Top Ten Fitness Trends For 2011

It's been a busy January. Unlike some internet fitness gurus I actually train people in the real world, hence this is my first blog of 2011.

Here are my predictions of what's going to be big in 2011 fitness-wise.

Note: Of the top ten trends I have put together, some are things that I like, some are things that I don't personally like but will be popular anyway, and a couple of things are probably wishful thinking on my part - things that I want to be trends. I have also put a list together of things which are already popular and will continue to grow.

Before I get to my list I want to review the list that is put together by the American College Of Sports Medicine (ACSM). Below is their list and my commentary on it

1. Educated and experienced fitness professionals. Of course they would say that, they are an accreditation organisation. I want this one to be true. Rather than having a system that at one end of the spectrum churns out sports science graduates who don't even know how to squat or deadlift, and at the other end has courses that last a day or two and then suddenly the person is a fitness professional. A profession that lets you deal with peoples bodies, the most sacred possession they have, with the minimal of experience of training. Let's hope this changes.
2. Fitness programs for older adults. This one has been around for years, and it has never really taken off or come to fruition. Here's why: older adults are not all the same! I have a female client in her 70's who can rack deadlift 60kg from just below the knees, as well as doing goblet squats and a whole range of strength exercises. I also teach a group of older people, where at least 4 of them couldn't get of a chair due to a whole host of problems they have accumulated over a lifetime. And then we have ultra runners like Jack Dennes who is in his 70's completing the badwater ultra. The obvious point is, the population over the age of 60 are not one amorphous group; some are very fit, some are injured, some have trained their whole life, some haven't.
3. Strength training. How can strength training be a trend?! It should be a fundamental component of any fitness program!
4. Children and obesity. Another one that has been banded about for years. All attempt I've seen so far to tap into this market have failed.
5. Personal Training. Of course they would say that. See my list to see a more specific trend. One to one training may well be over.
6. Core training. Whatever the core may be, there is no definitive definition. Having core training as a trend is like having leg training as a trend.
7. Exercise and weightloss. Shouldn't this be number 1, every year, forever?
8. Bootcamps. This is already happening, see my list for how it may evolve. And my previous post on bootcamps here.
9. Functional training. Whatever this is, isn't a deadlift functional?
10. Physician referrals. This is a whole other blog post, because the healthcare system is set up differently in the UK compared to the USA, I will write about this another time.

And without further ado, to my list of the top ten fitness trends in 2011.

1. Small group training/ semi private training.


I'm going to make a bold statement. Personal training doesn't work for most people, you might as well do a gym induction and write them a program to go away with, it has about the same success rate. Here's why. Most people only have one personal training sessions a week, if you're lucky they might do two. Then most of these clients don't do any training when they aren't with the trainer or train in a half-arsed way, and then most of these have a few sessions and then stop. Of course, there are some exceptions, but most people follow this route.


The cost of one to one sessions is too prohibitive for most people. That's why they only have one session a week or buy a block and then stop. Small group training makes the sessions more affordable, suddenly a person is paying a quarter of the price, so they can then attend more sessions.

But the most important reason the small group sessions work better for most people is the group dynamic. With all the small group training sessions I have been involved with, there is a sense of group camaraderie, banter between the participants and the instructor, and they are always high energy with everyone pushing everyone else to achieve more. The results from semi private training are superior in my opinion. As an instructor, they are more enjoyable to teach and you end up getting results with more clients. Everyone's a winner.

The semi private training model has been perfected and made popular by the likes of Alwyn Cosgrove and Cressey Performance and has been around for quite a few years. However, it seems commercial gyms have never really gotten a hold of it, and don't know how to deal with it. Are the trainers teaching a class or doing a personal training session they ask? It doesn't fit their payment model. This year might be the year commercial fitness facilities finally grasp the concept, and don't get left behind; as they increasingly are these days.

2. Online training

You can only train so many people one to one, and even in group training environments you can only train so many people per week. With online training, it is possible to have hundreds of clients at any one time.

This guy has 500 online personal training clients

Again, online training has been around for a while. And got a bad name in some circles, as it ended up being the domain of internet gurus who had never really trained anyone in real life. Also the technology wasn't there to begin with. Now anyone, can put together some decent quality videos and post them immediately.

Two recent products seem to have exploited this video phenomenon. Eric Cresseys Show & Go and Mike Boyles BodyByBoyle. I don't own or subscribe to either of these products. But the model is sound, why buy a book when you can get a whole video library as well, either through a one off payment or on-going monthly subscription.

Commercial gyms already have access to the market, but once again are lagging behind. If someone joins your gym and has a one off induction, (and if you're lucky they might get 4 or 5 follow up appointments) but then want to remind themselves of an exercise technique, why not create a video library online. They can still get advice and coaching from the instructors, they two concepts are not mutually exclusive. If a customer wants to buy an exercise program from you or access your virtual gym, why not let them. Sales people and owners of large chains are still enamoured by equipment and museum tours. Your product is not the room full of treadmills, it is the expertise of your staff and how they help clients achieve results.

With an online product, your market is not just the town you live in, but everyone in the world who could benefit from your knowledge. It's time the true fitness professionals took the online market back from the hucksters and keyboard warriors.

3. Crossfit style workouts & crazy gymnastics

There are a few crossfit facilities in the UK, but not that many. I expect a few more will open. But what is more likely is trainers will start to copy the model. Get yourself an olympic lifting qualification, even if you haven't lifted a weight in your life, buy some gymnastic rings, put together a random workout and bingo - you got yourself a class!

There are some good people involved in cross fit, see Kelly Starrett's mobility WOD blog for an example. And we could debate the benefits of high repetition olympic lifting all days. But more troubling, will be the trainers with a little knowledge making people do stupid things. These are probably going to be the same people doing bootcamps in the park. Don't worry if you've got the hip mobility of a wooden table and a bad back, these clean & jerks and hand stand back flips should sort you out.

Crossfit does make women hot

Conditioning workouts can be great, and crossfit does seem to produce an abundance of hot women. But appropriate movement screening and exercise modalities to suit the individual should be considered.

Or are the women of crossfit hot before they even start?

Again, commercial facilities could create their own version of this and invest in their staff training, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Who cares: hot women do crossfit, that's all we need to know

4. Bootcamps

Yes, bootcamps are already a trend. See my post here. In 2011, I think the market will become more segmented and commercial facilities will try to get in on the game about 2 years too late.

There already is some market segmentation, with bootcamps for women only like Fit For A Princess. This year there will be more of this. Rather than just military bootcamps, there will be weight loss bootcamps, kids bootcamps, sports bootcamps etc. Of course, the exercises you will do in all these bootcamps will be exactly the same! Run around the park, do some burpees, crunches, plyometric lunges and press ups.

Workout in the park: Bootcamp Peter Griffin style

Bu the people running these know they are onto a good thing. No equipment, no personal training rent, no individualised program, no building needed. Why make £40 an hour from one person, when you can get 20 people and charge them £10 each, that's £200 an hour for shouting at people in the park. Job done.

5. Corrective exercise & mobility.

With all these cross fit style workouts and bootcamp randomness there are going to be some injured people. The trainer well versed in corrective exercise and mobility will be positioned to deal with this. These days, it's rare for me to see anyone who hasn't been injured in some way. May be its just the people who get referred to me, but in  nearly every consultation I have some kind of back, shoulder or knee injury is mentioned. Almost every week someone says to me in passing 'I've got a shoulder/ knee/ back / problem what exercise should  I do for it.'. The correct answer is, it depends. I'm not going to give you some random exercises without assessing it and getting some history.

With regards to this I recommend Charlie Weingroffs DVD 'Training = Rehab Rehab = Training'. Use the functional movement screen, the selective functional movement assessment, the joint by joint approach and the core pendulum theory as your blue print. Again I can't recommend this DVD highly enough.

Even if you don't use this, have some type of systematic approach to it, I have no problem blending the work of Janda, Sahrmann, McGill, and Thomas Myers Anatomy Trains. Be the go to person.

This is one of my wishful thinking trends. I still see trainers giving people crunches and knee side to side...sigh.

6. Indian Clubs/ Power Clubs

The most popular exercise of the Victorian era is due a come back. I first saw 'bear clubs' mentioned on www.intensefitness.co.uk (the place I bought my first kettlebell from) about 6 years ago. Since then Indian clubs have been threatening to be the new kettlebell, but have never quite broken through.

Indian Clubs

There is now at least one training organisation (Premier) in the UK offering a one day course in 'power clubs', see the video clip below. I haven't done this training course, but I may well do.




The name 'Indian clubs' has always been dragging them down, if they'd called them 'hardcore MMA conditioning clubs' or 'fat loss skittles' then they'd be mainstream already.

The potential for shoulder rehab work, mobility, as well as conditioning, make these are versatile tool.

7. Yoga, breathing, meditation

Yoga makes a comeback every few years with a different emphasis. Sometimes its as a cardiovascular power workout like Ashtanga, sometimes its purely as a stretching class and sometimes its a bunch of folk in a super heated room overstretching their ligaments.

The current comeback will be based around breathing. In this ever increasing  sedentary and stressful world people are breathing in a very poor way. Recently, I've seen quite a few people breathing high up into their chest and shoulders, and they were unable to breather into the diaphragm or abdomen when I first demonstrated it, they had lost the ability to breathe properly.

The benefits of meditation and breathing correctly are well known. Many people are still reluctant to go to a class on meditation, but they will go to a yoga class, where they can get many of the same benefits. Though, I think in 2011 we may even see a rise in meditation classes. Good yoga instructors can combine breahting, stretching, mobility and quietening of the mind into one seemless narrative.

Here's a good article on the benefits of meditation.

And this is an article on breathing I like by an RKC and yoga teacher

He may be meditating peacefully now, but how's he going to get back to dry land?

8. Intermittent Fasting

The only nutrition trend to make the list. Fasting has been around since forever, but as a product it's hard to sell. You tell someone not to eat for 24 hours, they don't really need a diet plan or supplement for this. There's nothing to sell them.

In recent years, intermittent fasting has started to get an underground internet following which may well go mainstream. Brad Pilons ebook Eat Stop Eat is very good and covers some of the science, the website leangains has a good following and most recently Christian Thibaudeau on T-nation has come up with at least two fasting protocols. And rather than saying eat nothing, they've linked it to a supplement protocol, which makes it more marketable. And once somethings on t-nation its only a matter of time before someone copies and pastes it. True story: I have seen a PowerPoint presentation given by a training company to group of people as part of a Fitness Industry Association seminar that had sections in it copied and pasted from t-nation. Now the information was good, but it shows that the people running training companies don't know anymore than anyone else with an internet connection.

When intermittent fasting goes mainstream expect it to confuse the public and the mainstream media. For years, the message to eat breakfast and  eat 4-6 small a day has been a mantra in the fitness industry. Suddenly, the message will get confused, when someone starts saying, actually you don't need to eat breakfast, and may be try eating nothing for 24 hours?!

Of course, the 'eating small and often' and the 'intermittent fasting' approach both work, just to add to the confusion the public will have about this.

9. Vertical pole

Pole dancing has never gone mainstream. However, as I mentioned in the complete history of fitness part 1, at least one company is offering vertical pole classes to men and women. And if anyone at pussycat poles wants to invite me to try the class and write a review, I'm more than happy to give it a go!

All you need to do is put one of the vertical poles in a crossfit style circuits and call it a  'gymnastic core conditioning pole' and you got yourself a trend.

10. Everything will continue as before.

The biggest trend of 2011 will be inertia. Commercial chains will do what they've always done, offer their members one to one service in the sales blurb and then ignore them. Rely on an underpaid, undervalued and minimally qualified workforce. And continue to sell memberships like you're buying some double glazing off of a guy in 1983. Keep investment low, and have facilities over reliant on cardio machines and resistance machines that they have had for years. And a whole group of personal trainers with spikey hair and shaved legs will continue to say 'awesome' too much and will become bootcamp & crossfit experts as well.

If only Rollerball was going to be one of the fitness trends of 2011

Trends that will continue.

Zumba

Already popular. I didn't realise until I recently sent some staff on a zumba course, that it is a 2 day certification that anyone can do. No fitness qualification needed. They show you a few moves and then encourage you to free style and add in your own moves. Like most fitness courses, everyone passes regardless of how bad they are (remember the ACSM number 1 trend). Which means, you could go to class taught by someone who is a trained dancer and it will be great and inspiring or you could go to a class taught by someone who dances like you Nan at a wedding. Either way, expect there to be more zumba instructors than participants by the end of the year. Kerching!


Kettlebells

Popularity will grow because they work when done properly.

It goes without saying, if your instructor can't do a clean or snatch or turkish get up and doesn't know what a hip hinge is, go somewhere else.

Excuse for another crossfit woman picture

Boxing/ MMA

Either in small group format or as part of the bootcamp. Either way 'tap out' have got a lot of clothing they need to sell.

Suspension training, TRX, fitkit

Becoming part of mainstream gyms at last. Gymnastic rings are the cheaper option.

Wrap Up

Well those are my predictions, lets see if I'm right.

Top 5 most pointless fitness fads and gimmicks

These are the things that make me want to go on a palm striking spree.

When someone claims something is the next biggest thing, it usually isn't. Sometimes the thing that annoys me most is not the actual fad or piece of equipment but the hyperbole, when fitness gurus tell you how this particular invention will change everything, when patently it wont  In this post I will show you how to dissect fitness guru speak that makes no sense, and how you can create your own fitness trend.

Number 1 - The ViPR

The website for this piece of equipment says that it is the "evolution of free weights" and mimics barbells, dumbbells and kettlebells. No it doesn't.  At the recent leisure industry week in Birmingham where equipment suppliers hawk their wares, my friend said to one of the Fit Pro clones that he thought the vipr was a gimmick, at which point the guy said the whole industry is built on gimmicks - yeah it is, thanks to fools like you!

If you're thinking 'that looks like a piece of rubber with some handles cut into it' - you'd be right!

According to the Vipr website, this piece of equipment

"uses the four pillars of human movement: gravity infused, stretch-to-shorten, tri-planar and integrated."

Lucky for me it uses gravity infused movement because I normally train in the weightless environment of  outer space and don't usually have to deal with gravity (insert sarcastic laugh here).

Apparently it's also safer that normal steel free weights, because hey, dropping 20kg of rubber on my head is obviously lighter than 20kg of steel dropping on me.

Currently the vipr gurus have developed over 9,000 exercises. Which means they have developed approximately 8,990 pointless exercises. Check out the website videos where you can see people doing tri-planar movements like toes taps/ step ups on the thing or pushing it side to side.

Here's a piece of pvc pipe I covered in tape, it costs about £5 to make. I call it the Cobra, its a multi planar myofascial release device, you can buy one off me for £80

If they just said, this is a new piece of equipment that you can use in a circuit classes as one of the stations, or you can do a few exercises with this that you can't really replicate with a barbell or dumbbell, I'd be fine with that, but they always have to over hype and over price.

Do yourself a favour. Make yourself a slosh pipe, a piece of pvc pipe filled with water which makes it unstable to carry and you can adjust the weight by adding water. First time I read about this was an article by Dan John here, far as I can tell he invented it. Recently I've noticed a website that offers professional slosh pipes, this misses the point of home made equipment! The point is you're mean to get all McGyver and make the thing yourself.

Slosh Pipe - pvc pipe filled with water, make it yourself

Look out for a personal trainer using the vipr in a gym near you and making outrageous claims, then go home and make a slosh pipe to beat him with.


Number 2 - kettlebell fusion and kettleworx

I like kettlebells, I think nearly everyone could benefit form doing swings, goblet squats and turkish get ups. However, their recent popularity leaves me with a dilemma, everyone's trying to do them these days or claiming to be an expert. Back to Leisure Industry Week, about 5 years ago I went to it and there was not one kettlebell in sight, I had one at home that I'd bought from a guy he'd forged himself,  but the equipment manufacturers were selling the usual machines. Fast forward a few years and everyone is selling them.

The problem I have is people swinging around 2kg kettlebells. Hello, I've seen octogenarian women on GP referral schemes lateral raise more weight, therefore you can't do a swing with it - it's too light! Stop doing crazy exercises with it, stick with the basics. In my opinion anything less than 8kg and you shouldn't be doing kettlebells in the first place.

Now I see in Health Club Manager magazine certain enterprising individuals are creating fusion classes like Pilates and kettlebellsand yogabells. To take a phrase from Pavel (the guy who probably started the whole kettlebell thing) - the dishonour! If you're doing Pilates, do Pilates, don't try to latch onto the coat tails of the latest trend to keep your class numbers up. Please stop doing kettlebells badly, people who wouldn't normally even do a dumbbell press and haven't lifted a weight in their lives are jumping straight into snatches. Oh, and for the record I got people to do body weight 'turkish get ups' in Pilates 2 years ago, so I already invented Pilates kettlebell fusion, so there!

Here's how to create a fusion class/ concept. Combine two things, and then use some fancy words and marketing speak that doesn't make any sense. I just made these up, I hope they don't exist!


'Hotbells' - kettlebells in a hot room, combining the benefit of saunas, Bikram yoga (see below) and kettlebells. This class will literally remodel your muscle fibres and re-align your fascial trains, while burning fat at an unprecedented level.


'Great balls of fire' - take your hotbells to the next level. We heat up the kettlebells. They're literally so hot you can't hold them, as you throw them away you will develop plyometric power and rate of force development, train like the Russian Inuit special forces. As used by the national Finnish sauna team.

Okay, maybe I'm just bitter because something I like went mainstream.


Number 3 - Bikram yoga

Please note that this does not refer to yoga in general - but specifically Bikram yoga. I think yoga in general has many benefits when used in the right way and in the right context.

Bikram yoga was 'invented' by a guy in the 1970's, he had the bright idea of performing yoga in a room that is heated to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. It doesn't bother me that the founder of  it lives in Beverly Hills and has 40 Rolls Royces (according  to this article in The Times). And even the spurious health and fitness claims don't bother me that much (several Bikram yoga websites claim that it makes your body burn fat more effectively and redistributes fat in the muscle structure - hmm, so if I sit in a sauna I'll burn more fat). What mainly bothers me is a bunch of guys wearing Speedo's. Sorry, but I don't want some dude in a pair of swimming trunks doing a down dog in my face and spraying sweat all over me!

The only time you should be wearing speedo's is if you are in a swimming pool in an actual swimming competition

Okay, I lied the spurious health claims do bother me. As does standing on someones back while they are in full spinal flexion, McGill is somewhere in Canada, probably in his spinal lab shedding a tear. Bottom line, I don't think overstretching ligaments and tendons in a hot environment is a good idea.

Here's a picture of Mindi Smith to help erase the last picture from your memory. If your retinas are still burning from seeing the guy in swimming trunks, this should help with the pain

Let me repeat for those of you who skim read - this is specific to yoga done in a superheated room, not the yoga that has been practised for 1000's of years.


Number 4 - Underwater spin bike -  hyrdorider aqua bike

Cycling is a low impact exercise, but it turns out that it needed to be made even more low impact but putting the spin bike underwater. But hang on, doesn't water have more resistance than air, yes it does, so even though movement in water is harder, don't worry because the aquabike is

"Making it easier to work harder... the unique feature of the aquabike is its variable resistance facility letting you decrease the resistance of the Aquabike prior to a class beginning so you can even bring your granny along."

So it's easier but also harder, and you can decrease the resistance but the resistance can't be less than a bike on land, because air has less resistance than water, so the aqua bike is always going to be harder, right?! And bikes on land have gears and resistance levels, so you can make them harder too. Cycling is a movement without much eccentric muscle action, therefore not much muscle soreness, but don't worry with the aqua bike you can cycle backwards too. And don't forget that according to hydro fitness "water creates a massage effect", what like swimming does, or if I was in the water moving without the aqua bike?

Don't try and be all things to all people.

Number 5 - Functional training that is not functional

Somewhere along the line functional training jumped the shark. It metamorphosed into people standing on various objects filled with air while doing a rotational lunge matrix. I was hoping this stuff was dead, but only a couple of weeks ago I saw a guy trying to stand on a swiss ball, and last year in a London gym I saw a trainer with his clients standing on the bosu with a medicine ball.

Functional Clown Training

If something is functional, what is it functional for. Unless your clients spend their lives standing on bags filled with air then there is very little functional carry over. A quick summary of the research on unstable surfaces goes like this: Standing on these objects may help if you have previous history of structural instability in the ankle, sprains and so forth - if you haven't its not going to help and it may actually cause more problems in the knees and ankles. It may fire off a few stabilising muscles and make you better at balancing, but this is unlikely to carry over into everyday activities, as in life the surface is normally fixed. It is probably more applicable to upper body training, where the feet are fixed on the ground, and may help in a deload phase, for example a dumbbell press on the ball because you can't lift as much weight basically (hint: you don't need a deload phase if your aren't lifting any weight in the first place). However, for your fat loss client who can't lift any weight to begin with and who is now standing on the bosu with their ankles inverted, their knees bowing and their lumbar spin flexing it's going to do diddly squat for fat loss and probably make them more unstable. And before you say, what about sports where people are on an unstable surface, I don't see many pro surfer clients. And even then, people need to get strong first and move in the right way.

Functional should relate to the task at hand. For example, with some elderly GP referral clients, things like squats from a bench (getting out of a chair), step ups (for walking up stairs) and suitcase deadlifts (for picking up shopping) are all functional to their needs.

There is no need make clients start doing rotational lunges in the transverse plane with a flexed spine, when probably 90% of clients when I first see them do a squat completely with their knees and lower back rounding and have no hip hinge ability. It's also surprising how many people can't do a lunge in the sagittal plane (back and forward to you and me, fitness gurus like using terms like this with their clients to look impressive) to begin with. And please don't tell me we have to train the back to lift while rounded and twisting because that's what happens in everyday life. It happens because of poor mobility, why groove in poor movement patterns, why not get people to move right in the first place, and minimise dangerous loading in joints and ligaments and maximise the spine sparing effect. Core pendulum theory states that, yes, the back should be able to fully extend and flex, but ideally we want it resting in the middle, in a state of equilibrium. We know from McGills work that continuously flexing and extending and twisting the back with low load will cause disc problems. It's the repetition that causes the problems.

The tools aren't the problem, it's how you use them. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but please don't try and use that hammer if you haven't got a screw driver, get the right tools. I can think of one good exercise on the bosu, so for me it's not worth spending £70 for the one exercise I'm going to do with it, I can find something else to do the job. And to the guy on PTonthenet who says the bosu is "not just a product, it's a philosophy", err no! It's a tool, it's half a blue ball filled with air.

In short, most of our clients want to lose fat, need to get strong, be fit for everyday tasks and gets some additional muscle mass; do all of this before you start doing crazy gimmicks because you can't think of anything else to do, because you think it makes you look cool and you're worried your clients going to get bored..

Numpty - or £50 per hour - you decide

A few things that didn't make the list


The bodyblade and power plate (vibration training) didn't quite make the list. The work of Charlie Weingroff has helped convince me of the benefits of vibrational training for certain injured populations. However, this doesn't mean you should have rows of them in health clubs with otherwise healthy individuals standing on them when they should really be focusing on weight loss and strength. You are not going to vibrate your way to a size 8 dress size.

A note on bodypump - why it didn't make the list.

A few people wanted me to put bodypump on the list. However, I don't have too much of a problem with bodypump. Anything that gets women and some men to lift weights is a good thing. I might have a few misgivings about the exercise technique they use on some of the movements, but at least they are lifting weights. I have as many misgivings about some peoples deadlift and squat technique in the gym. And using high repetition weights all the time is not the way to go, but then again neither is the standard 5 day body part split countless gym rats follow with no apparent leg day.

The problem with any system is when people don't progress, if you are lifting the same weights as you were lifting 5 years ago, you haven't progressed, if you're body shape is the same, you haven't progressed. If you only do high repetitions or low repetitions you need to do the opposite every so often.

So with that in mind, bodypump can be used as a training tool as long as its not the only thing you do. You can use it as a high repetition day, or as a change of pace if you normally do explosive movements. You can even see it as more of a glycogen depletion type workout (to steal someone elses phrase) to aid with fat loss. If you want to hit your legs and you don't normally do legs, give it a go. Overall, more women lifting barbells is a good thing. If it introduces them to free weights that's good, and we can iron out any technique differences when they start lifting heavier in the gym.

Top 5 greatest fitness things

Ok, I've covered the worst things, here are the top 5 things you should be using

1. Body weight (ok, a cop out, but your body was designed to run, jump and move, body weight exercises can be some of the most effective
2. Barbells
3. Dumbbells
4. Power rack
5. Kettlebells
6. Ab wheel

Ok, that's 6 things, but i don't count bodyweight as equipment. Basically if you had a gym with only these things in, or trained at home with only have of these things you would get results. It doesn't need to be complicated or expensive. Choose things that have been proven to work over and over again. I need to go and lift some weights now.