Why do you do what you do? Whether you go to a traditional gym, run outside, ride a bike, go to Orange Theory or do Tae Bo.. why do you do it? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to lose that spare tire? Put on some beach muscle? Because your Dr. told you to? To maintain mobility as you age? To show your good for nothing ex what they’re missing out on?
Experience has shown me that most don’t really know how to answer this question. I take the responsibility as a trainer to ask probing questions that draw the real answers out of them – or rather, to guide them to the answers already inside that they are having trouble conceptualizing. However, this is article is not intended to answer the “how to find your why” question, and only you can answer the “what exactly do you want to accomplish” question. Here we’re going to explore the next question that must be answered after these two – Is what you’re currently doing the best way to get where you want to go? Once you’ve answered this question and apply it, you’ve graduated from exercising to training.
Exercise VS Training
Let’s start by seeing what exactly Merriam Webster has to say about it.
Exercise: “engaging in physical activity to sustain or improve health and fitness.”
On the other hand, training has a few definitions worth looking at.
Train: “the action of undertaking a course of exercise and diet in preparation for a specific event, to teach a particular skill or type of behavior through practice and instruction over a period of time, cause a mental or physical faculty to be developed as a result of instruction or practice, to point or aim something”
Do you see the glaring difference there? Training requires an end goal. It requires specificity. Training requires that you’re improving some aspect of yourself or developing a skill. Training is exercise, but exercise is not training. Mindlessly moving your body through space can be considered exercise, but it lacks a concrete goal or logical progression towards a goal, so by definition it cannot be training. If your physical efforts are aimed at nothing in particular, you will get results to match – nothing in particular.
Training is: Running intervals to improve your 5k time, a measured and structured strength training progression (with proper form and full ROM, or active efforts to achieve those things), agility drills to prepare for football season, or a logical application of weight training and conditioning work to facilitate fat loss.
Training is not: Using the Cybex machine circuit, bootcamp, Orange Theory Fitness, or doing the daily Crossfit WOD.
Don’t get me wrong, people can and have lost fat, gained a little muscle or improved performance to some degree with these types of workouts. Of course, a staunch beginner or someone coming off a layoff will accomplish these things no matter what kind of activity they take on because some activity is more than no activity, but is it the best way for them to reach their “why”? Is it the fastest way? Is it the safest way? Are they learning good movement patterns? Are they actually learning anything at all or just counting on their instructor to yell out the next set of exercises that 80% of the class isn’t able to do with respectable form? Maybe most significantly, what happens when progress stops? How do we even know when progress has stopped if you don’t have a specific goal we’re aiming for? How do we know what to do to continue progressing? The answer is training.
Maybe you hate the gym, don’t know what you’re doing, can’t afford a trainer, but can’t be bothered to educate yourself? Maybe you count on the social aspect of class or the gym just to get you motivated enough to even go. Maybe you need the accountability of a dozen “Slacker!!” texts after you miss class. That’s all ok! As long as you’re not hurting yourself, any exercise is better than parking on the couch with a box of Samoas. But if you’re frustrated by your lack of progress or are ready to take your physique/performance to the next level, understand that what you’re doing now won’t get you where you want to go. No high-level athlete was built on a Cybex machine, your well-muscled stud of a bootcamp instructor didn’t build his body doing sloppy burpees, and no competitive Crossfit athletes use the WOD posted each day. Interestingly, your chubby aerobics instructor probably did build their body doing low level aerobics all day, but that’s a topic for another article.