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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Capitalism and its effect on the development of gym equipment

Alfamax offers some left-of-field thoughts on whether communism actually had a positive effect on the development of gym routines and equipment in Easter bloc countries.

It fairly widely known by anyone who's been around in the gym for a while that the Russians pretty much made most of the important discoveries in the area of strength training. They then went onto to refine their methods and dominated the Olympics throughout the mid and latter part of the 20th century, all this while living under communism.

Conversely the west, living under capitalism, made popular the modern gym’s which have been filled with machines that largely offer little in the way of effective functional resistance training - that is equipping the body to perform a particular movement as opposed to merely concerning themselves with aesthetic appeal.

This is one example and I'm not saying communism is a wonderful thing, but my question is this: Has capitalism created a situation where things are predominantly done for financial gain by, in this case, withholding valuable information about truly effective training methods and concepts to the general public in the hopes of selling them a gym membership?