Yesterday I was reading the Jordan Times when an article titled, “Building Those Boulder Shoulders” caught my eye, so I clicked on it to see what advice could be garnered, if any. It was a question/answer format section on health, and as I soon realized, it caused me to start laughing. Here is the actual question posed by the reader:
“I'm 16 years old and I would like to know what I should do to get a nice body. I especially need to get large shoulders. I've been doing exercises for a month now and there's not much change so what should I do?”
I think this is quite humorous for one main reason: at his age he thinks he can get a great body in almost no time. His name and attitude led me to believe this youth is from the West, but I could be wrong.
We've been “taught” by TV infomercials to believe you can have a lean, sculpted body in as little as
four minutes. You can have
six-second abs, or go for broke with any number of 20-minute workouts. If you're into high tech workouts, you can get the electronic muscle stimulator machines that will perform the crunches for you. Now if you could just get someone to take your calories when you eat, or urinate for you when your bladder's full, you'd be in great shape and would never need to leave the comfort of your LaZ Boy chair. Good God in Heaven,
what have the marketers done to the minds of Americans?!“I have seen the enemy, and "he" is US!”
There's no denying it - our minds have gone softer than a TempurPedic bed. What's even worse is the kids who are counting on us to teach them aren't being taught, so they are tuning in and falling prey to slick advertising claims. When they don't get these quick results, then what? They give up on exercise and eventually develop any number of chronic health conditions, or they turn to bad supplementation like creatine, hydroxycut, or straight to steroids. Everyone is looking for that elusive “edge”, and willing to short cut or downright cheat to get it, but few are willing to actually work for it. Why should they when they're bombarded with bold face lies regarding fitness products?
The person who answered the question gave a lot of solid information to the readers, and did eventually state one month's worth of exercise was nothing more than a drop, but a good first step. He answered the question responsibly and made sure to state it's a lengthy process that you shouldn't rush just to obtain quick results. People don't like hearing that, though; I wonder how the readers took it, too.
Here in the West we are driven by instant gratification and quick results - if we don't see them, we're apt to bark out in anger, “I'm out of here!” The truth is we can't get a rock solid body we see in infomercials without expending a LOT of effort. Professional body builders spend hours upon hours in the gym to get ripped, and yet somewhere in our strange minds, we believe we can get the same results on a 6-second ab crunching machine. There is no common sense in such comparisons, and all you'd have to do to realize most junky products are junk is to
read a few independent reviews online.
Back in November, I pulled my calf muscle trying to add a little bit of jogging into my walk - and I do mean
little - maybe 100 feet! I gingerly hobbled around for the next three weeks. It's been three months plus since I tried to jog, but today I made the attempt out of pure necessity - to outrun a swarm of hungry mosquitoes. I ran the other half of my walk home! I was shocked to discover my cardio endurance had progressed to such a level, and if I didn't feel the call of Mother Nature, I would've kept running just to see how far I could've gone. Most people will dismiss this and say, “So what! I jog X miles a day on my treadmill!” Well, I used to jog three miles on a health club treadmill, too, but there's no substitute for jogging outdoors.
The point I'm making is persistence, patience, and perseverance all came together today to take my fitness to the next level. I didn't feel the old pains in my chest like I used to encounter when I was on a treadmill. I didn't once think, “OXYGEN!! I need oxygen!!” I just did it and kept on going to see where it'd take me. You cannot get these results from junky short cutting products - you get them from honest effort.
So the next time you're tempted to sit in a chair and watch exercise infomercials thinking, “This counts as my 30 minutes a day!” keep in mind who else is watching in the room with you. You can teach those around you with good habits and solid lessons, or you can let the marketers and TV teach them. It's your choice!
If you don't like trying to find all the segments of this series, you can locate the links to them here and they will return you the exact spot on the appropriate site.
