why do you exercise? While you’re contemplating the answer to that question, consider this: most people don’t have a clear understanding of why they REALLY exercise.
If you ask them, they’ll mention wanting to be healthy, look good naked, or shed some weight to avoid diabetes. However, these are surface-level reasons and only scratch the surface of the truth. The real challenge is that those providing these answers often overlook what lies beneath.
Let’s delve into why having only a partial truth can be problematic and uncover what people truly mean when they express their desire to be healthy or look good.
What do we really mean? When someone says, for instance, “I want to be healthy,” what does health signify?
Do they aspire to live until they’re 110?
Do they dream of running the Boston Marathon?
Do they aim to lower their blood pressure?
Answers to these questions vary widely from person to person, but beneath these diverse responses lies a common thread.
They want to feel the way they believe a healthy person feels.
For someone currently overweight, this might mean climbing a flight of stairs without feeling out of breath or playing with their kids on the floor without relying on nearby furniture to stand up. Similarly, for an individual recovering from old sports injuries, feeling healthy could entail playing basketball with their teenage child without worrying about knee and shoulder pain for the next 48 hours.
Everyone’s definition of feeling healthy is unique, and the path from their current state to their desired well-being won’t mirror that of the person ahead or behind them in line at the grocery store.
It works the same for those who want to look good naked.
What does that mean?
It varies for everyone, but fundamentally, it boils down to feeling confident in their own bodies.
That’s what they want.
That’s the way they want to feel.
The partial truth.
Why is it problematic to embark on your fitness journey with only a partial truth?
It’s simple.
Without clearly defining what you want from your fitness journey, the probability of feeling fulfilled and content with your investment is almost ZERO.
Why?
Imagine standing on a busy street corner and asking someone for directions. Do you ask for directions to a specific destination, or do you say something like, “I want to go west; which direction is that?”
“West” is akin to plotting your fitness journey with a partial truth. You may start in the right direction but never know when you’ve arrived.
Knowing the address of your specific destination is the opposite; you know where you’re going, why you want to go there, and when you arrive, there’s no possibility of mistaking it.
This is where something we call “practical fitness” comes into the equation, especially with the tailored approach of personal training in Glen Cove.
Practical Fitness What is practical fitness?
In a nutshell, practical fitness is the level of fitness you need to live your life as you see fit and nothing you don’t.
Instead of arbitrarily chasing gym metrics, it involves setting specific goals relative to what you want to be able to do in life.
Adding 20 pounds to your back squat won’t necessarily improve your quality of life significantly if you just want to play soccer in the yard with your kids.
Similarly, adding 2 more pull-ups won’t make you any happier if it doesn’t allow you to hike pain-free with your friends and family.
You need to know the deep truth behind why you exercise because you’ll have no idea what practical fitness looks like for you without specific goals and desires.
On the flip side, when you’ve precisely defined what you want from your fitness investment and understand the complete truth behind it, it’s easy to determine whether the work you’re doing in the gym is moving the needle in a meaningful way.
If you’d like to work with my team and I, Click here and schedule a Free No Sweat Intro to come into the gym and chat.
