The World Cup is in full swing. Whether you’re following along or not, there’s a famous football quote that’s just as relevant to anyone trying to get in shape.
“Football is a simple game made complicated by people who should know better,” legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said. I’ve found the same is true of fitness.
“I’ve been in this industry for 25 years and nothing has really changed all that much,” Tim Blakeley, trainer to the likes of Paul Mescal, Glen Powell and Joseph Quinn, told me last week.
“This is a boring answer because everyone’s always looking for that shiny new thing, but it’s the basics that will get you more results than any fancy new exercise or supplement.”
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The issue is that the basics aren’t sexy – and sex sells. That’s why novel methods are prevalent on social media.
But Blakeley says the Greek god you see demonstrating a new exercise on Instagram most likely built their physique with traditional strength training methods. Visually interesting exercises are then filmed at the end of a workout as an attention-grabbing ploy.
This leaves the rest of us struggling to see the wood for the trees, and we wind up letting the basics fall by the wayside.
As an antidote, this week’s newsletter is going to teach you how to see through faux-fitness smoke and mirrors. Then I’ll share Blakeley’s fitness basics that actually work, as well as a few diet tips that deliver tangible health benefits, courtesy of neuroscientist and The Age Code author Dr David Cox.
To be able to identify shonky health claims at 100 paces, it’s important to become familiar with the four horsemen of online fitness misinformation.
If someone is telling you something in fitness is revolutionary, it’s probably rubbish. If someone is asking you to part with cash in return for something they, and only they, have access to, it’s also probably rubbish.
If something sounds scientific but the creator doesn’t substantiate it or cite their sources, it’s probably rubbish. And if fitness advice is designed to provoke fear? You guessed it, it’s probably rubbish.
“There’s a growing trend on social media for something that’s described as ‘fear porn’ – people are being lured in by things that sound scary,” says long-time trainer and Everything Fat Loss author Ben Carpenter.
“A real health and fitness professional would say, ‘We know that added sugar should probably make up less than 10 per cent of your diet. If you consume too much it’s linked to things like obesity, weight gain, type 2 diabetes and teeth cavities.’ That’s very different from someone saying, ‘You can never eat sugar because sugar is killing you.’”
Trainer Tim Blakeley’s approach is the antithesis of this. He helped actor Paul Mescal pack on 8kg of muscle in less than three months ahead of filming Gladiator II. And if non-Hollywood sorts like you or me wanted to replicate this success, he advises doing “exactly the same things.”
If you can work all major muscle groups each week, eat whole foods where possible, do a bit of cardio, sleep fairly well and meet a daily protein quota, you are “nailing the 95 per cent,” as Blakeley puts it. If you do this consistently, your body and health will transform.
Neuroscientist Dr David Cox came to a similar conclusion when researching modern diets for his book The Age Code: simple tweaks can work wonders.
“Particularly in people over the age of 50 who really double down on eating a good diet, we see they have a far better chance of reaching 70 without any diseases compared to someone whose diet is getting worse over time,” he says.
Whole foods are worth prioritising, Dr Cox continues. Whole grains such as oats, brown rice and quinoa have been shown to support gut health and guard against chronic disease and premature death.
Eating oily fish a few times each week “is sufficient to slow ageing on a DNA level,” and including leafy greens in meals is an excellent trick for improving kidney health. Meanwhile, berries with a red, blue or purple hue are rich in flavonoids and offer a wealth of health benefits, including lowering your risk of high blood pressure.
So, on to our weekly conclusion. You probably see the same messages cropping up in this newsletter. This is because, to the best of my knowledge, that’s how health and fitness works: it doesn’t change from week to week, it stays pretty sturdy, and the simple stuff continues to work wonders.
A simple fitness plan built around tried and trusted methods is good. A simple plan you can follow consistently is excellent. And an exercise routine and diet that’s simple, consistent and enjoyable: that’s the gold standard.
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