Why I don’t train to hit performance goals anymore
I may be the only grown adult from Alabama that does not follow SEC football. I’m not sure why that is, as literally everyone I grew up around was big-time into the Tide or Tigers.
For whatever reason, sports-fandom never took hold of me. I appreciate the skills and athleticism and team spirit and all the rest that goes into the game. And I never turned down a ticket to a game when a friend turned up with an extra seat. There’s been few things in life than a game at Bryant-Denny Stadium down in Tuscaloosa.
But my attitude to the sport was always a shrug of complete indifference.
Nothing about it attracted me as far as a desire to play or even keep up with “how we’re doing this season”.
Just not my thing.
I’ve accepted that this is okay.
For similar reasons, some folks are into exercising because they want to get good at “the game”, whatever that is for them. Might be running marathons, tri-athlons, swimming, shot-put, whatever the game is.
Other folks are into exercise for other reasons.
Like vein-scribbled abs, bulging biceps, and a yoke that makes an angry bull think twice about charging.
There’s nothing wrong in training for aesthetics, or as I like call it, unashamed vanity.
For a spell throughout my 20s I fancied I could be a powerlifter. When I realized what that meant, the amount of weight I’d have to carry on my undersized body, and the strain on my cheap plastic joints, it wasn’t the wisest choice.
All in all, I wasn’t very good at it.
In 2006 when I weighed over 220 lbs, a nurse told me that my heart was enlarged and I was putting terrible stress on my whole system. At the time I didn’t care. But her words stuck with me over the coming years.
Powerlifting wasn’t an option for me, and I don’t care enough about any other sport to invest my time in it.
Q: What do you do?
A: You invest your time into bodybuilding.
Not to step on stage in your underwear with three coats of orange spray-tan.
To look good and feel good and move good in ordinary life.
I realized that my original motivation to lift, way back when Bill Clinton was president, was simple and direct:
I wanted to pack on muscle and look great to pick up girls.
That goal happened, but in a most indirect way which was nothing like how I imagined.
My detour into powerlifting left me with invaluable wisdom and the buffed-up frame of a bull-dog, but it was never really what I wanted.
While chasing strength has many advantages, a gigantic squat, bench, and deadlift is not what most non-fanatical mortals want and wish for in their hearts.
Being the owner of a nice-looking, muscular, shapely, lean body, which can move well with minimal pain and even do some decent parlor tricks?
That’s more like it.
My training still includes max-ish weights, such as they are these days, out of habit, and because that’s what I like, and because there are physique advantages to beefy squats and pulls. I’ve been doing these lifts for close to 30 years now and my body shows no signs of all the back injuries and knee injuries I’ve been warned about for close to 30 years, so why not?
If push came to shove, though, I’d be content to train in the magic rep ranges between 6 and 20. If you don’t have a strength-sports background, that’s likely the wise choice for you, too.
Conditioning work is a lot more important to me now. I’ve come to love sprints on the air bike and up gentle hills outdoors. (I credit these for the “fat loss flywheel” effect where I almost have to work to keep the fat from stripping off.)
My point is, there is nothing wrong with training for aesthetic goals. Keep an eye on performance, which includes not only what you lift but your mobility, flexibility, and movement quality.
But get them abs, son. Pump them guns.
No shame in constructive vanity.
The thing is, training to look good has many downstream effects on joint health and mobility, and also the “invisible” effects on carb metabolism, insulin sensitivity, and a buffet of health-promoting and longevity side-effects.
You get to be vain and justify it to yourself for health reasons, which is a win-win in my book.
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Matt Perryman