My brain has been non-stop since last nights twitter chat. I normally don’t participate in these because it tends to clutter up my follower’s timelines, but last night I couldn’t resist.
Topic: No More Excuses! Spotlighting celebrity fitness trainer Donovan Green (Dr. Oz's personal trainer to which I didn't know at the time) who was looking to promote his new book "No More Excuses"......
This is my absolute favorite topic to talk about within the fitness community and Polykinetics itself since I tend to challenge anyone who looks to use this particular claim, and the conversation was interesting to say the least.
I asked a few excuse type questions to gauge perspective on the author and expert’s idea of “no more excuses” (a statement highly valued and grossly overused within the fitness world) with the goal to silently compare the Polykinetics theory of being, “excuse-proof”. The overall chat consisted of the showcased author knocking off well-known excuses one by one (sound familiar?) but saw that the advice given to the audience was rather vague. Much of it being information that anyone could pretty much Google for free. I was hoping to find that this author had an equal passion and dedication to the “no more excuses” discipline verses just looking for an angle to amp up his book sales.
–After roughly 30 minutes of following the conversation…I realized that he was offering just that…..well-circulated advice (not necessarily bad for the most part, just typical) and they were NOT offering a single method where zero excuses held clout. The overall advice given was to seek out multiple types of fitness methods. Meaning they were just applying a particular piece of advice to which ever fitness method (running, cycling, swimming) it best suited. So, to kick the conversation up a notch, I posted my before and 90-day after picture in the conversation (not ever mentioning the Polykinetics name directly because my goal being to observe and compare, not to condemn), and of course to gauge a general reaction, but I was pretty much ignored by the author, his publicist and the media company promoting his book; but NOT by the chat participants themselves. My twitter feed began to blow up!
My most popular question to the author/expert being:
Do you know of a fitness method that safe-guards the respiratory system to prevent hyperventilation?
….And I was given a mundane math equation as an answer. Eek! It was 220 – AGE = Target Heart Rate (THR), which to the author’s “answer”, would give me a THR of roughly 190BPM. The massiveflaw with his advice to my question, and little to his expert knowledge, is that MY body begins to overexert and hyperventilate at 173BPM!! So not only was his “solution” inconsistent to my first-hand experiences, but also held a potential risk of sending me to the ER!! I was rather shocked and disappointed for the simple reason that the author was speaking so strongly about being very “safety first” earlier in the conversation, again, another principle within Polykinetics I take very seriously. –I kept the realization of the flawed advice and my reaction of the contradiction to myself.
I’m personally not one who appreciates being lied to or deceived in any way, as I would think a multitude of others would feel the same… so to try to enforce the “no more excuses” mentality, yet fail to confidently uphold to what it truly means, I find to be rather irresponsible, as well as, deceitful to the those who are taking on this life-altering challenge to get themselves healthy. It really is in a way equivalent to someone giving you a puzzle with several missing pieces, and forcing you to find a way of complete it, yet holding YOU accountable if you fail to do so. Again, rather irresponsible to do when talking about people’s health.
When it comes to Polykinetics, I instill the “excuse-proof” claim because I have dedicated countless hours into researching and testing it so that I can confidently stand by my statements. I have tried again and again to find flaws within my own method so that I may continue to improve the foundation. However, to date, I have yet to be successful at finding an excuse to trump Polykinetics, and I have never had a continued “failure” make me smile so big!
Lastly, I say this….if you’re a trainer/expert and you choose to promote and enforce a “no more excuses” mentality, you can bet that eventually you will find yourself going head-to-head with myself, my research, and my method to prove it.
My “general” advice? Be ready for it!