Insane workout or just insane?

Speaking to someone in the office today got me thinking. We were talking about diet and nutrition, but it led onto training and what could be considered optimal.

The lady, from what I understood, did not do any weight training. The rationale being that they did "not want to look big or bulky" and that they didn't really feel like they'd had a workout unless they feel ruined and dripping in sweat...

Firstly, I want to reiterate... Women will not get "big or bulky" without the use of hormones or anabolic steriods. It is pretty much biologically impossible for women to put on the levels of muscle mass that men can. But that is another rant for another time.

But the irony of people wanting to "beast" themselves or completely "smash" their gym sessions is that, for the most part, people usually want things as easy as possible in life. We want technology to store our passwords, we want cars to be more fuel efficient and we want fast food that is ready for us to eat. But when we're in the gym, it has to be as hard as possible if not we're missing out on progress, right? We have to feel crap to look awesome?!

To a certain extent it can be true. If you don't have enough intensity in your workouts then you will not get the gains you're looking for. It takes more than stepping into the gym and spending 15 minutes curling some 4kg dumbbells to see changes in your body. Losing weight, or gaining muscle is incredibly hard, and often a struggle. But people seem to think the only way to success is to suck it up, and smash out the reps until you are sick. But what if it doesn't have to be that way? What if you can see results without having to ask someone to hold your hair while you puke in the bin?

The idea that burning a shit loads of calories during exercise is the way to drop fat is false economy for two reasons. Ever heard of the saying "You can't outrun a poor diet"? To put this into context, you could spend an hour on a treadmill at a moderate pace and burn c600 calories as an example. 60 minutes of slogging hard. All to burn the equivalent of a piece of carrot cake that might take you 60 SECONDS to eat? Is it worth it? You're far more likely to see results from a controlled diet than hard, intense exercise. Also, it's thought that exercise stimulates your appetitite, so tempting you to eat even more and counteracting the calories burned.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't exercise, far from it. But you should train smart over hard. Yes, aerobic exercise will start to tap into your fat stores, but focus on building muscle to increase your Basal Metabolic Rate meaning you'll be burning more calories in general all through the day. So there's plenty of reason to train, and train hard, but smart.

Take home point is no matter how hard you think you train, don't expect to see results without cleaning up your diet first, and this means both eating enough nutritious food to fuel your body to work optimally, but also stay within your calorie limits according to your goal.

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Thanks

Brett

Adapt. Evolve. Become.