Fit For Life: Tick-Tock
Sunday, November 27, 2016
It is something that is infinite, but nobody has enough if it.
It is something that can't be made.
It is something that can't be bought.
It has value, but it is priceless.
It can be spent, but you will never get a refund.
Although it is infinite, we as humans only have a limited amount of it, and nobody will ever know how much they will have.
The word of the week is time. My favorite cliché about time is: You only have a limited amount, so spend it wisely, because there are no refunds. So my question to you is: why do you keep wasting it in the gym?
Yes, I am a big advocate of working out and exercising, but if you are not getting the results you are trying to achieve, then you are wasting your time. I would much rather be hanging out with my nephew, sitting in a coffee shop, reading a book, or lying in the sun somewhere, than being in a gym, if I was accomplishing nothing. Many of you probably feel that as long as you get there, that's better than not going, but I am telling you that's the wrong attitude and approach, because if you are not exercising properly you are not only wasting your time, but setting yourself up for injury, which is worse than doing nothing at all. I see it every single day. 90% of the people in the gym are wasting their time and getting nowhere from a fitness perspective, or looking worse, from an aesthetic perspective.
Is this you?
* Lumbering into the gym, grabbing a book or magazine and jumping on an elliptical machine or recumbent bicycle? Then you continue with poor form and posture by reading and ‘working out’ at a pace that would put people to sleep if they watched you long enough. You cannot read if you are training intensely, and you cannot train intensely if you are reading. Why bother doing "cardio", if your heart rate isn't going to elevate and you aren't working up a sweat? Sure you may burn a few calories, but if you eliminate a piece of bread or a cookie from your food intake, you have accomplished the same deficit as a sloppy day at the gym. Not only a waste of time, but by exercising with bad form you are feeding dysfunction at an accelerated rate, which will pay you back with lots of visits to the orthopedist. My suggestion: take a spin/body pump or some other form of exercise class, grab a partner and go for a fast power walk, or play a game of basketball. Anything to up the intensity, elevate your heart rate or work up a sweat.
* On the flip side, are you killing yourself in the gym, sweating profusely, slinging heavy weights, but ruining your efforts with a poor nutrition program? There are two different ways you can sabotage making gains with poor eating:
1) You eat all the wrong foods. You finish beating your body down, shredding muscle fibers, and burning up all your muscle glycogen, only to refuel your body with some processed garbage from a drive-thru, or some packaged form of protein bar disguised as nutritious and healthy. Remember this! Your gains are determined by how much rest you get, and how well you nourish yourself AFTER the workout, not how hard you work during. So if this is your routine, remember you will get fit faster and waste less time if you pay attention to what you eat. As I continuously say, “you can't workout a bad diet.”
2) You don’t eat enough. I'm not sure which one of these two problems is worse. In order to perform at your peak levels in day-to-day life you need fuel, so when you work out you need even more. When you exercise and lack fuel you end up burning muscle mass, which changes your body composition or muscle-to-fat ratio in a unfavorable way. I always recommend keeping yourself fueled up and ready to perform at your highest level.
So – nobody has enough if it, you can’t make it, you can’t buy it, but you can spend it. It’s priceless, and there are no refunds. It’s your time to waste – or use wisely. Wasting it in the gym is time better spent laying in the grass or doing a thousand other things…investing time in the gym is a wise investment. One that will reap more time for you in the long run – healthy time – time to be fit and really live life to its fullest.
Matt Espeut, GoLocal's Health & Lifestyle Contributor has been a personal trainer and health & fitnesss consultant for over 25 years. He is the owner of Fitness Profiles, a one on one, and small group personal training company, as well as Providence Fit Body Boot Camp, located at 1284 North Main St., on the Providence/Pawtucket line. You can reach Matt at (401) 453-3200; on Facebook at "Matt Espeut", and on Twitter at @MattEspeut. "We’re all in this life together – let’s make it a healthy one!
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