It's true, a perfect training and exercise regimen will include increasing loads. But given the general sorry state of fitness and health I see daily on the streets, getting people to understand that ANY exercise, even as little as 7 minutes a day, is beneficial will go along ways towards making people healthier and stronger.
"Then progressive resistance is required. Simply adding reps does not increase strength past initial accommodation."
But initial accommodation for many people might be 6 months. I have trainees who struggle to squat past parallel for weeks or months, who can't do a Tabata cycle of more than 8 squats and who struggle to do real pushups after weeks of training. The base level of fitness for most people is so abysmal that getting them to understand the benefits of 7 minutes of high intensity exercise can be life changing. Sure, to be truly strong, you're going to have to eventually lift heavy weights but for majority of the people out there, a simple body weight routine will give them an amazing fitness boost.
Any exercise is better than no exercise. For years, people have thought they needed to spend hours at the gym to lose weight when in fact, solid nutrition combined with short intense workouts can in fact lead to enhanced strength and fitness. When the baseline is so low, anything is helpful.
Spot-on. People think they need to throw themselves into a weight-lifting program, or P90x, or crossfit, or running 5 miles a day. It's all garbage unless they can develop a habit and see personal gains. All this method requires is a timer, a room, and a chair, which makes for a much less intimidating introduction to fitness.
A key advantage of barbell and dumbbell exercises is that they can be progresively loaded in small increments. Bodyweight exercises tend to have larger jumps in difficulty.
Most of the most popular weights programs for beginners are linear progressions. You literally add a fixed amount to each exercise, each session, until you can't. Folk are amazed at how quickly they can progress from struggling with a bar to squatting their own bodyweight.
I totally agree with you. But I think of exercise programs like the described blog post as the gateway drug to real strength. For most people, the idea of getting into a strength program is intimidating in the same way that doing a waltz in front of 200 people is. But if you can get someone dancing in their kitchen, eventually they might turn to real lessons with real instructors.
If I can get people doing 7 minute exercise routines in their living room, eventually they will see the results and want more which leads them to the next step, a true strength program.
Totally agree on the casual thing. I don't even think it takes a full 7 minutes. It can be done in much less.
I don't agree on "true strength", whatever that may be. I don't care to be any stronger than I am, frankly. I can pull myself up anything; I can easily lift my dates. I don't need to impress on the beach. And I don't enjoy gyms, I'd rather do something else. So "getting strong" really isn't on my priority list.
I feel differently: that training at home makes it easier to give up. "Oh, I'll just sit on the couch for a minute. Hmm, I'll just check facebook for a second".
A gym, meanwhile, is an environment dedicated to training.
Still, we're both spitballing. Each trainee has their own path to exercise. I would prefer to put them onto something that won't run out of room to improve within a month or two.
The way I see it you should treat it like any other UX problem: The user is going to be at home anyways, so if you can get a "conversion" (even a short 7-minute one) that can easily bridge them into the next step. Just like video games start you off in tutorial levels and help you develop the skills you need (e.g. Mega Man X [1]).
For example I tried out the 7-minute exercise simply because I could, it was easy. If I can't even be bothered to spend 7 minutes on exercise there's no way I'm going to the gym, so it's not as if the short exercises are interfering with work at the gym.
The problem with bodyweight training is that there's no smooth gradient from wall sits to, say, pistol squats. The difficulty increases lumpily and frequently requires a new motor pattern to be learnt.
Whereas going from a 20kg squat to a 100kg squat can be done 1kg at a time with the same movement pattern throughout.
For people who genuinely can't or won't go to a gym, I'd first suggest installing a power cage, adjustable bench, barbell and some plates. Failing that kettlebells and resistance bands. Only after those are exhausted would I suggest a purely bodyweight training regimen.
> Bodyweight exercises tend to have larger jumps in difficulty.
What's worse is that the exercise actually changes. So you're doing a exercise that requires more strength, that you haven't and cannot practice at a lower level of difficulty.
> It's true, a perfect training and exercise regimen will include increasing loads. But given the general sorry state of fitness and health I see daily on the streets, getting people to understand that ANY exercise, even as little as 7 minutes a day, is beneficial will go along ways towards making people healthier and stronger.
This is what is wrong with "fitness" today - the harder you work out the more "bad ass" you are, and the fitness-is-my-hobby crowd are notorious for their "go hard or go home" attitude (yes, massive generalization here). And since these people are the go-to 'experts', people who only want to not-suck when it comes to fitness probably get easily discouraged because there is a real and tangible barrier to entry: you have to "work out" which means to go to the gym, or go to the park and jog, go home, shower... while for some people, simply some more activity would be better than nothing. Simply walking more, or doing the odd push ups during down times.
But evidently - that is not good enough. Go hard or I will make you feel worthless for not being as dedicated as me.
"Then progressive resistance is required. Simply adding reps does not increase strength past initial accommodation."
But initial accommodation for many people might be 6 months. I have trainees who struggle to squat past parallel for weeks or months, who can't do a Tabata cycle of more than 8 squats and who struggle to do real pushups after weeks of training. The base level of fitness for most people is so abysmal that getting them to understand the benefits of 7 minutes of high intensity exercise can be life changing. Sure, to be truly strong, you're going to have to eventually lift heavy weights but for majority of the people out there, a simple body weight routine will give them an amazing fitness boost.
Any exercise is better than no exercise. For years, people have thought they needed to spend hours at the gym to lose weight when in fact, solid nutrition combined with short intense workouts can in fact lead to enhanced strength and fitness. When the baseline is so low, anything is helpful.