Things have been getting away from me a bit in blog-world, and later this week I think I'm going to bring in some reinforcements, as I'm off New York City to do some theatre-goin', which as you may know by now is my other passion besides keeping you people amused for an average of 53 seconds a day.

What's been keeping me busy is a little article on Great Exercises You Should Be Doing according to various experts in the field.  As usual I'm not going to disclose exactly which exercises everyone settled on as that would upset my editors...something about them not wanting my "e-self" to scoop my "print" self, but I will say this:  after all the dust settles (it's still flying) following Mike Boyle's throwdown vis-a-vis the squat, and after an older, less controversial assertion by Boyle, Eric Cressey, Chad Waterbury, and others that flat bench pressing Just Ain't All That Great Forya, I'm sensing a bit of a trend here:  a kind of assault (too strong a word...)--questioning, perhaps?--of some of the long-held basic tenets of strength training. 

There are still people out there who assert that all you need bench presses, squats and deadlifts for complete fitness.  And these aren't powerlifters, either.  They're regular folks like you and me, trying to improve their strength and look better. 

I'm not saying that's impossible; just that it's not that desirable.  At least to me. I understand that people want simplicity; they want an "All You Need Is..." approach, so fitness guys who put themselves in a given box ("I'm a kettlebell guy") often gain at least temporary popularity over guys who take a slightly more holistic approach. 

Despite this, it's pretty clear that the body DOESN'T like repetition:  too much sitting; too much running; too much benching.  The muscle, and connective tissues shorten or lengthen based on the demands of the movement you keep doing, and various overuse injuries become the inevitable results. They're just dumb soft tissues, after all, trying to make your life easier.  You're the general, sending them out into harm's way day after day. 

The funny thing about all the "prehab/rehab" stuff that's justifiably cropped up in the last few years is that it's often necessary to undo the effects of poor exercise habits.  And that's not a euphemism for 'no exercise'--I mean bad programming, bad form, too miuch of this, not enough of that.

The last thing an exercise program should do, friends, is make your life worse.  Make your life outside the gym more painful, more inconvenient, less enjoyable.  And yet too often that's what it's doing. 

More on this to come.