Exercise Is Not About Suffering
A certain mentality of suffering is promoted in many gyms these days. Both personal trainers, motivational speakers and certain types of group training environments there is a ‘hardcore’ attitude if you aren’t suffering lots when training or dieting then you aren’t doing it right.
This unfortunately puts off many average people from even trying to start exercising. They see it a a mountain not even worth attempting to scale.
Yes you have to work hard, achieving anything worthwhile in life takes hard work but its its not about machoism for the sake of it and it needs to be scaled appropriately according to the level you are at.
Below I discuss a better approach-
1, Training
Feeling like sh*t afterwards isn’t a measure of a good gym session.
It’s common these days to be bombarded by certain types of gyms and magazines promoting the attitude that working harder when exercising is always better. That you should always be crawling out of the gym after every workout in a sweaty puddle of destruction with nothing left in the tank.
This in my opinion is an idiotic and dangerous attitude.
Not only is approaching exercise like this is a sure fire way to quickly grow a hatred for it but I believe your chance of injury is also a lot higher.
This is especially applicable for beginners who’s fitness levels will be at a low baseline and haven’t yet built a better body awareness.
Sure you definitely need to train hard but you do not need to push every set to failure nor want to throw up after every workout, in fact I strongly discourage this as you’ll quickly plateau.
Steady Progression is the key
Your training needs to be focused on the key principles of getting stronger on primarily compound exercises whilst using good form. When combined with patience and persistence these are the ingredients for progress.
Now there are certainly limitations on how strong you can get otherwise everyone would be working up to a 300KG bench press. In order to truly maximise your strength you will at some point have to specialise your training (powerlifting as an example) but for the average person who goes to the gym this isn’t applicable and they are in most cases far away from their potential.
Like most things in life lifting weights will not always have a linear progression. There will be up’s & down’s and It’s natural to reach plateaus from time to time. This will require you to back off the weight you are using before ramping it back up again. The more advanced a lifter you become, the smaller the progress will be. What’s going on in your life; life stressors, quality of sleep and nutritional intake will also have an impact on your progress.
So there are many strategies to drive progress. Four key ways are:
increasing the weight you are lifting
performing more reps
adding more sets
reducing the rest period between sets.
I find its best to choose one of two of these methods per training cycle. Keep it simple.
Rep's & Weight Progression Example-
Flat Bench Press- 4 sets of 6-8 reps, 180 seconds rest
Week 1- 80KG x 8, 80KG x 8, 80KG x 7, 80KG x 6 = 29 reps total @ 80KG = 2,320KG total lifted
Week 2- 80KG x 8, 80KG x 8, 80KG x 8, 80kg x 7 = 31 reps total @ 80KG = 2,480KG total lifted
Week 3- 82.5KG x 7, 82.5KG x 7, 82.5KG x 6, 82.5KG x 6 = 26 reps total @ 82.5KG = 2,145KG total lifted
Week 4- 82.5KG x 8, 82.5KG x 8 82.5KG x 7, 82.5KG x 6 = 29 reps total @ 82.5KG = 2392.5KG total lifted
Squeeze out those small victories a rep and set at a time!
If you really want to get strong you have to look at this as a ‘long game’ and anyone who has increased their strength and transformed their body dramatically will have invested a number of years into the process.
2, Dieting
In a nutshell I feel that dieting shouldn’t be a sprint.
How many times have you already possibly tried crash dieting to then put the weight back on soon after possibly with a bit extra?
Yes creating a large calorie deficit for short periods of time certainly can work for a quick assault on your body fat but for most people this ends up being a yo-yo cycle.
During an aggressive diet you’ll likely be pretty miserable as you’ll be very hungry and possibly in a bad mood.
Whatever your time period is, one of the key important factors is maintaining muscle mass whilst dieting.
When in a calorie deficit you should ensure your protein intake is adequate. This for dieters is generally much higher than the RDA and for most people I set it at 2-3 grams per kilogram of bodyweight. The additional benefit of high protein is it helps with the feeling of satiety.
Adding strength training to this mix will further help you fight breaking down muscle and also help you to ‘shape’ your body that will look better at a lower body fat level.
You should aim at no more than 0.5KG weight loss per week and you should aim to do this over the course of at least 12 weeks ideally. If say you have more than 6 kilo’s to loose then you should aim to make this a longer time period to take this into account.
Again just like weight lifting dieting isn’t always a linear progression however you have to trust the process you are following reminding yourself whats most important.
Bodyweight will fluctuate lots depending on you hydration status, sodium intake, bowel content, hormonal cycle (for both men & women) and how much you have slept.
Track your weight without getting obsessed about it and look at the trend over the weeks and the month rather than from day to day. It’s much more likely to look something like this-
Wrap Up
Extremes whether they are with exercise or dieting are rarely sustainable.
Crafting a lifestyle that has good balance of exercise and sensible eating must incorporate patience and persistence.
In addition to this your fitness regime should complement your other interests in life, it should not be the sole focus.
In the pursuit of looking good make sure you aren’t missing out on health and living life!
