Fitness Myth Busting: Your Skinny Friend May Not Be Healthier Than You

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to there is a Method to the Madness.
My name is Rob Maxwell and I'man exercise physiologist and
personal trainer.
I am the owner of Maxwell'sFitness Programs and I've been
in business since 1994.
The purpose of this podcast isto get to the real deal of what
really works and, mostimportantly, why things work.

(00:21):
Hence the name.
There is a method to themadness.
Before I get to today's show, Iwant to thank Jonathan and Lynn
Gildan of the Gildan Group atRealty Pros.
They are committed to providingthe highest level of customer
service in home sales.
Why don't you give them a shoutand figure out what your home
is worth?
386-451-2412.

(00:44):
I have a question for you Areyou fit?
Are you physically fit, and ifso, how?
How are you physically fit?
Why are you physically fit?
Are there areas you are notphysically fit?

(01:06):
Let's talk just a little bitabout that today.
So what do you think of whenyou think of physically fit?
The most common thing peoplethink of is thin, skinny.
I mean, that's great.
Thin is.
I don't know if skinny is, butsure that's a component to

(01:29):
physical fitness.
That component is called bodycomposition.
But that's just one area offitness.
It's an important one, but sois flexibility, so is muscular
strength, so is muscularendurance and so is
cardiorespiratory fitness.

(01:50):
They all make up what arecalled the five health
components to physical fitness,and they are all equally
important.
I mean, maybe we can put somemore weight on cardiovascular,
because, yes, you have to have astrong heart for sure.
Body composition, because beingobese can lead to a lot of

(02:12):
different age-related andfitness-related and other types
of chronic diseases.
I shouldn't say age-related,that's really not true, but
fitness-related chronic diseases.
Muscular strength, because itleads to hypertrophy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean they're all importantand you know, maybe you are

(02:33):
going to rank some of themhigher than others, but I can
tell you that they're allimportant.
By the end of this podcast, Iwant you to at least change how
you view fitness or maybe you'vealready seen it for what it is,
that fitness is a balance ofall of those components.

(02:53):
But I don't want you to thinkof just being thin as fit.
Times are a changing, as theysay, and that is a good thing.
So we're starting to see moreand more people understanding
that.
I mean, if we go back to the1970s, probably before that,

(03:18):
probably before that, but maybeup into the 70s and 80s I mean
all, I should say, the magazinesand all of the movie stars and
all that.
You know that was just aboutbeing thin and everybody thought
of fitness as being thin, beingskinny.
I mean, nowadays there's enoughgood information out there that
shows that that is just notalways true.

(03:41):
It's not necessarily true.
So times are changing, but Iwill say they do need to change
a little bit more, because I dothink that out of the five you
know, people would still putbody composition as like two and
a half of them, and theneverything else adding up to the
middle, which just isn't true.

(04:02):
I mean, they're all important,so let me repeat them again.
We got body composition, andbody composition is the
difference between fat mass andlean mass, so it's not just
weight.
I mean weight doesn't matter awhole lot.
I mean, I know the BMI, whichis body mass index a lot of

(04:23):
physicians use, but you know thegood ones will tell you that
there's a lot more to the storythan that as well, because BMI
is nothing more than height andweight into an equation.
It's yeah, I don't even want tosay it's good, it's okay, but
like body composition means alot more.
Like, what are those pounds onyour body.

(04:44):
Are you mostly muscle or areyou mostly fat?
Well, that's body composition.
We want mostly muscle.
That's what body composition is.
That would be ideal to be moremuscle than fat, of course.
Then there's cardiorespiratoryfitness, and that is the ability
for your heart and lungs toproduce oxygen at the rate at

(05:08):
which you need it.
Produce oxygen at the rate atwhich you need it, so the more
oxygen that can be produced whenyou need it is the mark of a
good cardiorespiratory system.
That is very important.
Let's say you're thin but youdon't exercise, and then all of
a sudden you're climbing thestairs, you're out of breath.
Well, you're not fit, you don'thave a fit cardiorespiratory

(05:32):
system.
And I've known plenty of people, due to genetics and other
lifestyle things, that aren'tnecessarily thin to the eye but,
man, their cardiovascularsystem is super fit.
So you cannot judge a book byits cover and you can't say,
well, they're not as good asthat person who's thin over

(05:54):
there.
I mean, that is just not true.
All right, remember the goal ofthis podcast.
You will leave it feeling, oran understanding that all of
them are equal.
And what do you need to work on?
Then?
We have muscular strength Now,in the pure definition of it, it
it's the ability to move a loadone time, like that's the pure

(06:16):
definition.
But really I think we know whatstrength is it's the ability to
do work.
It's the ability of yourmuscles to move things, and that
is very, very important.
Here's another example we seequite often that's not correct.
People will see runners outrunning and that is awesome, and

(06:36):
they might be thin and they'rerunning and they look like
they're running at a good clipfrom what you can see.
So your automatic assumption isthey're fit.
Well, yeah, probably at leasttwo out of the five categories.
They might be, and they mightbe five out of five.
But what I'm trying to get youto understand is we don't know
that just based on appearance.

(06:56):
But what if they can't do asingle push-up?
What if they get down onto thefloor to attempt to stretch and
they have trouble getting offthe floor because of their
mobility, their flexibility ortheir strength?
What if everything creaks whenthey get out of a chair?
They just don't have thestrength and mobility.
Well, they're not fit, and theproblem with that is that's very

(07:19):
precarious because eventuallythey're not going to be able to
run if they don't take care ofthat skeleton.
If they don't make theirmuscles and joints stronger,
they're not going to be able todo what they like to do.
So they're only fit to anextent, all right.

(07:39):
Then we have muscular endurance.
It's very similar to muscularstrength.
It is very hard to divide thesetwo, so oftentimes we in my
industry just call it muscularfitness.
But the difference is, withmuscular endurance it's the
ability to do a load over andover again.
Do your muscles ache when youstand in line?

(08:02):
That's muscular endurance.
Do you go to a theme park andnot only are you fatigued
generally speaking, systemicallyspeaking, but your leg muscles
are fatigued because you've beenwalking around all day.
That's muscular endurance.
Do you cut the grass with agood push mower, which I know?
I have some clients that stilldo, and I do, by the way.

(08:24):
I think it's great exercise.
But are your forearms screamingat you by the end of mowing?
That's muscular endurance.
In the gym, like that would betested with how many pull-ups
you can do, that would also bestrength, how many push-ups you
can do.
So, as you see, strength andendurance are closely related to
each other.

(08:44):
But we have to have that I mean, think your activities, a daily
living.
If your legs get tired justfrom standing around or just
walking back and forth goingshopping, you're not fit.
So that's very important towork on.
And then, finally, our fifthhealth component is flexibility,

(09:06):
and flexibility basically isthe ability to move a joint
through a pain-free full rangeof motion.
Now that one is one that I'mcurrently working on making a
priority, because it hasn't beena priority.
I've always been reasonablyflexible and, as I say to

(09:31):
clients sometimes I have topoint out myself I'll say that
good or average is the enemy ofgood or great, because if I'm
decent, I'm not going to work atit.
That's not good, because Iwasn't great by any means.
Out of all five, it wasprobably the least of my
priorities, and you know we reapwhat we sow.

(09:53):
So the least of my fitnesswould be flexibility as well,
and I've noticed it more andmore.
I can look at pictures of merunning and I'm not lifting my
feet and that has a lot to dowith tight quads not recovering
as good.
So, and plus just testing it,just doing different flexibility
exercises and understandingthat I've lost some flexibility.

(10:15):
So I've made it a prioritybecause we want our joints to
move crisply, I believe.
Right, that gets back to gettingout of the chair example I used
.
Part of that is strength andpart of that is flexibility.
Now we don't have to be eliteat any of these to be fit.

(10:37):
We just have to be fit, we justhave to be competent, we just
have to be good.
And it is far more important tobe generally fit all the way
around than be elite at one ortwo of them only, to the demise
of the others.
I promise you that it is moreimportant.

(10:58):
You know, the military hasalways done a good job with that
.
They want fit soldiers, right?
I mean, I think you couldimagine why, but they want fit
soldiers.
They've always been good atstressing cardio because they
run, they march, they walk, theyruck.

(11:18):
They focus on strength by doinga lot of different calisthenic
type exercises strength andendurance by doing push-ups and
squats and pull-ups and sit-upsand those types of things and
the modern day grouping thatthey'll have in there.
There also is some strengthtraining, but they do a lot of

(11:40):
calisthenic type bodyweightexercises.
They do a lot of flexibility,stretching after they work out
and things, and that's part oftheir testing.
That they do and they'reexpected to maintain a
reasonable, not too skinny,weight.
It's part of how they get likedifferent points through boot

(12:01):
camp and things like that,different types of tests they do
.
If you go to the academies likeWest Point or Naval Academy, it
is all part of it and theybalance it out really, really
well.
My goal is that you leave thisthinking okay, so I need to work
on a balanced fitness approach.
I can't just go to the gym andlift weights.

(12:24):
I mean, that's what a lot ofpeople do.
That's great.
I think it's a good start.
Shoot, I did that probablythrough the majority of my 20s,
started doing cardio in my 30s.
Some people just run and theythink, oh, I'm fit and they
don't go to the gym.
No, we have to do all of it.
Flexibility, honestly, eventhough it's a priority, is the
easiest to get in.

(12:45):
I mean, if we just stretch alittle bit after our workouts
and during our workouts, likethat's what we'll have our
clients do a stretch here andthere is all it takes.
But we still have to do it andattempt to do it correctly.
Okay, so hit me up.
Let me know what part offitness do you need to work on?

(13:07):
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