The Biggest Loser Review - Professionals Give Their View on the Reality Show. This blockbuster reality show has ignited passionate reactions from fitness professionals and the clients they serve. Contestants who drop the fewest pounds each week are subject to possible elimination. The objective for contestants—besides drastically changing their bodies and lifestyles—is to be among a handful of players still in contention for the quarter- of- a- million- dollar prize; the finalist who is literally the biggest loser at the season finale wins. Produced in 2. 5 countries and airing in 9. The Biggest Loser franchise has morphed into a lifestyle brand that includes books, DVDs, video games and even protein powder. Close to 1. 2 million viewers tuned into NBC’s season 7 finale earlier this year. With season 8 airing in September, The Biggest Loser is gaining more fans, more attention and more momentum. The Biggest Loser: The Weight Loss Program to Transform Your Body, Health, and Life--Adapted from NBC's Hit Show! Is 'Biggest Loser'-Style Weight Loss Healthy? Biggest Loser Weight Management Program. Biggest Loser Weight Management Program The Official Biggest Loser Weight Management Program! Includes 6 tools to build your healthy lifestyle. Take the first step toward living The. The Biggest Loser Diet stresses nutrition and exercise. In six weeks, dieters can lose weight, make progress against diabetes and improve heart health. And this has some fitness professionals seriously sizing up the show. Is its portrayal of health and fitness helping our industry, or harming it? Industry experts and The Biggest Loser insiders weigh in. For fitness pros, perhaps the most memorable segments of The Biggest Loser are the workout scenes. You might see contestants sprinting on indoor cycling bikes, doing plyometric jumps or hustling across the gym while piggybacking a trainer. Scenes such as these have some fitness experts worried that the previously sedentary contestants endure too much intensity, too soon. There is simply no sound reason for doing this,” says Ross, a 2. ![]() Alison Sweeney, Jillian Michaels, Dolvett Quince. The simple idea of The Biggest Loser, familiar to dieters the world over, is that 'whomever loses the most.wins.' Losing weight will. Recipients of MentorLA program.The Biggest Loser Diet. Eat Less Move More’s Bigger Badass Brother – Fasting 22. Is The Biggest Loser Diet right for you? Diet & Weight Management. The Biggest Loser Official Weight Management Program 3 Day Diet Lose 10 Pounds Reviews kalaya natruals raspberry ketone with green tea and How Much Calcium Do I Need To Lose Weight How Jennifer Hudson Lost Weight Really How To. IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year finalist and personal training director for Sport Fit Total Fitness Clubs in Bowie, Maryland. Many of the contestants on that show have no business jumping or doing explosive exercise.”. Pete Mc. Call, MS, is a San Diego–based exercise physiologist with the American Council on Exercise (ACE), who creates and delivers fitness education programs for ACE. He agrees that the basic principles of exercise progression appear to be missing. Clients are pushed to their limits, which places them at risk of injury and overtraining. From the episodes I watched, there was no mention of how to design an effective, efficient workout,” says Mc. Call. The average viewer tunes in to be entertained and hopefully inspired to live a healthier lifestyle. From the standpoint of ratings, quick cuts of red- faced contestants doing sprinting intervals on treadmills is more compelling than long takes of the steady- state cardio that contestants do most of the time. And even with its indulgent 2- hour timeslot, The Biggest Loser can broadcast only a fraction of what goes on at “the ranch” or “on campus,” two terms that refer to the property where contestants live, eat and exercise for most of the show’s production. Background material gets shifted around and edited out. Bob Harper—one of the show’s two resident personal trainers—confirms that viewers at home don’t see the vast majority of what goes on between the trainers and contestants on the ranch. They step up on a 6- inch platform before they jump it or try higher steps. There’s definitely a progression in everything we do—but in fast- forward.” And “fast- forward” it is. These “clients” aren’t working out just three or four times a week for an hour at a time, like most folks do. Dropping pounds is a full- time job for The Biggest Loser contestants, and exercise is practically their sole. As a result, says Harper, “their fitness capacity increases considerably in a short amount of time.” Given that contestants work out for 4 or 6 hours a day, it’s not surprising that they advance more quickly than the average client. In fact, contestants are sometimes shown doing progressions that trainers might never teach to the majority of their clients. In addition to being a personal trainer and an exercise physiologist, Gideon co- owns Bamboo Balance LLC, a fitness, Pilates and aquatics company in Los Angeles. They are then forced into hitting the ground running, . At the time, it was the fastest I’d ever walked in my life. ![]() It was hard.” Vincent says she ran at high speeds only for short bouts—such as 3. However, “vigorous” for the drastically out- of- shape contestants might be a slow to moderately paced walk on flat terrain or a minor incline. In the process, Harper says contestants progress on more than just a physical level. Then a month later, they can do it and laugh, saying, . Still, the lack of insight about what happens before contestants run fast or jump high leaves some fitness pros uneasy. No one wants sedentary clients—obese or not—to think exercise is something they can’t handle even from square one. ![]() ![]() Exercises chosen to that end make sense,” says Ross. It’s not just thrown together, I can assure you.”. What’s With the Last- Chance Workout? Exercise design and progression may be dealt with mostly off- camera, but the grueling exercises that get air time are a main attraction. These exercises are mostly shown during a segment called the “last- chance workout,” which is the final exercise session before contestants weigh in for the week. The last- chance workout is one last- ditch effort to zap as many calories as possible and avoid potential elimination from the show. Some of the industry sources interviewed for this article referred to certain exercises shown on The Biggest Loser as “exotic,” “far- fetched,” “bizarre” or “unnecessary.” According to Scott Pullen, MS, a fitness and nutrition specialist with dot. FIT and a master instructor for the National Academy of Sports Medicine, the show’s training methods “fly in the face of what, hopefully, most responsible trainers would do.”. The extreme methods employed on The Biggest Loser appear to pay no consideration to the structural or physical abilities of the contestants,” says Pullen. A number of fitness experts interviewed for this article assert that the exercises are too difficult and complex for most contestants’ skills and abilities. They’re wrong, says Harper. And just because you see one contestant performing a particular move doesn’t mean they’re all doing it or doing it to the same degree. For example, a contestant with particularly strong legs might be encouraged to do plyo jumps at a higher level than other contestants. And some contestants might not do plyo jumps at all. The other quarter of the time, however, I question what I see. It’s not the exercises; it’s who’s performing them. Form and technique occasionally seem to get thrown out the window. I believe, as a trainer, you shouldn’t get ahead of your clients; you shouldn’t have them doing exercises they can’t properly perform. I realize it makes for better TV to show the struggle, but anything can be modified,” says Willett, who has appeared as a featured trainer in a Canadian reality show about weight loss, called X- Weighted. And The Biggest Loser contestants are by no means immune to injury. ![]() In season 7, for example, one young woman was sent home with a stress fracture along her pelvis. To that end, some fitness pros wonder why any of the obese contestants do potentially high- risk and high- impact activity. The Sterling Heights, Michigan, resident won season 7 after losing 5. I think sometimes you need someone to push you. That’s how I lost the weight.”. We want to be safe,” says Harper, “but we do push boundaries.” Part of a trainer’s role is to inspire and motivate clients to do their best, but how do you avoid overstepping boundaries in the process? It’s an instinct; a good trainer assesses the situation and the client.”. Phillips says she was never pushed past her ability when she trained with both Harper and Jillian Michaels, the other trainer on the show. Viewers at home don’t know the background behind exercise selection. That person doesn’t know why you chose a given exercise for your client(s) at that moment. These are completely inappropriate actions for a fitness professional. Trainers can provide an overload to a client through other methods,” he says. Tune into most recent episodes of The Biggest Loser and you are bound to witness a trainer swearing and/or yelling at contestants. It’s not just the yelling that has some fitness pros raising eyebrows; it’s also the perception that what’s being said is intimidating. We are in a situation where it’s a matter of life and death for the contestants, and sometimes they are looking for the easy way out. We are not beating them down emotionally—it’s about building up their self- esteem.”. Trainer Jillian Michaels, in particular, has been criticized by some fitness pros for what’s perceived as her “bullying” style with contestants. For example, on You. Tube, there’s a clip from season 6 of Michaels shouting at two contestants on treadmills: “So unless you faint, puke or die, keep walking,” she says. IDEA requested an interview with Michaels for this article, but she declined due to a busy schedule. However, Phillips, who trained closely with Michaels, had this to say: “Jillian knows how much you can give of yourself. She can read you like a book. She wants you to succeed,” Phillips says. The Biggest Loser campus is simply a different atmosphere. Whereas a “real- world” trainer might see a client up to a few times a week, The Biggest Loser trainers are in constant contact with the show’s contestants. Harper says he and Michaels are not on campus just for the 3 or 4 shoot days per week. They are there 6 days per week, assisting contestants with everything from training to nutrition to behavior changes. Both trainers keep lines of communication open with contestants from past seasons, as well. It is not necessarily right that it should be that way, but it is. I would say that the trainers on the show obviously do a great job of building relationships with contestants, as they are able to influence their eating, exercise habits and behaviors.”. Regardless of how much time the show’s trainers spend with contestants or how much they might care about them, some fitness pros could do without the yelling.
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