Walking to the checkout in any commercial grocery or department store in the United States, one invariably encounters a slough of scantily clad persons gracing the covers of fitness and lifestyle magazines.

Their faces hold placard smiles as their selectively posed physiques offer credence to the articles contained inside, offering new ways to “shed pounds and inches” and “get the body the ladies love” or “six easy weeks to your beach body.”

I, like any curious buffoon, dethroned several of these glossy tomes and took some time to read up on just what newly discovered fitness secrets could transform me from a lowly chemical engineering student into a muscle clad Adonis.

So, I read and read and read past numerous ads for chemical supplements and innumerous veins, and smiling over tanned women. I read programs for building bigger arms, for helping women lose weight in time for bikini season and for toning those tough spots.

I read men’s magazines, women’s magazines, bodybuilding magazines and health magazines; after all of the information I had gathered, I found the only consistent agreement among all of these authors was that their method was the best, and everyone else was wrong.

Being the engineer that I am, I asked the natural question of the fitness community: “Where’s your data?” The answer I got was an ugly one.

Most articles in fitness magazines aren’t peer reviewed, and many of the programs in them are not even clinically tested.

Really? It hardly seems fair that a magazine can promise so much from a physical program based on so little information.

So, how does a person become more fit? Is it by dancing about in front of their Wii fit? Does it happen doing 200 reps in a minute with the shake weight? Would they become more fit by following a movie star’s weight lifting regimen or diet plan? With all of these questions clouding my mind, I decided to ask the fittest man I knew.

For three years I had watched my judo instructor — a tiny, Caucasian, 5-foot-2-inch, 160-pound medical salesmen — pull hundreds of pounds from the floor in the dead lift, do handstand pushups in sets of sometimes 20 or 30, and throw around opponents easily twice his size on the mats.

But it wasn’t just his physicality that made me think he’d be the person to ask about fitness training, it was his method of teaching. In class he presented everything from chokes and leg locks to throws with an uncanny level of technical detail; yet, in spite of this he would always remind us that, “The goal is that the guy taps out. You’ve got to make the technique work for you, make it your own. Your judo won’t be the same as my judo.”

So, with this open minded, extremely knowledgeable mentor, I thought I would begin my excursion into real physical training, but often when I would put a question to him about physiology or exercise, his response would be the ever frustrating, “Get a book on it,” or “You just need to figure it out.”

So I did. I read about dead lifts and squats, devoured information about the Russian kettlebell and looked at physical training manuals as far back as the 1880s, and after a long while, began to become — at least in a meager sense — physically cultured. What I learned there, but I never saw in these fitness magazines, were the undeniable principles of exercise.

Firstly, form and technique matter. Learning exercise technique is to physical training what learning to read is to becoming educated: An utter necessity. This I cannot emphasize enough. In “Starting Strength” by Mark Rippetoe, the chapter entitled “The Squat” is 56 pages long. 

Last month, I saw the squat demonstrated in three picture boxes in a magazine under the heading, “Learn How to Squat.” A magazine is simply insufficient to teach you how to lift or run. A book is better, and a qualified coach is best. At a typical Russian kettlebell seminar, the trainer is so thorough that it will take several hours to explain and practice only two or three exercises.

Secondly, your body seeks equilibrium and changes in response to stimulus. If you don’t increase the stimulus on your body in any capacity, your body will not change. That is to say, if you’re not lifting more, running harder or longer or doing more work, you’re not going to improve. This seems painfully obvious, but I continually hear complaints from other men and women in the gymnasium to the effect of, “I don’t understand why I’m not losing weight, I run two miles every day.” The simple answer is that their body has equilibrated with their daily two miles. Perhaps it’s time for that third mile or better yet, a set of squats.

Thirdly, lifting weight is not bad; in fact, it is necessary. As humans, we evolved from a species that exerted itself on a daily basis by chasing down it’s food, escaping predators and building shelters from their bare hands. Simply put, fulfilling our physical nature requires that we bear a load; a strenuous, awkward, ugly amount of weight.

Unfortunately, nature did not provide us with perfectly shaped rocks and sticks at low weights that we could pick up over and over again in intermittent sets with which to make our homes. We moved things with our muscles, and not just with our bulging biceps or our pretty runner’s thighs. We moved them with every muscle of our bodies from our toes to the very tips of our fingers.

Fourth, chemical supplements are not a substitute for hard work. Even anabolic steroids, if taken by a sedentary human being will have little effect in personal transformation. Effort is the fuel for success, and there is no direct chemical substitute.

Fifth, set a quantifiable goal. How the opposite sex responds to your scantily clad presence is not a quantifiable goal. How much weight you can squat, how fast you run or how many kettlebell snatches you can do in 10 minutes are all examples of goals that can be measured. The measurement is proof of your improvement and your methods, or proof that you need to alter your program.

Lastly, and most importantly, learn to listen to your body. Learn to distinguish pain from injury, good fatigue from over exertion, too much training from too little. Learn to heed the voice of rest when it calls you to bed, and learn to ignore the temptation of fatigue as it begs you to quit your run a mile early.

Perhaps the most valuable result of physical training is the integration of the body and the mind, resulting in a completely healthy human being. Pursue a better fullness of life through physical culture rather than that ever evasive six pack abdomen.