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Would you expect a car wash to be cosy and relaxing?
Werner Kieser on being children of the Earth, vinegar-flavoured chocolates, the status quo, the fun factor, lean mass and manufacturing
Herr Kieser: Professor Seiwert, Germany’s time management expert, called Kieser Training a “purist concept without the bells and whistles” Why do you dispense with such add-ons?
We don’t train because it’s fun or the “in” thing to do. We do it because we know it’s necessary. As children of the Earth, the effects of gravity mean that resistance is fundamental and essential. Many seek it in sport but sport is limited in its capacity to deliver resistance. Kieser Training offers targeted and measured resistance. That may not be attractive but it does work.
Photo: © Kieser Training/Michael Ingenweyen
Despite that you could package it with more bells and whistles...
That would be a joke, just like vinegar-flavoured chocolates – eat one and you spit it out immediately – after all, you were expecting quite a different experience. We don’t take Would you expect a car wash to be cosy and relaxing? that risk and so don’t promise that training is fun.
Instead, you say it makes you happy – what’s the difference?
The training itself is not necessarily pleasant. In fact, it’s hard work. It has to be, because the human body treats the status quo as the ideal. Movement in our everyday life may be just enough to maintain strength levels but without real exertion, strength will gradually decline. In contrast, strength training improves the status quo. The majority of us live with strength below optimum levels and this causes problems. It’s not the training that makes us happy but its effects – with every passing day we feel healthier, lighter and better able to cope.
You present your concept as something very simple.
The concept has not changed significantly. I see no reason to change it. After all, the packaging is also part of the promise and it would be wrong if the packaging failed to mirror the content. We don’t claim to provide pleasure, sport or even wellness. We do claim to deliver efficiency.
You describe Kieser Training as a producer of “lean mass” – that sounds like asceticism...
The term “lean mass” refers to muscles, bones and tendons, i.e. fat-free mass. We need stronger muscles and higher bone density. Both demand resistance training.
So you could liken a Kieser Training facility to a manufacturing facility?
As I have said, we produce bone and muscle mass and so to that extent we can be compared to a manufacturing facility. This factory-type build-up is in line with our purpose. In our “factory”, we have machines that produce the right resistance for the musculoskeletal system, in the right places and at the right intensity. There is no need for anything else. Why gild the lily when it’s sufficient on its own?
So you follow the Bauhaus principle of “Form follows function”?
Industrial architecture is ideal if you want to produce and not just represent. Many people find such architecture horrendous but possibly that’s because they have a somewhat bourgeois understanding of cosiness and wellbeing. That’s absurd. After all, we would not expect a car wash to be relaxing or touch our emotions. On the other hand, this reductionist form does develop its own – partiallyunintended – aesthetic for those able to distinguish it.
Column
According to the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty, any thought that ignores the physical dimension is inevitably doomed to failure. He regarded the neglect of the physical as a misunderstanding of life itself. For him, the body was not just a canvas for random ideas, nor was it something amenable at will to unfettered manipulation by an equally free spirit. Instead he regarded it as an expression of our entire existence, the vehicle that allows Man to be in the world. According to Ponty, the body – here meaning the mind and body combined as a single unitis “the event” in our life, it is the “expression of our entire existence rather than an external accompaniment to it, because our existence is realised in it“. Similarly with Descartes, who said that the relationship between the spirit and body “cannot be compared to the captain and his ship because the spirit is intimately fused with the body and so cannot be separated from it”. Consistent with this, Feuerbach talks of the “porous self”, a self that is not independent but is also determined by the body. Other living creatures may unfold in a closed functional unit but not so Man: In order to understand Man you have to go beyond what is immediately observable or explicable at the purely functional level.
Dr. Siegfried Reusch, Editor in chief of journal “der blaue reiter” – Journal for Philosophy” www.derblauereiter.de und www. verlag-derblauereiter.de
An unrivalled success story: 10 years Kieser Training in Austria
The Austrians must have really been waiting for Kieser Training to enter their lives. From the moment the first site opened in March 2000, they have been tolerating waiting lists for their introductory sessions, but kept their appointments and made Austria the most successful market for the concept.
This is not meant to belittle the hard work put in by all the staff over the years, starting with Werner Kieser himself when he had to get behind reception after his presentation on the opening day to help sell subscriptions to relieve staff overwhelmed by demand.
Today there are three facilities in Vienna and one each in Graz, Salzburg and Linz with a total of 18,000 customers. Two major resorts, Bad Tatzmannsdorf and Kitzbühel both sport a Kieser Training Selection facility – a new business model for smaller locations. The success of the concept is very well summed up by the experience of Marion Leszuk, who went to the launch event 10 years ago, joined on the spot and cannot imagine life without strength training any more.
Marion Leszuk, 63, was one of the very first
customers in Vienna.
Photo:© www.fotoweinwurm.at
Mrs. Leszuk, can you remember how your friends reacted when you took up strength training at the age of 53?
As Kieser Training was completely unknown in Austria at the time, most of them simply did not know what to make of it. They figured I had simply joined a fitness club. But what I liked most was the close supervision of my training. You just can’t get it wrong, particularly if you have any problems. With the wrong training you could do more damage than good.
So did you also benefit from the medical evaluation?
Yes, I did. I suffer from osteoporosis; it runs in the family, so I was very pleased to be seen by the doctor who had impressed me so much in her presentation during the launch event.
Have you seen improvements in your condition?
My osteoporosis was diagnosed at an early stage. I have been taking drugs ever since, have regular checks and do Kieser Training. The condition has hardly progressed and I feel I have it under control. If I think of my mother – broken bones, even broken vertebrae – I’ve been spared all that. My mother was always in hellish pain, while I’m relatively pain free without taking any pain killers. That’s worth a lot! I’m sure that’s due to my strength training.
Was it hard to get started?
No, not at all, because the concept really agreed with me. I noticed very soon that it was doing me good and I was really looking forward to my next session. In the first year, I trained twice a week, now I find once a week sufficient. When I started, I had very weak muscles. I’m certainly not the sporty type! But within a short time, I improved tremendously. Now, after all those years, I have reached my potential. You cannot ignore ageing – it makes a difference whether you’re just past 50 or 63, as I am today.
And how do you keep going? It’s not really fun, is it?
NI still like going for my sessions, but not with quite so much enthusiasm as at the beginning. But there is one thing: The training really still does me a world of good! Somehow, I just feel lighter. I think, it’s almost a bit like an endorphin rush.
Could you imagine stopping with Kieser Training tomorrow?
Oh no, that would be a real loss. For as long as I am healthy enough, I will continue to renew my subscription. I want to stay fit for my two grandchildren.
Impressum
Publisher Kieser Training AG, Kanzleistrasse 126, 8026 Zurich, Switzerland
CEO Michael Antonopoulos
Editor David Fritz, reflex@kieser-training.com
Regular Contributor Michaela Rose, www.sportjournalistin.de
Programming Michael Fuchs Online-Marketing, www.mfo.ch
Reflex is published quarterly.
All material in this magazine (including its online version) is © 2009 Kieser Training AG and cannot be used without written permission.
