Explaining things to people with no exercise intuition - Page 2

Some people just have poor coordination/athletic skills. I have a friend that took salsa dance lessions and she is by far the worst dancer I have ever seen. I also took martial arts with one of the stiffest people I've ever met. However, they both had a lot of fun doing those things. Some people just like the experience or exercise and their skill is never going to be high, I don't really see anything particularly wrong with that as long as they are enjoying themsevles or staying healthy.

^+1

As a caveat, I quit boxing before the end of the first year because it became apparent to me that I was not up to the par of the gym. I had a load of fun there, tho.

Yeah, personal enjoyment and all is fine. But that doesn't make it any less painful for me when I try to teach them how to do something.

I think the real issue here is that modern trend of "localized" exercise - people think in terms of "okay, I'm going to do arm workouts" or "I'm going to work my abs"; that's fine, but people really need to *use* their body to develop kinesthetic awareness, ie. "exercise intuition".

Just getting out there and moving and doing things - hiking, tackling someone on a rugby field, some free-hand climbing to see a good view, mountain biking, trail running - allows someone to learn how all their parts work together.

One thing active and athletic people have that others lack is detailed physical self-knowledge: I know exactly how flexible I am, which leg is more flexible than the other one, I know that my right ankle has more rotational flexibility than my left one, I know that my left elbow hurts if I do a tricep curl, and on and on... active people learn how to move to compensate for shortcomings and enhance strengths - that's what "grace" is.

When friends of mine decide they want to start a fitness regimen, the first thing I recommend to them is to start taking a 30 minute walk every morning - it introduces the idea of daily discipline, it's pleasant, and it's healthy - and then do a regimen of stretching for 10-15 minutes. Stretching (or it's fancy cousin, yoga) is a great way to introduce someone to body awareness. If the keep that up, and maybe add in "fun" things like hiking or cycling trails, THEN they're probably ready to start thinking about a structured fitness plan.

DH

A lot of the issue is that people are A) afraid to try anything new B) lazy C) take magazine or crappy internet snippets at face value. People try doing a squat (etc), it's hard, they read some idiot in a magazine saying it'll destroy your knees, and they never think about it further. A year later they wonder why their legs aren't developing or they can't dunk a basketball or whatever. This sort of crap is how you have people all doing 3x12 machine circuit training and never making any progress.

I find an interesting contrast between my wife and myself. I've always been fairly adept athletically, played a bunch of sports as a kid, ran around like a maniac in the woods, swam, climbed trees, rode bikes all that jazz. I did varsity athletics in college, taught myself to weight lift in my 20s, trained MMA for awhile. My wife, on the other hand, basically didn't do anything other than some structured dance classes and karate. Her parents were too busy and too paranoid to just let her go run around. Now she just doesn't have the coordination to go ramble around in the woods, doesn't know how to ride a bike, swims poorly. And it's very hard to learn those things in your mid-20s.

The whole class thing is interesting. Everybody feels like they need to take classes for everything. Parents will put their kids into ten different classes and not let them just ran around and DO stuff.

youve been here seven posts and you are already my new favorite member...

completely agree.

My pet hate on this board is this - dudes show up asking for advice so that they can say that they have asked for advice - but here are the 900 reasons why I can't do it...

I've been around various fitness forums, so it's not my first time at the rodeo. Basically taught myself how to lift online, put on 40 lbs in two years, strength went way up and body fat went down, and consider myself fairly well versed. I made a lot of the common mistakes, and have seen plenty of other people make all the others. People are pretty consistent, really.


Worse are the people that say they're going to follow all your advise, then go away and come back six months later asking for more, and it turns out they basically ignored everything and did their own thing. Surprise, it didn't work.

On the other hand, your interweb fitness experts frequently go into WAY too much detail for the average beginner and just blow their minds. People start talking about pretty esoteric dieting details and advanced workout techniques, when really most beginners just need to get to the gym with a competent basic routine and bust their ass and eat decently for a few months, THEN come back looking for more advice.