There Are No Shortcuts To Building Lifetime Fitness
This is how to ensure you go about it the right way
Ours is a world of instant gratification. Just refresh your favorite social media news feed and note how quickly you’re inundated with ads and posts peddling the latest “get rich quick” scheme. People want everything the world has to offer, and they want it right now.
Problem is, it doesn’t stop with making money. There are just as many “get fit quick” schemes out there. Influencers and savvy marketers selling you a vision of fitness that simply doesn’t exist for you and me. A vision of wealth, beauty and washboard abs. If you just bought their training package, if you just bought their supplement or their coaching, you’d build the body of your dreams in no time.
Uh huh.
These people aren’t interested in making you the best version of yourself, there interested in separating you from your money. Believe that.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day” is one of those classic sayings I’ve heard many times from many smart people throughout my nearly 34 years. Its message is as simple as it is profound: it takes time to achieve something significant and meaningful, whether it’s building one of the world’s greatest empires or losing thirty pounds.
The next time you’re tempted to believe you can fast-track your way to health and fitness, keep these 4 things in mind.
Body adaptations take time
You don’t build muscle overnight. You’re not suddenly in shape after one week of running. Building fitness is a process, fueled by effort and consistency. Not to mention a solid workout regimen and adherence to diet. No matter your fitness goals, it takes time for your body to respond.
Take muscle building for example. While the rate at which muscle is built differs from person to person, multiple studies show show engaging in strength training at least 2x per week for a minimum of 30 minutes per session will get the ball rolling. And even so, it can take anywhere from a few weeks to multiple months to start seeing progress. To get to where you want to go often takes many months, even years.
Of course, the more you train, the more your body acclimates to the training, the more (and diverse) training you’ll need to perform to facilitate new growth and development. You’ve probably experienced the plateau effect at some point — that time during training when you stop progressing. Your body has become used to the effort, and you must find different ways to challenge your body to get things going again.
The sooner you accept fitness is a lifelong pursuit and not some 3 month flash in the pan the sooner you’ll realize your vision.
Injury lurks behind every corner
Nothing sinks your U.S.S. Health & Fitness faster than an injury. As a distance runner for nearly 20 years, I’ve experienced my fair share, from IT Band Syndrome to stress fractures to Plantar Fasciitis. All of which arose from me trying to do too much too quickly.
“The most common thing that leads to overuse injury is the proverbial “terrible too’s”, doing too much, too fast, too soon,” suggests orthopedic consultant William Pickett, MD.
Said another way, if you attempt to build fitness too quickly, you’ll most likely get hurt.
A couple years back I bought a training program from a prominent Instagram influencer. I’m ashamed to admit it, but not ashamed to admit it. If anyone asks these days I say I was “gathering data” for a fitness mobile app I was developing at the time. But I fell for the marketing, plain and simple.
As soon as I opened up the training program, I knew it was crap. If I’m remembering correctly it was a 12-week program starting off with five days per week training, hitting all major muscle groups each day. I want to say each sessions was comprised of a minimum of 30 sets. I remember being so mad I just wasted money on something clearly stitched together from Google without any real science behind it.
I got through 3 days before my body started rebelling. Thankfully I had enough sense to listen to my body and chop the workouts up into more reasonable chunks.
Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned veteran, progress slowly. Favor consistency over intensity. If you’re tired, take things easy. If you’re sore, tread lightly. If you need a day off, then for God’s sake take a day off.
Pushing hard on days you shouldn’t will not improve your fitness. In fact, it will probably have the opposite effect.
Good habits take time to develop
According to Healthline:
“It can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic.”
That’s a pretty wide range. But the takeaway is simple: developing a habit doesn’t happen fast. Whether it’s improving your fitness or quitting smoking or going to bed earlier each night.
Something as important as fitness can’t be rushed. In order for the habit to stick, you’ve got to explore and experience everything fitness has to offer. What sorts of activities do you like? What don’t you like? Do you prefer working out in the morning or afternoon? Where are you talented and where do you have to put in more work?
It’s essential to understand what fitness means to you in order for you to be as fit as possible. And it’s difficult to understand that giving yourself only a short time to ponder these questions.
Your goals will change along the way
I’ve been a fitness addict since I started distance running for my high school track team in 2003. But over the years my fitness goals have shifted as wildly as the GameStop stock price these last couple weeks.
There were a few years where I wanted to get as big and strong as possible. There were years when I wanted to run as long as possible, followed by years of running as fast as possible. Yoga stepped in for a hot second. Swimming took hold one year while rehabbing a lower leg injury.
This kind of dovetails into what I was talking about with habits. You just don’t know what’s going to stick unless you try a multitude of things. And just like elsewhere in life, fitness interests and priorities shift over time. What was important before may not be as important now, and vice versa. I’m not as interested in bodybuilding or racing anymore, now I’m focused on mobility and longevity. It’s the nature of the game.
There are no shortcuts to building lifetime fitness, regardless of what anyone tells you. Fitness is a journey, and a personal one. How I go about it and how you go about it will always be different, even if we share similar goals and objectives.
Establish your routine. Practice good habits. See what you like and don’t like.
And above all, take your time.
Scott Mayer is a runner, thinker, curious observer and certified personal trainer. Visit the In Fitness And In Health website for training plans, consulting options and additional content.