By Rick Callahan, CrossFit Coach at Forever Fit I LOVE/HATE The Biggest Loser. I have watched every season for as long as I can remember, and I am a giant advocate of the show. But, since I am a red-blooded American, I have the right to complain about a lot of the petty stuff that drives me up a wall. While I love the stories, the premise, and the people who appear on this show, I have a huge bone to pick with the actual execution and some of the production value gimmicks that go along with it. LOVE Teamwork - Putting athletes or clients on a team together is arguably the best way to instantly spark more effort to become physically fit from individuals. I would argue that 99.9% of people exercise harder when the outcome of the team is at stake as opposed to just themselves. No one likes to be the weak link. Teams give a sense of belonging, community, and provide a bigger reason show up every day than just fitness. HATE The Stupid Frikkin Scale - The entire shows premise is weight loss, not necessarily improving health and wellness. This is not to say the two are mutually exclusive, but it often drives home the wrong point to mentally fragile individuals. Many of the people on the show are so obese that it certainly makes perfect sense to focus on weight loss as the primary initial goal. BUT I would say tying their entire self-worth, team contribution, and general purpose to one number and its downward trend is a tough sell. I tend to believe more in measurable athletic performance and qualitative feeling better as a more worthwhile goal to strive for. The focus on the scale and the scale alone perturbs me. LOVE Accountability & Competition - Now I know I just said I hate the scale and I do, but the idea of having a check in with your personal fitness coach and your team each day or week is a great way to hold people accountable. If you know the teacher is going to check your homework, you will actually do it. If you have to present a blank sheet of paper to the class, it would be tremendously embarrassing. Thus, people try to avoid that situation as best they can. As for competition, is has been said that men will die in the name of points. This concept a great way to simply drive effort and consistency. If you are competing against other teams, individuals, or a prior version of yourself, having a benchmark to measure yourself against inspires basic human base genetic need to be the alpha male/female. It is built in to everyone. You try harder when you are going against someone else. Point blank. Anyone who says otherwise has never played a sport before. HATE The Product Placements - If I have see another cheesy product placement for sugary Clif bars or low sodium Progresso soups or 100 calorie packs, I am going to pull my hair out. Giving primetime airtime to the highest bidder sponsor with shitty off-the-shelf preservative filled foods is the worst gimmick going. Someone please make it stop. LOVE Bob Harper (and the coaches in general) - They have sort of made the switch in the last few seasons toward more of a CrossFit style training, and it is infinitely more watchable. I had so little interest in watching people spend hours and hours doing interval sprints on the treadmills and the bicycles, it had run its course. But Bob Harper (with his CF obsession) has injected new life into the training techniques often shown on the program featuring more barbells, rowing, running outside, medicine balls sleds, etc. To me, the fact that the coaches have been willing to change their ways shows that even those at the top of the fitness industry have come around to our way of doing things (and are willing to break the mold of endless cardio and starving yourself to lose weight). I only see this as a good thing moving forward for the masses. For more information on how team training can help you successfully reach your fitness goals, contact Forever Fit email Nina Fanning, Director of Forever CrossFit at nfanning@stayforeverfit. ;
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 15:54:05 +0000
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