My Most Valuable Fitness Lessons
When I was 12, I joined my first travel soccer team. It was around that time that I started to take health and fitness seriously. In those 15 years since I’ve been educating and experimenting with how to be fit in the most efficient way. For most of those years, I did most things wrong. I made some progress but it was either short-lived or at the expense of another part of my health.
To save you valuable time, and help you reach your health goals, take these lessons from me. There are more important lessons, but those you can learn from almost any post about starting fitness out there. These are the ones that may go overlooked but are vital nonetheless.
Why should you listen to me? The lessons learned from mistakes is one. Lessons learned the hard way are learned well. Two is that I do have a personal training certification. In short, I have the experience and knowledge to help you out.
Here we go!
It all starts with diet
I start with this because I can’t emphasize it enough. It doesn’t matter what your goal is, lose fat, gain muscle, whatever. If your diet isn’t in line, the rest of your decisions won’t matter. Primarily, you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Think about it this way. A cardio session lasting 30 minutes on the treadmill will burn 200–400 calories. Or, the same amount you consume in a medium French fries from McDonald’s (340cal), and that’s one side from one meal. Secondarily, your macros (carbs, fat, protein) go a long way towards determining your body composition. You can lift for an hour 6x a week. If you’re eating less than 100g protein and 300 cals under maintenance, it won’t matter. Figure out your TDEE, figure out your macros for your goals, and make your diet fit.
What’s the best diet? There isn’t one, because it depends on your goals, history, ability to buy/prepare meals, ethics, genetics, and more.
Most diets work because they focus on the following:
Awareness
Here’s a story. When I was in High School, one of my favorite breakfasts was a granola-yogurt-raisins bowl. I thought I was being so healthy. It’s grain, dairy, and fruit! What a way to start the day! When I did the math, though? About 800 calories and 80 grams of sugar. No wonder I liked it, I was having a big dessert for breakfast.
Most of us aren’t aware of the caloric and nutrient makeup of our foods. Taking the time to track what you eat in a week will show you where you’re consuming more than you think and where to adjust. You’d be surprised how much difference cutting one-or-two things out of your diet can help.
Quality
Quality often matters more than quantity. Nutrient-dense foods like whole vegetables and grains provide the most bang for your buck. You can eat a whole bag of baby spinach and only have 90 calories. A lot of the time hunger comes from a lack of proper nutrition and your body tells you to search for more food. Processed foods are the biggest culprit. Unfortunately, their price and convenience make them the first option for many people.
For a lot of people, simply eliminating processed foods and replacing them with whole foods can create some drastic health benefits. Start to take note of the quality of the foods you eat. I promise it’s not as expensive as you think to eat this way. Potatoes, onions, beans, spinach, these are not expensive items.
Consistency
When I lost 30lbs a couple of years ago, a lot of people asked me what my secret was, or how I did it. I told them it was quite simple, but not always easy. Figure out your caloric needs, roughly measure your food, and hit your goals for 80% of your meals for a couple of months. That’s all I did in addition to 3x week cardio sessions. Again, a simple framework but the execution is difficult. Regardless, it’s the consistency that makes the difference. That one salad you had this week is not enough. At a caloric deficit for long enough your body will have no option but to burn fat for fuel. But you have to give it the time to do so.
If that doesn’t work, you can start to seek out other more intense weight-loss methods. Most people don’t give that first method an earnest attempt.
Dieting alone won’t make you fit, but it can make you healthy. A good diet supports your exercise, and it becomes a positive feedback loop. You eat good, you feel good, you exercise well, you refuel, repeat.
The body is amazingly and frustratingly adaptive
Here’s a lesson I learned the hard way. When I was right out of college I couldn’t afford a gym so I downloaded a few follow-along bodyweight cardio programs. These things were intense, full of jump squats, lunges, knee tucks, core work, etc. I finished every session in a pool of sweat on the floor. I kept thinking about how much better this work would make me at soccer (my favorite hobby). I’d be more explosive, agile, strong. Except, it didn’t. Because the sessions were made to be done in a small space, all of the movements were in one plane of motion — up and down. Sure, I was jumping, kicking, punching with intensity but soccer is about covering ground, changing direction, balance. Things that I wasn’t working on. My cardio was up to snuff, but I didn’t think I was much a better athlete on the pitch. I learned that the best way to get fit at soccer was to play a lot of hard soccer.
That story was to introduce the SAID principle. Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. The body is capable of adapting to any kind of stress you can throw at it, provided that you do so over time and have proper diet/recovery in place. However, these adaptations will be specific. Doing a lot of swimming will not make you a better runner and vice-versa. Of course, there are isolation exercises meant for prehab that people will do for their specific sport but whatever you’re trying to improve you should spend most of your time/effort doing that activity or close to it.
Additionally, your body can handle way more than what you’re currently throwing at it. Given enough time/nutrition to recover, the body can adapt itself to fit nearly any demand. So don’t hold back.
Be clear on your goals, and take stock every few months
Related to the SAID principle is that there is, unfortunately, a trade-off that happens with your muscles. If you gain muscular endurance, you are sacrificing some strength and the inverse as well. So if your goal is to build both muscular strength and endurance, it’s possible but you’ll likely get half as far by choosing two goals. Because there are specific adaptations, you must have specific goals, and specific goals require specific measurements.
For example, if you want to improve your cardio, you need to be training for 20–40 minutes at 60–80% of your maximum heart rate a few times a week. Going for an occasional jog may help prevent degradation but it will not actively improve your fitness. Without measuring yourself, there’s no way to know if you’re in the right zone, or if you’re improving or not.
The other major principle to follow is one of individualization. Everyone will react differently to different programs, there’s no right one for everyone. That’s why it’s important to stop every now and then and evaluate how well you’re reacting to a program and adjust as necessary. You should be adjusting anyway as your body adapts. I spun my wheels in the mud for a long time by sticking with similar routines. At a certain point of adaptation, more effort does not equal more results.
[Here’s another side lesson I learned the hard way: celebrity/athlete programs are awful. Celebrities and athletes at the top of their game are not like you, they’re better. They have the genetics, the training background, the time/money, the diet to exercise and recover in a way that we cannot. Trying to replicate their routines is not wise. Free yourself to follow normal routines for normal people — because you are one.]
Lose the ego, leave your comfort zone, see the results.
If you’ve ever been in the gym, you’ve seen the extreme ego lifters. With either their clothing, their weights, or both they’re going for attention over anything. We all roll our eyes. However, if you’ve ever added weights to do half-reps with or used momentum to cheat the weights up then you’re guilty of the same sins.
Practice correct form, make sure that you’re hitting full range-of-motion, and that the weight is controlled throughout the rep. Then, you can move up in weight. When you cheat with form, you’re only cheating yourself.
Likewise, there are probably some exercises that you don’t like doing or you prefer an easier version. Well, if you are like me, you don’t like them because you were bad at them or they made you feel weak. I did machine-assisted squats, shoulder presses, and more for a long time because they felt easier and made me feel good. They feel easier because they are easier because they remove the coordination aspect. As a result, my stabilizing and secondary muscles of those movements were weak and I wasn’t functionally fit. Use free-weights, use strict form, master the basics, and your body will thank you.
I also spent a long time ignoring aspects of fitness that had little glamour appeal because of my ego and vanity. I didn’t do rotator cuff, hamstring, low-back, or any mobility exercises. The resulting imbalances made my posture poor, and I was getting injured more often. Don’t get me wrong, appearance is/was a motivator for me, but the long path to true physique and fitness demands balance.
So, do the hard, boring, or uncomfortable stuff — light enough if that’s what it takes. Replace your ego with humility and patience and you’ll be much better off in the long run.
There are no shortcuts
There are no shortcuts to true fitness. So many programs advertise 21-day transformations, fixes, revamps, etc. They’re mostly BS or unsustainable (maintaining the intensity of the “transformational” programs is unrealistic).
Building foundational strength, becoming flexible, lowering your resting heart rate, adding inches to your vertical. Whatever your goal, they all take considerable time and effort.
While some people see this as a turn-off, you should see it as a turn-on. Making fitness a part of your life is an amazing keystone habit. It adds years to your life, life to your years, and gives you the energy and discipline to reach other goals of yours. So adopt the mindset that you aren’t going to do any quick-fix work, and instead commit to slow and steady progress that will compound over time. You owe it to yourself.
This is good news for most of us. Though we are not blessed with considerable athletic talent, we can gain it through consistent effort.
That’s what I’ve always appreciated about fitness, how straightforward and high-return it is. There are a lot of things in life where we’re not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze, or even how to squeeze, or what the juice tastes like.
But when it comes to your health, if you can consistently get in quality exercise and diet towards a specific goal — you will get there eventually and it will be great.
That’s all! I hope you got some good advice and motivation out of this.
“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” — Socrates
