I would say that the most common goal when it comes to exercise is to ‘lose weight and tone up’, but what does this really mean?
For most people by ‘lose weight’ they mean reduce body fat and by ‘tone up’ they are referring to increasing muscle mass. However when it comes to obtaining this physique so many people approach it completely the wrong way.
So why am I saying you should stop exercising?
To explain this I need to define my personal opinion on the difference between someone who ‘exercises’ or someone who ‘trains’
Exercise
noun
‘physical activity that you do to make your body strong and healthy’
Exercise is physical activity with its primary focus and effect produced for today. It can consist of any form of cardio vascular or strength exercises but does not contain any structure or programming. It’s main benefits are fairly acute and preformed regularly it does not produce much stress for adaption in muscular strength, growth and performance.
Benefits of Exercise:
• Initial strength increase
• Initial muscle growth
• Initial cardio vascular increase
• Helps reduce the risk of major illness
• Burns calories
Training
noun
‘the activity of learning or teaching the skills and knowledge needed for a particular job or activity’
Training is a structured form of exercise where you have a specific programme to follow to reach your desired results. The body is consistently put under progressive overload to produce stress, allowing for continues growth in muscle and cardio vascular fitness. Every training session is met with a specific goal allowing you to walk away feeling complete and one step closer to your overall target.
Benefits of Training
• Continues increase in strength
• Continues increase in muscle growth
• Continues increase in cardio vascular fitness
• Burn calories
• Reduce risk of plateaus
• Reduce risk of overtraining
• Maintained motivation
Exercise is great for the acute effects as mentioned above, but you are never going to actually achieve the results you want and deserve unless you swap it for actual training. No longer will you need to walk into the gym thinking ‘what shall I do today?’. With your structured programming you will know exactly what is expected of you each session and not feel that you are wasting your time. This will ensure in you feeling highly motivated and for the first time actually getting results!
I am not saying that exercise doesn’t have its place and if your main goal is to maintain good health and reduce the risk of illness they it is for sure a lot better for you then just sitting at home on the sofa. This is why exercise classes have become so popular because they allow people to train with friends and have structure with time. Despite this, they are still not structured training and will only produce the same results as exercising.
However, to get any benefits from exercise or training you will need to back this up with your nutrition. It doesn’t matter how many calories you burn or how much muscle you gain, if you maintain high levels of body fat you will still be unhealthy.
So there we have it, to achieve that body you deserve, and improve your overall health...
STOP exercising and START training!
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