Expert Asks If You Can't Lift More Than You Weigh, Then Why Do You Need 500 Pounds of Weights to Work Out?
The average American male can bench press only 135 pounds without risking injury, and women can typically only bench press about 60 pounds, so why does everyone feel like the only way they can work out is with a 500 pound weight machine from a gym?
That's the question asked by Donnie Gorsuch, a woman who didn't have the time or money for a gym, but wanted to exercise in the comfort of her own home. Her logic flew in the face of the popular notion that if you don't belong to a gym, you need to buy gym-style equipment to work out.
"Gyms and the health club industry have created in the popular consciousness a type of 'gym dependency,' which has convinced millions of people that the only way to really get a good workout is with gym equipment," she said. "But I didn't have the time or money to join a gym, and I didn't have room in my house for a giant workout machine. That's when I discovered the practice of bodyweight training, which uses your own weight to provide the resistance for muscles that gym equipment provides."
Gorsuch is not only a practitioner of bodyweight training, but she also developed with her husband a simple brace for bodyweight trainers called The Power Platform(www.
"Bodyweight exercises don't require weights, so they are ideal for people who can't afford or don't have time for the gym," Gorsuch added. "In this economy, most people are of one of two extremes. They either have two or more jobs trying to make ends meet, or they are among the millions who are unemployed or underemployed. Bodyweight training is perfect for these people, because it's neither expensive nor time consuming."
The practice has been around for decades, and is used by the military, the space program, and even Olympic athletes, according to Gorsuch.
"People have become slaves to their gym, and when they are forced to quit because of time or money, they wind up buying an expensive piece of equipment from a late night infomercial than ends up taking up space, or better, becoming a staging area for folding clothes or a work bench for household fix-it projects," she added. "Bodyweight training has always been around, but because of the unique challenges facing most people in today's new economy, it looks like the practice will finally gain the mainstream acceptance it deserves."
