If Not Now, When?

Ok, you’re convinced that you need to do something. Maybe, as we discussed in the previous post, you’re going to start walking. Maybe it’s planks or pushups. Doesn’t matter. You’re going to start. One of the questions I get most often is: what time of day is best for exercise?

The Best is Whatever You Have

There’s a saying that goes something like, “The best camera is the one you have with you.” It’s true: you might have an expensive collection of gear at home, but your phone might be the only camera with you when something you want to capture happens.

Similarly, the best time to exercise is the time you have available. You might have heard that exercise late in the day can interfere with sleep. That’s true for many. It’s true for me. But, if that’s the only time you have, what do you do—not exercise at all? I suggest that you do lower intensity workouts, look at your sleep environment, make sure you’re stopping caffeine and/or alcohol intake early enough to sleep well, etc.—but, you find a way to exercise.

We Make Time

We all have the same amount of time. How we use it is our choice—yes, even when it comes to fulfilling obligations. If you know exercise is beneficial, then you make the time, and you get it done, because you know your life will be better, and you’ll show up better for everyone and everything you care about. It might not be easy, but it’s worth it.

Lets get better together.

I Have a Tight Budget, But I Want to Train

We’ve already mentioned that walking is a great place to start exercising (if you’re not already doing it), for a number of reasons, one of those being that you don’t need any special equipment. But, what do you do if you’re ready for more, and gyms, equipment, trainers, etc., just aren’t in your budget?

Once Again, You Already Have Everything You Need

Well, probably. The standard disclaimer applies: before you start any exercise program, consult with your doctor. Make sure there isn’t anything lying in wait, about to become a problem as soon as you step up your program.

Assuming everything checks out with the doctor, you really do already have everything you need to get in better shape—your own body. Planks, pushups, squats, crawling (yes, really), and many other movements will help you build a solid fitness foundation—and there are many people who become very fit doing only bodyweight training.

If you’re truly going it on your own, stick to the basics, and look up free or low-cost tutorials for the exercises you plan to do. If you’re not yet strong enough to do a particular exercise, you can often find good instruction, free of cost to you, on how to modify, or scale the exercise in question so that you can perform it, and built strength that will translate to the more advanced version later.

Take it Steady, But if You’re Ready to Start, Start

It can be intimidating to start any exercise program, but especially so when you feel you lack the equipment and/or instruction you need. That said, if you have enough floor space to do planks or pushups, you have all you need to get started. Take it slow, stick with the basics, but do something. You’ll be glad you did.

Let’s get better together.

Strength is the Master Quality

If you read the previous blog, and took it seriously, and you weren’t already walking, you’re doing it now. Well done. You’ve started building the master quality—strength.

Wait a minute: strength, from walking? Seriously? Yes, seriously.

What is Strength?

There are many definitions of strength, but in this context, strength boils down to one thing: the ability to produce force against resistance. We produce force against resistance when we lift a weight, but we also do it when we stand up, pass the salt, and when we walk. Anything that produces movement produces force necessary to overcome the resistance in the way of that movement.

Endurance

It’s been said that endurance is continued strength. This is absolutely true. Take our example of walking: for most of us, walking around the house is no problem. Same for around the block, the neighborhood, etc. But, if we walk long enough, we’re tired. Our muscles don’t move us as quickly—with the same amount of force—as they did when we started the walk. Or, take a walk on flat ground and move it to the hills; walking is suddenly much harder (requires more force), and is often called hiking, instead of walking.

Body Composition

As we said, strength is the production of force against resistance. It is what allows us to create movement. What produces that force? Muscle (the brain, nervous system, connective tissue, and bones are all involved, but it’s the muscle that contracts, producing the movement). What else is true about muscle? It’s metabolically active, which means it burns calories, both at rest and when active (more when active). Getting stronger helps us build more muscle, and more muscles burns more calories, even at rest, and burning more calories helps us burn more fuel, which includes stored body fat.

The Point?

There are a lot of ways to exercise, and many of them are very beneficial. That said, the master quality is strength, and the most beneficial way of training is to use a program that build strength. It will help you move well; it will help you maintain healthy body composition; it will help you slow the aging process (which causes us to lose muscle, and the capabilities that come with it).

By all means, work on flexibility, mobility, movement (getting strong helps all of that). By all means, develop endurance (getting strong helps with that, too). And by all means, train to get the body you want (which is likely to involve a certain level of muscle, and…yep, strength helps with that, too).  Just make sure that strength is your foundation, and that you keep tending to that foundation, even as you build on it—for the rest of your life.

Let’s get better together.

Go Take a Walk (Really, Do it Now)

For most of us, the way to get started isn’t some new exercise program that “everyone” is doing. It’s not by trying to repeat our old performances in the gym from high school or college. It’s likely not by taking up a sport, or returning to one. It’s the simplest thing: stand up, put on your shoes, and take a walk.

Why is this the place to start? A few reasons. You already know how to do it; you probably do a lot less of it than you once did; it gets you outside (yes, a treadmill is ok if weather or other circumstances dictate it, but outside is better and more enjoyable); you don’t need any special equipment.

It can be stimulating: sounds, sights, smells, etc., that you’re usually cut off from, being indoors. The movement patterns in walking are good for the nervous system. It elevates your heart rate, and lowers your stress. If you sit at a desk a lot, you might be surprised to find yourself walking taller and straighter by the end of your walk than at the start, and that both is good and feels good.

You can bring your earbuds, if you want, and listen to some music, or a podcast, or an audiobook. Just put the phone in your pocket, and leave it there—head up, shoulders back.

Even better, you can bring a friend, or a loved one, and find out what’s going on in their world, and share what’s going on in yours. Or, you can simply enjoy some time with your thoughts.

You can do this the rest of your life, no matter what else you do. If you do it consistently, you’ll be surprised at the improvements to your fitness over time. And if you do take up that much more intense program we mentioned earlier, you’ll have a good start on handling it. You might object, and say that walking isn’t intense enough, but if those other programs were what you need—right now, for where you are in life—you’d probably be doing one of them already.

So, go take a walk. And take another one tomorrow.

Let’s get better together.

Intensity for Today (Maybe), Consistency for a Lifetime

It feels good to feel excited, fired up. There’s certainly a time and place for this. If you were to take a lot of what you see on social media literally, however, you might get to thinking that feeling excited, fired up—motivated—should happen all the time, every day, before every workout. There are a number of problems with this approach.

What’s your favorite food, or favorite meal? Take a moment to really remember it; visualize how it looks, call to mind the smells, the tastes, textures, etc. (I know, you’re annoyed with me now, because you’re hungry and your mouth is watering. I promise this is for a good cause.) Now, think of having that meal, one that gets you excited to think about, every day. Would you still find it so exciting? Would it even taste as good as it does when you have it only occasionally? Think the same way about your favorite movies, songs, etc. They’re all great, and they can change your emotional state, but would you want to listen to that favorite song on infinite repeat, or watch that movie every day?

Recovery

You may have heard that exercise is stress. This is true. In the right amounts, it’s a very healthy, beneficial stress, but it’s a stress, all the same. One thing stress requires—any stress—is recovery. The more intense the stress, the more recovery we need. The greater the volume of stress, the more recovery we need. This is true, before we factor in the stress we deal with at work, at home, etc. This is true before we factor in age, health, and the like. So, what’s the point here?

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day, and Neither are You

Would you expect to get in shape from one workout? Of course not. Would you expect one day, or one week, or even one month of the Super Spartan Mega Insanity Warrior Challenge (yes, that’s a made up title) workouts to get you there? Again, of course not. You need to train consistently, over time (how much time, exactly, depends on a number of factors, so don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself of others). All of those workouts require recovery, as does the rest of your life. It’s a lot better—crucial, even—to train in a way you can recover from, day after day, week after week, month after month, than it is to try to force yourself to do workouts you aren’t ready for, or progress more quickly than you can handle, or crush/smash/whatever yourself/your workout—only to find that you’re too tired, sore, irritable, etc., to handle the rest of life.

And the rest of life is what you’re doing this for, right? Unless you get paid to exercise, “winning” in the gym, on Instagram, etc., doesn’t matter. The point is to do the things that make you better at life, so you win at work, with your family, your friends, and anything else that matters to you.

So, the next time you see a social media post announcing a challenge, or a new workout program with words like extreme, intensity, insanity, or anything else along those lines, take a breath and ask yourself whether that’s really a good fit for you. There’s a good chance your life is already more than extreme/intense/crazy enough. Stick with what you can do consistently, and with what makes you better at life. Keep doing that, and you’re doing great, and you’ll get where you want to go—without dropping the ball in other parts of life.

Is there a time and place for intense workouts, challenges, and the like? There sure is. We’ll talk more in the future about when and how to do those things. For now, consistency is where it’s at.

Let’s get better together.

When are You Going to Write About…You Know, Workouts?

We’re gonna get there, I promise. There are reasons to talk about things other than the nuts and bolts of workouts, however.

There are Many Ways to Get Fit

I certainly have preferences and recommendations about how to get fit. That said, go on social media, or to any number of gyms, and you’ll see people getting fit with a lot of different methods: machines, free weights, calisthenics, you name it.

Even among people who favor a particular tool (kettlebells, barbells, etc.), the actual workouts might be quite different from person to person. This is how it should be.

Here is what is common to all people: there needs to be some level of motivation, commitment, discipline. Some people absolutely love to exercise, and they find that they are motivated to train often. Other people value the results they get from exercise more than the exercise itself, and they rely more on discipline. Many people fall somewhere in between. Whatever your personality, You need a spark (motivation), and then you need something that keeps you burning (commitment/discipline).

In my experience, it’s far more challenging to find and maintain the right mix of motivation/commitment/discipline than it is to find the right workout program.

Posts about exercise, movement, nutrition, sleep, etc., will come in due time, as will programs, and a reopening of availability to work with you individually.

In the meantime, I am motivated, committed, and disciplined toward the cause of helping you find reasons to take care of your health and fitness, and reasons to keep pushing forward, even when the going is tough.

Let’s get better together.

The Gift

Note: this post serves as a good overview of many topics we will revisit many times in the future. I also think, and hope, that it can give you a good push, here, and now, to get started, or to keep going.

Per the previous post, the only thing you need to get started is the desire—any level of desire at all—to get better. Once you have that, you start taking action—any action—and follow it up with more action, and you’re on your way.

That said, many of us have been raised to put everyone else first. Many of us are deeply uncomfortable with doing anything, even positive, healthy things, that could be seen as selfish. Where can we turn for a spark to help us get started?

“The Gift”

Steve Prefontaine, the great distance runner who set American records at distances from 2,000 to 10,000 meters, put it this way:

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

What is the gift? Many things: the gift of being alive; the gift of being born in a country with such comfort, such an advanced standard of living, that we can spend hours a day arguing on the internet over the best methods of exercise—exercise that helps keep us healthy and capable even in the absence of manual labor (such as was needed in the past, and still is in many places around the world).

The gift might be using the capacity we develop in ourselves to help others. It might be to set an example to our children, to our loved ones, to our communities. It might be part of making us great athletes, or highly capable first responders, or military operators. It might be in simply getting the most out of life: climbing mountains, playing sports we like, remaining self-sufficient well into our later years. It might be all of those things, and many more.

Magnify the Gift

I looked up several sources for definitions of magnify, and three basic ideas emerged:

1. Make something appear larger, as with a magnifying glass.

2. Increase the importance or effect of something.

3. Praise or glorify.

It’s the second idea that is the important one in this context. Whatever gifts we have, whatever abilities, we can use them to greater effect if we take care of ourselves. On the other hand, when we don’t take care of ourselves, we diminish our ability to put our abilities to use. If we let things go too far, we can lose or greatly diminish our abilities permanently.

Are you good at your job? Does your job make a positive impact in the world? Probably, the answer is yes to both of those. Do you also find that you’re exhausted, and that you get more tired, more easily overtime? Yes, some of that might have to do with aging, but it also might have to do with so-called comfort, food, Too much time in front of screens, too much time on the couch, and not enough time rebuilding ourselves.

Whatever you are good at, and we are all good at a number of things, that is your gift. Your life, which gives you the opportunity to use other gifts, is your greatest gift. Your freedom to use your life in the way you see fit is also an enormous gift. The more you take care of your life, which means your health, both mental and physical, and your fitness, the more you can put all of these other gifts to use. And when we put our gifts to use, we make our own lives better, and we make the lives of those we touch better.

Whatever your gifts, take care of what makes all of them possible.

Let’s get better together.

All You Need

Many people think that people who exercise regularly are special in some way. They’re motivated, or passionate about exercise.

There’s an excellent book called “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, by Cal Newport. It has to do with work and career, but there’s an important principle that applies to exercise, healthy eating, etc. In the book, Newport gives multiple examples of people who chucked everything and followed their passions. It didn’t work well, over and over. On the other hand, there are several examples of people who built their careers in a disciplined way, and the better they got at what they did, the more passionate they became about their chosen fields. The passion grew out of the doing, not the other way around.

The point is likely obvious by now: the passion, or motivation, for exercise comes from choosing to exercise, again and again. The passion, or motivation, to eat well, take care of your sleep hygiene, etc., comes from choosing to do those things, again and again. And that passion grows for the same reasons it grows in one’s work: the continued positive reinforcement of acting with purpose, of doing good, positive things for oneself; also, it comes from the results. When we take our work seriously, over an extended period of time, we get better at it, and rewards follow. The same is true of exercise and healthy living: when we consistently make good decisions and take positive actions, the rewards follow.

Many people confuse passion or motivation with inspiration. The emotional spark they feel, the one that pushes them to start, is the spark they think they’re supposed to feel every day, for every workout, for every healthy meal. But, nothing in life works that way: even people who love their work don’t love it every day; people who love their partner find that parter annoying sometimes; people who are in great shape, week after week, year after year, have plenty of days when training, healthy eating, etc., feels forced. The difference between failure and success is commitment, discipline.

But, that’s just it, you say: I’m not committed, I’m not disciplined. Those people are. I just don’t have what they have. Guess what? At the start, they didn’t have it, either. They built the commitment, the discipline, and along the way, the motivation, the passion.

And guess what else: you already have everything you need to build commitment, discipline, motivation, passion—and results. It’s that voice inside you that isn’t happy with how things are. The voice that knows you could feel better, perform better, look better. The voice that wants better.

That voice is like a fire starter out in the wild: it’s just waiting for you to strike it, and send a spark onto some kindling. And it’s easy to do it, so much easier than you’ve told yourself. Put whatever screen you’re looking at down and get up and move. Put on your shoes and walk; the walk doesn’t have to be long or fast. Make even a slightly better food choice. Turn off the screens, enjoy a little quiet, and go to bed on a time of your choosing. Get up at a time of your choosing. And then, make the choice again. And then, do it again. Those decisions are like muscles; they grow and get stronger when you make them consistently. Before you know it, individual decisions turn into discipline. Discipline turns into commitment. Discipline and commitment bring results that turn into motivation, and that becomes passion.

You already have everything you need. Make one better decision. Do it now.

Let’s get better together.

Who is this for?

This blog is for anyone who realizes what a privilege it is to be able to exercise by choice. We live in the greatest country on earth, the greatest country in history, and one of the many ways we know this is that so many of us rise to doing work that allows us—requires us—to exercise by choice to maintain optimum health and fitness. In so many places, places not as free as we are, “exercise” is survival: the work involved in getting enough food and water to keep oneself and one’s family going, the work involved in keeping one’s home together, etc.

In our great country, we are largely concerned with ailments that come from a lack of movement, a lack of time outdoors/in the sun, and too much food that is packed with calories, but lacking nutrients. What a blessing this is! Much of the world doesn’t get to consider choices/problems like this.

We didn’t get to this lifestyle without the hard work of countless many, and the loss of many lives. If you think, as I do, that what so many gave in the building of this great country means we should do our all to live up to what they’ve done for us—including taking care of our physical selves—then this blog is for you.

But, it’s not only for you. What about people who know about everything said above, but struggle with motivation, depression, and similar challenges? Such people want to make themselves better, but find every step forward feels like a step upward, a slog, at an impossible angle. Well, I’m one of you, and this blog is very much for you, too. We can accept our struggles without empowering them. We can accept weakness, failures, setbacks—without making them permanent. We can live the heroic in the everyday.

If you’re determined to make the best of yourself, no matter the obstacles you face, this blog is for you. If you want to make the best of yourself, but need to build determination, this blog is for you. If you realize that by taking control of the physical—how you train, eat, sleep, maintain yourself and your surroundings—you can build a rocklike foundation for improving all parts of your life, this blog is for you.

Let’s get better together.