Do more with less

Smart Strength Training - how to reap the rewards of being strong without the negative side effects

Being diagnosed with a pretty rare autoimmune condition, Palindromic Rheumatism, in my early twenties left life looking pretty lonely and bleak. But one thing was pretty obvious to me, I wasn’t going to let the diagnosis control my life. I was far too stubborn to let that happen.

With very little information available on the condition, I was left to my own devices and got to work researching. One of the conclusions that I came to was that the stronger I could make the muscles around my joints, the more those joints would be protected and the more my joints were protected then the less frequent flareups would be.

While there were countless lifestyle factors that over the last decade have helped me turn this diagnosis from a everyday crippling disease to a minor inconvenience in my life-nothing has made more of an impact then strength training.

The issue was when I got started most of the information around working out was geared towards the “no pain no gain” and “feel the burn” mentality. It left me exhausted, and while there was significant improvement I knew I could do better.

With the amount of research I was putting into fitness and how helpful it was to me, I decided to become a personal trainer and help others on their journey towards health. And while there were many individuals that found me to help them along their weight loss journey, I found that focusing on alleviating pain and discomfort went way further than simply burning calories. The long lasting effects of changing body composition and building lean muscle mass improved everyone’s life that I came across regardless of why they came to see me.

From the middle aged women who were struggling to lose weight their whole lives, to doctors who would be sidelined with debilitating pain on their days off, to older individuals who wanted the strength to just stand up and get out of bed without assistance-strength is not for the young and healthy, it is strength that will keep you feeling and looking younger and healthy.

Having been a trainer now for over a decade, I have definitely made my fair share of mistakes (mostly on myself unfortunately). But the more experience I have, the more I realized something very counterintuitive to what every form of media and content was telling me-you can do way more with less.

Doesn’t make sense? Yeah I get that, it was pretty hard for me to accept at first. As a fitness professional it was almost expected for me to be able to do more. But that simply was not the case. Those long workouts in the gym multiple times a week on top of a full-time training schedule would leave me with sheer exhaustion physically (and mentally) trying to “keep up” with my peers.

Having an ever increasing schedule and finding it hard to stick to any program without having a flareup, I turned to getting the biggest bang for my buck. If I only had a half hour to warm up and workout I would focus on hitting compound exercises that would target all my main muscle groups over the course of the week.

And just in case you’re wondering, a compound exercise is one that focuses on using multiple groups of muscles in the movement compared to isolation exercises that target just one. An example would be a dumbbell row, which would target your lats (back muscles) as well as your obliques (core) and triceps/biceps (arms) versus a dumbbell bicep curl, which targets your biceps.

Hitting two to three compound movements (varying based off of difficulty and intensity of the movement performed) provided the most amount of joint relief I had ever experienced. And better than that, it was giving me great results aesthetically. I was able to build more lean muscle mass (lean being the key word there which means not gaining size) than I had in my years prior without leaving me burnt out and fatigued by the end of the week.

The truth? There is no quick fix. There never was. If there was, the fitness industry wouldn’t be a multibillion dollar business that continues to make more and more money every year off of failed promises. If eat less and move more truly worked then it would. But it’s just not that easy anymore, not in a world that is saturated with information that is geared more towards profit then results.

So if you want to reduce your body fat, or if you want to reduce your pain levels, or if you want to reduce the amount of precious time “wasted” without results-it’s about training smarter and not harder.

15–20 minutes a day of compound movements done at a moderate to high intensity level is all that you need to get the results from that gym membership. Don’t feel like going to the gym everyday? Make it 25–30 minute session 3–4 times a week. Think of it as a weekly total of 90 minutes for optimal results. Add in daily walks at a low intensity and you have the recipe for health and longevity.

Nothing looks OR feels better than being healthy.

Take it from the woman who was told that she would never be able to walk properly unassisted when she was 23 but is now squatting more than her bodyweight for 10 reps and 3 sets.

Take it from the same woman who has maintained a weight loss of over 100 pounds for nearly 15 years.

It is so much easier to do it the “smart” way then the “hard” way. It’s not about how many calories I burn in a workout or how many sets I can do per muscle group in a day. It’s about providing my body with the stimulus it needs to be strong and effective. My knees hurt less now being in my mid-30s with arthritis then they did when I was in my early twenties before the diagnosis. It wasn’t about losing the weight, it was about getting strong.

To all those who are looking for that “tight and toned” look, you need lean muscle mass for that. You can’t tone what’s not there, and if you focus on losing weight then there won’t be much muscle left to tighten you up.

And to all of those who are looking to “punish” themselves for all of their bad decisions, it might give you momentary mental and emotional relief but not the physical effects you’re looking for.

Long story short, less is more when it comes to truly having the physical effects you’re looking for in the gym. No matter what those effects are.