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The New Rules of Lifting for Women
In The New Rules of Lifting for Women, authors Lou Schuler, Cassandra Forsythe, and Alwyn Cosgrove present a comprehensive strength, conditioning, and nutrition plan destined to...
The New Rules of Lifting
Ten unique programs for fat loss, muscle gain, and strength improvement for beginners and elite lifters. Want to get more out of your workout and spend less...
The Book of Muscle
The World's Most AUTHORITATIVE Guide to Building Your Body You probably know a lot about building muscle. You know which curl is the best for your biceps,...
The Testosterone Advantage Plan
Wide shoulders, narrow waist, thick chest, muscular arms and legs: today's male ideal physique is the same as that of ancient Greece. Aerobics and the Food...
The Home Workout Bible
Get bigger biceps, broad shoulders, a bigger bench press, powerful legs, cut abs . . . without ever leaving your home! The body you want, in the space...
Built For Show
No-nonsense workouts to build a lean, strong, eye-catching physique. Every young, single guy is looking for an edge, some way to get single women his age to...
Huge In A Hurry
Men's Health Huge in a Hurry will add inches to your muscles and increase your strength, with noticeable results quickly, no matter how long you've been...
Sometimes I Answer My Email
I don't always answer my email promptly, a character flaw that I'd like to correct but probably won't anytime soon. However, I did answer a couple of random questions sent by readers this weekend, and thought I'd share the answers here. If this is something you'd like to see here, I'll do it more often.
And if you disagree with my replies to those readers, please let me know where I'm wrong and how I should've answered. With both questions, I've done some slight editing for the usual reasons (grammar, punctuation, clarity) and to protect the correspondent's anonymity.
I'm a newbie personal trainer working in a local gym. Whenever I try to talk to my fellow trainers about functional training and training the body as a unit vs. body-parts style, they think I'm stupid and new and just don't get it.
I'm intimidated to train my clients in front of them, but I know that unless you're a bodybuilder it really isn't necessary to split your body up. I tell them that everyone should do squats and deadlifts, and they say that beginners must start on machines!
Any suggestions?
Chad Waterbury told me a great story about getting a job early in his career at a big gym in Chicago. The other trainers thought he was nuts when he had his clients doing basic strength and power exercises with free weights. But when those clients got better results than the ones who worked with the other trainers, he got promoted to head trainer.
That's the bottom line: Who gets results?
I'm not a personal trainer -- I'm CSCS, but have never trained clients in a gym, and don't plan to -- but I don't think there's any doctrinaire way to go about it. Some clients, especially those recovering from injuries, severely detrained, or cruelly uncoordinated, might be better off with a mix of machines and free weights until they improve their strength and muscle quality.
You'll still have to get them off the machines as soon as you can, but for some clients it probably makes sense to let them see some kind of training effect before you start worrying about whether they're doing functional exercises. Simply improving their strength and muscular conditioning will probably have some functional crossover.
So my advice is to do what's right for your clients. Leave ideology out of it. Be flexible and train each client according to his or her needs, working with what you have and building up from there.
I'm 22, and plan to return to school this fall to finish my degree. I'm leaning toward journalism/advertising. Specifically, I'm interested in writing for the fitness population.
My questions: When you attended journalism school, what was your focus? Were you mainly interested in fitness writing, or writing in general? How did you go about getting writing jobs as a new, young writer?
By pure coincidence, I wrote about that in my previous post. As I explain in more detail there, I didn't start writing about fitness until I got a job at Men's Fitness in 1992, when I was 35 and had already put in thousands of hours writing about other subjects.
If you want to get paid as a writer, you almost certainly must have a degree in journalism. Some don't, but those guys are exceptions. Furthermore, in my experience, there are only a handful of journalism schools that give you a leg up when it comes time to get hired. The absolute best chance you have is when you enter the job market with a master's degree from Columbia, Northwestern, or Missouri. For undergrad, the top schools are probably Missouri, Northwestern, Ohio University, Syracuse, and Florida.
That doesn't mean you can't get a decent job if you don't go to those schools. It's just harder to get taken seriously in the job market.
Right now the entire publishing industry is contracting, due to the drop in ad revenue. But, as I wrote last week, something similar happens every 10 years. The time to get into the business is when it's recovering from one of those contractions, which means you want to have your degree and some momentum a year or two from now, when companies start hiring again. A lot of the people who get laid off will leave the field, opening up more entry-level opportunities and more chance for advancement once you get in the door. It's cheaper to hire entry-level writers and editors and train them up to senior level than it is to hire senior-level publishing professionals who've already established their bona fides.
Specializing in anything makes it more difficult. There just aren't many full-time jobs for fitness journalists, and you have to hope one is open at the exact moment you need it. Just about everybody I know in the field stumbled into it.
So that's the best advice I can offer -- get the degree, pursue your interests online and offline, and hope for the best when you graduate. But also keep in mind that you never really know what you want to do and what you're good at until you've actually done it. I've seen fitness geeks who thought they'd love working at a fitness magazine but then realized they didn't really like it at all.
There's a lot of compromise in any branch of publishing (or in any profession, period), and some people would rather not be part of that when it comes to something they care about.
The Rundown
Lou Schuler is an award-winning fitness journalist and author. He began this weblog on menshealth.com in September 2003. If, for any reason, you need to know more about this middle-aged, bald-headed man, click here.
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Comments For This Entry
Posted by Julie at 10:40AM on January 28, 2009
Just a little answer will do... LOL!
Posted by Lee at 03:46PM on January 29, 2009
In my medical practice among other things I do pain management work. Many people I see have injury's based on weak core muscles, in the back, hips, and shoulders. In my training experience, free weights properly done address weak core muscles much better than "the machines" and strong core muscles in my opinion help protect against injury, often serious and debilitating injury such as disc herniation, impingement syndromes and other things you wind up getting surgery for.
I think the best thing a weight trainer can teach is the proper use of dumbbells. I think functional and total body training with free weights, or cable machines is key to developing this kind of core strength, and I think that will lead to a long and injury free life, as well as the muscle necessary to ward off things like diabetes, hypertension and metabolic syndrome. All of these things tend to have associated with them muscle atrophy, especially core muscle atrophy.
The other thing I try to impress on my patients is the need for discipline in what they do. If I can get their pain under control it is for sure if they abuse themselves they will be back. I have been recommending the "New Rules" books to patients who are interested in including a exercise regimen in their recovery. I studied many programs by many so called "experts" and that system as far as I can see is the most well thought out program I have read. Its fairly aggressive and it is advancement oriented in a very ordered way. Because of the way it alternates exercises some muscles are resting while others are performing. It also varies exercises between sessions but still works the same muscle groups and it varies intensity and rest between exercise days. This makes it very balanced. It starts out with high rep sets which I think is very prudent. It's hard to lift too much weight if your goal is to lift it 15 times. Once conditioning has been achieved with the high rep sets, you then vary the mix with heavier weight and less reps and more sets etc. The other thing I like about this approach is the cardiovascular workout you get with this regimen. Because of the timed rest intervals, and the alternating exercises your cardiac work stays high while individual muscles are properly rested between sets. I was amazed how well this works, and how efficient it is. So I think you are right on course using this kind of approach to being a trainer. So I recommend you stick to your guns, and have clear goals in mind with your clients, and tell them one of your goals is to make their core strong so they can get old and wrinkly and not need to use a cane or mobility scooter or need spinal surgery.
One "rule" I wish had been included is the rule that a set is over the first time you break perfect form. This is the discipline issue I was referring to. As a trainer I think that in fact is the most important thing you can impart to your clients. How to do weight training with maximum effectiveness and safety.
Posted by Amanda Vogel at 02:04PM on March 09, 2009
I would like to comment on the answer regarding fitness writing. My experience has been a bit different.
I've been a fitness writer for about 10 years, and I do not have a journalism degree. I have a Master's degree in human kinetics. My MA has helped me get certain gigs, I suppose, but most of the time I don't think it matters. Perhaps it matters more that I am certified in fitness and I learned everything I could about how to write what my editors want and how to survive in the magazine industry.
I actually think it's easier to specialize in certain topics, depending on what your niche is. Right now, it seems there's a steady stream of opportunities for fitness articles in health/fitness pubs but also in lifestyle and even business magazines and websites. I'm always booked with assignments - and I only write about health and fitness.
Amanda Vogel
www.ActiveVoice.ca
www.twitter.com/amandavogel
Posted by Polla at 03:23AM on July 07, 2009
Lou
I had to take two weeks of resting and walking very slowly, after my first encounter with squats. I’m still on the break-in program and intend to do it for the suggested four weeks. There is a big improvement. Just a question. In your book The new rules of lifting on page 262, to estimate the number of calories, Step 1: Multiply your weight in pounds by 11. As we calculate in kilograms, does the faktor 11 stay the same?
Best Regards
Polla van Blommenstein (South-Africa)
Posted by evision at 01:05AM on March 08, 2010
http://www.sangambayard-c-m.com
Posted by Mobility Scooter at 10:54PM on May 13, 2010
The approach of this article takes the uncommon path of enlightening readers without forcing them to endure the usual sales drivel that accompanies most material. All I want is to be given the facts and then be allowed to form my own decision. Thank you for providing that opportunity. Personal Mobility Scooter
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