In the last issue of The Exercise Standard, I mentioned the Summary Statement - Workshop on Physical Activity and Public Health sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and the American College of Sports Medicine. (To refresh your memory refer to page 15 of The Exercise Standard, Volume I, Issue 4, Fall 1993.) I enumerated its major points and briefly criticized it as inappropriate due to major definitional and conceptional flaws.
Since the release of the Summary Statement I have witnessed several media reports regarding its proclamations. These reports have been published in local newspapers and on both local and national news broadcasts. One was aired locally October 26 by Karen Johnson, MD, of the Baylor College of Medicine. I am certain that I have seen only a small fraction of such disseminations.
A related article appeared in the Orlando Sentinel. It was entitled, "Is Fitness a Fading Fad?" I find it ironic that - if indeed the masses are really losing interest in fitness - they actually are losing interest in an incorrect perception of fitness placed there by the inappropriate propaganda of the ACSM. Its collective membership has never experienced, defined, discussed, observed, or studied fitness as it should be practically endorsed and implemented into American society.
As I have already mentioned in various books and articles, meaningful investigation into any phenomenon requires three things: strict definition, reliable observation (tests), and statistical controls.
In these regards, the exercise physiologists avoid definition, rely on data acquired without valid measuring tools, and permit research subjects to supervise themselves. (They might as well supervise themselves. The exercise physiologists are not disciplined to properly supervise research.) Supervision also refers to more than just the implementation of the exercise, per se. It also involves statistical controls and the consistency with which they are interpreted with respect to the classical sciences.
I cannot perform some (most) aspects of research in exercise because I, too, do not possess valid measuring tools and some of the criteria needed to properly control the application of the stimulus. The difference is that I am aware of these major shortcomings. Of course, such deficiencies never seem to impede the typical exercise physiologist from hastily cobbling together faint musings and rushing them into print as research for his equally moronic colleagues to ruminate and perform follow-up studies. (Isn't it interesting that they spend megabucks proving EITHER something so obvious that lizards and rattlesnakes would already know OR proving something so ridiculous that real scientists simply shrug their shoulders and try to ignore or excuse it with: "Oh well, they say stuff like that in [the field of] exercise.")
I also have doubts about my beliefs and statements regarding exercise. It is natural for me to want to believe something other than the cruel truth about my genetic limitations and the extreme effort required to adapt within my limitations. This causes me to constantly seek a way out of the harsh reality and to reexamine my conclusions. After all, deep down, I do not really like my conclusions.
In addition, I appreciate vague impressions that I cannot express directly and concisely to others. Either the words do not conveniently exist or I have not spent the effort to facilitate the communication. It is just such as this that makes this issue's feature article, Walking Programs and Physicians - a Natural Courtship, (The Walking Article, for short.) so useful. It expresses many concepts that you and I already appreciate and agree upon, but it also offers an intuition that I can not readily express in other ways. And it serves to subvert the precepts behind the outrageous Summary Statement.
But before we embark into The Walking Article, I must explain the conditions of its origin: In the early 1980s I escorted a physician (name?) around the Nautilus® compound at the request of the general manager, Ed Farnham. Ed mentioned to me privately and in a scoffing manner that the doctor was a fanatic proponent of walking programs. Ed also mentioned that Arthur Jones had slight patience with such nonsense. In any case, I was instructed to avoid or acquiesce to the issue.
Until this episode, I had never given walking as exercise any consideration one way or the other. But I immediately agreed that Arthur's opinion was correct and that the obvious required no more investigation. To me it was similar to one of those philosophical queries where one ponders how to prove that he is not in a room where he is not. Why waste your time?
Nevertheless, in 1982 I found myself involved in the Nautilus Osteoporosis Study. There we had available a finite number of potential subjects to impanel into preliminary research to demonstrate that loading muscular structures effects bone remodeling. The principle investigator, Morris Notelovitz, was innocently though strongly swayed by exercise physiology types (Everett Smith et al., Carol Fields, Chris Zauner) that 1/3 of our precious population should be randomized into a walking program. This required space, personnel, treadmills, blood work, physicals, consultations - resources that were taken away from enabling us to make the most of an ideal setting to determine once and for all if our best techniques of muscular stimulation were effective toward increasing bone density.
I admit that there was some justification to use such an activity as walking as somewhat of a control; however, the ultimate control, as Morris argued himself, was the population at large. I saw this study as our only opportunity to use the best of our muscular loading techniques and other resources - time, money, and subject population - to get some - any - remodeling response. Once accomplished, it would then be possible to go back and explore other less efficient but perhaps more practical possibilities. But no, we compromised our best shot for the sake of a poor analysis of several questionable approaches.
Beyond this, however, were other complications. The exercise physiology twits complained that their subjects became bored without music. Of course, the subjects needed ventilation, therefore fans. Also, the researchers had drained off another 1/3 of the eligible subjects from the study's initial focus to a stationary bicycle group, and since the bicycles made an incessant whining noise; the music was necessarily played at a volume to be heard over the treadmills, fans, and bicycles. Then the bicycle/treadmill instructor was required to speak loud enough to be heard and understood over the already-prevailing din.
Because the Nautilus equipment where we instructed our subjects was in the same room, it was often difficult to communicate with our subjects. Even though I might obtain comprehension of my commands, our subjects were often less patient and more irritable with our criticisms due to their difficulty to hear us lest we raise our voices as though shouting at them.
Belatedly, I realized that the research setting was ridiculous. I realized that I must convince Morris that walking was not exercise and that the influence of the exercise physiology breeds were destroying the study.
But before I could convince Morris of his error I had to explain to myself why walking was not exercise. This, indeed, I felt was the major challenge. How could I grapple with my bias against walking as exercise when then I had no substantive arguments? I spent weeks reflecting on the Exercise vs Recreation argument and developing the outline for the First Definition of Exercise (Although the Definition was not completed until 1989.). Eventually, I assembled a collection of arguments that supported my bias. These arguments fall into several categories. Some hinge on the Exercise vs Recreation argument. Some are direct and consistent criticisms of the mechanical efficiency of muscular loading during walking. Others are oblique observations and criticisms of - not necessarily what - but how and why the walking-as-exercise proponents speak, conceptualize, and believe what they do. Each perspective is an important chink in their belief system.
The original version of The Walking Article was completed in 1984. I now believe that my arguments would have been stronger if I had then completed and included The First Definition of Exercise. The Definition is the basis of critical analysis. Of course, The Walking Article is now updated with this improvement, however, the article does not read as well as I would like due to my organization of subtopics. Please study its content with frequent and careful reflections to The Definition. Also, I realize that some of its content is redundant with what many readers have already read in other SuperSlow material. I deliberately included this for the benefit of readers who have not had access to the other sources.
This article was my only opportunity to convince Notelovitz of the futility of walking programs. I mistakenly believed that he being an MD, a PhD, and a faculty member of the University of Florida Medical School that he could be objective. His response was a passionate and nonsensical denouncement of the article in the presence of me and his exercise physiologist. Not a single point of the article was broached, much less discussed or debated.
Before encountering the article, I still must relate one additional episode that entails the walking fetish affecting the ill-fated Osteoporosis Study. It was expressed that the Osteoporosis Study was often known by both researchers and subjects alike as the Nautilus Study. Some felt that it appeared that too much emphasis and attention was placed on those women randomized to perform Nautilus exercise and that the others were slighted. It was also natural that many if not all of those women randomized into the study had ideally hoped they would be instructed on the Nautilus equipment only to be disappointed when they found themselves riding a bike or walking on a treadmill 20 minutes/day, three times/week. I admit that I felt sympathetic for these women although I considered the stationary bicycles and treadmills a wrongful trespass in the first place. I guess, somewhat to compensate for my true feelings - which the research staff already knew - I silently acquiesced to a project to make the bicycle/treadmill subjects feel more important. What I did not predict, however, was how this minor project would backfire on the entire research program.
The Osteoporosis Study was highlighted in the 1984 International Congress of the Menopause held at Lake Buena Vista, Florida. This event convenes once every four years and focuses on many different aspects of medicine and health concerning menopausal women. Understandably, osteoporosis is a major concern at the Congress.
At the Congress our researchers displayed data demonstrating that the treadmill subjects produced the greatest improvement in a VO2Max study. Second best in oxygen consumption efficiency was the stationary bicycle group. And dead last was the Nautilus group. I ignored this as usual. And I really did not see the next blow coming with regard to how this would further affect our work with the Nautilus subjects. Even when the researchers returned to Gainesville after the Congress and mounted the poster study at the entrance to the gym for all subjects to see, I still was not my prescient self. I still acquiesced to a point of no return. Within weeks the attitude and performance of many of my best and most faithful subjects had waned precipitously. They entered the gym and read the display to see that they had lost the oxygen consumption race. They would then ask me why they should work so hard on the Nautilus machines if it did no good to do so. I found it difficult to make them understand that VO2Max was not the major focus of the study and it was improper to tell them what was really on my mind: that such testing was worthless and did not mean anything to anyone with half a brain.
Within a short time the problem became so severe that an impasse developed between me and the University researchers. I was determined not permit the situation to continue. On January 1, 1986, I removed the poster study and was treated as though I had simultaneously murdered Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, Uncle Sam, Tinker Bell, and the Tooth Fairy. Notelovitz sided with his team to have me removed as I knew he would. Although I never understood why Arthur Jones required me or anyone else associated with Nautilus to be present at the University when he openly admitted that the research was worthless, I decided that it would not be me. I knew Arthur's track record with such arrangements and reckoned that he would shut it all down if I could make the conditions of my expulsion ugly enough. It worked. Arthur stated his observation that I appeared quite proud of myself. Of course, there were many other factors affecting Arthur's actions. He was in the midst of selling Nautilus and simultaneously setting up a grant Chair in a newly formed department in the University. This new department would eventually become the marketing focus of his new venture, MedX®.
Nevertheless, the important observation in this messy story is the effect of the exercise physiologists. They ruined the most expensive, best supervised, longest-range exercise study to date. It was ruined because they imposed their aerobics religion on a study that ostensibly and objectively focused on bone remodeling. They are responsible for influencing Notelovitz to devote over half of the study's $3.5 Million and subject population toward a spurious notion. This imposed more testing on the limited patience of the volunteer subjects and eventually led to an outright conflict of interest in the motivation of the only subjects - the Nautilus Group - that were engaged in meaningfully loading muscular structures.