Eyebrows don't help

We get a message from several places in our culture that we have to do it all, full-on, all the time.  Professional athletes, for example, and their coaches talk about giving 110%.  Bosses urge us to work harder, faster, and smarter.  Our families want us to bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and have something left for cuddling our loved ones and serving the community, and maybe even picking up our dirty socks once in a while.

All that grit and multi-tasking and determination has a place and a useful one.  But most of the time, it’s not our best choice in fitness.

Our fitness goal should be efficiency.  We want to calibrate our movements so that we use just enough effort to get the job done and no more.  This, in the long term, keeps us safe from injury and helps us maintain our fitness no matter how far the calendar moves forward.

Two tools that help us do that are cardio intervals and mind-body work.  Cardio intervals help us pack more workout into less time and they work better.  They’re also incredibly simple to use.  Instead of trudging along on the treadmill for an hour, we spend half an hour alternating speedy minutes with recovery minutes.  We burn more calories and get done sooner!  Our hearts and lungs actually adapt more quickly using intervals as well, so we make more progress in less time.  Wins all around.

Mind-body work like Pilates or yoga helps us tune into what is actually happening with us.  We can find the places in an exercise where we can relax.  There may not be many, but I’m pretty convinced that contracting our eyebrows has no effect on our ability to lift heavy weights.  As we learn to recruit the appropriate muscles at the right time, our movements get smoother and more efficient.  They also get more graceful, but that’s just bonus points.

So, yes, let’s work hard when we’re working out, just not any harder than we need to.