The real answer to The Big Question isn’t that simple. The world’s elite performers spend years working at specific, focused practice that isn’t all that fun. They’re consistent with their training and have a work ethic that keeps them going when others settle for less. They develop habits for self-talk and emotional control to keep them focused at critical moments. In athletics, their success is in part tied into nutrition, supplementation, general physical preparation, recovery, and the ugly duckling no one wants to talk about, luck.

The world’s great stars are all, to a certain degree, lucky. For one, they had the luck of drawing the parents they did. Talent is often overrated, but in sports where limb lengths, explosiveness, and height can all play significant roles in success, genetics can’t be overlooked.

The parental luck-of-the-draw can also play out in the support and encouragement they provide during the star’s formative years. In champions’ autobiographies, you read about chance meetings with mentors and friends who were critical to their development.

Their demographics and geography play a part: Wayne Gretzky would not have been a world-champion hockey player if he’d grown up in the Mojave. At the very least, stars have the good fortune of not being unlucky in tragic ways: born in a war-torn country, hit by a car, suffering a fluke injury at a critical moment, or being duty-bound to leave their passion to take care of a sick family member before they hit their stride.

Many experts overcome incredible misfortune to earn their accolades. I’m not trying to downplay their achievements, but instead outlining how complex The Big Question really is. Imagine if someone came up and asked you: “What made you what you are today?” Could you fit it into a soundbite? An interview? Could you explain it at all?

Star athletes can rarely explain the big picture of their success, and it’s unfair to expect them to. This may seem counterintuitive, but executing a physical skill and understanding it are two completely different things, and most of the world’s best athletes don’t have the time to carefully evaluate, study, and question the physiology and psychology of their development while they’re busy becoming the greatest in the world at their sport.

Layer on top of that all the things that lead to wins that are outside the athlete’s control: team dynamics, coaches, game schedules, opponents getting banned for drug use, deflated footballs, and we come to the conclusion that a star athlete is probably no more qualified to answer The Big Question than you would be.

The Celebrity Halo

If we accept that The Big Question is difficult to answer, a complex stew of talent, practice, effort, and luck, why do we hang on celebrities’ every word? More importantly, why do we fall into the trap of associating our own ideas with the newest, hottest celebrity as though that star knows the answer?

Let’s pick on Tom Brady for a second. I choose him not because he’s particularly bad about it, but because he’s the most recent famous example. After the Super Bowl, a host of websites latched onto his statements about his diet to explain his success in the NFL at the ripe old age of 39. It’s very strict, rejecting any foods he considers inflammatory or bloating, and is based on extensive rules for timing and quality.

• CrossFit’s Facebook page shared it because Tom avoids sugar and white flour.
• Some in the paleo world shared an article about his diet because Brady emphasizes food quality extensively, and his diet has “plenty of all-natural and whole foods and exclud[es] foods like tomatoes and peppers”
• Type “Tom Brady Fitness” into a search engine and you’ll find scores of others shouting: “See? I told you so!”

What makes us think that Tom Brady’s diet is the key to his success? Maybe it is. Maybe it’s his sleep hygiene routine. Maybe it’s the intense focus and determination he puts into his training and preparation. Maybe it was an off-loading of responsibilities to hired staff like his personal chef and soft tissue guru. Maybe it involved the quality of his coaching or smarter plays on the field. Maybe it has to do with the team dynamic of the Patriots? Maybe it’s all of these things, maybe it’s none. Most likely, it’s a little bit of all of it, a few things I didn’t mention, and a splash of luck.

If we assume that Tom Brady is the expert on what made him successful, rather than cherry pick which intervention “did the trick,” why not follow all of his advice?

The Big Question Trap

Business Insider says what everyone who shares Tom Brady’s training tips is thinking:

“He isn’t built like a Greek God. But his longevity and health can’t be argued with, so clearly Brady is onto something.”

By latching onto every word Tom Brady says when it matches our own biases, we grant him credibility. After all, he’s the expert.

But is he? If that’s the case, then perhaps CrossFitters should give up on lifting heavy weights because they teach our muscles to “stay contracted” and cause imbalances and inhibitions that interfere with ‘muscle pliability.’ Pliable muscles are apparently “softer, longer, and more resilient,” and “promote the circulation of blood and lymph to promote healing.” Muscles can be made pliable by TB12 body coaches through “proprietary manual tissue work techniques” and lifestyle change. This is, at best, imprecise and on shaky scientific ground, but clearly he must be onto something.

Brady’s diet also includes grains, so perhaps the paleo crowd needs to reevaluate their idea of what constitutes a healthy diet. After all, he must be onto something, and if he was eating something inflammatory or counter to his evolutionary heritage, he wouldn’t be the best in the world, would he?

Brady is a business partner with Alex Guerrero, who was penalized in 2005 for falsely representing his supplement, Supreme Greens, as a cancer cure. In 2015, Guerrero was given notice for false advertising again after marketing a concussion recovery product called “Neurosafe.” The FTC found he “did not have any studies regarding the actual NeuroSafe product and provided no competent and reliable scientific evidence claiming that the supplement ‘Neurosafe’ would help in concussion recovery.” Tom Brady directly advertised for Neurosafe, and when asked about it in an interview, gave a tortured defense involving a condemnation of all of “western medicine.” But shouldn’t we all be using it? After all, he must be onto something.

Brady has endorsed seasonal eating, taking in ‘hot property’ foods like red meat during winter and ‘cold property’ foods like raw vegetables in the summer. He has championed the acid-alkaline theory of diet and disease, claiming to eat 80% alkaline/20% acid “to maintain balance and harmony through my metabolic system.” Neither of these have much evidence behind them or are even plausible, but then again, he’s won 5 Super Bowls, so he must be onto something.

You get the picture.

Stop the Madness

When a celebrity agrees with us, the temptation to cite them can be nearly overwhelming. It validates us and raises our own status in the eyes of our peers, friends, and lifters. “See? I’ve been saying this all along! The greatest quarterback in the world agrees with me!”

It can be a dangerous game putting people on a pedestal, because once they’re there, they’re free to speak and influence your audience. I’m sure Tom Brady’s diet is a significant part of his success, if for no other reason than because it’s high in vegetables and quality foods and provides him the energy he needs. That doesn’t mean we need to endorse the whole thing, or endorse the celebrity as a source of fitness wisdom. Tom Brady is a virtuoso quarterback and deserves every bit of the praise he’s received for his incredible performance and dedication to his craft, but if you endorse him as a fitness and nutrition expert, how do you answer someone who’s worried that you don’t focus enough on ‘muscle pliability’ or have an alkaline water dispenser at your gym?

The same is true of Food Babe, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the never-ending stream of celebrities with opinions. “Well… they’re only right about the things I think they’re right about.” Good luck with that one. 

How are you managing what goes through your eyeballs?

Social Media and the Climate of Fitness

The post The Fitness Trap: Tom Brady and Food Babes appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

What we value in our role models, our celebrities, our sports stars, is sometimes based on what is fed to us, and not necessarily because of their ability, who they are, or what they give back to the world.

It’s much the same in the world of functional fitness. For whatever reason, we, the consuming public, tend to raise up a legion of heros that are more akin to Kardashians than, say, Mia Farrow. While Kim Kardashian is jetting to parties, Farrow is jetting to Central Africa to work on alleviating hunger.

Stop Feeding the Animals

So here’s my plea – please stop feeding the animals. Stop idol-worshipping the vapid, self-promoting Kardashians of CrossFit who offer little more than a steady stream of ass shots, hashtag vomit, and selfies. I am here to tell you that the most popular, most followed and adored athletes in the sport of functional fitness are not the best athletes or most effective role models. Is this a matter of opinion? Sure. Are you free to follow whomever you want? Of course.

But I would put it to the community this way – there are tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of young women (girls now, young adults soon,) who will be growing and maturing into the sports of CrossFit, Grid, and weightlifting. Who we teach them to admire is who they will admire and who they will become. Reject the empty, the Kardashians of our sport, in lieu of mold-breaking role models – real athletes, who eschew the lurid selfie in place of performance. Athletes who let their numbers, not their body parts, speak for them.

Five Strong Female Role Models

We can learn a lot from certain high level athletes – they are hungry to teach. They are not the ones posting a ton of hashtagged selfies. It’s sad and frustrating that there are certain athletes in this sport who have fewer followers on their social media accounts and fewer big-named sponsors because they are more Farrow than Kardashian in the way they conduct themselves.

But we, as the consuming public, can change that, and it begins with following some very solid role models, and making sure those we coach and those we raise take a look as well. With that, here are five functional fitness athletes I encourage you to take a closer look at. 

Honorable Mentions

• Chelsea McCarty – strong as hell and making her move.
• Chelsea Kyle – Columbus Weightlifting coach, and one of the best coaches out there.
• Taylar Stallings – Need I say more?

5. Kris Clever

Very few people embody quiet and understated like Kris Clever. From winning the CrossFit Games in 2010 to being a participant in the SealFit Kokoro camp to a member of the LA Reign, she is one of the hardest working women in functional fitness. Her social media accounts reflect someone who is fun, at ease, and instructional. She is down to earth and, by all accounts, just plain old nice. Look at any CFHQ video of her doing a workout demo, you will see a person who is smiling and truly interested in imparting knowledge.

Unfortunately, we saw the imbalance of media-driven consumerism when Clever was seemingly passed over for a Reebok commercial in 2011. The male 2010 Games winner Graham Holmberg is featured, along with Becca Voigt, who came in seventh that year. Make sense to you? It doesn’t to me. As a Games champ, Clever never got the Thorisdottir treatment, with banners, billboards, and sponsorships. Shame on Reebok, but Kris has remained above the fray regardless, and pressed on as a superior athlete across multiple sports.

Follow Kris:

• Twitter

4. Courtney Walker

A member of the San Francisco Fire Grid league team, Courtney is a gymnastics superstar. She placed fifth overall in the 2014 CrossFit Games Norcal Regional, just missing a bid to the games along with her Fire teammates Cheryl Brost and Annie Sakamoto. If you don’t know about Walker yet, you should take a closer look. Her goals? “To be a better athlete, and to go out into the community and to inspire others.” Gold.

A review of her social media feed reveals someone who works extremely hard and achieves what it is she seeks to achieve. You can learn a lot just by watching and listening.

Follow Courtney: 

• Twitter
• Instagram

3. Diane Fu

Diane Fu is a weighlifting coach who has earned a great deal of respect within the world of functional fitness. What I like about Fu is that her social media presence is nearly 100% educational. Through her business and website FuBarbell, she is interested only in passing on knowledge. What a fine role model for young women who wish to be strong and focus on confidence and precision, rather than simply looking good in a swimsuit.

Follow Diane:

• Twitter
• Instagram

2. Lindsey Valenzuela

While a world-class athlete, CrosFitter, Gridder, and weightlifter, Lindsey is, at her core, a teacher. I have witnessed her in a one-on-one coaching situation and when she is in that moment, her focus in 100% on her student. Strip away the endorsements, the magazine covers, and the hype, and you have a down to earth, genuine person who would love nothing more than to see you achieve your goals.

She takes the inherited role of role model very seriously. Lindsey’s reputation is strength, and she has said on more than one occasional that lifting heavy weight is “probably one of the most empowering things women can do.”

And it translates into mental strength as well. Few people are as focused as Lindsey when a workout or Grid race begins. She stood her ground against a tremendous tide of backlash when she pursued a professional career in Grid. When many of her fellow athletes began pulling out of their respective Grid teams because of sponsor pressure (a subject for another day,) LV stood firm, refusing to have her career dictated by a supplement company. As a result, she emerges stronger, more respected and more focused than ever before.

Follow Lindsey:

• Twitter
• Instagram

1. Valerie Voboril

Val Voboril has been a consistent top finisher in the CrossFit games since 2009. She has never made any bones about the fact that she works out once per day, and has no desire to give up her fourth grade teaching job. In fact, she is currently unable to attend the Grid finals with her team, the LA Reign in Charlotte NC, because she is teaching. Her child and family are without a doubt her priority, yet she continues to outperform athletes ten years her junior.

Listen to Val explain how she chooses to be a role model here, starting at about 3:15. But watch the whole thing, please. Because she lays down a grat foundation of perspective about winning, family, and priorities. If you are not following Val and if she is not your role model yet, she should be.

Follow Valerie:

• Facebook

Photo 1 “Mia Farrow holding Central African baby” by Hdptcar Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Photos 2 & 3 courtesy of NPGL.

The post 5 Strong Female Role Models to Inspire the Next Generation appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Back then gyms were only for two things, and which thing the gym specialized in determined what kind of place it was. You had the “health center” that was primarily for weight loss. It had ferns, little chrome dumbbells, and smelled almost clean. The alternative was a dingy place filled with huge guys that smelled like a bag of unwashed socks. This facility had dumbbells up to at least 150lbs (although the best gyms all had two hundred pounders) and at least two squat racks.

Why What You Learned in the Gym Is Wrong

The weird thing was that often both of these gyms weren’t great sources of information on how to gain or lose weight. Much of what we think we know about hypertrophy is based off what bodybuilders have always done. The problem is that no one does a study on how lifting tempo affects muscle gains and then has the nerve to ask the massive guys participating in the study how many grams of testosterone they’re taking per week.

The same can be said of dieting. While bodybuilders do know how to get super lean, they also do it with the help of large servings of drugs and unhealthy, last minute water depletion. (Hell, they even use that trick on Biggest Loser).

Let’s break down these two popular subjects and try to get a straightforward approach, like that used by Hollywood stars and their trainers to get results.

The Myth of Hypertrophy Training

Training for muscle size is possibly the most convoluted training method there is. Because we’re influenced by bro culture and the hype of muscle magazines, we often lose sight of one important piece of the puzzle: If you give a guy who is predisposed to muscle gain a truckload of drugs, he will likely gain muscle regardless of the training plan.

When it comes to hypertrophy training, there are all kinds of claims from time-under-tension to one-set-to-failure (or the reverse, with methods like German volume training). And despite being different, each one claims to focus on the “one thing” that is key to muscle growth. But having watched many very big guys train, I can honestly say that I’ve never seen anyone truly big count the speed of their reps. Nor do most even seem to use a full range of motion.

So what to do?

Calorie Surplus Is Key

The number one thing that drives muscle building is a calorie surplus. No talk of hypertrophy is worthy of mention without a corresponding talk of hardcore eating. During the filming of Superman, Henry Cavill (pictured center) went on a 5,000 calorie a day diet (with 3,000 per day coming from whole food sources, not supplements). Try eating that much food for even a day, let alone the months required for him to go from normal to looking like the Man of Steel. (For more information on the exact process followed please go to Gym Jones and support their work.)

Once you’re eating the massive amount of food required, and then making sure to get adequate rest post-training (because you don’t grow in the gym, only out of it), it will matter little what exact plan you are following. You simply need to hit it hard, lift some heavy stuff up off the ground in a variety of ways, and work the muscles with both reps and weight. Use big lifts and put it together in a way that keeps you enjoying the process, as that is what will ultimately see you successful in growing or not, with little bearing on how fast you lift the load or the exact number of reps you use.

The Myth of Diet

For those of us in the fitness industry it may seem like there is a huge revolution going on. On the one hand, we have what we know works – get decent quantities of protein, some healthy fats, and moderate carbohydrates based on activity levels. Avoid using processed foods as much as possible.

On the other hand, we have clear evidence that the rest of society doesn’t know this. When 60% of the world is overweight or obese it is pretty clear that people who know how to eat are in a minority.

So what gives?

Between people being told to eliminate carbs, back-load carbs, or eat high- or low-GI carbs, they got confused and just went and ate a Big Mac instead. Science, as with bodybuilding, doesn’t really offer much because most of what they’re forced to research is based on the shaky foundations of the food pyramid. That, in turn, is based on the erroneous assumption that fat loss is about what is referred to as the laws of thermodynamics, or put more simply, calories in versus calories out.

What this basically says is that if you eat less, then you’ll lose weight. Brilliant.

Why Calorie Counting and Intermittent Fasting Don’t Work

There are two problems with this old concept of diet, though. Firstly, when you exercise your body undergoes several changes, one of which happens to be a correspondingly higher metabolism. As your metabolism increases, so does your appetite as your body strives to actually retain the same amount of fat as you have right now. With exercise comes appetite.

The other side of this coin – starving yourself – does the exact opposite thing. If you reduce your energy intake long term, then you will slow down your metabolism, which will actually make it easier to gain fat again if you go back to regular eating in the future.

One of the diet trends over the last few years has been intermittent fasting (IF). For me, IF is what lazy people do to try to control their weight. I’m just not a fan of it. Why? For the simple reason that for 50% of the population IF may actually harm their health. While I know a small percentage of women respond well to IF, the vast majority I know have suffered from a lot of problems that took considerable time to fix, and were only fixed by going back to a more normal eating plan.

Diet is really so simple that I am always at a loss as to how people can get it wrong. That’s one of the reasons I love Dr. John Berardi of Precision Nutrition so much. He takes all this mess and puts it into easy to use rules. While he has Ten Habits, the first five are most important:

1. Eat every two to three hours.
2. Consume protein with every meal (women 20g, men 30g).
3. Eat vegetables and/or fruit with every meal (for best fat loss results minimize the fruit and eat more vegetables).
4. Eat “other” carbohydrates such as rice and potatoes only after you’ve earned it.
5. Drink zero calorie beverages (meaning no fruit juice or soda, and no dairy or sugar in your coffee or tea). i.e. drink water or black tea or coffee.

To maximize fat loss you need to maximize activity as well as keep your metabolism ticking along nicely. The thyroid responds poorly to both excess and inadequate blood sugar levels, and your brain actually needs some sugar to keep you thinking clearly all day.

Beyond the Myth of Bodybuilding

Bodybuilding has a lot to answer for as we are swept away by what we see on magazine covers and fail to understand for the most part that what you see was a condition that was only sustainable for a few hours at best. A friend of mine who was a finalist in the Men’s Health cover model competition went two days without eating or drinking to maintain his shape for his shoot – and then went and ate a pizza moments after he was finished. That binge and purge cycle is seen in addicts and doesn’t exactly seem like the healthiest way to live.

What most people don’t want to hear is that gaining muscle or being lean are constant works. While you can change to a great degree how lean you are for a photo shoot, you can’t stay that way. However, professional physique models are always only a couple of weeks away from picture ready – and when they do have pictures taken, they’ll literally have hundreds done to use for the next six months until they peak again. You can see what Hugh Jackman has to say about how he views staying close to Wolverine-shape all the time here.

If you want to be big or lean, then you need to work at it constantly. If the goal is size, then you need to eat big and lift heavy every day. The day you go hungry for five or six minutes is wasted as far as muscle building is concerned. Likewise, if your quest is to be Brad-Pitt-in-Fight-Club-lean year round, then you need to make sure that you eat clean all the time and treat it like a job – just like the stars do.

Photos 1 & 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

By Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

“hugh_jackman_018” by Pimkie Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

The post What the Hollywood Stars Know About Fitness That You Don’t appeared first on Breaking Muscle.