I am not a scientist. I will not pretend to be. If you are looking for peer-reviewed papers and a lot of hard to read material with big words and tough to follow sentence structure, I ain’t your guy and have never claimed to be.

In my experience most of the people I work with in achieving their goals are the same way. Remember- it was scientific studies that brought us the magic of the “fat burning aerobic zone” and the low-fat diet, both of which have failed miserably in the area of real-world application and results.

My clients and student don’t care about  peer-reviewed papers, they care about to moving  better, feeling better and looking better. They want to get stronger and lose body fat. And that is exactly what they do.

So while science and research are vitally important to the fitness business as a whole, they do not concern me nearly as much as the reality of the results.  I am one of those guys who chuckles a little when science looks at something that we have doing for years and proves that it works in the lab.

Having said that, I do know this:  If you want to improve something you must-

  1. Find a way to measure it.
  2. Measure it consistently.

Example- if you don’t balance your checkbook, don’t be shocked to find out you don’t have as much money in the account as you thought.  Measure what matters. As I stated in a previous blog, I have chosen to use my heart rate monitor to measure progress with kettlebell ballistic exercises. I have shown significant improvement in every area I have measured, most notably in work capacity and body composition.

Is my $80 heart rate monitor from the sporting goods store 100% accurate in regards to the total number of calories burned in a session? Probably not.  But it is better than blindly swinging away and not knowing anything.

Why? Because the HR monitor is accurate unto itself and if it shows me that I am able sustain a higher heart rate and burning more calories today than I was last week or last month then that is a desirable, real-world result. The funny thing is that of all the people who pointed that out to me in comments and questions, not one of them suggested that it might be reading too low.

It was pointed out to me that Lance Armstrong at his peak did not generate the same amount of wattage that my HR monitor indicates that I am generating.  First of all, I admit do not know how to calculate wattage and really don’t care about it unless we are talking about where I am gonna plug in my Les Paul.

High Volume Steel Bending

My unscientific mind offers this for consideration: I am quite literally twice Armstrong’s size. This must account for something. I also wonder how many times he can swing a 32kg kettlebell in an hour. I got a feeling that his swing ability is about the equivalent of my big ass on a road bike. Now maybe that’s just redneck logic, but  it seems to me like the proverbial Apples and Oranges.

The most finely-tuned high performance race car in the world will never pull as much load as the average semi-truck. That same truck fully loaded will use more fuel for the same number of miles traveled.

Some folks have pointed out that research and studies are saying the level of calorie burn from the previous post is not only inaccurate, it is impossible.

Good. Dennis Rogers taught me to specialize in the impossible. I am the Hardstyle Bumble Bee.

 

Studies are done on control groups with average people.

I refuse to be controlled. I refuse to be average. I urge you to do the same.