Out one evening, I asked one of my son’s young friends for his email and phone number because I’d wanted him to do some graphics work for me. I pulled out a pen and notecard and he looks at me and says, “oh, old school.” It was a hilarious realization to him, that we could share information without fumbling with our phones, but the pen and paper were the correct tools for the job at hand. The situation was instantly remedied and there was no amount of shouting our emails or numbers out over the din of the club. It made me think of other recent times when just finding  someone with a pen was a task.

This also made me think to get away from the saying, “old school” as it applies to fitness in general and bodybuilding in particular. When someone’s playing “hopsquats” with their “TRX Bands” or “lunging squats” on a Bosu ball, don’t call my pull ups, benchpress, or squats “old school.” These exercises, plus many other “old school” barbell and dumbbell movements, made every champion in every sport, from The Olympics to the Superbowl and are still the best tools for the job. I guarantee they didn’t do it with “Exerbands, Bosu’s, stability pads or TRX bands.” I guarantee Arnold, Coleman, Cutler or Heath; Wilkins, Garcia or Kyle owes their “perfect, best in the world, physiques” to weights. I guarantee every body you see on every magazine cover, male and female, was created with weight-based workouts. Every speed athlete, every sport, every age, every country, trains “old school.” So put down those “shake-a-weights” and pick up some real weight.

You can supplement your warmups or workouts with these “new, improved” trendy “shortcut” tools; but like supplements to nutrition, you need real food, you need real weights, barbells and dumbbells, to make significant, constant progress. So don’t try to say you’re “training with TRX Straps”, you’re not. You’re playing. You’re using toys instead of tools. A workout requires “work.” You don’t need functional training when everything is functioning fine. You are not building size, shape or stamina by shaking ropes or slamming a medicine ball at the floor. You are ticking time off a trainer’s watch, while they create these ridiculous, awkward movements that make you nothing but noisy and tired.

Saying weights are “old school” is like saying cash is old school; see how “old” it is when you need something in a foreign country. Did you ever coax with plastic when you really need a special favor, room, meal? Cash talks, just like whole foods talk, and weights talk, while trends walk; they come and go, but they always go away. Some offer challenges or look pretty or fun; but face it, the “new school tools” are for play. Real athletes use real weights, real workouts, real food and real sweat.  And don’t even get me started on Zumba. I know people who sweat like that sitting still!