Gym & Misc Irritating people/things that annoy you in the gym II

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Its horrible to say but the weight loss thing for PT's must just be the easiest money spinner, especially on women. "Yeh you totally need to loose 10kilos and I can do it just sign up for my $70 a week boot camp, and 1x$50 PT session a week". I assumed most people knew by now that weight has little correlation to fitness unless you are legit overweight/obese.

Knock on wood my gym is dead at the moment, seems like everyone is still away or no one had the NY resolution to get in shape.
 

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Its horrible to say but the weight loss thing for PT's must just be the easiest money spinner, especially on women. "Yeh you totally need to loose 10kilos and I can do it just sign up for my $70 a week boot camp, and 1x$50 PT session a week". I assumed most people knew by now that weight has little correlation to fitness unless you are legit overweight/obese.

Knock on wood my gym is dead at the moment, seems like everyone is still away or no one had the NY resolution to get in shape.
I feel bad for the girl too. She asked my missus to see if I could do a nutrition consult for her, so she could lose the 15kgs and she would pay me
She's trying to pay me to help her hit a goal her trainer told her she needs to hit. Joke.
 

Infra Ted

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Bad PT's can really f a person up and they don't even know it. The potential to adversely alter hormone levels, the potential to cause irreparable metabolic damage, not to mention the physical injuries one may incur due to the PT's incompetence. The industry just keeps pumping them out though. Walked past the AIF the other day and there were so many baby faced wannabe PT's in there it was ridiculous. No doubt a lot of them had little idea of what the profession entails.
 
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Bad PT's can really f a person up and they don't even know it. The potential to adversely alter hormone levels, the potential to cause irreparable metabolic damage, not to mention the physical injuries one may incur due to the PT's incompetence. The industry just keeps pumping them out though. Walked past the AIF the other day and there were so many baby faced wannabe PT's in there it was ridiculous. No doubt a lot of them had little idea of what the profession entails.
What I hate is most see it as an easy cash grab, there's not a lot of PTs who are passionate about it, or who actually want to help people change
 

Infra Ted

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I was at a mates house the other day and he had one of those "powerfit pro" things that you stand on and it vibrates laying in the living room. Mockingly, I asked what he was doing with one of them. He told me his girlfriend recently bought it to lose weight. Here's the clincher: apparently she paid $700 for it :eek:. I was stunned but it gets worse. I look on his fridge and he had what looked like a diet plan pinned to the fridge. I can't remember exactly but here is what was written:
Breakfast: black coffee
Lunch: steak (big)
Dinner: steak or fish

I haven't met his GF yet but it dawned on me how little the average joe (in this case jane) knows about nutrition and general wellbeing. A lot of people try and do things to better their health and are often doing just the opposite. Couple that with the bad PT's discussed above and getting fitter/stronger/healthier can often be such a daunting (and sometimes insurmountable) task for the average person.
 
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It just seems so staggering to me that there are still people that are so ill informed. Specific training and eating, sure, you need some expertise on that, but if the goal is just general health and well being, maybe a little bit of base fitness to make you better than the average couch potato surely everyone knows layoff off the fast food and soft drink and go for the odd walk/run. I'm not saying that's an easy thing for everyone to do but its not complex. Maybe its too much information availability, too many theories on the best quick fix and people get confused.

DemonTim is it worth actually speaking to said girl and just pointing out that this goal isn't hers and is therefore pretty silly as something to strive for? The worst thing here is if she doesn't hit that the PT is just going to say it was because she missed a session or didn't eat right or whatever to keep her on the hook.
 
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It just seems so staggering to me that there are still people that are so ill informed. Specific training and eating, sure, you need some expertise on that, but if the goal is just general health and well being, maybe a little bit of base fitness to make you better than the average couch potato surely everyone knows layoff off the fast food and soft drink and go for the odd walk/run. I'm not saying that's an easy thing for everyone to do but its not complex. Maybe its too much information availability, too many theories on the best quick fix and people get confused.

DemonTim is it worth actually speaking to said girl and just pointing out that this goal isn't hers and is therefore pretty silly as something to strive for? The worst thing here is if she doesn't hit that the PT is just going to say it was because she missed a session or didn't eat right or whatever to keep her on the hook.
My partner has already suggested the goal is stupid. Apparently it's all around her Bmi. That's what her trainer is using to determine "healthy"

I've offered to catch up with her to discuss it
 

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Infra Ted

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BMI was never designed to assess the relative health of an individual. It's semi useful if used as a general and broad measure of health in large groups of people. However, it doesn't take into account an individuals body composition, body fat %, etc.

For the average person I think it's a half decent gauge of where you're at but I certainly wouldn't be designing a program and goals around it.
 

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Before we keep losing our minds about the BMI, the problem is with its interpretation. It is still a *fairly* useful epidemiological marker of disease risk. Just because a few silly PTs /Dr. use it for something it's not supposed to be used for doesn't make it any less valid.

The average 180cm/90kg person walking around the street is probably not into health and fitness. And it is not practical to measure / estimate the BF% of the population. What else would you use (for its designed purpose)?
 
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Before we keep losing our minds about the BMI, the problem is with its interpretation. It is still a *fairly* useful epidemiological marker of disease risk. Just because a few silly PTs /Dr. use it for something it's not supposed to be used for doesn't make it any less valid.

The average 180cm/90kg person walking around the street is probably not into health and fitness. And it is not practical to measure / estimate the BF% of the population. What else would you use (for its designed purpose)?
What are you meant to use it for?

Were going off our heads about a PT using it to demonstrate to a client why they need to lose weight, and rightly so, its outdated and antiquated in basically any form used for an individual assessment.
 

WakeUpPies

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What are you meant to use it for?
Stuff like this:



+ Population level disease trends in relation to BMI. It's still a useful tool for estimating morbidity/mortality risk.

Were going off our heads about a PT using it to demonstrate to a client why they need to lose weight, and rightly so, its outdated and antiquated in basically any form used for an individual assessment.
Yea because it's not supposed to be used for that.
 

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If you've gone to a health care professional they should, imo, be at least capable of administering a caliber test to estimate body fat.
Failing that, hip to waist is far more accurate than BMI as an indicator of risk of CV related diseases/illnesses

"Using BMI (≥ 30 kg/m2) as a surrogate for obesity, we found that 20.8% of men and 30.7% of women were classified as obese. When using the World Health Organization gold standard definition of obesity, 50% of men and 62.1% of women were classified as obese."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2877506/#S11title

"Conclusions: Obesity assessed by waist–hip ratio is a better predictor of CVD and CHD mortality than waist circumference, which, in turn, is a better predictor than BMI. The recognition of central obesity is clinically important, as lifestyle intervention is likely to provide significant health benefits."
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2003...tor-predicting-cardiovascular-death-australia

"Abdominal obesity is increasingly recognized as a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Compared with body mass index (BMI), anthropometric measures of abdominal obesity [e.g. waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), sagittal abdominal diameter] appear to be more strongly associated with metabolic risk factors,1,2 incident CVD events, and death.37 T"
http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/7/850
 

WakeUpPies

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If you've gone to a health care professional they should, imo, be at least capable of administering a caliber test to estimate body fat.
Failing that, hip to waist is far more accurate than BMI as an indicator of risk of CV related diseases/illnesses

"Using BMI (≥ 30 kg/m2) as a surrogate for obesity, we found that 20.8% of men and 30.7% of women were classified as obese. When using the World Health Organization gold standard definition of obesity, 50% of men and 62.1% of women were classified as obese."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2877506/#S11title

"Conclusions: Obesity assessed by waist–hip ratio is a better predictor of CVD and CHD mortality than waist circumference, which, in turn, is a better predictor than BMI. The recognition of central obesity is clinically important, as lifestyle intervention is likely to provide significant health benefits."
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2003...tor-predicting-cardiovascular-death-australia

"Abdominal obesity is increasingly recognized as a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Compared with body mass index (BMI), anthropometric measures of abdominal obesity [e.g. waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), sagittal abdominal diameter] appear to be more strongly associated with metabolic risk factors,1,2 incident CVD events, and death.37 T"
http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/7/850
Definitely agree on your first point and not going to argue WHR being superior if you can do it. The problem is you have to think about practicality too when it comes to conducting big population level studies. I'd love it if we can easily collect more measures from the population but people don't always co-operate. That's when you have to use stuff like the BMI.

Edit. How many people here even know their waist and hip measurements? Now think about collecting that information from someone like my mum who gives zero shit about health and fitness lol. Again, I don't even like the BMI that much but let's not condemn it to hell because of a few silly PTs and Drs.
 
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Aeglos

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Definitely agree on your first point and not going to argue WHR being superior if you can do it. The problem is you have to think about practicality too when it comes to conducting big population level studies. I'd love it if we can easily collect more measures from the population but people don't always co-operate. That's when you have to use stuff like the BMI.
Why do we have to use BMI though?
Sure, if someone lives by themselves with no access to a mirror, tape measure or medical services they might need to use BMI. But really, where in the world will there be someone in that scenario that would have knowledge of what a BMI is? And even if they did I doubt they would have access to a set of scales, and we've already eliminated the tape measure so they have no way of measuring their BMI anyway!

Even for study purposes, most are done by researchers (such as the ones I linked to) who do have access to more accurate measuring tools
And I'd feel sorry for anyone stupid enough to do a large scale, self reported study, where their means of measurement are garbage
 
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