The Fitness Guru

Thank God! The Times Wellness Blog has been kind enough to post the results of yet another study suggesting that we can get fit in six minutes a week. Think of everything else we will have time for now. More work, more Blackberry, more emails, more Facebook, more Twitter, more blogs on wellness, more reality television. It’s like a dream come true.

Needless to say, I’m bothered yet again. You’d think by now I would stop reading these articles. The truth is–I have. This one was sent to me by my buddy, Seth, so I read it. Some day I will learn. My time could be spent doing other things.

The study is an interesting account of endurance training. The results suggest that endurance gains made through long term training can be matched through six minutes of very intense interval training per week. Great! For all the endurance athletes out there, that is good to know. As I am training for a marathon, it warms my heart to know that, if I am in a pinch, I can train for six hardcore minutes each week and that will benefit my endurance.

Here’s the problem: there is a suggestion, though no proof in the study, that the intense intervals will improve weight loss. Also, there is only brief mention of how INCREDIBLY taxing these all out intense intervals need to be. So Joe Average American is kicking back with the morning coffee and reading that maybe he can get rid of his gut (and 2 out of every 3 Joes in this country has a gut to get rid of) by running all out intervals for six minutes. He wanders off to his neighborhood gym where there is little in the way of supervision and he busts a move on the treadmill. His body, in no way, shape or form ready for such intensity, starts to break down, and in little to no time at all, Joe is injured, out of the game, and spends the next six months bemoaning his ill-fated attempt to lose his gut, which, due to his inactivity, continues to grow.

And even that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is this: this is all being written up in the Times WELLNESS blog. Wellness. Well-ness. That word, for me, suggests a balance of mind, body and spirit. Where is the balance in reporting on a study like this?

In this day and age, we have too much interference on a minute-to-minute basis with our well-being. We are so busy focusing on everything around us that we rarely take the time to take care of ourselves. Disagree? Fine. Turn off your email for a day. Avoid Facebook or Twitter or your cell phone or your television or Youtube. Let’s go Hardcore Thoreau and just focus on you and the world around you, in that moment. Won’t happen. Can’t happen. We’re not wired like that anymore. And, consequently, we are left doing damage to our bodies and souls because of this unconscious addiction to stress. If you like studies, check out the one from MIT regarding Blackberry addiction (Crackberry) and stress. (Author’s note: the iPhone, with its 15.2 billion apps, ain’t a whole lot better.)

Exercise is your opportunity to free your body and your mind. Take an hour to do something that you enjoy doing and the benefits are tremendous, from healthier organs to happy moods and greater productivity in the workplace. A gentleman mentioned in the NYT Wellness article that six minutes is perfect for him because, as a 41-year old father of two, he doesn’t have the time to exercise “for hours.” I’m the 42-year old father of two and I say “Horse Feathers!” It’s not a question of hours. It is a question of making time on a regular basis to tend to yourself. Weight loss becomes the added benefit of that care. You want to lose weight? Feed yourself the right fuels, stay active and do things to reduce your stress level. It’s always the people who say that they don’t have an hour to spare that are most in need of sparing the hour. It’s your personal meditation. Not hippy-dippy-trippy Eastern meditation (though, folks, if you haven’t tried it, you really really should), but meditation in the spirit of relaxing and refocusing your energy to better serve your well-being, your family’s well-being, your goals and your quality of life.

Wellness Blog: get it together. There is no room in my schedule for six minutes a week. I’d rather run for an hour.