If you ever find yourself relaxing at home and fancy watching MTV or similar then inevitably you come across several fitness adverts claiming they have the ‘ground breaking’ ‘instant muscle making’ pieces of equipment that you cant live without.  Unfortunately Most are just fads and are just a way to get you to empty your wallet in the hopes of ‘bulging biceps’ and ‘shredded abs’.

I am not claiming that all fads are a waste of money but we need to understand the difference between what is useful and what is useless.

What is a fad? Fad: (noun) “an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities; a craze.”

Fitness fads tell us information we want to hear - This food tastes great or this exercise is easy and produces better results than an hour in the gym. Fads tell you there is a short cut or a simple answer to achieving your goal.

Abs toners, Shake a weight, Vibrating belts and Thigh masters – The list goes on and on. All claim to be more than they are and very few can be found in gyms today. Although the vibrating belt has come around in another guise recently but I don’t doubt that this will soon fade away.

Trend or Fad?

Trend: “A general direction in which something is developing or changing”

When I first got into the fitness industry everything seemed to point to ‘core training’ you would be hard pushed to find a gym that didn’t have stability balls and Bosu’s. ‘Core stability’ was the buzzword and core specific classes were on every gyms studio timetable. Although its not so prevalent now it still has its place and its roots were already in classes such as Yoga and Pilates = Trend

What about some of the other exercise equipment that has found its way into the modern gym? Kettlebells and clubbells? Or the Torque king?  I recently came across a great article on the TRX another piece of equipment with great claims which seems to warrant an appearance in gyms across the world.  The conclusion was that the TRX exercises had the greatest impact on core musculature in general. The researchers also compared the TRX push up and conventional push up exercises to a bench press with 50% of 1RM, although they did not consider the ab muscles other than internal obliques or the quads during the bench press. In this comparison, the bench press had a significant peak activation of all of the muscle groups over the push up, either stable or unstable.

One thing that seems to have happened to many gyms is that they have gone back to the good old days—dumbbells, barbell weights, squat racks, tyres and ropes. There will always be another gimmick or fad, someone may even come up with a real ‘ground-breaking’ piece of kit but what will always remain is that which over a long period of time has always worked. There are no quick fixes or instant muscle makers just the need to remain disciplined and motivated then you will see progression and get the results you are after.

If you want to see the funny side of fitness fads then check this out. It seems as though there are no limits or boundaries to crazy fitness ideas.  

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/ultimate-vulgar-exercise-device-tug-toner-135784