by Neil Anderson
What is the single best exercise? Catchy question, eh? Apparently the New York Times thought so too. Earlier this week several GPPrs (thanks all - I love when you do this) sent me a link to the NYT article posing this very question.
I (like many who read it) have been flabbergasted by the world-wide response. It has been enormous. Health and fitness experts, from nearly every point of the globe, using every form of media have all been sounding off on what they think about this NYT masterpiece and which exercise really is the best. Before you click the link, I'll save you some time.
It doesn't say ANYTHING.
It can't. If we (exercise consumers) have learned anything over the last 25 years, it is these things:
1) The human body is ultimately capable of making ANY movement, in EVERY plane of motion, in each of the 3 metabolic pathways. There is no single exercise that can simulate all of this at once. If there were it would fall victim to this next point.
2) Doing any ONE exercise over and over ad nauseam will create adaptations which would eventually render that exercise useless in terms of improving our health.
3) Because we understand points 1 & 2, we also know that title question in the NYT article cannot be answered as written.
4) No one should know more about the points above than a NYT journalist.