Ballet meets Yoga and Pilates!

I was riding the streetcar back from Powell’s Books today (a truly great bookstore) and passed by a gym in the ritzy part of town called Ballet Barre – ballet meets yoga and pilates.  Then a few minutes later we went by a huge new LA Fitness.  Now i more or less don’t have much against ballet, yoga, or pilates, well maybe pilates.   But my over arching belief has always been that if folks are happy with what they are doing and are getting something out of it then more power to them.  I do feel that some ways are more effective than others for meeting certain fitness goals, but thats a different blog post.

What this got me thinking about is the whole damn fitness industry in general.  I receive a ton of catalogs from places like Perform Better, Bigger Faster, Stronger, etc.  There is good some stuff in there, but for the most part i am astounded by the large amount of crap.  Balance boards, band contraptions, and all sorts of other stuff for consumers to spend their money on.  Listen, at its core fitness is not that complicated, and does not even require that much equipment.  Pick up heavy shit, put it back down, lift over your head, carry it till you can’t.  Work hard, sweat, and occasionally feel like you want to vomit.  Exercise does not require a fancy facility with tons of pre calibrated machines, color coded dumbells, and a juice bar.  You need to be able to yell, grunt, cry, drop shit from overhead, and lay on floor in a puddle of sweat when you are done.  But the mainstream fitness industry does not care about this, as they are about profit and money, not results or the actual success of the clients.  Thus they constantly have to reinvent the wheel, or at least put a new spin on an old product.

Anton