Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Are You Training, or Just Exercising?

Training is a results-based process. It all starts with a goal. What is it that you are looking to achieve? Do you want to run a 5k trail race or a marathon? Do you want to complete a century on your bicycle or maybe become a competitive racer? Do you want to play Division 1 college hockey or football? Maybe you're not interested in competition and your goal is simply to be strong, lean, fit, and energetic. Once the goal is in place, achieving that goal comes down to planning and execution. This is true for anything in life. Without planning and execution any "goal" simply becomes a "wish" and like a friend of mine used to say, "Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.".

Most of the people, if not all them, that come to Dynamic or read my blogs, know that I race cyclocross. My goal is to be one of the top masters racers in the country. I have a singular, year round focus on achieving that goal. I do off-season strength training when the cross season ends. I work with a coach year round who designs a program for me. I have a race schedule that starts with road races in the Spring, mountain bike and road races through the Summer, and the cyclocross season starts in September. Everything that I do from January through August is in preparation for my cx season from September through December. This is my 4th season of cross and I have improved each year to the point where I am now challenging for top 10 spots in the most competitive series in New England, arguably the most competitive in the country. This is not a fluke and it is not because I exercise and eat well. It's because I have a goal, I have a plan, and I execute.
planning and execution has led to my best season yet

So what does this mean to the average person who has no competitive aspirations, rather, their goal is a bit more ambiguous? For many, the goal is "I want to be strong, lean, fit, and energetic.". This goal can mean many things, but in all honesty, if it's important enough to you then it should mean that you want to get in the best shape possible. To get in the best shape possible requires being involved in a comprehensive, well designed, strength and conditioning program that allows you to consistently continue to get stronger, more powerful, and better conditioned. Whether you are training in a program at Dynamic with our professional coaches, or if you are sweating over a barbell in your basement with a program from a trainer, or strength coach that you diligently follow on your own. If you are not in a program, then you are not training, you are merely exercising. Training is the proper path to excellence, exercising is the proper path to mediocrity.

This isn't meant to sound harsh, it's more of a reality check. Look at it this way.. The human body was designed for activity. Most people today are slightly active at best, sedentary and morbidly obese at worst. To even achieve an average level of fitness, which could be considered the fitness level of the modern day manual laborer who is using the body in a way it was designed to be used, most people need to significantly increase their level of activity from what has become the norm. For many, the path to this level of fitness is through conditioning based, bootcamp-style workouts with lots of variety, no progression, no structure, and no programming. That is not training, it's exercising. This will get you fit, sure, but you will only ever achieve a level of fitness that is average at best. To the sedentary or morbidly obese person, this level of fitness would be an astounding, even life saving achievement. Regardless, it's only gotten you to "average". So now what?

Now you have to decide if average is good enough for you. Let's take a quick test. At your job, do you strive to get "met expectations" on your review? When your son comes home with a report card that has all C's on it, do you run out and buy that bumper sticker that says "My son is an average student at Union Middle School!"? When you head out to climb that 4000'er in the Whites, do you get halfway up and say, "This is good enough, I'm heading back."? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then please stop reading this and get your fat ass down to McDonalds before the McRib sells out. If you're still reading, then obviously you are not one who strives for mediocrity, so why should something as important as your health and fitness be different?

With respect to your health and fitness, here's what I feel is the most important thing about having a specific training goal and being involved in a training program to achieve that goal. Simply, it puts a much higher priority on it when you deeply invest yourself in it. When that happens, it becomes so much more than just training for a goal, it becomes a lifestyle. Almost everything you do and the choices you make are weighed in a different context as you start to look at things from the perspective of how it will affect your ability to achieve your goals. You adopt a lifestyle that is conducive to achieving the goals that are important to you. You eat better, you try to get more sleep, you watch less tv, you don't waste a second of time or energy on things that are going to take away from your ability to achieve your goals. If you're just exercising, then it's really just part of a routine. You get up, you workout, you go to work, you eat like crap, you go home, you watch tv, you go to bed. You get up and do it again. Your swinging the same kettlebell today as you did two years ago. You run 30 minutes in the treadmill at 6.0 pace and you can't remember when it wasn't that way... When you don't feel good or things get a little tight, you blow off your workout because, "what's the difference, it's not like I'm training for anything...".

When you're training, you keep track of your progress towards your goal. You continue to get stronger and faster. You plan your meals for the week, especially when you know your schedule is going to be crazy because you know that eating like crap is not an option, (I've been eating dinner out of tupperware for 3 years now and I am in better shape, faster, stronger than I have ever been at any point in my life.). You haven't a clue who is on "Dancing with the Stars" because you're in bed getting the proper amount of sleep so you can recover properly and continue to make progress towards your goals. You are not satisfied by mediocrity, you are achieving excellence, and when you're 75 people will be shocked that you're a day over 60.

So yeah, that's the difference between training and exercising. If it's not important to you, then keep renting space on that treadmill or doing your "muscle confusion" bullshit with the latest greatest Shaun T dvd set from that late night infomercial. Enjoy average. If it is important to you then TRAIN for it and achieve EXCELLENCE!

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