The current trend for fast fitness sounds great. You burn calories. You burn fat. You become a cardiovascular superhero. But I’ve been doing it for 18 months and, as I discovered last week, I’ve gone too far. I’ve burnt more calories than I’ve consumed. I’ve lost 10% of me — just gone, as if by magic — and a large chunk of that appears to be muscle. I have the physique of a malnourished long-distance runner.
What’s left of me needs to slow down. Slow food is better than fast food. Slow fitness is better than killing yourself on a treadmill.
This week, I stood outside a gym and asked anyone in Lycra what they thought about building muscle. To a man, the men were all for it. To a woman, the women were all against it. Apparently, you ladies don’t want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is why many classes focus on cardio.
the long haul
The increase in the rate at which the body burns calories for those who do strength training twice a week (Maastricht University 2008)
Step forward, Tom Mans, a former strength-and-conditioning coach at Bath Rugby, now a personal trainer. Tom is sceptical about the obsession with intensive gym classes.
“If you’re close to vomiting in a session, you’re doing something wrong,” he says. “Bodybuilding became unfashionable about 10 years ago. Now it’s all about high-speed training, but I think we’re coming full circle. Weight training should be the basis of anyone’s fitness routine.”
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To the ladies, Tom points out that you won’t turn into Arnie overnight. “First of all, men have seven times as much testosterone [the muscle-building hormone] as women. Second, it takes months and years to look like a bodybuilder. You wouldn’t do a few weeks of sprint training and expect to run as fast as Usain Bolt.”
Resistance training — weights, cables, kettlebells, body-weight exercises, all that hideous malarkey — builds muscle. Muscle burns more calories than fat — even when you’re lying on a sofa eating cake. Ergo, the more muscle you have, the more fat you lose. It also improves bone density. All those skinny gym bunnies I’ve been trying to keep up with this year are going to have osteoporosis when they get older. You don’t want osteoporosis, do you? No. Good.
So, to slow fitness. While Tom is busy working out the rebuilding of me, let’s finish this week with an example. In many cardio classes, there are press-ups. The goal is to do as many as you can in, say, 45 seconds while an instructor yells fridge-magnet encouragement at you. “No one ever drowned in sweat.” “Train insane or remain the same.” It is, says Tom, far better to do fewer slower. The aim is not to get your heart squirting through your ribcage, but to get your biceps burning. Burning is good. Muscles are good. Fast is overrated.
tommans.com
Next week: the diet that builds muscle to burn fat (clue — eggs)
