If Your Trainer Can’t Get You In Shape In A Prison Cell, Fire Him
If your trainer can’t get you in shape in a prison cell, get another trainer.
Efficiency is to get the maximum out of the minimum. The highest level of return from the smallest possible investment. Anybody can be happy living in a tropical paradise with unlimited money. It may take more ingenuity to be satisfied with a backpack and a sleeping bag in Alaska. That may not be the choice for everyone, but you have to admit, lots of toys can distract you from actually thinking.
Fitness has gone through many phases over the years. It you look at old time strongmen, they had a few heavy object, gravity, and their brain. They still got incredibly strong. Times changed and the never ending need for variety is provided by marketers and not the trainees creativity. The rise of the machines, an idiotic but provocative concept that you need a several thousand dollar machine to train one muscle caught on and never really left us. If you walk into any modern fitness facility they instantly give you a tour of the machine area, the free weight area, and the aerobic area. The larger and greater amount of equipment seems to be the measuring stick by which fitness is validated.
The question remains how much equipment is needed?. External force is certainly a requirement for great adaptations in lean body mass yet there are those athletes who grew up in extreme conditions and use only the most primitive of tools. They have shown great results. Not necessarily capable of 1000 pound squats, but certainly mobile, strong, agile, and muscular.
Remember as you reduce the size of the tools, one has to be more knowledgeable to get the job done. Ex cheerleaders and high school football players gravitate towards Bally’s Fitness for jobs as trainers. Pointing to a "leg machine" or "chest machine" requires little knowledge or mental sweat from their newly printed certification document.
It takes two double sided drive mechanisms to achieve goals. One is inspiration or desperation. The other is that we run away from pain and run towards pleasure.
A fertile environment for such creative soup is prison. Note the picture at the top of the article. It is a cell for prisoners to get exercise in. They are not allowed to mix with the general population ( to use internet slang, they are IGX’ers). The only thing in the cell is a chinning bar, space, and a floor. It may be called Nike fitness. Just do it. This style of training could be called prison training or playground training. You see young males in urban areas challenging each other to contests of will and hormones. They try harder and harder stunts to put on size and strength. Body size and muscles not only have a practical value of athletic prowess but psychological value of being bigger and stronger appearing to potential challengers. This methodology is deeply rooted in the rights of manhood and the desire to be the Alpha Male. Between the incarcerated and the hormone rich youth, you have a crucible formed that contains pain, pleasure, inspiration and desperation. There is no chrome, no ferns, no mirrors, no showers, no aerobic bunny’s. There is gravity, steel, and the application of will. This simplistic view of stimulating bones, muscles, tendons, and organs represents the purest form of physical culture. If these gentlemen can show outstanding fitness that results in weaponry for sociological combat. WHY CAN’T YOU?
If you don’t have the skills, find someone who does. If your trainer or guru or exotic man of mystery can’t train you in a prison cell, fire him.
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