It amazes me how many people who claim to be interested in their health, performance, and appearance will fight me to the mat when I tell them that strength training, with the purpose of building muscle mass, is the only real “secret”.
“Oh I don’t like the gym. I don’t care for lifting weights.”
That’s cool.
Here’s some of the things I don’t like or care for:
Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, metabolic syndrome, having no energy to live my life, constantly aching joints, heart disease, inability to do basic life tasks because I’m weak and immobile, prematurely aging, or being fat.
I’ll take the weights.
From talking with folks, I’ve come to realize that a major obstacle is a gap of perception.
When I say “you should train with resistance to build muscle”, I’m working with certain beliefs, ideas, and mental pictures.
Which are not remotely the same as the beliefs, ideas, and mental pictures conjured up in the minds of the people I’m talking with.
I suspect that many people hear me talk up the virtues of strength training and acquiring muscle mass and see visions not unlike Macho Man Randy Savage in a wrasslin’ promo from the 1980s.
Many folks work from the impression that you must train to be 250 pounds at 3% body fat with a spray-on tan.
That you need to spend 2 hours a day, five days a week, smashing your body with dozens of sets per body part.
It ain’t so. You can knock out two or three 30-40 minute sessions in a week and get over 90% of the benefits.
What else isn’t so:
Muscle tissue is not just a nice-to-have vanity.
It’s proving to be an essential part of not only health but vital living as we get older.
If you want to not just survive but live an active life, this is not optional.
Among other things, muscle tissue…
*Makes your joints stronger and healthier and (if you don’t wreck them by being stupid) less prone to aches and pains
*Improves insulin sensitivity, which improves metabolic health across the board
*Reduces markers and symptoms of aging even in organs and systems, like your heart, lungs, and immune system, that have nothing to do with muscle tissue
*Protects against aging-related diseases and dysfunctions that you’re just “supposed to accept”.
*Keeps your mind sharp and your nervous system tuned in training and the after-effects of training
If you read all that and still want to tell me that your horse-dance aerobics class is more fun and makes you sweaty, we’re not on the same wavelength. We don’t operate in the same universe of cause and effect.
Quit the excuses and mental gymnastics.
Just lift the damn weights. Just build the damn muscle.
And make sure you’re in the community. We’ll be stoking the fires after New Year’s Day.
Matt Perryman