Physical Subculture

Monday’s workout:

Max Effort Front Squats
Lunge Buelers/Farmers Walk. 8 per side/120 feet. 3-4 sets.
KB swings. 90 seconds. How many can ya do?

Today:

Max Effort Bench Press
Ring Fly Outs (see video below). 3 sets of 5-6.
Johann Wolfgang Goerthe New Combo! Have fun.

We know her as trainer Al or Allyson Goble, but the local music world knows her as Allyson Seconds, and here’s what she does when not at the Tribe.

Certifiable?

The demons we chose to battle aren’t always very demonic. Stubborn, we sometimes fight the power without there really being a ‘power’ to fight. One of my many made-up battle was against the concept of certifications. Not only do I currently not have any (at one point in my life I had over 13 of them), I’ve refused the many requests to consider the idea of creating one.

Here’s how this industry works: A person or organization decides that their knowledge is so worth seeking out that people should not only pay out the ass for it, but be rewarded for their effort with a ‘certificate.’ Initially this industry had 3 major players, the American Council on Exercise (ACE), the Aerobics and Fitness Assoc. of America (AFAA) and the American College of Sports Medicine (yep, you guessed it, ACSM). Now keep in mind that 25 years ago, none of these existed (or at least no one cared yet). Eventually, as the fitness industry grew, the big 3, at least one of which a ‘health club’ required for employment as a trainer, morphed into hundreds, over a dozen of which were collected like trading cards by yours truly early on in my career.

Our industry typically offers 2 options. The 2-4 day certification or the 4 year degree. Despite the giant discrepancies in the time frame, I’ve yet to meet anyone who learned how to train or coach people strictly through their degrees. Sadly, they often hold about as much practical water as most certifications.

Keep in mind that, despite the fact that they were usually essential for employment, not a single one of these certs was required by law, as there is no governing body for personal training. In other words, massage therapists, physical therapists, hair stylists and mechanics are all in legal league beyond the training world, since they are licensed and government regulated, while the fitness industry isn’t. This is a mixed blessing. Although the entertainment that quite commonly passes for personal training has not yet caused enough damage to incite the highly litigious, the government hasn’t gotten it’s dirty little claws into the game, deciding who does what with whom.

It also means that anyone can create a ‘certification,’ leading to the vast and confusing world of trainer certifications available to anyone with ducats and a dream. The certification market/racket has a wide range of options. What started as generalizations (the ‘personal training’ cert or the ‘aerobics instructor’ cert) has diversified into a vast buffet of specializations (there are at least 3 different major schools of thought for kettlebell certification alone). They don’t all suck, in fact the information behind a handful of them might be money well spent. BUT, no one outside of the actual industry understands how they work or what they mean. In fact, in the 15-ish years I’ve been doing this, I’ve only been asked about my certifications by non-trainers maybe 3 times. Which begs the question:

Why ‘certifications?’ Perhaps telling a client or potential client that being certified in left-hand-specific gyroscopic sports conditioning biomechanical tectonics will wow them right into my clutches, but chances are they won’t have any idea what that means, or they simply won’t care. At training gatherings we used to boast to each other about our certs, not unlike whipping out our 12th level magic user’s character stats at D&D conventions and bragging about his +6 save against polymorph spells.

But, alas, Joe and Jane Smith don’t care. Somewhere along the way we decided that just learning the info wasn’t enough. We had to PROVE that we learned it. Gimme that piece of paper.

Well it’s happened. The ground has been broken, if only metaphorically, on the Physical Culture certification. The details will be forthcoming very soon, but suffice to say, it will be broader than a specialization, but deeper than any general cert. But that’s all I’m going to say for now.

The DVD

Last week we started filming our upcoming DVD. The cameras will be rolling with some frequency over the next couple of weeks, and I’m inviting anyone who wants to be a part of the process to join us. We’re recording actual workouts, in various locations around Northern California (yup, all over the place). On top of the plethora of program designs featured, each workout will be broken down into individual movements, detailing the instruction of each exercise. This weekend we’ll be filming at an abandoned factory, at our splinter gym Midtown Strength and Conditioning, and in Big Trees National Park, as well as good ol’ Bodytribe.

Workout:

Max Effort Deadlifts

Squat Rows. 2 sets of 15.

New Challenge: Wittgenstein. You’ll need: a heavily loaded bar on pins and a pair of lightish DB’s. Here’s how it goes: Heavy deadlift from high pins (hand-and-thigh style, only a few inches of lift)/1-arm DB snatches (6 per side)/bent rows (6)/DB swing (with both DB’s, 6 reps)/squat press (6). 4 times, and, of course, time it.

____________________________________________

Words with power we might not expect.

Remember the South Park episode (Chef Goes Nanners) involving Chef’s anger at the city’s flag depicting 4 human figures, which were white on the flag, standing around a lynched figure still hanging from the noose, which was brown in color. He was in an uproar that such a racist flag would still be flying in this day and age. The town folks couldn’t understand his anger, which infuriated him even further. Finally, he realized the town didn’t understand his anger because the town was so completely colorblind that it didn’t see white folks hanging a black man, they just saw people hanging a person (and killing folks in South Park is so common it doesn’t raise an eyebrow). So they decided to change the flag and have people of all colors hanging a person of random color, and the town, including Chef, was happy (and Kenny died from eating 60 antacid tablets and drinking water).

Sometimes we use words in a similar fashion. Although having no understanding of the malignant power of a word may not be an excuse to make it a common part of one’s vernacular, it sometimes does explain a word’s useage. For being such a stickler for my attempts at language art, usually demanding power from the definitions of words, my slip ups need to come back and bite my ass, as one recently did.

We like strength and the pursuit of it. Gender plays no role, nor does it shift our training. Whatever factors we need to work with or around when modifying a training program, what sex you are is not one of them. I’d like to consider Bodytribe blind to gender in terms of training. It’s not a point of pride simply because we can’t boast about what should flow naturally. But we’re accountable for our screw ups (and in this case, when i say ‘we,’ I am pointing the finger right at my own deflated chest). Sometimes, from this place of base equality, our ‘lynching flag’ might come out, and since our very nature doesn’t incorporate misogyny, we don’t instantly understand that our ‘flag’ might offend. Whether it be through word or action, what might be meant as casual play might be misconstrued, but that doesn’t quite absolve us from guilt, does it?

Case in point? From my days of doing small town summer theater, certain terms crept into my vernacular that have yet to leave. For about 3 years my post high school summers were spent with friends creating live theater in the California foothills, which was surprisingly well received. These friends were often studying theater in college during the rest of the year, returning from distant cities so full of skill that at some point I felt silly being on stage with such talent. So I eventually stopped joining their productions, vowing that I wasn’t going to drag down the quality of one of their productions again.

One wrote several plays,went on to become a Blue Man, and now teaches theater at our old high school. Another, also a play write, has done theater both in New York and now Chicago. A third has been in both LA and Sacramento Theater Company productions, and a fourth had a fairly successful TV commercial career for a while. Why on earth should I have been on stage with these people, unless I was playing drums, which I wasn’t.

But we had a blast and I learned a lot of Shakespeare, which has stuck with me for the past 20 years. A word that is often appearing from the depths of my lexicon is ‘brethren,’ which, in my casual use, meant ‘of my tribe or family.’ In the real world it has STRONG chauvinistic tones, especially from folks who might have encountered it through exclusionary organizations like fraternities or religious orders, where the word is connotative of the gathering of the men folk. ONLY the men folk.

Now my little trainer brain can’t even imagine a situation where I’d want to hang out with ONLY men folk. Since neither gender has a stranglehold on either brains (or the lack of) or humor, the picking of friends, co-workers or training partners has nothing to do with what naughty bits and hormones they have. There are criteria, to be sure, but anatomy and reproductive ability ain’t it.

So, bruthas and sistas, is Bodytribe free of all gender bias? Is anyone? Heck no, but we’ll keep working on it. Otherwise my mom would kick my ass. I shan’t be casually throwing around ‘brethren’ in the future, though, since my sisteren are often preferred company.

Now is it sexist to post a video of my weightlifting crush Julia Rohdes? At the Olympics she sounded more like an Anime character when she screamed before her lifts, but in this video is has a bit of a Godzilla sound to it. And so what if she misses two out of three attempts…

Meanwhile…

USAW Club Coach certification, October 4th and 5th. 2 days of working with Jim Schmitz learning the art of the Olympic Lifts. Maybe he’ll bring us some pictures of his visit to Beijing for the Olympics.

Monday’s workout:

Max Squats.
Brick Don’t Hit Back
KB Swings. Heavy, 1 Minute. How many?

Wednesday’s workout:

Max Bench
Powerslave Modify the dips accordingly, but time this sucker.

One Step at a Time

Our whole recent dialog (see last two posts) might find common ground, or at least a starting point for forum, if we equate walking with an entry level to movement for health purposes. Sure, there might be other options, but let’s consider that the first step could be, literally, the first step. Let’s see through the eyes of an organization that is trying to reach the demographic that needs this first step. It might be hard to grok this lowest common denominator of movement, especially for those of us who have accepted the gospel of serious sweat and embraced brutal training as playtime. As mentioned before, we might mean well when we come from the if-I-can-do-it-so-can-anyone camp, but often that turns into snobbery, not motivation.

Train Hard
Eat Well
Rest hard

This is the prescription/mantra we understand to create progress in our lives, but again, this is a luxury model not available to everyone. Exposing the idea of intensity might scare off some of the people who need to get started the most. Perhaps instead of critiquing the organizations that are aiming their artillery at the non-movers, who we can call ‘first-steppers,’ we should encourage these program designers to follow up with steps two and three.

My critique, instead, would be that there seems to be a plethora of organizations aiming at the same goal. I wondering if a little communication and merging would create more momentum. Seems like the train has to make too many stops before it can gain the speed it needs to climb the hill. This is where government funded programs and departments can take a page from the private sector handbook. Bodytriber Brian Fisher is the local king of networking, with one of his many projects being the massive Sacramento information website Midtown Grid. Brian puts people where they need to be and works with folks to get things done. I’ve never known anyone with as much passion for putting pieces together like Brian. Maybe I get him to chime in on how to rope in all the separate organizations and departments into one common movement, because currently it seems a bit diluted.

BUT, the mission is not without merit. Getting First Steppers walking may just be one of MANY first steps that can be taken, but it is valid. Of course the fear that any first step will end up in a face plant if there aren’t second and third steps already in place is also valid. Perhaps, as Bodytriber Amanda mentioned, we need to have our own forum, inviting the organizations involved to open a dialog with our tribe. We’ve got a great collection of resources, opportunity, brains, and that much needed impetus of desire to create change. So here I shall speak my latent conviction and make it universal sense… let’s have a Gathering of the Tribes with a different mission than we’ve had in the past. I’ll start making arrangements…

Meanwhile…

I visited a gym in Truckee during my stay there, a gym “voted best gym in Truckee,” which is convenient, being that is the ONLY gym within 30-40 miles. The typical machine and mirror show, it at least had a squat cage and half rack, although nary a bumper plate to be seen and there was a sign on the mirrors stating “please do not drop the dumbbells.” Rubber coated dumbbells and rubber floor simply begged for me to disobey this rule, so after every set of 1-arm snatch/windmills, I let gravity make sweet, violent love to the dumbbell, with a thudding embrace that was of a volume that would still seem tame compared to Bodytribe levels. The other two gym patrons seemed to not notice, probably due to the 70’s/80’s pop rock station pumped through the gym speaker system.

Let’s play a little game. Count how many clip art pictures of bicep curls are on this gym’s website.