March 2, 1987
Fitness
ARE YOU FIT? A TEST YOU CAN TAKE AT HOME
There is a great deal written and discussed regarding fitness. One topic that is often ignored, however, is the most basic of all: Just what constitutes fitness?
The marathoner might argue that the throne of fitness is housed in the cardiovascular system. The bodybuilder, on the other arm, might argue that it is best exemplified by the biceps. The yoga-adept might feel that fitness begins with relaxation and flexibility. The aerobic dancer could argue on behalf of form and function.
All would be partially correct. But each would be primarily wrong.
Fitness is the final result of a recipe with many ingredients. And some argument can be made for the proportions of those ingredients.
Fitness is a combination of the following: aerobic capacity, speed potential relative to work, endurance, flexibility, muscular strength, vital respiratory capacity, body fat, and nutrition.
Considering the areas involved, we could assume that the typical marathoner would rank high in aerobic capacity, endurance, vital respiratory capacity, and body fat. Very few marathoners are fast relative to sprinters, few of them are flexible, muscular strength is almost all in the legs, and nutrition is often anything but exemplary.
The perfectly fit human animal, of course, would score high in every category, relative to gender, age, and results of the population in general.
Most of us involved in regular fitness pursuits would certainly score higher than the general population, although many of us would exhibit categories in which we were somewhat deficient. I know that I always dread approaching the flexibility portion of such tests.
Most people involved in fitness seem to enjoy playing numbers games with themselves. Runners like to know how many miles a week they ran, bodybuilders love to reread their reps and sets. And although they don’t necessarily want to take the necessary time off to be tested, most people who are into fitness would like to know where they stand in the hierarchy of health through fitness.
The last time I submitted to a full-scale fitness evaluation was 1981. It took nearly two days, and I almost drowned in the hydrostatic weighing tank.
Now you needn’t take nearly two days of torture; fitness buffs can now take a self-fitness test at home, thanks to SportMed of Montreal.
The SportMed folks (1-800-361-3651) have put together a compact, ingenious appraisal kit for $49.95. It is a combination of examination guide in eight different areas, body-fat calipers, lung-volume test, and three walk-me-through-this cassette tapes packaged in a vinyl folding case. (I suspect that removal of the tapes from their molded plastic holders is one of the strength tests.)
The kit doesn’t purport to be a substitute for a full-scale, doctor-on-the-premises health and fitness evaluation. But it sure does a nice job of plugging the holes in the years between the full-scale editions.
SportsMed doesn’t market it as such, but if you and some of your fit friends are ever stuck indoors during a rainy day, it subs as a wonderful parlor game.
It’s also great to have around for those occasional visits of your blow-hard friend who feels that, although he hasn’t worked out on a regular basis for 10 years, he’s still in good shape because he watches lots of sports on TV. If the body-fat calipers don’t tickle his fancy, the lung-volume bag will sure give you a chuckle.
March 9, 1987
Fitness
FIT FEET CAN MAKE YOU FEEL FIT ALL OVER
Most aerobic fitness involves the feet: walking, running, aerobic dance, cross-country skiing, rope-jumping, bicycling. Combine that with the fact that 70 percent of American have foot problems, whether or not they exercise.
Considering the thousands of steps it takes to walk or run one mile, it is not difficult to appreciate that even a minor foot problem can be aggravated by overuse.
Unfortunately for the gung-ho aerobic athlete, and especially for the weekend athlete, the typical solution to foot or ankle problems is immobilization: a cast in extreme cases, or a foot appliance, such as an orthotic, in less traumatic cases.
But even an orthotic, which allows the athlete to continue training, is sometimes an imperfect solution. It tends to impede the natural movement of the bones, tendons, muscles, and ligaments and can end up treating the symptom rather than the cause.
The foot, like the hand, is an intricate piece of work, a concert of bones that form a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
This intricate balance of bones, positioned for function, makes many things possible but also designs the foot for trouble. With 26 bones in each foot, the chance of one slipping out of place is high—especially those bones linked directly with the ankle.
This is true especially when running, for example, where, on level ground, two to three times the body weight is crashing down on those delicately placed bones with each of perhaps 4,500 steps per foot in the typical 10K race.
It seems logical that at some point, a bone or two could slip out of position, ever so slightly, and cause tremendous problems.
Dr. Rue Tikker or the Contra Costa Foot Clinic in Concord, who over his 33 years in the business of treating feet and ankles has worked on 400,000 patients, has an unusual approach to treating those problems.
Instead of immobilizing many of the foot and ankle problems he sees, Tikker often takes the opposite tack.
Tikker first moves the foot through its range of motion and then repositions the bones; he follows that up with specific adjustments to get the delinquent bones to move back into place. His goal is to make the foot as mobile as biomechanically possible, restoring it to the function for which it was designed.
Having personally had a bone in the foot go out just a hair, cause acute pain for two days, and then just as mysteriously slide back in, immediately ending the pain, Tikker’s methods sounded reasonable to me.
Tikker’s methods put him into a very sensitive category. He has treated ankle sprains and foot injuries of big-name professional athletes when traditional methods failed to correct them, but has been asked not to name names because the athletes stepped outside their teams’ accepted hierarchy of treatment.
Tikker, a graduate of the California College of Podiatric Medicine, and now 59 years old and contemplating retirement, trained for eight years under John Martin Hiss in Los Angeles.
Hiss, an orthopedic surgeon, didn’t like to operate if he didn’t have to, and so developed his system of therapy and adjustment. At the height of his success, Hiss and his assistants treated 800 patients a day.
The method that Hiss developed is still employed by a handful of foot specialists, but most of them are nearing retirement age.
“It’s becoming a lost art,” Tikker said. “It’s not taught in schools, and therefore it’s dying out—although I continue to get referrals from orthopedic surgeons I know.”
March 16, 1987
Fitness
THE RISE, FALL AND RISE OF A SPECIALTY MAGAZINE
(First of two parts)
The May issue of Runner’s World magazine will mark a milestone in its recent history: It will be the first time in nearly 10 years that it has no major competition.
The competition has been absorbed. After nearly a decade of beating up on each other, Runner’s World—the elder statesman of long-distance running—bought out The Runner.
Runner’s World was started in 1966 as a twice-yearly homemade journal published from a Kansas bedroom by Bob Anderson. During the early years, it had the field of long-distance running to itself.
During the mid-1970s, however, long-distance running began to grow. That growth turned into an explosion, and Runner’s World, a magazine that wasn’t even carried on newsstands, began to enjoy tremendous success because it was the only source of distance-running news and training advice. The magazine at that time was still very much a hobbyist’s publication.
At the 1977 New York City Marathon, George Hirsch, publisher of the counter-cultural New Times magazine and an ardent runner, put together an ambitious race program designed like a magazine. The program evolved into The Runner magazine, and suddenly Runner’s World—then based in Mountain View—had big-league competition.
A sport distinguished by good will and camaraderie began to develop cracks and fissures from greed, as running-shoe manufacturers poured millions of dollars into the cauldron. Competition for the runners’ subscriptions became heavy; the bigger the circulation, the more a magazine could charge advertisers. Competition between the two magazines for ad dollars became fierce, then vicious.
The Runner claimed to be the magazine for the serious runner, and accused Runner’s World of selling out by doing too many cover stories on topics like stretching so it could put an attractive woman on the cover and sell more newsstand copies. Occasionally The Runner would go against its own editorializing and carry a stretching cover that would set newsstand sales records, then come back the next month with a serious, sweaty cover that would bomb.
Runner’s World began to feel it was necessary to justify some of the attractive women it used on its cover, so it did two things: It carried the woman’s credentials as a runner inside the issue, and it began doing split covers—an attractive woman on the cover for the casual newsstand buyer, and a serious cover for the subscriber.
The idea was highly criticized by some serious runners, but the idea was also cited in marketing textbooks and has since been used by various other national magazines.
Meanwhile, The Runner was setting records for the largest number of owners of one magazine in less than a decade. Started by New Times, it survived the death of that magazine, then was purchased by MCA, then by Ziff-Davis, then was sold to CBS as a minor entity in a quarter-billion-dollar package that was one of magazine publishing’s biggest and most controversial sales. The constant was Hirsch as publisher, Marc Bloom as editor, and a masthead that included some of the biggest names in running.
Because of the incredible diversity in long-distance running, both magazines began to receive criticism about the articles they were carrying. An article on how to run a better 10K would be praised loudly by new runners and damned as old hat and repetitious by veterans.
As happens in any such explosive business, however, too many people suddenly try to make too many dollars off what amounts to a suddenly stagnant market. In this case, some runners lost interest in the sport, others became injured, and markets became saturated: just how many pairs of running shorts can you wear out in five years, anyway?
The market slowed. The 1984 Olympics, expected to provide the next booster stage in orbiting running as the participant sport of choice, backfired. Instead of orbiting running, it was the final blow to numerous running specialty companies.
(Next week: Some sanity sneaks into running.)
March 23, 1987
Fitness
MAGAZINE’S SUCCESS WAS SEVERELY MISINTERPRETED
(Second of two parts)
Every company that grew on the coattails of the running revolution felt that when the 1984 Olympic Games arrived in Los Angeles, it would be like a license to print money. The Running Revolution after all, had occurred in part due to the impact of the Olympic long-distance running in 1972 and ’76.
The response to the 1980 Olympic Games had been terribly flat, supposedly due to the boycott. But with the Games scheduled to be held in the United States in 1984, the running-shoe and clothing companies—along with the magazines that reported on the sport—figured to benefit enormously.
At Runner’s World magazine, the success accompanying a publication that had simply been in the right place at the right time was severely misinterpreted. When the running revolution hit in 1976-77, the magazine felt it should have been given more credit for the national phenomenon.
In reality, the magazine had grown at the largess of the burgeoning sport. A person had to become a runner before his running friends told him about Runner’s World. The magazine did not create the runner. It was a distinction that would dog the magazine to near extinction.
By 1984, the success of Runner’s World had spurred owner Bob Anderson to begin other ventures. He felt that with the Midas touch that had turned a little magazine into a giant, any business venture was possible. Profits from the magazine were diverted into other magazines, other businesses.
An obsession developed for huge annual sale goals: two-digit numbers with six zeroes behind them. The 1984 Olympic Games would be the catalyst to go over the top. The goal of 500,000 circulation would be assured by 40,000 to 50,000 street sales in Los Angeles. It was virtually assumed Runner’s World would have the market to itself.
The 1984 Games turned out to be a disaster for every running specialty business that became involved. Shoe companies lost millions, as did running-clothing manufacturers. Runner’s World fell well short of its Olympic advertising goal and most of the tens of thousands of street copies languished due to an avalanche of problems.
The magazine was cash poor, and a divorce between the owners of the privately held company threatened ruin. At the eleventh hour, Rodale Press of Emmaus, Pa., stepped in to buy our Runner’s World.
Rodale moved the magazine back to the Pennsylvania Dutch countryside—where Rodale’s holistic magazine Prevention had flourished—but after examining the “numbers,” found that something more was needed.
Runner’s World wasn’t as strong as Rodale had hoped (1984 had short-sheeted the venerable old magazine more than anyone had suspected) and the running market was flat. The market could only barely support two running magazines. Running shoe advertising, always the backbone of the running magazines, was hurting.
Faced with anemic returns from a magazine for which it had paid good money, Rodale made a wise business move. At CBS Magazines, which had acquired The Runner in a package that included a half-dozen top-drawer magazines, such as Car and Driver, sails were being trimmed. Considering the flat running market, The Runner was a liability. A deal was struck, and Runner’s World was suddenly on top again by buying out the competition.
Amby Burfoot, long-time East Coast editor for Runner’s World while it was headquartered on the West Coast, is now executive editor of the magazine. He is in charge of day-to-day editorial matters. He is enthusiastic about the buyout of The Runner.
“We’ve been able to make arrangements with most of the top writers at The Runner, and George Sheehan is back with us,” Burfoot said. “We’ve also made arrangements with Bill Rodgers, Frank Shorter, and Marty Liquori to answer readers’ Q&As about training. And we’ve added Joan Benoit-Samuelson to that list.”
None of the New York-based staff of The Runner was willing to leave the Big Apple for the lush Pennsylvania countryside. George Hirsch, founder and publisher of The Runner, has been hired as publisher but will work out of New York, primarily in advertising. He will have nothing to do with the editorial; that’ll be Burfoot’s preserve.
When the May issue of Runner’s World hits the newsstands, perhaps it will be a return to normalcy for long-distance running, a sport that could very much use a strategic pause while it catches its second wind.
March 30, 1987
Fitness
PHYSICAL WORK IS WHAT MAKES THE DIET WORK
The continued “health” of the diet industry in America is astonishing. At any one time during much of 1986, there were as many as three diet-type books on Publishers Weekly top-10 nonfiction bestseller list. There have been two or three diet books on the list for as long as I can remember.
Hasn’t it occurred to anyone who diets that if any of the diets really worked, there would immediately be an end to unwanted fat, and no new diet books would need apply to the publishing combines in New York? This, of course, is not the case.
Every new diet that comes along claims to be the diet. And none of them ever is. Some are worthless. Some are dangerous. All are essentially ineffective.
You can count on the fingers of one hand how many diet books have been predicated on good research. Those few books languishing in the wilderness, you see, contain an element that many dieters don’t want to hear about: exercise.
The classic dieter who yo-yos between one diet and the next, losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight again, and then coming back heavier than ever, wants to be told how to manipulate the formula of food entering the mouth. The classic dieter diets almost as a hobby, and doesn’t want to hear that there has to be an element of physical work involved before the diet works.
Unfortunately, for a diet to be effective, it requires attention to food input as well as to burning up calories. Fortunately, there is a very low-energy, painless way to be spoon-fed the facts about dieting. The only physical work involved is inserting an audio cassette into the tape player and exercising your ears.
Jane Brody, the New York Times nutritional columnist and author of several bestselling books on nutrition and health, has a cassette on the market: “Jane Brody’s Weight Loss Program” (Warner Audio Publishing, $7.95).
Brody competently gathers facts about nutrition and health, and disseminates them in language the layman can easily understand.
Brody’s 40-minute cassette brings together current scientific information on diets: why they don’t work, some underlying reasons why people are overweight, what the fallacies are in many of the “popular” diets. The interview format of the tapes makes it simple to follow; most of the questions are those the classic dieter would likely ask.
The realization that there is nothing complicated about diets begins emerging as Brody discusses one misconception after the other. But the fact that a diet without an accompanying, modest exercise program is doomed to failure is also brought home forcefully.