Psychic octopus: fitness industry predictions for 2011

I followed with some amusement the tales of Paul, the psychic German octopus, during the World Cup.

It’s always fun to take our modern, twenty-first century brains off-line for a while.  It’s enjoyable to pretend that incomprehensible auguries matter and that the entrails of chickens can be used to predict the future.

Graffiti octopus with a hint of Cthulhu – image by cdsessums

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PREDICTIONS FOR THE FITNESS INDUSTRY

For further amusement, then, I thought I would channel my inner psychic octopus and make eight (of course!) predictions for the fitness industry for next year.  I know it’s not really the typical time to make such predictions but we’ll all have forgotten about Paul by Christmas.

Next year, I’ll revisit and see how well it has done.

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1-3. Fitness programme market shifts

This year has seen a breakthrough in the type of products being offered in the fitness market.  When Adam T Glass issued Grip and Rip, the fitness programme market was changed forever.  It was a tipping point.

Grip and Rip was marketed as the product to end all products, a product geared towards teaching the trainee how to train.  The idea being that if you give someone a fish then you can feed them for a day but if you teach them to fish them you feed them for a lifetime.  At least, until the world runs out of fish but that’s another story.

Markets shift for a reason.  They shift mostly because talented people spot what products are mature in a market, what is missing, and where new products need to go in order to be successful.  The rise of a product that teaches trainees how to train has shifted people’s perception of what a product should be able to achieve.

As always in a mature market, when a ground-breaking new iconoclast comes along, the market leaders get a bit grumpy.  They still have the big fire-power, the big email lists and the largest followings.  In time, however, their new recruits start to tail off.

But with the experience of being the market leaders for a long time comes a reluctance to evolve and they will continue to produce programmes that don’t meet the new expectations.  However, I do believe that they will see a marked reduction in the sale of old-fashioned, programme-based products.

OCTOPUS PREDICTIONS 1-3: I fully expect to see Adam’s Grip and Rip product go from strength to strength.  I expect the number of fitness products released that provide fixed programmes to decrease dramatically.  I expect that other enterprising professionals will start producing products that aim to meet the new perceived need of how to train effectively.

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4. Bodybuilding for athletes

Several things have been battering away at my subconscious recently that have made me think that athletes are still struggling to gain the muscle mass that they want and that coaches are going to start addressing this with larger priority.  In no particular order:

• In the beginning, they say that bodybuilders, Olympic lifters and strongmen of all kinds trained together in the same facilities and using the same methods.  John Grimek represented the USA at weightlifting in the 1936 Berlin Olympic games, was a fair gymnast and beat Steve Reeves in 1948 at a bodybuilding competition in London.
• In the last couple of years, T-Nation has gone through a number of phases.  Most recently, it has changed direction sharply to reflect a requirement by its readers to include more bodybuilding material.  So what?  you ask.  It’s a bodybuilding site.  Well, yes.  But it’s also one of the main sites that young athletes go to when they are developing.
• A quick glance at the forums today will let you know that the single biggest problem that young people are struggling with is gaining muscle mass.  Where once it was a fairly simple equation of hard work + more food = huge, this seems to have got more difficult in the last few years.
• Some prominent strength coaches and writers, including the noted Charles Poliquin and Dan John, employ methods with their athletes that are difficult to distinguish from bodybuilding.

OCTOPUS PREDICTION 4: I expect to see some sort of reconciliation that brings bodybuilding methods back in from the cold and incorporates them into athletic programmes.

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5. Paleo Diet going mainstream

In recent years, mainstream nutrition advice has been jumping around all over the place and it’s starting to confuse people.

When I was growing up, there was a fairly strong sense of what was healthy and what was not.  Saturated fat was bad for you.  Cholesterol (i.e. egg yolk) was bad for you.  Too much meat was bad for you.  Wholegrains and fibre were good for you.  Fruit and vegetables were good for you.

Now, people have been exposed the Atkins diet and the idea that fat may not be as bad as previously thought is starting to break into the mainstream.  So-called “good fats” have been identified, eggs have been given a clean bill of health and certain fruits and vegetables (with high antioxidants) have been held up as panaceas for all kinds of ailments.

There is now no real consensus in the press about what constitues a healthy diet.  The communication of nutrition information from scientists to the public is poor and disrupted by food and supplement companies funding their own research and muddying the waters.

There is definitely an opportunity for an enterprising nutritionist to push the simple solution of the Paleo Diet and people will grasp at it willingly because it presents an elegant solution to a mass of confused data.

OCTOPUS PREDICTION 5: At some point, we all know it, the Paleo Diet is going to go mainstream.   

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6. Resistance training for seniors

In the Western world today, we have brainwashed ourselves into believing that our bodies decay and atrophy as we age.  We see our grandparents and parents gradually wasting away, doing less and less and it convinces us that this is what ageing means.  We are told that we will automatically get worse and worse at our sports and that we will lose muscle and our bones will get brittle.

However, Biomarkers makes it clear that even ageing populations can gain bone and muscle mass through resistance training and that this can reverse what was once thought part of the ageing process.  Yes, ageing does have certain effects.  Notably, the skin gets less elastic and fat deposits are stored differently.  But the loss of muscle mass (and therefore strength and balance) is not one of them.  Loss of muscle mass is caused by inactivity not age.

At some point, some brave soul is going to put their head above the parapet of health and safety and shout that resistance training is the single best thing that seniors can do to fend off the so-called symptoms of old age.  Someone is going to put together a case to convince a willing minority that they can reverse what they thought was the ageing process and become active again.

A minority will embrace it and we will have a revolution of active seniors running around having the time of their lives, while other less adventurous souls look on in envy and horror at what they are missing.

OCTOPUS PREDICTION 6: Someone is going to market a resistance training solution to seniors and a whole generation will suddenly realise that they have been lied to and they didn’t have to let their bodies atrophy like they had been told they would.  (I don’t really believe that this will happen but if a genie could give me one wish tomorrow, it would).

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7. Computers hurt people

I am starting to realise how much difference the introduction of the computer into workplaces has made to people’s health.  Out of around 100 employees at my workplace, at least 5 have already had some sort of spinal surgery to take out bulging discs.  They had to take several weeks off sick while they had their operations.  It would also not be wide of the mark to say that pretty much everybody has lower cross syndrome.

However, if I look at the recently retired generation who resisted starting to use new-fangled machines during their final years at work, then I see a very different picture.  Despite having spent forty years attached to a desk, they are ramrod straight and have very reasonable posture.  The only thing that has changed is the introduction of computers.

Although there has been an awareness of correct posture in the workplace, nobody in the mainstream press has really hammered home the point that constant computer use leads to chronic postural difficulties.  At some point, there will be a movement to push this knowledge out to the public and not just to the fitness community. 

OCTOPUS PREDICTION 7: the connection between computer usage and spinal ill-health will be made (publicly) and rules and regulations will follow.  Too many sick days are being taken for it to go ignored much longer. 

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8. Female-specific resistance training

This one is a bit cheeky because I think it is already happening.  As I understand from Anna’s friends, they are already starting to be introduced to resistance training by their personal trainers.  Kettlebells seem to be popular.  I imagine that’s because they don’t look like things that the typical male gym-user would use.

I am also told that women are starting to look for a more shapely look with some definition rather than the super skinny look that was overpoweringly popular until very recently.  Good luck trying to get that look without weights.

However, I still see plenty of women exercising as I’m driving to work in the morning.  They are all jogging or speed-walking.  I’m all in favour of people moving more rather than sitting around but I feel uncomfortable watching them for a couple of reasons:

• I’m not a specialist at gait analysis but even I can see that they are turning in their knees so much that it’s only a matter of time before they get joint pains.  I’m not an anatomy expert but I guess that they have weak glutes from sitting too much.
• They never seem to lose any fat.  I would be really disappointed if I put that amount of effort into getting up really early every morning without seeing any results from it.
• The ones who have been doing it a long time look a bit peeky.  Their muscles look atrophied and I suspect that they probably are setting themselves up in consequence for osteopenia.

OCTOPUS PREDICTION 8: Female-specific resistance training will go mainstream in some shape or form because it is the only thing that can deliver good results in the long-term.

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Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments.

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