressing (soft) tissue quality, which I am 100% on board with.

But still: $12,000? To bridge and perform push-ups? Yowsa/mad respect.

– Next:

CAN HELP TRIM THEIR WAISTS???!!!! My wife was yelling when we got to this part. Vogue has just notified all readers that they can trim their waists by foam rolling. Just let that sink in.

A Trimmer Waist.

By F*&%#@^ FOAM ROLLING!

But the best case scenario is that women read this article and feel indignant and insulted. Buzzwords like elongating, lean, lengthen, etc should instantly put up a red flag. The worst scenario? That women are going to read this article and think foam rolling will trim their waist and get them leaner. (Just for the record. One more time. Fat loss gets folks leaner).

NOTE: It would help if Vogue took the time to differentiate between actual foam rolling and using the word prop correctly. I know, I’m being nit-picky.

5. In the middle we get some more quality nuggets of information, this time factual (again the parfait effect):

Rolling is also beloved for its performance-enhancing properties. “I recommend foam rolling prior to physical activity,” says Nina Figeroa, owner of Base Physical Therapy, where the majority of clients are assigned foam-rolling homework.

Awesome. I’m on board with that. I feel bad for Nina, though. She’s most likely someone who’s well-versed and understands the science, yet quoted in an article selling foam-rolling as a body slimming method.

6. And the coup de grace, end-all-be-all shititude of a comment from the article:

“Makeup artist Gucci Westman has two rollers at home, one long, one short, to help her break up lactic acid before and after workouts.”

Amazing!!!!!

Too bad lactic acid is “buffered” by the body fairly quickly and converted back to glucose to be used as energy substrate during exercise.

Lactic acid doesn’t “build up.”

Lactic acid can’t be broken up by a foam roller.

Do you even science Vogue Magazine? And why are you soliciting fitness advice from make-up artists?

Come On Vogue!

You just wrote an article that set women’s fitness back decades, and told them that foam rolling will slim their waist and worse, redistribute bulk. Why not just roll out some stock footage from the 1920’s of women using those vibrating belts to battle belly fat?

It’s just as useful as this article.

Worse, you continue to use fictional buzz words and questionable commentary that does nothing other than confuse the reader and make the weeds thicker. You can do better than that.

For the record: This isn’t advice coming from a meanie head strength coach either. This is coming from my wife, a reader of your magazine. A fan of your magazine. And a woman who’s offended on behalf of women who want to learn and understand how to be fit and gorgeous.

Categoriesrant

The 5 Worst Types of Trainers

I’ve been on a bit of a “ranty” mission lately with some of my blog posts and it seems it’s spilled over to my article writing as well.

With my latest article on T-Nation.com I discuss some of the attributes and characteristics I feel make for the worst type of trainer(s).6

Granted, anyone could write a similar article geared towards any profession7 …but it seems the fitness industry has an affinity for attracting some of the worst of the worst.

I had fun writing this one. I hope you enjoy it.

—> CLICK ME <—

CategoriesMotivational rant

Shut Up. And Do the Work.

My Junior College baseball coach, Joe Antonio, was a hard ass.

I played for him at Onondaga Community College (located in Syracuse, NY) from 1995-1997, and can honestly say it was two of the best years of my life.

Coach Antonio is #11 pictured above. Can you spot me?, taken during my first spring trip to Florida, circa 1996? Hint: I’m the pasty white guy.8

Coming out of high-school I was a good baseball player. I was a Varsity player for three seasons, earning All-Conference honors both my Junior and Senior years as a right-handed pitcher.

I was good, but I was also untested. I was a big fish in a small pond (graduating class of 55) coming from a very rural part of the state, a town devoid of any traffic lights and fast food joints, surrounded by dairy farms and corn fields, and wrapped in its own bubble of blissful naivete.

For the record: Yes, I did grow up with electricity, and running water. And no, even with a graduating class of 55 people my Senior year I wasn’t nominated for any “Best…” or “Most Likely To…” quips in the yearbook.

Not even “Best Biceps” or “Most Likely to Have Hair For All of Eternity9” or anything like that.

Pffffft, whatever.

High-School Senior Pic, 1995. Such a boss.

So anyways, off I went to Syracuse to play for Coach Antonio. Syracuse isn’t a huge city by any stretch. But when you hail from a town who’s highest building is three stories (if that), your options for “fine dining” aren’t limited to the rotating hot-dog rack in the local gas station, and you have access to, like, stuff, like, Old Navy and Applebees, it’s a pretty big deal.

Going to college in a somewhat big city immersed me in an environment where the lights blocked out the night sky, cars zoomed everywhere, there was stuff to do, and people stayed up past 11 PM.

On top of that, my coach, Coach Antonio, as a I noted above, was a hard ass. The complete, polar opposite of my high-school coach who was as laid back and easy-going as could be.

Coach Antonio’s style rubbed a lot of players the wrong way. I don’t know why, it just did. OCC was a very successful baseball program back then and every Fall dozens and dozens of guys would show up for tryouts (on top of the ones who were recruited by Coach, like myself).

He yelled, he cussed (not AT players), he held his players accountable, he was a perfectionist. There was a certain way he wanted everything done, and if you didn’t follow through he’d let you know…even during warm-ups.

Within the first week of tryouts many guys, some of whom were All-Conference (and in some cases All-State), from much larger schools than myself, started dropping out and quitting. I can only guess as to what their reasons were. But if I had to guess it was because most of them were coddled, maybe slightly entitled. and/or weren’t willing to put in the work.

Many expected to make the team based of their accolades alone.

Coach was tough, but to me, he wasn’t that tough. In my mind, if you did what you were told, worked hard, and didn’t slack, he’d be the guy in your corner and championing your praises once Division I,II, and III schools started contacting him for players.

And that’s exactly what I did. I showed up on time, did what I was told, put in the work, kept my mouth shut, and was often the guy (along with several other teammates), who would stay after practice to lift and do sprints.

All of this isn’t to insinuate I wasn’t ever chewed out. Boy was I ever! But I never took Coach chewing me out as an attack or some stroke against my manhood. He was trying to teach me and to better prepare me for what lied ahead in my baseball career (and life).

He made me a better baseball player (I ended up receiving several scholarship offers, and ended up at Mercyhurst University in Erie, PA). But he unquestionably made me a better, stronger, more resilient man. Attributes I feel, to this day, helped shape my career as a fitness professional.

What’s My Point?

Sometimes I want to tell young (sometimes old), upcoming (sometimes veteran) fitness professionals to shut up.

There’s a phrase that myself (and Eric Cressey) use quite often:

“You have two ears, two eyes, and one mouth. Use them in that order.”

Listen, watch, learn…shut up.

I was having a chat not long ago with a student who was a year or two away from graduating. In the ten minutes or so we were conversing I couldn’t help but notice all he was doing was railing on this and that professor; that “this guy (ex. phys. professor) was an idiot,” and that “this one (Sport Development and Human Movement) had no idea what she was talking about,” and blah blah blah.

I wanted to be like, “dude, shut the eff up. You haven’t done anything. Just because you read T-Nation and publish a podcast on the side that four people listen to doesn’t mean you’re God’s gift to wannabe strength coaches.”

Sure, are some of the things we learn in school out-dated and archaic? Absolutely. And when discussing higher education, I’d like to think there’s open discourse between professor-student and that, sometimes, questions DO need to be asked and conventional ways of thinking DO need to be challenged.

However, there’s a fine line between that and being a know-it-all-dick.

It’s analogous to the the personal trainer who’s been working for three months and starts worrying about building his or her “brand.” They can’t fathom why their self-published e-book isn’t making them six-figures yet, or why is it the only people who’ve signed up for their newsletter is themselves, their mom, second cousin, ex-girlfriend, and their kitchen toaster. Don’t ask.

Things aren’t just going to happen without earning it and putting in the work…over the long haul.

No, you’re not going to sip pina coladas while you swim in a pool of passive income. No, you’re not going to work with professional athletes on Day #1. And no, you’re not going switch on the lights to a brand spankin new 10,000 square foot facility tomorrow and people are going to be knocking down the doors. Nor will it happen next week. Or next month.

Could those things happen? Yep.

But not until you shut up and do the work.

[Drops mic, exit stage right]

CategoriesOff Topic rant

Twitter Math

People on the internet crack me up. Trolls in particular.

Everyone is a tough guy (or girl) on the internet. The total lack of social filter or any semblance of decency seems to be non-existent when a select few sit behind their computer screens.

It can best be exemplified in this example.

Random guy to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on Twitter:

“Dude, my cat’s vomit could have made a better movie than San Andreas. It was that bad. Plus, your mom’s a whore. #smallbiceps.”

This behavior is analogous to the phenomenon of road rage (not so much the busting a cap in someone’s ass because they cut you off on I-95 type of road rage, which is a tad excessive to say the least; but more so the type of “rage” people project when they flip someone off in their car or yell any number of expletives through their car window and then immediately drive off.)

There’s no urgency to “get away” in a car, because, well, they’re in a car.

Someone can tell someone else to fuck off and before the recipient of said “fuck offedness” can respond (with a fist in the other person’s eye) the culprit is either two stop lights a head or illegally swerved into the car pool lane and high-tailed it out of there.

It’s a whole nother ball of wax when there’s less of a barrier.

People react and act much differently when the other person is face-t0-face.

Lets re-visit our random Twitter guy from before, but this time put him face-to-face with Dwayne.

“OMG, dude, I loooooooved your last movie. The way the lighting in the background made the sweat on your biceps glisten was amazeballs. Can I touch them?

No homo.”

When left with the alternative…a six foot, five inch, 270+ lb behemoth of a human being standing right smack dab in front of him, our internet tough guy changes his tune and turns into a giddy school girl at a One Direction concert.

I had a interaction with a troll recently, on Twitter.

The story begins with a completely random, inert, ho-hum, not-so-very-special Tweet on my end.

All I was trying to convey was that, for most trainees, there’s no need to worry about muscle fiber type, rate coding, neural firing patterns, inter and intramuscular coordination, or anything of that nature in order to get strong. While all enter the conversation, the ONE thing that’s most in our control is the size of our muscles.

A larger muscle with more cross-sectional area has a greater ability to produce more force.

KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.

See, nothing special. But, you know, train-of-thought information.

Not long after I received a response from someone on Twitter. To the effect of:

“Do u actually train people or just tweet? Most guys I know who are any good, don’t have time for this. Just curious.”

[NOTE: I’d link to the actual response, but in the aftermath, the person BLOCKED ME from following HIM, which is funny, because, I’d rather masturbate with sandpaper than follow this jackass. But anyways].

In Fairness: he did catch me on a rather “aggressive” day with regards to my Tweeting prowess. I think it was my tenth of the day.

So I chimed back, rather innocuously, with:

His response (again, I can’t re-post verbatim):

“LOL, exactly. Tony, stop writing about stuff you never do. Must be in between clients, right? Time waster.”

What I wanted to do was respond with something like this:

And then reiterate to him that, “no, I wasn’t in between clients because…I WASN’T AT THE FACILITY IN THE FIRST PLACE!”

Side Note: Did I mention it was my day off and that I wasn’t training people?10

But I didn’t. I resisted the urge to get into an internet dick measuring contest.

Rather than play into what he inevitably wanted me to do – engage – I just shot back with:

And that’s when he blocked me (which, for the record, I’m not complaining about).

Which begs the question:

If I wasn’t “any good” or he saw no value in the information I provide, why was he following me in the first place?

Which also begs the question:

Why even write this post in the first place?

1. Understandably it serves no real purpose, and I could have just as easily spent this same time writing a training program for a client.

However, writing about it is cathartic in a way and makes it less likely I’ll want to stab someone in the throat.

2. I just wanted to write this afternoon.

Something fun.

Furthermore

Lets do some Twitter math.

According to my profile, I joined Twitter in December of 2010. That’s ~1,580 days. Up until the writing of this post I’ve Tweeted a total of 5,351 Tweets.

That’s an average of 3.3 Tweets per day (95% of which are either links to my own posts or various articles I come across I feel would benefit my followers). Only like 0.8% are LOLCat videos.

Lets say it takes 20 seconds to write each Tweet. That’s a total of 60 seconds out of my day spent Tweeting.

Clearly I need to re-evaluate my time management skills.