Intelligent Movement Blog

Short rant. Had some extra time yesterday to lift and decided to use the upstairs “womens area” of my gym, only because I didn’t have a lock to secure my stuff and it’s easier to stash it in a corner in that room. I warm up, go to grab weights and realize the biggest ones they have in there are 12lbs.

Given what we’ve known about weight training for a long time now, I find it a bit absurd that my gym seems to believe that if you are a woman, you only need 12 lb weights or less. What is someone going to do with a 2lb dumbbell? There were a ton of those.

I also noticed a trainer in the room with two clients. He looked like a linebacker. His clients were a mother and daughter who each had a significant amount of weight to lose. Linebacker had them on one machine after another and wasn’t doing anything to correct their posture or form. There was a lot of seated chest and shoulder presses going on. Then he stuck them on the cardio machines. Personally not a fan of isolation exercises and really not a fan of machine isolation exercises or mindless steady state cardio. There was so much more he could have done for these women in that hour. Entertainment for me though. I spent another 15 minutes with the BOSU and Swiss ball, just so I could observe the joys of what not to do.

So I had every intention of starting this blog back up in January with a list of what I wanted to focus on, test and research. Didn’t happen. That being said, the research part is occurring with some semblance of a focus and I am hoping to write a series of posts in the near future about smarter ways to train the body while getting results.

I might work in fitness, but admittedly I simply haven’t been doing it for that long and a degree in exercise physiology or a certification in personal training doesn’t always transfer into functional knowledge. I’d consider myself very knowledgeable on how to train better posture, more effective movement (and movement quality) and how to correct poor movement patterns. I would consider myself weaker in the areas of weight training and weight loss though I am taking steps to increase my knowledge.

During my Pilates training, the theme of Pilates versus weights and personal training came up a lot. What some people would argue is that they are apples and oranges. Different ways of training the body and never will the two meet. With more of an us versus them mentality, some Pilates people might argue that lifting heavy weights is unnecessary and unsafe, while personal trainers might argue that Pilates strengthens your core, but will do little for overall strength gains or weight loss. I disagree with both philosophies.

Based off of my reading and training, I think they can come together to be utilized effectively especially when it comes to gaining strength and muscle mass. I also believed they can be used effectively for a weight loss client, though the largest and most important determinant of weight loss success is nutrition, not exercise. I would even argue that they have some fundementals things in common.

1) Pilates and weight training are not cardio. I will tackle cardio in another post, but can assert that neither is a form of cardiovascular training and both fall under the definition of resistance training.

2) To be effective, Pilates and weights both rely on low reps, higher intensity and good form. You won’t get gains doing 30 isolated tricep kickbacks with a pink 3lb dumbbell, the same way that if you can do 30 reps of a Pilates exercise, you are doing wrong and ineffectively. Pilates exercise reps should be 3, 5, 8 or 10, which is not that different from effective weight training philosophies.

3) On the same note, form matters. Good biomechanics don’t change with exercise modality. It doesn’t matter what type of exercise you are doing. If you do it with poor alignment or incorrect muscle recruitment, you run the risk of getting hurt, aggravating old injuries and your strength gains will suffer.

4) Pilates nor weight training alone can cause effective weight loss. They can make you stronger, increase your muscle mass and by improving your posture, can even make you appear a bit leaner, but the biggest determinant of successful weight loss is nutrition, not exercise.

With all that being said, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that they can be merged and applied to create an effective program, which is what I have challenged myself with doing and reporting on this blog. In my next post, I plan to analyze the idea of heavy weights (or load) and how that does or doesn’t conflict with the Pilates philosophy and how that principle should be defined and applied to both modalities.

The content of my blog will be back, but I am taking some time to think about the direction that I want this blog to take. Thanks for being patient during it’s construction.