I mean that literally.  They most likely didn’t even look that good the day of the shoot.  Most of you are inherently aware of this fact but seeing as I still have clients bringing photos of fitness and underwear models to me as examples of their fitness goals, I thought it was worth reiterating the realities of how that photo came to be.

Dove has a fantastic commercial showing just how much hair, lighting, make-up and Photoshop go into the distorted images that the media presents us everyday:

Women aren’t the only ones under unrealistic pressure to look perfect.  While holding a copy of Muscle and Fitness, you may find yourself wondering how you too can have pecs that look as though they were chiseled out of a solid slab of granite.  None of the exercises inside produce an “ah-ha” moment.  They are the same routines you have been doing at the gym for the past three decades.  What is the secret?  What is it that you are clearly missing out on?

Well I’ll tell you about the part of their “Beach Body” routine that never made it to print.  Steroids.  Most of the models in magazines like Muscle and Fitness and Flex have been doing massive amounts of steroids for years: Deca-Durabolin,  Duratest 250,  growth hormone and Winstrol.  I know this ’cause I’ve spoken with many of them at the gym.  Then, there is plastic surgery: mostly calve implants and liposuction.  About ten weeks out from the photo shoot, these models begin strict dieting and carb depleting, which I can tell you firsthand is miserable and unhealthy.  As if that were not enough, they then receive the treatment witnessed above in the Dove commercial.

Men’s Fitness online asks the doubt-inducing question,

Are you fit enough for her?

Then links you to a piece entitled “The Superhero Workout: Develop the Body of Your Favorite Comic-Book Superhero,” accompanied by a photo of The Incredible Hunk.  But it is not the heavily sterioded Lou Ferrigno of the eighties.  Apparently he is no longer muscular enough.  Instead it is the modern computer animated version.  You know, the one that used an armored tank for the hammer throw in this summer’s film.  So are you fit enough for her?  Of course not!  You are but a mere mortal.

No wonder why so many people feel their efforts to be a “real man” or “real woman” are futile.  Their markers for having achieved such are often misguided and unrealistic, laying the ground work for shows like The Swan and Extreme Makeover to become so wildly popular and disturbing at the same time.  They feed the fantasy of cosmetic surgeons and The Fab Five ringing your doorbell and then overnight there is a “new you.”

So then what is the image that you should strive for?  Can I show you a photo of what a realistic, healthy body looks like?  No, it would only be somewhat realistic and healthy for a few and an insult to so many others.  To present an ideal, realistic image only takes us back to the beginning of the problem.  So then how do we know when we have finally succeeded?  The answer begins with a change in perspective.

We must shift our focus from the destination to the journey.  All roads on the map of life end at death, but there are many ways of getting there.  There are several things I suggest you do along the way:

1.  Sleep enough to wake feeling rested and not needing caffeine or other stimulants to get you through the day.

2.  Make sure the food you eat is organic and unprocessed as much as possible.

3.  Take steps to ensure you are eliminating waste regularly (2-5x’s/day).

4.  Be physically active on a daily basis.

5.  Acknowledge the issues in your life keeping you stressed and unhappy.  Work to change those which are in your power to do so and accept those which aren’t.

These five basic suggestions are in no way new information, but how many of us actually live by them?  This is the direction I recommend heading in.  And I can assure you that when you put the magazine down and pay attention to the journey,  your beautiful body is bound to follow.

Jamie Dreyer is the President of Further Fitness NYC.

My New Year’s resolution for 2008 was to do more high adventure activities.  I figured the best way to fit them into my work schedule was to make them my work schedule.  So in June, Adventure Further was born, and I traveled cross-country to Las Vegas with five clients.  Our first excursion was white water rafting down the Colorado River.  It was a simple day trip, no gear to bring and lunch was provided. We did not even have to row the boat seeing as it had an outboard.  And although I was picking them up at 3:30a.m. and they only went to bed at 2 a.m., everyone seemed to be in good spirits.

We loaded up the car and headed to the strip where we met our van and driver.  I forget if his name was Dean or Rick or Richard.  We’ll just call him Dick.  We were not even ten minutes into the drive before I realized that this guy was angry at the world and we had just entered his.  In Dick’s world the temperature must remain sub-zero so that he can wear his favorite motocross parka, jeans and a hat.  Too bad none of us got the memo that the desert would be transformed into the Arctic Circle, ’cause we were all wearing shorts and t-shirts.  It’s June in Nevada, Dick.  What the hell man!  Fortunately, the A/C blast only affected the people in the front two seats, where Brian and I were wearing our sleeveless tees.

In addition, Dick desperately wanted to play tour guide.  He would not shut up and grew visibly angry when not paid enough attention.

Dude, it’s 4 a.m.!  We all saw National Lampoon’s Vacation; you don’t have to impress us with your extensive knowledge of the Hoover Dam.

Luckily for Dick, Brian and I were wide awake and found it easier to offer the occasional “uh-ha” and “you don’t say” than to do deal with his passive-aggressive tantrums.

We finally arrived at the launch site and everybody wiped their eye boogers away, everyone except Brian and I, that is.  We never caught a wink of sleep due to the forced narrative by our navigator and the icy chill of the permafrost.  Instead we each plummeted out of the door onto the asphalt waiting for the scorching sun to do its job.  Once defrosted, we loaded into the raft and pushed off.

Holy crap, that water was cold!  No seriously, it was ice cold.  And when you added the wind, we were all shivering for over an hour.  As I looked around the raft at the blue faces, I saw the look in the group’s eyes.  It was a mutiny. They wanted to throw me overboard! Somehow I had made a terrible mistake by not informing everyone of the water temperature and in doing so became the least popular person on earth.  But how was I to know?  Who would have thought that the water temperature would be in the 50’s?  It was 115 degrees outside that day!  And when I asked the woman who took my reservation what we should wear, she said “Oh, just clothes to get wet in.”  Thanks for the heads up.

I will say, though, that the process of getting soaked was a ton of fun as you can see in the video below.  And I loved exploring the Grand Canyon.  I hope to go back someday and do a multiple day trip, spending the nights camped on the river bank and using oars instead of an outboard.

I learned several lessons on that first adventure.  First, ask every question imaginable beforehand.  Second, even if I have all my i’s dotted and t’s crossed, surprises still occur.  Third, sometimes people are just going to complain.  And lastly, never hire a driver named Dick.

Jamie Dreyer is the President of Further Fitness NYC.

Being an Eagle Scout, I am no stranger to the great outdoors.  But having lived the past nine years in the concrete jungle of NYC with no car, Mother Nature and I have been distant old friends for way too long now.

After a ten-year hiatus I went camping this weekend at Bear Mountain, bringing my girlfriend Maribel along with me for her first wilderness overnighter.  I don’t mean fake camping, where you drive 100 ft past the latrine up to your spot, drop a tent next to the car and watch the game with your buddies on a mini-TV.  That to me is just cheap accommodations.  By camping I mean backpacking. Leave the car in the lot, hike several miles into the mountains, pitch a tent and poop in the woods.  You should be far enough away from people that no one can hear your screams. Otherwise the scary stories don’t have the same effect.

I knew the trail I wanted to hike, the location I wanted to stay at each night, the food I wanted to prepare and the story I wanted to tell.  Other than that, what we did the rest of the time was a great, big, question mark.

So, why did I leave a cozy home, Siggy’s Good Food and indoor plumbing behind to carry 40lbs. of gear up a mountain, sit in the woods for three days and freeze my butt off for two nights?  And why did I feel compelled to drag my girlfriend along with me (other than the fact that it was her car getting me to the mountain)? Was it for the exercise?  Nah.  Was it to look macho in front of my woman?  Couldn’t hurt, but no.

It was to reconnect. Reconnect with my body as I navigated over the terrain. Reconnect with nature as it engulfed me.  And reconnect with Maribel as the distractions our everyday lives became more distant. This last point ended up being the most important part of the weekend.

The past two months have been rough ones for me.  Life has whipped a few curve balls my way and one caught me in the head, leaving me feeling deflated and defeated.  In the past, I would not have shared such troubles with anyone.  Instead I’d put up a façade and avoided intimacy with friends and lovers until I felt I had put myself back together.  But my silence during the first day’s hike weighed on each of us more than any of the gear we were carrying. We needed to talk.

Thankfully, Maribel has always put me at ease in regards to sharing subjects that previously were very loaded for me.  So I took a risk and exposed my insecurities to her as well as my fears of sharing such in the first place.  In doing so I learned two big lessons.  It is OK to share these feelings with close friends and family. But most importantly, they would probably love the opportunity to be there for me.

Now sitting at home, it is obvious that my aching legs had a great workout.  But I can’t help but be convinced that the healthiest part of this weekend was learning that what I saw as an emotional burden that I did not want to place on others could actually be an opportunity to let others get closer to me. In fact, learning that lesson was probably the healthiest thing I’ve done all year.

Jamie Dreyer is the President of Further Fitness.

This week I began my foray into the world of video blogging via Youtube. I thought it would be fairly quick and easy to create a decent video.

I was wrong.  After one blown mic and hours in the park I thought I had finally captured a clear dialogue of myself and happily headed home.  There I discovered what I really had on tape.  Twenty five minutes of kids screaming, city buses screeching and me stuttering.  I did finally find a take of my intro and closing in which the city “sort of” takes a break and I “sort of” learn to talk.

The only problem was that nature decided to be beautiful. The sun created some kind of glare or something  ’cause the visual sucks.  And never have I cursed a gentle blowing breeze in the park until today.  You can barely hear me!

But I hope you will bear with me.  Because even though the audio and visual both blow, I think this exercise is very good.

Jamie Dreyer is the President of Further Fitness.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am not a fan of treadmills. To be completely honest, I’d rather put on ten pounds of pudge than suffer on a treadmill for 30 minutes, three times a week. But that is mainly because I find it terribly boring and, as a rule, only do exercises I enjoy.

But putting my personal preferences aside, there is some solid science on the side of running on solid ground.  Biomechanically, the runner on land uses her legs to propel her body forward, while the runner on the treadmill swings her legs forward simply to stay in place.   In response to the “ground” constantly being pulled out beneath her, the runner on the treadmill uses a more cautious gait than the runner on land.  Her steps become shorter, lower and choppier.  Also, running on a treadmill does not provide shifting terrain, direction, or speed, so balance, coordination and stabilization are not developed.  If only perfect practice makes perfect, then practicing a less efficient running pattern will only make you a less efficient runner on land. And let’s face it:  there aren’t too many treadmill competitions!

Granted, there are some obvious pros to a treadmill if you are a running enthusiast. You can use it no matter what the weather conditions are.  You can also set an easier pace for your lighter training days.  And some treadmills even absorb more of the shock of running, reducing stress to joints and soft tissue.  However, I believe the vast majority of people pounding away on shock-absorbing platforms are there simply to get their heart rate up and to burn some calories.  I also believe that very few of them really LOVE running on a treadmill. The TVs are there for a reason… it’s boring as hell!

Now, I will resist giving my lecture on why I hate TVs being in the gym, as well as so many other places on earth.   But I will venture this:  there are better ways of burning off that pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food than mindlessly staring at a flat screen while on a hamster wheel.

Too often, exercise is a chore on the “To-Do” list.  Another clock to be punched.  Time to be served on the treadmill.   Instead of exercising such a discouraging view, I encourage you to indulge in cardio activities that are pleasurable, that engage your mind, that you may not even consider exercise at all.  Go for a hike, play with the kids, walk the dog, rake the yard, or go dancing.

Hell, you can even engage in some good ole sex!

Jamie Dreyer is the President of Further Fitness NYC.