You need to lift weights. You need to lift weights and do cardio. You need to lift weights, do cardio, and do mobility work. You already knew that you needed to do that before you opened this article. So why don’t you lift weights, do cardio, and do mobility work? Clearly you know it’s good for you, and yet … you don’t. So you must be the problem. Because those super-fit bastards at the gym can do it.
Of course, you aren’t actually the problem. The problem is that “lift weights, do cardio, and do mobility work” probably feels like you’re the one vegan guest at the wedding reception where the menu is “beef, chicken, and double beef-stuffed chicken”. None of it sounds good to you.
You’ve been handed a menu of exercise from very smart and accomplished people to maximize health, longevity, and athletic performance outcomes. The general exercise recommendations are effective at optimizing your health.
Consistency
However, optimization is only beneficial if you actually do the optimal thing consistently. If you hate lifting weights you probably aren’t going to load-up a barbell and spend 45 - 90 minutes pumping iron four times per week. If you hate running you’re probably not going to follow that Couch-to-84K program that’s trending in your feed. It’s really easy to get caught-up in figuring out what’s optimal, and when we do that we lose sight of what really matters: consistent adherence.
Consistently doing a thing beats sporadically doing the best thing by a thousand to one, and consistency is driven by enjoyment and accessibility.
Enjoyment
The people that lift weights 5 times a week do it because they enjoy it. However, if you talk to a lot of these people it will sound like they don’t enjoy it. They’ll talk about how sore they are and how much their training session that day smoked them. So it’s worth dissecting the different possible meanings of “enjoyable”:
- You enjoy the thing while you’re doing it (aka “Type 1 Fun”)
- You enjoy having done the thing after it’s over (aka “Type 2 Fun”)
- You enjoy the people you do it with
- You enjoy the feeling of getting better at it
- You can see and believe that doing it makes you better at things you enjoy more strongly
Any one of these things is going to dramatically increase the change you’ll actually adhere to the activity in question. A person who is bored to tears in the gym but arranges to go with a buddy from their pickleball league is stacking two of these meanings into their routine - enjoyable company and the enjoyment of having better performance on league night.
Accessibility
A lot of exercise plans get deep-sixed if they require driving to a gym more than 20 minutes away. 25 minutes equals a 50 minute round trip. If you consult the ancient tomes, you’ll see that 50 minutes is basically an hour - and there’s only twenty-four of those things in a day. It’s a lot to ask, especially considering that it doesn’t even include the exercise part!
Likewise, plans that are more complicated are going to meet the firing squad of impatience more than simple ones. Complicated rep or timing schemes, or workouts that require a lot of equipment setup and teardown fall in this category.
Any one of these things may be manageable on its own, but once you start to stack them, your chances of consistent follow-through start to evaporate.
Limits
None of this is an endorsement to stay inside your comfort zone forever. If your goal is to be independent and vivacious at eighty, you’ve got to load your body meaningfully and uncomfortably sometimes. But that doesn’t mean you have to be doing hard things all the time. Life has seasons to it, and it’s smart to recognize when you’re in a season of life that allows you to train hard and thoroughly and when you’re in a season of life that is more conducive to scaling-down and being highly strategic with your time and energy. The point is: the optimal list of exercises isn’t your only option.
Action
Pick the one thing you’d do this week without a huge force of will, even if it seems too easy. Do it. See whether you want to do it again. If yes, then that’s something to build on. Maybe find a friend and ask them to join you. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what you actually enjoy, which is where a conversation might be helpful.
Once something is reliably happening, the next question is: “what it’s for”. That’s the theme of the next series: Capability for Real Life.