The Path of Most Resistance

Do you dread going to the gym or exercising?

Do you have more negative memories about exercising than positive?

Do you treat your body poorly?

Do you talk about how miserable exercising makes you because you feel you aren't accomplishing anything?

Do you exercise less and less on a monthly basis?

Do you have fewer positive experiences with exercise every year?

If you answered yes to most of the questions above then you need to change the way you think about exercise and becoming a fitter, healthier, stronger, faster, more youthful you.

First of all consider the following formula:

TALENT X INVESTMENT = SUCCESS.

Talent is your natural talent to do something. If we were to rank your Strength for example on a scale of 1 to 20, with 10 being the average, how well would you rank? High? Low? And how high would you want that number to be? 14? 16? 18? 20 evidently would be amongst the strongest people on the planet and very rare. But a 14 isn't anything to sneeze at either.

Investment is the amount of time and effort you want to spend on a task. In this case the task might be losing weight, building strength, improving flexibility, or even just feeling better about your health.

Now lets pretend for a moment you are below average in your Strength. A mere 7. The local wimp who wants to be the next Charles Atlas (bodybuilder from the 1920s to 1970s). Is the young Mr Wimp going to accomplish anything special if he is only working on it 5 minutes per day? No, he won't, not when you consider there is 1,440 minutes in a day.

Now lets pretend for a moment young Mr Wimp decides he wants to really practice hard and aims higher, perhaps going for 1 hour per day. Well its better. But is 7 hours per week really enough to turn Mr Wimp into Charles Atlas? No, probably not. It will improve some of his muscle tone, but its not going to be anything spectacular. It might boost him up to an 8 or a couple more points higher given time.

No, what Mr Wimp really needs is a CHALLENGE. And its going to become a huge time commitment.

Think 3 hours per day, 5 days per week. Approx. 15 hours per week. If his goal is to be building muscle then he needs to lifting weights during those hours. He will be tired and sore afterwards, but if he has the mental fortitude to keep doing it then he will start to see results. Over time he will continue to challenge himself and build up his strength. If his final goal is a 16 Strength then it will take him years to accomplish, but it can be done if he invests the time.

He isn't going to accomplish this goal by being lazy and taking the path of least resistance. No. He has to take the Path of Most Resistance if he is going to accomplish this goal.

Now I am not suggesting you go out and buy Charles Atlas' book. Certainly not. You can do so if you really want to, but its really like any other bodybuilding book you might find. (According to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Atlas is the reason Arnold became a bodybuilder in the first place.)

That and the whole "15 minutes per day" slogan from Charles Atlas just isn't enough time investment to be truly effective.

What I trying to convey here is that it is really more a matter of will power if you want to succeed in a particular goal.

Yes, natural talent is good. But it will only take you so far if you don't have the will power to spend the investment of time in attaining your goal.

You can learn to self-motivate, you can hire a personal trainer, you can get yourself an exercise buddy... but the end result is you need to find the will power and the motivation to make that investment of time in taking the Path of Most Resistance towards getting your goal.

Because doing nothing or almost nothing will get you this far: Nowhere.

Lets pretend you are Mr Average with a 10 Strength. You only exercise 10 minutes per day. About an hour per week. Using our formula from further above how far will that get Mr Average?

10 Strength X 1 Hour per Week = "10 Strength-Hours" (sorta of like measuring Torque in "foot-pounds").

In contrast Mr Wimp's new exercise routine is...

7 Strength X 15 Hours per Week = "105 Strength-Hours".

Now who do you think will be growing muscle mass faster? Someone doing 10 Strength-Hours or 105 Strength-Hours? The answer is obvious. Before you know it Mr Wimp will have a 10 Strength or higher. He may eventually reach a point where he decides to change his name to "Mr Strong" (kudos to the children's book).

So how do you know where you rank on the Strength Scale of 1 to 20?

Well, there are several ways to try and figure that out for yourself. You could use the previous post I made titled "How to Test your Muscle Tone", but that won't give you a detailed result because its only 2 exercises.

What you really need is a comprehensive test for a variety of different exercises and a ranking / points system for each of the exercises. In theory you could ask your personal trainer (if you have one) to come with some kind of system for testing you and then giving you a ranking. Or if you live in Toronto you could hire me as your personal trainer and I could do it for you.

You could try and come up with a system yourself, but it will be tricky to judge since you're not the most unbiased person when it comes to your own fitness. What you really need is an objective judge.

Then once you know where you are you can say where you'd like to be. Go after that goal. Invest the time and every month do the test again to see how close to your goal you are. If you are start off at 9 Strength and your goal is 14 and you're up to 10 after only a month then in theory you only have 4 more months to go before you reach your desired level of fitness.

And there is nothing more motivating than knowing you're making progress and succeeding at your goals.