Deconstructing the Oprah Winfrey Workout

Oprah Winfrey has been quite open about her struggle with her weight. She’s had chefs, published a cookbook, worked with personal trainers yet her weight has continued to go up and down over the years.

She just can’t seem to find the right path to bring her weight into a healthy zone.

Her exercise routine, according to Oprah.com, was designed by her trainer Bob Greene and I was curious what it looked like.

I reviewed the exercise portion and was surprised by the choices. Perhaps these aren’t the only drills Oprah is doing but even so, why she’s doing some of them at all really has me scratching my head.

The Oprah Workout

Exercise 1 – The Standing “Fly”

This drill uses a pulley system and is one of the safer and more effective drills in the routine. You create the movement by pulling down and in. You should have a staggered stance and not allow your hands to leave your peripheral view.

Exercise 2 – Squats in a Smith Machine

A Smith Machine is a squat bar that slides up and down eliminating the need for a spotter. It sounds like a good idea but the problem is that your body does not move in a straight line. So, when you squat in a Smith Machine, you force the body to move in an unnatural way placing excessive force on the knees and lower back. The Smith Machine is often touted as a good choice for a beginner. It’s not. Stay away from it.

Exercise 3 – Incline Bench Press

Any form of bench press with a straight bar is risky for your shoulders. Why Oprah is doing this drill is a mystery to me. There are so many other options that are less risky and use more of the body – pushups being one choice – than sitting on a bench pushing weight over your head.

Exercise 4 – Lat Pull

This is a reasonable safe drill provided you pay attention to your shoulder blades. The pull down portion of the movement should be initiated by the shoulder blades. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of impinging soft tissue in the shoulder.

Exercise 5 – Rotary Torso

This drill requires you to turn your body while keeping the arms straight. It’s often used as a core drill and as long as you can turn using the trunk rather than the arms, it’s a fairly safe drill.

Exercise 6 – Bicep Curl

The Bicep Curl, as pictured by Oprah, is a muscle isolation or body building drill. To make this a more wholistic drill that engages more of the core and forces you to improve your balance, stand on one leg.

Exercise 7 – Triceps Extension

Another “body shaping” drill. This movement doesn’t require much energy expenditure and because the drill uses a dumb bell, there is a low level of resistance until you reach the end of the movement which is when you get the highest level of load with the lowest force producing ability of the muscle. While the drill is relatively safe, it’s also ineffective at producing significant physical capacity improvements.

Exercise 8 – Incline Crunch

Although the exercise is listed as a “crunch”, this is a sit up and the incline sit up is one of the worst versions of the sit up around. It’s impossible to not use your hip flexors to pull yourself up and when you do, the attachment of the hip flexors on the lumbar spine causes a micro-shearing force of one vertebral body on another. Not a good thing. A useless and exceptionally risky drill, it has no place in anyone’s workout. Period.

The Bottom Line

Oprah’s “workout” has a few drills that are reasonably safe (standing fly, lat pull, biceps and triceps drills) and a few that she should avoid (Squats in a Smith Machine, Incline Bench Press and Incline Crunch). This issue – routines that include drills with high levels of injury risk – is a common problem people face with routines on the Internet, in magazines and even those designed by some fitness professionals.

The routine lacks movement in functional patterns which, if you’re going to take 45 minutes or more to exercise, you might as well use routines that help improve your overall functional ability. If you notice, Oprah doesn’t move her body through very much range of motion. She is either using a machine or standing relatively still. This means she won’t spend much energy and doesn’t challenge her movement skill development much at all.

My critique is based on what was published on Oprah’s site. Perhaps her routine is somewhat different than this or that this was a sampling of drills Mr. Greene uses.  She could modify her routine making it safer, more functionally demanding and get off the machines.