Things that are bad for you

lol you can guess what prompted this....

I'm curious how many of us have participated in lessons over the years and it constantly irritates me. The fruit on the cake was when students that hadn't been alive as long as I'd been training were comming up to me telling me what was good and what wasn't for you....

I recall the days of Shotokai katate which, though it had its plethora of faults was still a bloody hard slog. Keeping a low stance for hours with few breaks, hour after hour of kata. Whatever you think of these lessons it was a good workout you left with the gi plastered to your back feeling like you'd done something.

I've been to see them train lately, gone are many of the hard exercises. I watched a class for about an hour last time and I didn't see a drop of sweat, none of the gruelling low stances or any of that. It looked a shadow of its former self.

I use that only as an example. People saying don't do low squats, don't come all the way up in a sit up, don't do press ups on your knuckles, don't do this don't do that. Dear God I can't stand it any more!!!

I said it on another thread and I'll say it again... I used to do knuckle push us a lot, I can now touch type and I play finger style on the guitar so I don't know what's its meant to have destroyed...

Anyone else remember the god old days?

Does it seem to anyone else that all these new exercises are easier?

It probably started out with good intentions but its gone all to pot now... meh

Blame the stupid system of liability.

Good ol' hard training is still the go. All this modern rubbish is just making us softer, both mentally and physically.

Hard training is still out there. Even near you ;-)

It's just harder to find!

its not always if some exercises are BAD for you, its really are they any bloody good when alternatives may (emphasis on MAY) be better

the fact that you can touch type and play guitar may indicate that knuckle push ups didnt do you any HARM, but can you be sure they did you and GOOD?
Rhetorical question

remember duck walks or whatever you called them in your club/s
or people used to advocate keeping legs stiff in both sit-ups and leg raises etc.

old time bodybuilders didnt have benches for bench press, they used 'floor press' and didnt get decent pec development... the other side of the coin is that how essential are large pecs for anything?

the best bit of advice I was given many years ago, and I still hold true is that
"if you like an exercise, it will probably like you"

Dave, your right and those are good examples, but I do understand and see what Jagunco is saying... I'm sure you do to.


Even the discipline in the class has shifted (at least here in the states) ... sadly I am guilty of letting that slide as well. As of lately this topic has been on my mind and I've been looking at bringing back some of the old my self.


If only I could hit them with a stick... ah the memories....

I do love my judo class. Main teacher is in his 60s, has been doing the sport over 40 years, and still enforces that old-school discipline & respect, apparently quite effortlessly! Occasionally we do exercises in the warmup that are nominally "bad for you" but I figure it's worth it. None of the kids misbehave, and everyone gets a decent workout before we even start throwing each other around.

Roadkill

One of the reason I was getting irritable with my capoeira class was that they blatantly didn't train as hard as they could. Its fair enough they didn't want to they did it as a hobby and all that but it was frustrating to watch.

The instructor did what any sensible person would do and catered the class for the 95% and not the nut job in the corner (me) but there was literally people just standing up in the middle of warm up's, sorting their hair out and all the otyher stuf that would get you lynched a couple of decades ago. I was horrified to actually see someone yawning MID EXERCISE!!!

When the former instructor left and they were deciding who to get in at the Durham class I was one of the candidates. One of the lads was heard to say

'Jagunco? He's a nice enough bloke but he cracks the whip a bit doesn't it.' Which I took as a compliment


Dave I do know what you mean and there are silly workouts out there. I firmly suspect some of the Chinese ones I used to do were only invented to make Englishmen look funny, but you take my point? I mean I know some people who have been told not to get to tired at the gym (??????)

But how many people take training seriously; the last time I threw up training was on Sunday and everyone at the gym was looking at me in disgust I hurled up leaning out of the fire escape when I say everyone at the gym I mean the one person training and the two personal trainers idly standing around. Then again what normal people have done a run and are doing a hard pad session at 10am on a sunday........

On the flip side I used to go out with a kung fu instructor and I have to say most of the conditioning stuff she did was pointless, painful and had no value other than the early onset of arthritus.

If you make the training session harder wont it weed out the part timers and leave only those that are willing to learn???

Jagunco wrote: but there was literally people just standing up in the middle of warm up's, sorting their hair out and all the otyher stuf that would get you lynched a couple of decades ago. I was horrified to actually see someone yawning MID EXERCISE!!!

Well... I'm certainly not talking about something that bad.... I couldn't stand that either... See, that's where the stick came in before... and it worked like a charm. He just had to walk around with it.

Tugging on Supermans cape....

always a no no

Why not? Batman did it all the time

I love the 5BX yet my Osteopath says they are lethal etc. Funny how I didn't die all the years I used to do them before I ever saw him. When I did Kyokushin you could set your watch by the punch or kick or block we were doing. It was the same thing every single class and it was repetitive and boring but you worked through it and if you didn't, Sensei came around with a shinai and gave you a few. We took pride in it being so hard and pushing us to our limits and you felt bad if you fell by the wayside.

Now, as Dave says, did it do you any good compared to more contemporary methods? I would argue no, but as the Kiwi said, we are getting softer and weaker. I do think he is right, it is all about liability even though New Zealand is smarter than Australia when it comes to adventure sports like bungee jumping and jet boating. They have laws that limit liability to (I think) NZ$20,000. You sign the waiver, you have no more come back than that. It means these adventure sports can get insurance and operate profitably and thus NZ is arguably the adventure sport capital of the world, and safe too. But overall, westerners just want the semblance of risk, hence these 'reality tv shows' that are scripted and hardly real at all. This permeates into our martial arts, fitness training and society's will to exert as a whole.
Perry

I would probably take exception to some bugger stoving a bamboo sword off my back. That's not an exercise really at the end of the day. Thought I see where it comes form in terms of hardening the fuck up.

Happy average is the key. There's a difference between applying an amount of growing pressure and difficult targets to build a reasonable persons willpowers and endurance to wandering up and down administering an act that would get you locked up if you did outside the dojo.

Still..... got to love the good old days. I do recall my old karate instructor was always selective about who he did his painful demos on, it was never anyone who would leave because of it. One lad confronted him and said in as many words if he ever punched him again he would leave and never come back.

Ah the good old days, when men were men(and sheep were scared)It didn't do me any harm is a great way of having a pop at the new methods of training in all aspects of sport/martial arts.
Fact is though that many of the things I did back then, have resulted in joint problems today, even though I still train I am careful how I do warm ups.
The insurers/governing body demand that when I teach judo, I do so in a safe manner that will not leave me open to insurance claims. My organisation demands that I redo my coaching certificate every 2 years(in order to get insurance) Without both, and a first aid certificate and CRB check, I can't teach kids. Gone are the days that a blackbelt wearer could simply walk onto a mat and teach what they felt like.
I to lament the passing of them, but then I do tend these days to view the past through rose tinted glasses!!

We do all view the past with rose tinted glasses and I am sure we have all looked upon modern methods with a degree of scorn at how "soft" classes are.

But then my old shoulder injury has been playing up again and I have just come back from the hospital where they are deciding if my ankle is worth operating on and my fingers are bent as is my nose and.. and...

Were the old ways that good or are all of the aches,pains and injuries I have accumulated over the years just a normal progression which will be the same for the "new breed"? BTW I'm not ancient old warrior, just a 45 year old normal person who has trained since he was a child.

My main gripe is that the political correctness has once again gone mental. It started with taking exercises away that were unsafe and what have you but it seems to have gone to an extreme.

I'm the same as everyone, at this time my hip hurts my wrist hurt my back in killing me and apparently I have a damaged rotator cuff in my right shoulder and when I'm under stress my neck cracks like old twigs if I twist my head around.

I'm jut refering to just the exercises that have been dropped 'just incase' or just some that they seems to think would put people off cos they requite too much effort.

Just so you know though I'm completely opposed to that hitting people to harden them up crap. I used to get that all the time, that is a daft exercise

i hate going into a comercial gym, everyone looking in mirrors and doing bench presses on the machines and towels
hanging over the pull up bar, i like gyms with boxing rings, free weights, sledge hammers, tyres, rope (for climbing!)
and in the gym i go we sometimes hit the heavy bag with a baseball bat, its a bloody good exercise.

if comercial gyms had people tyre flipping for 10 minutes than hitting it with a sledge hamme for 10 minutes
before doing 100 burpees how busy do you think they would be? oh and no MTV on??

most people dont want that, they want running machines in front of TV's and lat pull down machines in a gym
that resembles more of a relaxed gathering than hard core training. They want to be spoon fed fitness!!!!!
Thats why gimmicks sell a bundle, such has lose belly fat by wearing this belt for 10 minutes a day crap, and it costs about 200
pound!!!!! ads that say lose fat and build muscle easy are what people want to hear, not " come to our gym
and we will put you through hell and pain for 6 weeks"