Train Like You Mean It

Shawn Perine
Mon, 21 Jul 2014 21:00:00 -0700
Lifestyle

Earlier today I was at the gym, doing my usual thing: pushing and pulling, heaving and hoisting, earbuds firmly implanted, gaze fixed dead ahead. In short, working hard and expediently and with a good deal of quiet joy for the feeling that such work elicits. Just then I catch someone standing in my periphery, apparently waiting for me to finish my set. It's another gym regular with whom I've spoken on a few occasions. Between the earbuds and the look of intensity I know I project when I'm in the midst of a workout, I'm always a bit surprised when this kind of thing happens. There are plenty of people looking for a conversation in the gym. I'm clearly not one.

Regardless, when I finish my set I drop my dumbbells and pull out my earbuds. The guy takes it as his cue.

"Hey, man, how's it going?"
Updated: Tue Jul 22, 2014

Earlier today I was at the gym, doing my usual thing: pushing and pulling, heaving and hoisting, earbuds firmly implanted, gaze fixed dead ahead. In short, working hard and expediently and with a good deal of quiet joy for the feeling that such work elicits. Just then I catch someone standing in my periphery, apparently waiting for me to finish my set. It's another gym regular with whom I've spoken on a few occasions. Between the earbuds and the look of intensity I know I project when I'm in the midst of a workout, I'm always a bit surprised when this kind of thing happens. There are plenty of people looking for a conversation in the gym. I'm clearly not one.

Regardless, when I finish my set I drop my dumbbells and pull out my earbuds. The guy takes it as his cue.

"Hey, man, how's it going?"

"Good," I reply.

"Yeah? Everything's going good?" He counters. "You doing well?"

"I am. What's up?"

"You're looking good, dude. How do you stay so ripped, man? What's your secret?"

"My secret," I respond, "is that I don't talk during my workouts."

It was definitely a snarky response — I plead guilty to that. But I've seen this guy regularly at the gym for over a year, and believe me when I tell you that he spends more time talking than training. Far more. In fact, I've caught him roaming the gym, looking for ears to bend. When he finds one, he starts training on whatever piece of equipment is nearby, and then begins working his jaw with twice the vigor he works his muscles.

A couple of weeks back in this column I discussed the importance of sticking with a clean diet, and how so many think they're eating clean, but when pressed admit that they're not eating nearly as clean as they think they are. Same goes for training. The distracting guy in the gym probably thinks he's putting in good effort. He's at the gym pretty much every day for over an hour, that's for sure. And he does hit a few sets of this and a few of that while he's there. But not surprisingly, he isn't in great shape, and yet he wants to be.

After he left me to chat with someone else, I glanced around the gym to see that most of the people there were either engaged in conversation, texting or simply resting between sets. Maybe 30 percent were actually lifting at that moment, and of that 30 percent, a fraction were training with any focus or intensity.

I don't want to characterize anyone reading this, but the truth is that many people think that they're working hard in the gym when they're not. And then they lament their lack of results and think that maybe their routine is wrong or that they need to try a different form of training. No. That's not it. What they need to do is train like they mean it.

You have one hour or 45 minutes or however long you're in the gym for each day, to get the job done. You need to make every minute count if you expect to see the kind of results that will keep you coming back for more. It's funny to me how some guys can get intensely focused on a game on TV, shutting out the world for a few hours each Sunday, yet they can't go more than a set in the gym without checking their phones, chatting or watching the boob tube.

It's an old cliche, but a good one: You get out what you put in. The vast majority of people I see at the gym only put in a fraction of their best effort, and in turn only see a fraction of the results they could be seeing if they put as much mental energy into the gym as they did into watching their favorite team or TV show. I'm not saying that you have to approach your workouts with the same zeal, but the next time you find yourself dissatisfied with the results of your training, ask yourself: Do I train like I mean it?