The Rise Of The Couch Potato; Or, If It Is Too Hard, Then You Are Doing It Wrong

Fitness is all about, gradual adaptation.

If you push your body too hard, it will stop the exercise.

And there will be no adaption, because the exercise was too short.

Without a long, sustained exercise, there will be minimal adaptation.

People who choose duration over weight, will blow right past you.

Because they are singling to their body, much more clearly.

If you stay in one routine for too long, same thing will happen.

You will enter a plateau, as your body will stop being challenged.

Without the challenge there cannot be, adaption.

So when you see people at the gym, lifting 3 sets of 10 times and then resting a long while.

That means, they are unable to move to 12 lifts, and then 15 lifts, and maybe 50, and then add more sets.

And the reason why they are unable, to push past their 3 sets of 10, towards lifting thousands of times.

Is because their weights are too heavy, the body shuts them down at 10, that is their maximum.

But their maximum is not a triumph, that is their plateau.

They have, cornered themselves.

They lift too heavy, their body stops them short.

And their failure, keeps them in the plateau.

Sets and reps, require incrementation.

All the while, adjusting tempo, and rest period, and weight.

It is only 3x10 the first month, otherwise that is a recipe for a plateau.

So how do you push past 3x10? by not choking the body with weights that are too heavy.

This lifting that people usually do, is almost certainly isolating muscles.

Muscle isolation is a terrible idea, it even looks odd.

Though the ascetics are not nearly as important, as growing a functional and integrated musculature.

This means eliminating achy back and knees, lessening the chances of an injury.

A full body dumbbell workout, is a million times more that having 2, 4 or 6 muscles stick out.

Muscle isolation creates muscle islands, whereas our musculature is a symphony.

The muscles you earn with a full body exercise, support each other.

The muscles you get from muscle isolation, don’t have the support system necessary.

As a beginner, roughly same rules apply to jogging.

It extremely foolish, and dangerous, to get off your couch and just jog.

That will just make you start suffocating, your body isn’t ready for this.

If you can’t walk fast without, running out of breath.

Then jogging will ruin you, and you may give up on fitness.

You first need hiking, long distance hiking and speed walking.

You need to get up to a point, where you are running pout of breath.

But not suffocating, and then stop and rest.

But you may not rest until you recovered, as that would mean you stopped the exercise.

The amount of rest you get, is just enough to be able to run the same distance.

If you only ran for a minute, then you only get to rest for as long as it is necessary.

For you to run for another minute, before stopping.

By keeping this tight, you will discover that as days pass.

You will need to rest less and less, and your minute of jogging will quickly become 10 minutes.

If you push too hard, you will get too tired, ignite the cycle.

Jogging is not a science, some people just need landmarks.

But if you are large and in pain, you will need a notebook and a timer.

Or a free interval timer app, or a clip-on interval timer.

And no you can’t cheat by moving slower, you rascal.

You need to find slow songs, figure out their beats per minute.

And synchronize your step with them, and as you progress you will need faster songs.

The non-couch potato people, don’t usually need this.

But then they end up, getting themselves cornered at the gym.

They won’t learn the wisdom necessary, to stay beneath failure.

And to make duration, more important than the weight.

Which really means, keep your body going, so that it can slowly adapt, don’t push it too hard, or it will force you to quit without any changes.

So to clarify, your jogging journey, should start with hiking long trails and power-walking with dumbbells.

Then it will be much easier to close your rest gaps, but you must always aim to run longer, rather than harder.

As the distance will help your body adapt, and the harder, will make you stop without adaptation.

And once you get to the gym, you have to aim to flex your entire body, all at once with dumbbells in hand, and avoid muscle isolation.

And again, starting with very light dumbbells and gradually increasing their weight, preferably by just two pounds.

The only time wham you should lift to failure, is when you are showing off, and your workouts must be such that you should never have time to show off.

Ideally, no one should ever know, that you can dance to country and western, with 35 pound dumbbells in your hands, for three hours straight.

When it comes to full body workouts, I try to tell people that we are one muscle, a big compound muscle.

And if you ever get to dancing with 70 pounds of weight, Yippee Ki-Yay, you’ll certainly look like one.