Are You in a Fitness Health Cult? Part 1 of 2
Posted by BEAST Sports on
Within the fitness and health industry there are plenty of different groups, crews, clans, cliques, and whatever else you want to call them. It's just like high school, where you have the popular kids, the geeks, the bullys, and so on. These aren't always a bad thing, as it gives you a social group that has similar interests and therefore can help you in many aspects of life. However, when it comes to the fitness industry here is the problem I have:
I'm definitely not trying to pick a fight with any "gangs" but my purpose is to have people take a step back and look at it from an outside point of view. It may change your mind, or it may not.
Lets start with the CrossFit crowd. Definitely not a crew I'd wanna start a fight with as they're getting bigger and bigger by the day. They even have tons of females involved and they are never ones I like to argue with. Yet, here is my beef! Crossfit is NOT thee only way to workout and get fit. It's just not. Bottom line. Yes, X-fit does incorporate great compound lifts, it does have a good "community feel" to it, and yes, it can provide you with awesome results depending on your goals. My favorite thing about Crossfit as a whole is that for some rhyme or reason it got females who would never touch weights before, into using them. So yes, it's cool and trendy, and is a good workout but the way some of these close-knit X-Fitters look at outside training techniques blow me away as in many, including my opinion there are more optimal ways to build muscle and train.
Next on my hit list would be the Paleo community. I actually love the idea because of the fact that it encourages eating whole and natural foods. With me being so into Nutrition, i love it and believe for overall health and wellbeing, you can't beat eating from the least processed sources available! However, is it the only way to eat and be healthy? No, probably not. Are some people gonna do better eating a different way? Absolutely. My "grass-fed" beef with the hardcore Paleo gang is that they sometimes look at other ways of eating as awful, and have this thing about rubbing in what they eat on a daily basis as an unintentional/intentional way of switching people over to their side.
I could go on and on, but I'm gonna end it here and let you think about some other health cults until next Monday when i'll go over a few more.
Until then, train and eat optimally...whichever way that may be for you.
Stephen Obar (@OBARmuscle) is a writer for various fitness publications, a personal trainer, diet coach and a cancer survivor. Stephen currently spends his time hitting the weights as well as continuing to soak up all he can on the newest and latest bodybuilding and nutrition studies and news. When he is 'relaxing', you can find him in the kitchen, and overseeing his little brother's nutrition and training as he is a sponsored Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athlete.