Ok – I admit it. I watch Oprah.

I’m an ex-football player, until recently drove a big pick-up truck, I like B level martial arts flicks and yes, I occasionally watch Oprah.

I didn’t really set out to, but my girlfriend records it and one thing led to another and yadda yadda yadda, I’m now watching it from time to time on my own.

And for the most part, I like it.

There I said it. It’s out there and there’s no taking it back.

However, I have to say, there was one show awhile back where I just about threw the remote through the tv.

The entire hour was about Gwyneth Paltrow and her personal battle with weight, postnatal depression and getting healthy again.

Ok – sounds good. Here’s a high profile person who obviously has access to the best of everything, she’s with the daytime Queen of Living Your Best Life, so this should be good, right?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ok – before I launch into the tirade, here’s my caveat. I’m all for people losing weight, being more active and generally getting healthy. After all, that’s what I do for people day in and day out. If you are that person that thinks parking further away from the food fair allows you an extra plate, well you’re mistaken, but at least you are doing something and trying to make changes. With a population as overweight as it is, usually doing something is better than nothing. (But seriously, you have to be REALLY overweight before walking all the way across the WalMart parking lot will help).

But back to the point at hand. Keep in mind that I’m totally indifferent to Gwyneth Paltrow – she neither annoys me nor excites me, much to the chagrin of my brother-in-law who says she’s top 5 material. I just don’t get it but hey, it’s his misguided choice.

A little perspective…Gwyneth Paltrow is 5’9” and has always been thin. Ladies, don’t shoot the messenger, I just report the stuff.

After her second pregnancy, she couldn’t lose the weight as easily this time around. Quoting from her Oprah interview, “I could not get off these 20 extra pounds,” she says. “I don’t know if something changed. I don’t know if it was being older and being in my 30s instead of my 20s. … I [was] 34 when I had him, and I just couldn’t get it off. It was kind of demoralizing.”

So Gwyneth made an almost-smart choice. She enlisted the help of a ‘professional’ (and I could not be using the term more loosely) to aid in her achieving the fat loss.

Enter Tracy Anderson. Celebrity trainer and the future demise of health and fitness.

Tracy is a 5’0” former dancer that has developed a ‘system’ of training that ranges from zero resistance (waving your arms back and forth), to pulling thin stretchy bands, to dancey aerobics, and lifting little pink dumbbells because according to her, “no woman should lift more than 3 lbs.”

Now hopefully most of you reading this just realized that she lost all credibility by saying that. For those of you that don’t get it, here’s why…

Common sense.

Common sense should be the basis of all training programs. At Peak Fitness Management, we train people for the sport of life, which means that whatever your physical training program is, it should not only be sculpting the body you want but it should be preparing your body for the demands of daily life.

Got a kid to pick up? Is your kid more than 3 lbs? Then you should be training so that when you do that, you don’t hurt your shoulder, neck, back etc.

How about groceries? A briefcase? Hell, I have jackets that weigh more than that.

You know what lifting 3 lbs is good for? It makes you good AT LIFTING 3 LBS!

In the workout video where it shows the two of them going through the routine, Gwyneth actually comments on her son being 30 lbs and how she carries him all day.

Knock, knock

Who’s there?

It’s Common Sense.

Sorry, we’re not in right now, please come back later.

Look, even if you think you don’t have a super active life and you are more of a 9 to 5’er, you don’t play sports etc, you need to have a body that supports all those little things that come up that you don’t think about. And if you are active, for the love of god, make sure you are preparing yourself for the demands of whatever activity you intend to do.

But what else is wrong with this program?

They exercise in a heated room. Ok for some, bad for others.

They train 6 days a week, two hours a day.

So what’s wrong with this picture? In 12 hours of training per week, Gwyneth has sculpted an ok body. In fact, for someone that is tall and naturally thin, I’m going to go ahead and give her the label of mediocre. Again, keep in mind that she is naturally thin…If she had always struggled with real weight issues and lost 50 lbs to look the way she does now, I’d be championing her efforts.

But I’m not.

Part of that reason is because she also spent a good deal of her Oprah interview talking about how the demands of her career limit her time with the kids so she’s choosing smaller roles.

“While shooting a film in New York City, Gwyneth says she came home every night thinking about what she’d missed. “I left the house while my kids were asleep, and I came home and my kids were asleep,” she says. “I walked into their room, and I just cried. I mean, it was pathetic. I was like, ‘What am I doing? I missed the whole day. I don’t know what they said today. I don’t know what they ate. I don’t know where they went.’ I just felt terrible.”
(Oprah.com)

Gwyneth, if you are listening, “YOU SPEND 12 HOURS PER WEEK IN A GYM AND PRODUCED AN AVERAGE BODY. TRAIN PROPERLY FOR HALF THE TIME AND SPEND MORE TIME WITH YOUR KIDS”.

Trust me. Your butt will be fine. You’ll keep your depression at bay and you’ll have another 6 hours to spend with your kids.

And this is one of the MANY lessons to takeaway from this latest episode of When Good People Do Dumb Fitness.

Ninety percent of the people I have trained over the years have a life filled with competing priorities: work, spouses, kids, social obligations, squeezing some time in for themselves, etc. Not once have I ever told a client they need to work out for 12 hours per week.

It’s not realistic. You won’t maintain it and it’s probably going to overtrain you before you know it.

Keep your workouts brief and intense. Get in, get it done, get out. You don’t live in the gym, you go to the gym to help prepare your body to live the life you want.

But truly, the biggest thing that irks me about this is that people are going to see fit celebs (Anderson now trains Madonna) and they will think ‘if it works for them…’

But what women (and men) need to remember is that they can’t follow Hollywood diets and workouts. It’s like the 16 year old boy who buys Muscle and Fiction hoping to look like the guy on the cover.

Aside from the celeb’s exercise and lack of eating, they have doctors who will prescribe them pills to make them thinner, can check into hospitals to be fed by a tube, have daily massage, botox, plastic surgery, personal assistants, personal chefs, and the best dressers on the planet.

And when that doesn’t work, they have the best airbrushers on the planet too.

A good friend told me once, believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see. I would say if that person is from Hollywood, maybe 10% of what you see is more accurate.

So congratulations to Tracy Anderson. For bringing back all of the myths about women’s fitness, you are the first entry in my KYA (kick your ass) list.

And Gwyneth, I’m putting you on notice.

Next week I’m going to bring you a bit of science as to why this program is a waste of time and a whole ‘nother heaping of common sense fitness.

JUST WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE THE EATING PROGRAM THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS. YOU WON’T BELIEVE IT!

Yours in health,

Cord