Why you Should Train for Health over Aesthetics

The Importance of Exercising for Health Rather Than Aesthetics

In a world driven by image and appearance, the emphasis on physical aesthetics often overshadows the primary reason why we should exercise: our health. While the desire to achieve a toned body or sculpted muscles is not inherently wrong, prioritizing aesthetics over health can lead to detrimental consequences in the long run.

Understanding the Difference: Health vs. Aesthetics

Health and aesthetics are often intertwined, but they should not be viewed as one and the same. Health encompasses a wide range of factors beyond physical appearance, including cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength, flexibility, mental well-being, and overall quality of life. On the other hand, aesthetics focus mainly on how the body looks externally - factors such as body fat percentage, muscle definition, and size.

The Risks of Prioritizing Aesthetics Over Health

When individuals exercise solely for aesthetic purposes, there is a tendency to engage in extreme or unsustainable practices. Crash diets, excessive cardio, and over-reliance on supplements are often seen in pursuit of the "perfect" body. 

Use of anabolic steroids, especially in younger adults, has increased dramatically over the last 20 years. According to the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Survey of 2019, non-medical anabolic steroid use almost tripled in the 18 years between 2001 and 2019.

These practices can have negative consequences on both physical and mental health, leading to issues such as nutrient deficiencies, metabolic damage, eating disorders, and body dysmorphia.

A dirty, not so little secret, not just in the fitness industry, but the majority of high-level sports, is that performance-enhancing drugs are widespread. In addition to the aesthetic advantages, they also give a performance edge. This contributes to a very warped perspective of what is achievable and ‘normal’ for the average person. Adding to these deceptive marketing strategies, air brushed photos and filters only adds to the problem.

An additional factor to this, and I speak from personal experience from my days competing as a bodybuilder (drug free), is that when you “look your best” (shredded & chiseled) you probably feel your worst. You have been dieting for a long time, your energy levels are low, you have to drag yourself through every workout and your libido has rock bottomed to zero. Essentially, your body registers you in a famine state and thus does its best to preserve energy by minimizing its expenditure. Far from being a sex-hungry adonis, you probably just want to curl up on the sofa and distract yourself in any way until the dieting is over whilst resisting the urge to crack and binging on gallons of ice cream. This is not an optimal state of health to be in, far from that.  Your cover body fitness model will not look like that year round. Well, not unless they are using the aforementioned performance-enhancing drugs and even then they won’t maintain their ‘peak’,

The Benefits of Prioritizing Health

On the other hand, exercising primarily for health can bring about a host of benefits that extend far beyond appearance. Regular physical activity has been proven to reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. It boosts mood and mental well-being by releasing endorphins and reducing stress levels. Improvements in strength, flexibility, and endurance enhance daily functioning and the overall quality of life.

Set your goals as achievable benchmarks of performance that don’t require going to an extreme instead of how you are looking, and you will likely be a lot happier. 

My mantra is to do just enough in the gym setting to reap the health benefits from it and then, if you want to move more, find other things to do in the form of sports, dance and other physical activities. 

Shifting the Focus: From Aesthetics to Long-Term Health

To shift the focus from aesthetics to health, individuals should adopt a holistic approach to exercise. Instead of fixating on the number on the scale or the size of muscles, focus on how exercise makes you feel. Set your goals as achievable benchmarks of performance that don’t require going to an extreme, rather than how you are looking.  Pay attention to improvements in energy levels, stamina, and mental clarity. Celebrate small victories such as running a little further or lifting a little heavier.

Conclusion

While there is nothing wrong with wanting to look and feel good, the primary goal of exercise should always be to improve and maintain overall health. By shifting the focus away from aesthetics and towards long-term well-being, individuals can cultivate a positive relationship with exercise and reap the numerous benefits it has to offer. Remember, a healthy body is a beautiful body, regardless of what may be warped societal standards of aesthetics.

Why most new years resolutions fail

It’s that time of year when gyms are flooded with a new wave of members.

Gym owners and sales teams rub their hands together in anticipation of this cycle every year. They do their best to get new members to sign up to a minimum commitment period when they know that a good percentage of them won’t be attending after a few weeks, and even less in the following months. 

Why Most New Year's Resolutions Fail

Every year, countless people set ambitious New Year's resolutions with the hope of making positive changes in their lives. However, despite good intentions, a large majority of these resolutions ultimately fizzle out. 

There are several reasons why this happens-

Over-Ambition

First and foremost, many people set unrealistic or overly ambitious goals. While it's wonderful to aim high, setting unattainable or vague objectives can quickly lead to feelings of frustration and failure. For instance, someone resolving to completely overhaul their diet and exercise routine overnight may find it difficult to sustain such drastic changes, leading to eventual abandonment of their resolution.

If you can barely run, or inefficiently at best then jumping up to attempt a 5k run after seeing a motivational video from Dave Goggins screaming at you to “Stay Hard MOFO” isn’t going to end well.

If you read a Fitness article telling you that a "real man" should be able to lift 2 times his body weight on a Deadlift, but you don’t even know how to hinge your hips properly, then you can predict that outcome!?

If you go from being completely sedentary at a desk all day to going to the gym six days per week, you will quickly burn out. 

If you are really unfortunate, then from these three scenarios above something may get broken in the process. Physiotherapists make a lot of money off the catastrophes created by this pitfall of over-ambition.

Poor Planning

In addition, lack of a clear plan and accountability can contribute to resolution failures. Simply stating a goal without breaking it down into manageable steps and establishing a support system makes it easier to lose motivation and momentum. Furthermore, many people underestimate the mental and emotional challenges that come with making significant lifestyle changes. Without addressing the underlying mindset and habits, it becomes difficult to sustain meaningful progress.

A vague idea of wanting to lose fat without a proper reference point of where you start either through a caliper test, DEXA scan etc. isn’t going to cut it. It's akin to saying I want my company to make a profit of a million pounds when you don’t even know what your monthly profit and loss is. 

Getting to the gym is great, but what do you do when you are there? Do you just randomly do a bit of this and a bit of that? Do you follow that latest workout from Men's Health demonstrated by some adonis personal trainer that is completely inappropriate for your level? For a guy, the first thing that comes to mind is probably training a bit of chest & biceps. How about Deadlift to help build your booty?

Appropriate exercise selection that is scaled to your current level is very important. If you are unable to do a proper push-up, then don’t even think about trying to do a parallel bar dip. A barbell squat might be totally inappropriate for a person who doesn’t have the shoulder mobility to properly secure the bar onto their back. 

A personal trainer is a value ally here and can help properly plan out the steps in a progressive and structured fashion. Additionally, they are someone who can hold you to account. Let's be honest, most of us are generally poor at doing this for ourselves.

Life Gets In The Way

Finally, life's inevitable curveballs often disrupt people's New Year's resolutions. Unexpected challenges, stressors, and time constraints can derail even the most dedicated individuals, making it difficult to prioritize their resolutions over immediate demands.

This ties in with the previous two points. You need to plan a regime that properly takes into account your individual lifestyle factors. 

For example-

If you are a young twenty-something at university without the commitments of a part-time job, then you may well be able to sustain getting to the gym five to six times per week. Recovery from bouts of exercise is generally better when you are younger. 

However, if you are a mid-forties busy city professional with two children under the age of 10 then getting to the gym twice per week might be the most sustainable approach. It’s possible you could plan time to do more short bouts of exercise at home, but it would need to be planned carefully. Your ability to recovery properly from exercising needs to be factored in too. The more external stressors you already have in your life, the less ‘resources’ you will have to commit to exercise. This is where the expertise of a personal trainer can help balance you this carefully.

Summary

Understanding these common pitfalls can help individuals approach their New Year's resolutions with greater mindfulness and intention, increasing their chances of success. By setting realistic goals, creating a solid plan, addressing mindset and habits, and preparing for potential obstacles, people can increase their likelihood of making lasting changes in the new year.

Why your personal trainer should practice what they preach

For me one of the most important things as a personal trainer is to practice what I preach-

That means-

1, Training with consistency.

2, Eating in a way that promotes health both physically & mentally.

3, Crafting a lifestyle that creates good health.

I would absolutely hate to feel like a hypocrite and if I didn’t do these I quite frankly would probably be a rubbish trainer.

Through my 19 years experience I’ve experimented with almost every modality of training, eating, and recovery methods to filter through what actually works and what does not.

The industry is full of so much contradictory information and it can be hard enough for a trainer to navigate this, let alone ‘Joe Public’.

I’ve always made myself my own guinea pig in my research and you can trust when I say I believe it is highly unprofessional to use methods with clients that I haven’t yet first throughly tried myself.

There are several reasons why this is important -

Training

1, From a training perspective if i’m not personally valuing the benefits of training how am I expect to preach the benefits to my clientele?

You definitely want your trainer to be “getting high on their own supply” in this context although this can be a careful tightrope to balance and an exercise addiction isn’t a good thing to strive for either.

My philosophy is to do work in the gym to make yourself stronger & more resilient so you are more capable of doing awesome stuff outside of the gym. The gym absolutely should NOT be the only place that you exercise and I highly encourage all of my clients to find other physical actives to do. Move a little bit each day.

Further to this, how am I supposed to properly coach a client on an exercise if I’ve not done it a lot myself? How would I know how it should feel, its challenges and common mistakes?

Eating

2, From an eating perspective I truly believe in what Hippocrates said: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”.

Food beyond more immediate fuel is literally the raw materials you body will use to recycle its cells every few years. I’ll be blunt when saying if you eat crap you body will be built of crap.

I come from a family with a history of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. I’m not one of those guys who’s naturally in shape and muscle comes easily to.

I’ve had to bust my balls for every bit of progress i’ve made and I feel this has made me a more effective trainer as I can relate better to the average person.

I would feel like a complete asshole were I advising a person to eat a certain way whilst not following these principles myself.

That being said I am careful to steer people away from extremes of eating patterns & behaviours.

I really dislike the black & white mentality of many trainers labelling food as either ‘clean’ or a ‘cheat’, this type of black and white approach to eating will ultimately lead to disordered patterns of eating and potential disorders if not kept in check.

What I instead try and promote is primarily to emphasise FOOD QUALITY. That means as fresh and untampered with food as much as possible. If the food has loads of ingredients and a very long shelf life its likely not the best choice.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good dessert and slice of cake but if i’m going to have one its going to be fresh and made of good quality ingredients.

Mental health is an important a factor in overall health as any other area and having a poor relationship with food will certainly detract from all other areas of your life.

I know from personal experience having competed at a national level in bodybuilding and suffering at times with a much less healthy relationship with food.

One big dirty little secret with the fitness industry is that many trainers, especially the ones of who strive to stay ‘shredded’ year round have an awful relationship with food that goes through cycles of binge, starvation and over-training.

Lifestyle

Sleep and stress management are the two main lifestyle pieces of the puzzle to focus on.

Pretty much the better duration and quality of sleep you have the more stress you are able to recover from.

Training is great, but understand that training is also stress.

Now let’s visualise you have a life-force bar like in the video game.

You have daily outputs that take away from this being at 100 percent that for most people mainly includes work and family commitments. Training is also a stress and will take away from this life-force bar.

A student in their early 20’s who can steep in every day and has relatively few responsibilities is going to have a much bigger power bar for recovery compared to a 40 something busy professional working 50-60 hours per week whilst jugging being a parent to one or more children.

Any training that is added to a persons lifestyle needs to be dosed appropriately for each person to respect that persons life force bar.

Again from personal experience I’ve experimented with many different types, frequency and volumes of training so understand well how much the average body can handle.

I admittedly haven’t always gotten it right but I have learned from my own mistakes which has made me more effective as a trainer.

Wrap Up

In summary I would feel like a charlatan and a fool to recommend certain things If I hadn’t first throughly road tested them myself and as a potential client you should demand this of your trainer too.

If you want someone who is highly skilled and professional get in touch today.