One of the greatest habits I’ve developed has been working out regularly.
Everyone has their own motivations for wanting to workout, but mine has shifted quite a bit over the years. When I was younger –in elementary school– my dad would do dips at the kitchen counter. I wasn’t able to do them at the time, but I always thought that was very cool and I wanted to be able to do that. My dad also showed me how to lift free weights at that time, which I was able to do but with smaller weights. And, so from an early age, I developed a desire to workout to be like my dad.
Later in middle school, my motivations for working out shifted. I started to playing tackle football –which is very big in the midwest– and I wanted to be strong to help me make the top team and secure a spot at corner and wide receiver. That motivation carried on into high school. In high school and college, an another shift occurred where I started to workout to look and feel good. It helped me feel confident and was also very helpful to calm down any anxieties from the day.
For the past couple years after graduating from college, I’ve started to workout more with the goal of staying healthy both physically and mentally. Back in high school when I was working out mornings and afternoons for football practices, I weighed around 160 lbs with very little body fat. But, since then, I’ve fluctuated from as low as 140-160 lbs. I’ve learned that I don’t like when my body is too big or too lean, I am more interested in staying at my equilibrium weight where I feel healthy.
I think more now then ever, many guys are so focused on working out to look huge. It is just my observation but it seems like in the past 5 years, the culture has shifted towards one where fitness to look like a bodybuilder has become something that a lot of young guys care about. I’ve had friends who just started working out regularly want to show me their super complex routine that they swear by because some youtube trainer said it. There are all these advertisements to take certain supplements to optimize workouts or to follow a certain strict regime or diet that will ‘guarantee’ you get jacked.
Just from my perspective, I think a lot of stuff people are consuming on social media surrounding fitness is nonsense. If you eat a healthy diet and regularly do a combination of cardio and weight lifting over a long period of time, you are going to see results. In my own experience, I’ve seen the most rapid muscle development when I do certain weight lifting exercises more intensenly, untill exhaustion. If you want to see faster results, push yourself harder, has always been my mentality. You really don’t need a bunch of fancy gym lifts either, as long as you have the right form and get a well rounded workout of different muscle groups, it doesn’t matter how fancy the lifts are.
In short, I think there is too much focus today on some of the peripheral stuff like super complex lifting exercises, strict keto diets, and supplements that people often miss the most important thing when it comes to getting a good working out. In my experience, it has always been to extremely hard at a core set of exercises, be consistent, and eat a generally healthy diet.
