(don’t) Go hard or Go home
It’s getting towards the end of the year and most of us are feeling it, we are tired and loosing momentum. It’s time we all took a break from the daily grind to spend quality moments with loved ones and remember what is important to us in life.
This, however, does not mean we should stop moving, rather the opposite. The whole notion of ‘go hard or go home’ is absolutely wrong and will not get most of us to where we want to be, instead of having this mentality change your mindset to, just turn up. In Ayurveda (yogic health science) we are told not to exert ourselves to more than 50% of our maximum, not of course there are going to be theories which will rebut this, but stay with me…
There are 2 main reasons which most of us train – health and vanity. There is an extremely small percentage of the population who fall into a third category – to win. These are athletes and will train in a completely different manner to the ‘normal’ person. They live to excel at their chosen sport, they don’t usually have to work full time and also have access to a support group at their disposal who can help them manage injuries and stressors which are placed upon the body to be able to compete at these extremely high levels. So if you are not an athlete why are you training like one? Is it for health? Training for health most definitely does not include smashing yourself 5 days a week, to see for yourself walk into any crossfit facility and count how many joints are strapped. Training for health should be a sustainable program that can be modified depending on your life circumstances and shifting goals. Training for health really is just turning up, moving your body to feel alive, increasing the blood flow to the joints and organs, getting your heart rate up a little and leaving you feeling with a vitality that lasts all day long. When you are training at 100% it does not last long, in fact physiologically we can only give 100% for around 30seconds, then we hit the lactate zone, then move into aerobic which is around 50-60% of our maximum capacity. When trying to give it everything you have, every time you train, you will undoubtably fall in a heap or injure yourself, or both.
The other reason is training for vanity, which lets be honest, we all do to some extent. But how vain are you? Does training take up so much of your time and energy that it has become your be all and end all? Can you accept yourself as you are right now, fit and healthy, or do you just want to shift those last 2kg/body fat %/cms to be happy? Now remember I have come from over 10 years in fitness, I have tried it all and have been incredibly obsessed with my weight and body, but none of that made me happy or content.
I was talking to my (gorgeous) husband the other day as he caught me checking out a guy down the beach with his shirt off and muscles bulging! He asked if I would like him to look like that and my instant reply was – I can not think of anything worse. When I see guys that have no shred of body fat on them and muscles that have taken hours in the gym to build I feel instantly repelled as I know how much vanity is required to maintain this look. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good to feel good, but how many times do you check yourself out a day to critic how effective your current training and eating program is?!
Don’t get me wrong we also do it for the love of it, for the fun of it, for the social aspects. But as much as I love running and working up a sweat, if it was detrimental to my health and my body shape I would not do it!
So where was I going with this…that’s right – just turn up. When you feel tired and crap, just get out of bed and walk barefoot on the beach. When you have nothing left to give, come along to yoga and spend half the class in child’s pose. When you know you should train but really can’t be bothered or feel you should be christmas shopping/catching up on work, get the hell out of your head and into your body for half-1 hour, you know you will not regret it, in fact you know you will feel damn good for it.
One Comment
Great read and definitely worth remembering at this time of year…easy to forget to sometimes go a little easier on the body!