Yes, Maybe, No

The best blog post ideas come from my super awesome clients.  One of them asked me whether it was possible to do, say, bench press with twelve-pound dumbbells forever and have it be okay. 

There are a lot of ways to answer that question.

 

One:  yes.  The workout we are willing to do is always better than no workout.

 

Two:  maybe.  It depends on why we want to do that.  We, culturally, are under so much pressure to do more and faster and better that it’s a little bit amazing that we don’t all just blow up.  If we are trying to unplug from the competitive machine without sacrificing our desire to be healthy, exercising beings, it is perfectly all right to have a go-to workout that hits all our major muscle groups, gets our heart rates up, and gives us a chance to balance and stretch.  We do not have to do the shiny new workout of the moment.

 

Three:  no.  BORING!  Bodies and brains need different stimulation in order to prosper.  Doing the very same workout forever sounds like absolute torture to me, personally, and while I may not be entirely normal, I’m sure I’m not alone in this.  A boring workout is easy to postpone or shirk entirely.  Worse, when we’re bored, we tend not to pay attention to what we are doing and that is a good way to get injured.  From a body perspective, there are several reasons to change things up from time to time.  One is that we grow in response to challenge.  Those twelve-pound weights are going to become ridiculously easy to press after a while, so we are not providing our muscles with sufficient challenge.  Another is that, depending on our age, we need either to build up strong muscles and bones or to prevent and/or postpone the natural loss of muscle and bone that comes with aging; we do this by lifting challenging weights.

 

We need to consider why we are asking the question when we choose our answer.

 

Go play.