The Gym Problem; Or, The Lift Heavy For Big Muscle Myth

Dumbbells at the gym are for the body, the way narrated books at the library are for the mind.

And both places are equally special, and must be viewed with great respect.

Unlike some other institutions, neither the gym, not the library, has ever aimed to or hurt humanity.

A word of caution: if you are just beginning your fitness journey, then know that the gym is hard.

That it is better to prepare your body for the gym first, unprepared, you run the risk of giving up on fitness.

A gym offers a compressed version of a much healthier lifestyle, where you frequently hike pretty trails, bicycle, and jog long distances.

In our busy world, it is not possible to hike every other day, but it is possible, to give your body roughly the same albeit compressed workout at the gym.

So if you are just beginning, don’t do the shortened compressed version, for one you should know what you are compressing.

But most importantly, you should enjoy the real experience, because walking, hiking, bicycling, jogging are each beautiful in their own way.

Just as important is the fact, that when taking to nature first, you will effortlessly earn endurance, that will make your gym workouts easy.

Another word for walking, hiking, bicycling, and jogging, is adventure, and there are few things in life as pleasant as nature.

I warn you, you will not find beauty at the gym, there you are tasked with just the muscle and none of the vista.

Let me be clear, if you skip the beauty and earning the initial endurance, you run a severe danger of permanently giving up on fitness.

Please understand, health is not a hobby, it is longevity.

Giving up on fitness, means giving up on decades of your life.

Please take this warning to heart, and as soon as you can, preferably right this moment, get up, and begin packing for a hiking trip.

You will be leaving Friday after work, returning early Monday morning before work.

You will sleep long, rest well, and lose a few pounds, when you had your fill of weekend and vacation camping and hiking.

Begin bicycling, and once your legs can carry you for long enough, start jogging, preferably in parks and woods away from concrete.

Now, if you are large, you will not – in fact - be returning to work on Monday, you will stay a while, until you rethink your diet and future plans.

Because believing that you can just skate along obese straight into retirement, is a falsehood, you will not make it to your retirement.

And if you think that is scary, then you have no idea, just how really dangerous obesity is.

By the time your mind and body are ready to sign up for the gym, you will look at your younger fat self, and scoff at your feeble fitness efforts.

Cargo cult thinking is one of the biggest problems, acting like the people who are pretending to work out.

This is how everyone ended up believing that muscle isolation, and sets and reps, is somehow the secret formula – it is not – it is a fools errand.

The often omitted from field of vision joggers hold the formula, their leg muscles, show how muscles grow.

Except that they are actually losing their body weight, and to continue grow larger muscles, you have to weigh yourself down.

But not so much, that you won’t be able to run your route, the distance of an hour, or two, or even three or four.

Depending on what level of obesity you are fighting, the duration must come first, to how much yo are lifting.

If you add so much weight that you can no longer run your distance, then you have made a mistake, you added too much weight.

This is a very delicate mechanism, and in fact increasing your weights so high, that you may run your distance, but much more slowly is already bad.

Now, unlike a jogger who primary focuses on their legs, you need dumbbells in your hands, which affect your entire body.

And as you perform different dumbbell exercises to rest muscle groups, or restore circulation, your entire body get a workout your upper back first.

Then your legs, and finally your biceps, and what may come as a slight surprise your abdominal area.

Focus on twisting and turning, on flexing your entire body, as much as you can, and like joggers don’t rest, and rarely for more than a few seconds.

To use jogging as the theory behind powerful fitness and bodybuilding, you must focus on what joggers focus first.

Eliminating the need to stop, joggers may use a Couch to 5K program, but dumbbell workouts demand lifting to slow music for the first few months.

And eliminating your rest periods with an interval timer, be it a clip on that will vibrate on your belt, or as a free app that will beep during your music.

Music helps you enter a dance trance, and makes time pass faster.

You start in the beginning of the rack, with three or five pounds, depending on how strong you already are.

And once you are able to lift three pounds for an hour, then you go up, by no more than two and a half pounds.

This may mean using wrist weights, as most gyms have 5 pound intervals, the ladies weights my be spaced by to and a half pounds, pleas use that.

Now go, get packing for your weekend adventure.

And if you want to start with a bang, get rid of your kitchen appliances to break your bad diet habit.