Marc on Muscle Confusion

My muscles are confused every time I use them for something other than walking to my car!

Fitness, like anything else in America, is all about crazes… jazzercise, step aerobics, fitness bootcamp, P90X, buns of steel, spin classes, kettle bells, etc. I'm sure you can think of a few more. Here on the base at Fort Meade the "hippest" workout craze is Crossfit, and if your really into fitness, then you go to the Crossfit gym. Yes, they have their own gym, and it looks as rugged as the barn where Rocky trained for his fight in the Soviet Union. I think that if you are a male, you're not allowed to wear a shirt, and if you're a female, you can only wear spandex shorts and a sports bra. If you check out their website, you'll see the Crossfit slogan that doesn't even make sense to me: Forging Elite Fitness. What the hell does that mean?

I don't have much of a problem with fitness crazes, because if it motivates someone to get healthier, that's a good thing. What I DON'T like, is when the people wrapped up in whatever the current craze happens to be turn into disciples trying to make converts by telling everyone unless you're doing it their way you're wasting your time. That's when I get irritated.

Muscle confusion is just another in the long line of fitness crazes. It's a fancy way of saying, "vary your workouts". Muscle confusion sounds a lot cooler though.

A couple of years ago in Texas I was running a lot during the workouts we would do with the new Chief selectees. The runs were usually around 3 miles, but at a fairly slow pace. When you run in formation, you have to have road guards block traffic at intersections while the formation passes through. The road guards sprint ahead of the formation, jog in place while stopping traffic until the formation passes, and then sprint to catch up, then to the next intersection, etc. I always volunteered for road guard duty. I didn't know it was happening, but my running that fall was stronger than it's ever been in my life. Everyone told me it was because of the sprints, which I had never put much stock in before. "They" say that you shouldn't just go run three miles every day at a steady pace, but that you should do sprints sometimes. I think it would qualify as muscle confusion, and I must admit that it worked.

I think more importantly, changing things up keeps you from getting bored out of your mind. I read an article once about a guy who ran the same route from his house every day for like 28 years. I can't imagine that. I would get pretty tired of it. But in the end, everybody is different, so everybody needs to find what works for them. Joe Kurmaskie might need to ride his bike across Canada to push himself, but someone else might find incredible accomplishment in making it from Oelwein to Fairbank.

Lucky for me, since I'm so inconsistent at any kind of exercise, my muscles will always be confused!