…ANYTHING! Read on for the 12 BEST ways to tone your whatever or gain muscle in your blah blah blah! All the answers right here!!
Do those lines seem familiar? I bet you see them all the time on fitness sites and muscle magazines. Where am I going with this, you are probably asking. After I finished my workout yesterday – I’m not going to lie – I was proud of myself for finishing with some anti-extension specific roll-outs. Most people would refer to that as “core work”. Are wheel roll-outs “the best” exercise for abdominal stability? That’s the question that gets asked often with regards to many exercises. And my answer is…
Who cares? Does it matter THAT much? I HATE most “core” specific exercises – the dangerous ones like sit-ups, that you can power and fling your way through until you throw your back out, and the relevant ones like planks that you have to grit your teeth and hang on through – so I can almost never convince myself to make the time to do them. I’ve told myself I am out of time, I am too tired, I did enough of the big 3 exercises to make up for it, I will do them later or at home or tomorrow. Everything. Every excuse. Being a personal trainer doesn’t make you flawless in your workouts or your will to push yourself with regards to your weak points. I work out alone. So, frankly, it was a big deal that I bothered. For some reason, I don’t mind roll-outs as much as other exercises. And it’s not because they are particularly easy to do correctly.
So what’s the point? I’m not saying that your workout plan shouldn’t try to get the best bang for its buck by including well-thought out, safe, relevant exercises (involve a lot of large muscle groups, motions, cross multiple planes of motion, are ergonomically non-detrimental, etc, etc). Of course you should plan as best you can for your goals. But you could have the most impeccably designed exercises that will turn you into a massive, shredded, sexy beast and it won’t matter one damn bit if you are never going to bother to do them. Perhaps I am the only person experiencing this situation but I don’t think I am. Exercises that you are motivated to do consistently (not just because of ease – they should always be challenging or you are wasting time) are going to be more beneficial to you than the best laid plan that you don’t mind talking yourself out of. Don’t forget to switch up and replace those exercises with variations after a while and you will be on your way to success! Happy lifting!
This is great advice. Being competitive I seem to find myself under-motivated at the gym due to the fact I can’t preform to the level of the lifters around me. I struggle with making working out a habit for this very reason. I’ve found a few key exercises that I truly enjoy and don’t constantly have me comparing myself to the lifters around me.