Workout smarter, not harder!

As a kid I loved to watch cartoons. Not Pokemon or any of that rubbish. I’m talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bugs Bunny and some of the Disney cartoons like Duck Tales. I’m sure most cartoons are simply a waste of time, but now and again they make you realise something.

I’ll always remember the Duck Tales episode where Scrooge McDuck tells the story of how he became so rich. As a very young duck (hey it is a cartoon) he went out into the world to make his fortune but all the work he could get was cleaning people’s shoes while they had their hair cut. On the first day he worked extremely hard on his client’s shoe until they sparkled clean. All the client gave was a quarter. Scrooge was so angry as he had worked so hard and yet received minuscule returns. He eventually figured out that to get ahead he’d have to work smarter not harder. The next scene we see him cleaning 5 people’s shoes at one time by creating a bicycle-powered contraption so all he had to do was sit and pedal. The rest is (cartoon) history.

What an earth has Scrooge McDuck got to do with fitness?

We need to realise that it’s not just how hard we workout or how strictly we keep to a diet that is going to bring us success. If we aren’t following sound advice then we may not ever reach the goals we are aspiring for. We need to be smart about the exercises we choose and the food we eat, otherwise we are just wasting our time and effort.

No matter how much you want it and no matter how hard you try, you won’t reach your fitness goals unless direct your efforts to exercises/diets/lifestyle changes that really work.

For so long I wasted my time working out by just doing what I thought was going to help me get leaner and musclier. In hindsight a lot of what I did was never going to get me where I wanted to be. First of all I needed to find out how I was going to lose flab, how I was going to gain muscle and how I would keep my body that way.

So just how do we workout smarter instead of harder?

Take a step back and see what you’re doing. What is your diet like? What kind of exercises are you doing and how often? Are you making progress and are you measuring/tracking this progress? These are all questions that you have to be able to answer decisively. “I think so” is not a good answer. You need to be sure that the time you are investing is actually going to produce the output you are looking for.

I talk about ‘bang for buck’ exercises in an earlier article published on Take Fit. This article explains that before we focus on isolation exercises such as crunches or dumbbell curls, we need to make sure we are doing exercises which involve our whole body. That way we are maximising output (causing muscle growth throughout our whole body) while minimising input (if you are doing nothing but ‘bang for buck’ exercises you’ll probably decrease the time it takes to workout while seeing increased results)!

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How To Stop Complicating Things And Keep It Simple, Stupid!

KISS

No it’s not the kissing you do when you’re in love, and it’s not the rock band either. In actual fact ‘KISS’ is an acronym of the phrase “Keep It Simple, Stupid” and is said to have first emerged during the Apollo space programs at NASA in the 1960s.

When solving problems, people sometimes tend towards complicated solutions that are harder to deal with than the problem, or ostensibly ‘clever’ solutions that do not actually work for all possible forms of the problem …according to KISS, the method used should be as simple and straightforward as possible.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_principle

So many times as humans we over-complicate things to the point that we are not able to solve the initial problem. The reason the simple solution is so often the best solution is because 9 times out of 10 it is the easiest solution.

KISSing in practice

If you have a complicated workout plan, a confusing diet and are continually measuring the amounts of food you eat and time you spend exercising you aren’t putting the KISS principle to work. For some people that kind of thing may work well, but for most it will only lead to frustration. You see, a successful fitness regime has to turn into a changed lifestyle, not a 3 month plan. If you can’t stick at it as part of your life then there really isn’t a lot of point starting it in the first place.

The simpler a workout or diet program is, the greater chance you’ll have of succeeding. Remove as many obstacles and barriers in your way and you’ll be left with something you enjoy.

How to actually keep it simple

To make sure you utilize the KISS principle effectively you need to look for nutrition plans and workouts that are simple but effective.  Don’t choose to do something just because it’s easier and less complicated.  You need to do a little research to makes sure it’s worthy of it’s simplicity.

For example, instead of doing 20 different exercises to target all your muscle groups, why not just do squats, dead lifts, bench presses and chin ups?  These exercises are simple enough to do and they would combine to give you an extremely effective workout (I can guarantee that).  Buy some equipment, say goodbye to your gym membership fees and you’ll have the kind of simple efficient workout that will get you results.

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