You know you should improve your fitness. You should walk 10,000 steps in a day. You should get a jumping rope for your house – and use it.
You should go to the gym in your neighborhood. But you don’t. Or if you do, it doesn’t last long. Exercise for fitness doesn’t come easily. Why not?
What’s The Most Common Reason?
“I don’t have the time.” That is one of the leading reasons. Or “Exercise is no fun. I get bored.” Fitness takes time just like cleaning your house or doing laundry.
Let’s suppose you go to a membership gym. It’s an hour in the gym plus getting there and back – surely two hours altogether. I don’t have time for that, we say to ourselves.
I’m busy. Yes, that’s an immediate, very short run view. We postpone working out because other interests are in our mind and on our calendar.
Those are important events and interests. We give them priority. Then time for exercise isn’t
there.
Time Now OR Time Later?
Here is a longer time view. Suppose you go to a gym 50 times in a year.
That’s once a week with just two weeks off for vacation. You’re spending 100 to 150 hours on training in a year.
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Now read this recent newspaper headline: “People Who Do Strength Training Live Longer – and Better” (New York Times, August 29, 2022.)
The article reported research published in the British Journal of Medicine stated that people who do one or two weekly strength training sessions a week and aerobic exercise reduced their mortality risk by 40%.
Will training today lengthen your life span? Will it do so by the 100 to 150 hours you devote to it in a year? That’s about five days – and surely the 40% mortality risk reduction is much better than that.
The cost-benefit trade off looks pretty clear. Do the personal training. Make time for training. You’ll make up the time later.
Law Of Least Effort
All good … but we don’t think this way. Why not? We prefer immediate gratification, and we prefer to take the easier way.
It’s the “law of least effort.” When given choices, people typically choose the easier task over the harder one. Training is hard. “Trying to do hard things is, well, hard.” (Washington Post, October 4, 2022).
What Fitness Training Requires
Training takes both time and effort. But there is another side to that coin. It turns out that we also believe that the greater the effort you make to achieve a desired outcome, the greater the mental reward. Our brains work this way.
For sure, the harder you work to get bulging biceps, the greater the physical reward. When the greater mental reward kicks in, then you begin to value the effort itself. Then “It’s too hard” goes away.
No Fun? Try A Personal Trainer
There is a third problem. Exercising isn’t most people’s idea of a good time. “It’s no fun. “I don’t like to exercise alone.” Here is a solution.
Hire a personal trainer. It’s now you and him or her. Your personal trainer is with you for every exercise. He or she guides your exercises so that you do them right.
You are efficient. You get more value in the same time compared to doing it by yourself. And you are not alone. Your personal trainer is a conversation companion.
The personal training session becomes a mini-social experience, too.
If you’re located in Washington DC, Bench Gym Personal Training will help you get fit and live longer.
Our personal trainers are experts in exercise science and have a better understanding of nutrition and can help you create a healthy eating plan.
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