Let's imagine you are a music student. Your teacher assigns a piece that you have never played before. At your lesson, you attempt the piece and sail through the lyrical passages quite easily. But there are numerous issues in the faster, more technical sections. Your teacher compliments you on the lovely lyrical quality of the melody, but points out the many issues that you still struggle with.
Then you go home. You practice this piece daily. But every time you pick up your instrument to play, you are drawn to the lyrical sections. You love to play those passages. And they sound fantastic because you have a natural affinity for playing this way. By the end of the week, when you return for another lesson, the lyrical passages sound beautiful, but because you have spent less time on the more technical passages, you have made little progress there. Your teacher points out the same places that need work.
This scenario might be familiar to you whether or not you are a musician. We are drawn to certain types of music, movement, art, food, everything. And the things that we tend to be good at are the things we tend to enjoy. And the things we really need to work on, the areas where we are lacking something, are the things we tend to avoid. So we continue to improve only in the areas where we are already excelling. It makes sense. You understand it. But it is a tough habit to break.
If you are already great at running, but all you practice every time you work out is running, you may stay great at running, but you will continue to lack many aspects of fitness which running does not address. For example, running is aerobic so your lungs and your heart get a good workout. But running uses mostly the leg and hip muscles in a very small range of motion. Running does nothing to build upper body strength. Running is not an effective way of building core strength. Running does not stretch or lengthen any muscle group thus promoting flexibility. Running does not promote agility, unless you are running a complex obstacle course. Running does not even strengthen your legs in a significant way, unless you are running up hills or practicing sprints.
Don't get me wrong! There are numerous benefits to running: it is easy to do; it is basically free; you need no equipment or training; you can do it anywhere; it burns plenty of calories while you are doing it. There is nothing wrong with running! I am just suggesting that if you ONLY run, you might want to consider branching out and incorporating some additional challenges into your workout. I would say the same thing if your only workout is yoga. Or Pilates. Or golf.
Unless you are doing Crossfit or bootcamp as your daily workout, my guess is that you are leaving something out when you workout. Do you incorporate strength training? And do you see gains in your level of strength? Upper body? Lower? Core? Are you stretching on a daily basis to keep your muscles elastic rather than tight and stiff? Are you incorporating some type of sprint work so that you up the intensity of your workout? Do you do mobility work so that you maintain a full range of motion through all of your muscles and joints? If you are already working hard in all of these areas, then I will shut my mouth. I stand corrected.
If not, I would suggest that you pick one thing that you are NOT good at. One area where you know you need to improve. And then make a plan to include some new exercises into your workout that address this area of weakness. Don't drop all that stuff you are good at! Keep running or hitting those golf balls. Just add a little something new to spice things up!
Then you go home. You practice this piece daily. But every time you pick up your instrument to play, you are drawn to the lyrical sections. You love to play those passages. And they sound fantastic because you have a natural affinity for playing this way. By the end of the week, when you return for another lesson, the lyrical passages sound beautiful, but because you have spent less time on the more technical passages, you have made little progress there. Your teacher points out the same places that need work.
This scenario might be familiar to you whether or not you are a musician. We are drawn to certain types of music, movement, art, food, everything. And the things that we tend to be good at are the things we tend to enjoy. And the things we really need to work on, the areas where we are lacking something, are the things we tend to avoid. So we continue to improve only in the areas where we are already excelling. It makes sense. You understand it. But it is a tough habit to break.
If you are already great at running, but all you practice every time you work out is running, you may stay great at running, but you will continue to lack many aspects of fitness which running does not address. For example, running is aerobic so your lungs and your heart get a good workout. But running uses mostly the leg and hip muscles in a very small range of motion. Running does nothing to build upper body strength. Running is not an effective way of building core strength. Running does not stretch or lengthen any muscle group thus promoting flexibility. Running does not promote agility, unless you are running a complex obstacle course. Running does not even strengthen your legs in a significant way, unless you are running up hills or practicing sprints.
Don't get me wrong! There are numerous benefits to running: it is easy to do; it is basically free; you need no equipment or training; you can do it anywhere; it burns plenty of calories while you are doing it. There is nothing wrong with running! I am just suggesting that if you ONLY run, you might want to consider branching out and incorporating some additional challenges into your workout. I would say the same thing if your only workout is yoga. Or Pilates. Or golf.
Unless you are doing Crossfit or bootcamp as your daily workout, my guess is that you are leaving something out when you workout. Do you incorporate strength training? And do you see gains in your level of strength? Upper body? Lower? Core? Are you stretching on a daily basis to keep your muscles elastic rather than tight and stiff? Are you incorporating some type of sprint work so that you up the intensity of your workout? Do you do mobility work so that you maintain a full range of motion through all of your muscles and joints? If you are already working hard in all of these areas, then I will shut my mouth. I stand corrected.
If not, I would suggest that you pick one thing that you are NOT good at. One area where you know you need to improve. And then make a plan to include some new exercises into your workout that address this area of weakness. Don't drop all that stuff you are good at! Keep running or hitting those golf balls. Just add a little something new to spice things up!
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