Daily Mail - such negative female articles.

I think Sean at mindbodymatters needs a kick up the arse and telling straight. It's no wonder women are frigtened to death of weight training when people who work in the field are scaring them off too. He should know better and how the hell can he say weights of at least 25kg???? Doing what.....lateral raises, deadlifts????? Pointless stating that without the exercise..............I'm bloody livid.

I spent at least half an hour ranting at work! One was not amused.

I couldn't believe what he was saying, it would have been bad enough reading the article as it was but for that tripe to come from a ' fitness professional ' .. *shakes head*

Email sent

So he is willing to freely put down any woman who shows any sign of training based on his view of how they should look, but its funny that he dosn't put up any pictures of himself on his own personal training website!

Ach, he works in Fitness First, what do you expect . Probably scared of women with muscle as he's seriously lacking himself ....come on Sean, take the bait and post

I'll see if I can find a piccie of him, I work for FF... :-D

Go Flick go ....my comment regarding FF was in no way meant to reflect on you and others who are likeminded and work for FF

I got an email response:

Hi Flick,


Thank you for your feedback regarding the article.


I assure you I was in no way criticising these women for training with weights and actively encourage all my clients to include resistance exercise in their workouts. However, I still stand by my opinion that there is a difference between 'normal' and 'athletic' fitness. And I do believe that athletes, professional or amateur are less concerned about aesthetics and more with performance - bodybuilding being the exception of course as it is striving for both. To build the muscle mass that the celebrities mentioned in the article have done would necessitate a great deal of training and careful diet. More than the many women who might read the magazine would be likely to have time to do.


Personally I think that the pictures of the women shown - with the exception of Madonna - look great, and indeed Jodie Marsh is now competing as a bodybuilder.


The article's comment regarding periods stopping actually related to marathon runners and exercisers who do excessive cardio but was presumably cut due to space restriction, as was my full comment regarding bicep curls and tricep extensions and the weights used - 25kg was purely speculation, not a recommendation nor a condemnation. Here I continued that I recommend multi-muscle group and whole body exercises such as dips, deadlifts and pull-ups etc. rather than isolation exercises as they save time. Obviously an athlete such as a bodybuilder will use isolation exercises more because she or he will have, or will make, the time to include them in a workout.


Also I would like to point out that I didn't write the article and just gave my opinion on exercises and likely fitness regimes, not on whether I thought they were 'too' muscley.


Any way to get people exercising is surely to be encouraged, hence the suggestion of doing exercises at home without special equipment or gym membership.


Apologies for any offence caused.


Kind regards,


Sean Barnes-Murphy


Lots of comments here, but mainly, I thought Dips were an isolation exercise???
He's basically back-tracking and saying he agrees with strength training and that women shouldn't expect to achieve what the celebs do but that certainly wasn't in the light that the article was printed... :-/
 
P.S No offence taken, I'd work in a mainstream gym any day of the week, sooooo much more equipment and I LOOVEEEEE helping 'normal' people who come in - so fufuilling... :-)

the moral of the story is that magazines and the tabloid press are full of shiite!

So whats new?

...but that doesnt mean it isnt worthwhile complaining and pointing out the errors.

Good on ya Flick.

and, really...''the muscle mass of the celebrities'', what muscle mass?
 why does everyone have to knock maddona...I think she looks amazing!

flick161

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He's basically back-tracking and saying he agrees with strength training and that women shouldn't expect to achieve what the celebs do but that certainly wasn't in the light that the article was printed...)

I guess anyone who does any kind of interview with the media can expect what they say to be manipulated so as to portray the angle that the mag wants to take...and the mag is not going to risk alienating it's reader by straying from convention and suggesting that it might be a good thing if women were to exert themselves

The magazine got a different email and are yet to get back to me :-D

I'm not much of a one for standing up and being counted but I'm glad I did this time :-)

Well done Flick ! I'm going to compose my email this weekend

kitty


Problem is you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. A celeb makes an effort to lose weight or enhance their physique and gets slated for it, they put on weight and they're sent to hell.................probably all written by some ugly fat bint who sits at a computer drinking high street bought latte in a paper cup and eating a blueberry muffin wondering why she can't lose weight herself so the little yellow demon sits on her fingers and makes her type hideous comments.

 

 That is SO true; how often do you read, on one page, that So-and-so has become "worryingly thin," then two pages later, Ms X is slated for "ballooning" (what a cliche...) to a size 10!!! Then, they've got someone else a few pages later trying to persuade us that a size 14 is normal!
We all know that a size 14 can look "big" on one female and slim on another - even two size ten women together can look quite different; one will look bigger than the other, but how can it possibly be right that a woman who "goes up" to a 10 is seen as a pariah? Does it matter what the label says as long as it fits?
As for dress sizes themselves, they seem to have changed out of all dimension - about 30 years ago, a size 8 was 30-20-32, a 10 was 32-22-34, a 12 was 34-24-36, a 14 was 36-26-38 etc.  I used to read my mum's Slimming magazines, and that size 10-12 was seen as ideal. Now the sizing is completely different - a size 8 means a 26" waist, as opposed to the 20" of yesterday. Does that mean that today's proverbial "size Zero" (a four in the UK) was the size 8 of yesterday?
Like Dawn says, it's a no-win situation. I'll stick to the crossword and the funnies!