Fitness for Consideration: Part 1

I would like to offer a small review of all the fitness sources I read and would possibly consider for recommendation to others. Said sources include Men's Health and Shaun T' Insanity.

Men's Health

When you read enough fitness articles, every article starts sounding the same. Unfortunately when you read enough Men's Health articles, every Men's Health article sounds the same. Being a magazine publisher as well, they have the agenda of appealing to the masses. And I really dislike agendas. Every article has become just another reincarnation of a fad exercise or diet. What foods to avoid? The new fruit that'll help you lose fat? Get bigger biceps, back, and chests! All their exercise routines blend into one conglomerate of complicated and confusing movements. They've picked up on the HIIT trend, you know, the one where short intense workouts blast away fat. And all their exercises are targeted to work your core, biceps, hamstring, chest, and back all at the same time!

I think you can really do away with all this complexity. And as I said, they're just appealing for the masses looking for that new and cool exercise that'll completely revolutionize their lives.

The most annoying (and unfortunately interesting) thing about it is, they throw in absurd amounts of statistics in these too, mentioning studies and research. I would offer some examples, but I blocked the site because of how addictive the numbers are despite knowing all the numbers are generalizations that can't be directly applicable to anything I do. They tend to introduce biases in my life (exercise and food) that I really don't want to see.

Takeaway: My advice is to avoid making fitness complicated. Don't go after fads and statistics you don't understand. Eat healthy (don't eat out often), exercise (don't follow exercise fads though), and don't stress out on health. Reading magazines and websites based on magazines is the wrong way to do all of this. So avoid Men's Health (almost like the plague).

Shaun T's Insanity

After reading about and trying different types of exercise routines, I think I have a good sense of what Beach Body workouts are after. But I'll keep my reviews brief.

Insanity is for losing weight. There's no other way to say it. The focus of Insanity is mostly cardio and in an attempt to keep the program gender-neutral, they have neglected real strength training for guys. I did this during my goal to get six-pack abs, where I just needed to lose weight/fat. I don't know how much fat I lost in comparison to total weight loss, but there's nothing that'll help you gain muscle here.

I didn't follow Insanity 100%. I mixed in my own weight-lifting in here and only picked exercises from the first 2 weeks of Insanity, which I repeated a few times. Maybe there was something I missed later on? Not really. I still looked through the videos. Just more cardio. More intensity.

One of my friends did it. He's a guy. He lost weight but now his arms are as skinny as a girl's. Very unfortunate side-effect considering the only exercise he used to do before was bicep curls.

Takeaway: On the bright side, no equipment needed. On the downside, you'll apparently really screw up your knees (one friend reported ACL surgeries being involved and multiple reported knee problems). Do Insanity if you're young, eager, broke in terms of gym equipment, and already somewhat fit to begin with.