I’ve been going to the gym now for around 9 months and recently have started to wonder what the point of it is? I joined a crossfit gym a few weeks ago to spice it up also.
The classes I go to are making me run down to the point where outside of the gym I’ve become very lazy and I’ve come to the conclusion I was only going to the gym so I could look a bit better in pure vanity stakes.
I’m only 29 so just wondering for those a bit older, what is the point? Should I be thinking of it in a different way? My goals are to enjoy it and be able to play with kids and grandkids and explore via hiking, cycling, etc when I’m older. Squatting 5kg more than I did last week or having slightly bigger arm muscles seems pointless in the big scheme of things.
These are some excellent questions. I’m 27 years older than you and happen to like the same things you mention: cycling and hiking. You also have a long term outlook and you are asking this on a website dedicated to lifestyle change.
I think you should probably start thinking of it in a different way.
Let’s first break it up into health and fitness, these are related but absolutely not the same.
When it comes to health, you really want to eliminate the long term effects of a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet. There are three major issues to address:
1: Poor diet - there is nothing what can do more for your long term health than to learn to cook. It is the best way to learn about real foods and gain control of your diet. There are numerous threads about that on this very site. With this out of the way let’s move on to number
2: Non-exercise physical activity - the best way to escape the consequences of sedentariness is not to be sedentary. One can try to mitigate the effects of sedentariness by engaging in compensatory behavior by exercising 150 minutes a week, but that doesn’t even come close to the time non-sedentary people move on a regular basis, which is more like 120+ minutes PER DAY. Doing this in a gym or even as scheduled activity is simply ridiculous as a long term plan.
One has to approach this as the lifestyle change it is: commuting by foot or bicycle, walk whenever possible, chosing the place you live with these activities in mind. If you break a sweat a few times a week, there is not much to gain from further aerobic activity in terms of health. This site is full of resources and people who embrace an active lifestyle. If one likes a more tangible or measurable goal, the ten thousand steps a day approach is one option.
3. Weight lifting/resistance training: muscle loss with aging is something almost everyone, who does not perform hard physical work, faces. When this is not addressed, one may end up with sarcopenia (inappropriately low muscle mass, officially recognized as a disorder only a couple of years ago). Sarcopenia causes serious quality of life and health issues.
That said, effective weight lifting/resistance training are unfortunately not as simple as getting on a treadmill or elliptical trainer. On the other hand, once one has learned the proper way to do it and identified what works for oneself, it takes very little time and the improvement in quality of life is almost immediate. It is also incredibly inexpensive, provided one uses free weights or kettlebells etc.
I believe everybody should receive some form of instruction by a trainer or truly knowledgeable individual. I also think that everybody should attempt to build muscle for at least a couple of years at some time in their life, the earlier the better because after age 30 it may become a little harder to gain muscle with every year going by. The reason for serious weight training for some time is the memory the muscles retain after a period of induced hypertrophy - it is so much easier to become strong again if one has been strong before.
Now to fitness:
The above captures really most of the health benefits of an active and healthy lifestyle because that’s what it is. If one has additional goals and an athlete’s attitude, one can easily add exercise to one’s life. But, with the basics squared away, it’s not going to be no load elliptical trainer workouts or walking on a treadmill, but higher intensity stuff. With an active lifestyle, recovery from higher intensity training is better and basic conditioning is already taken care of.
Let’s just take cycling as an example, because I know a little bit about that.
I like mountain biking. The trouble with mountain biking is that it is not much fun if one doesn’t have a decent level of cardiorespiratory conditioning; and mountain biking itself is not ideal to train that. I found out, by accident, that road biking is ideal to build athletic depth, which in turn makes mountain biking much more enjoyable.
I was living in NYC at the time and getting to trails was a two or three times a month opportunity. Then I found out about the NY Cycle Club, but the group I wanted to ride with, fast paced pack rides, was out of my league. So I got a home trainer and a heart rate monitor and, after roughly figuring out what my heart rate was at the anaerobic threshold, I started doing two 45 minutes sessions per week riding at the anaerobic threshold. It is hard exercise but not as psychologically hard as interval training. To my surprise, I was able to join the group within a few weeks of doing that.
What I’m trying to say is that it is relatively easy to achieve a relatively high level of conditioning when one starts with an active lifestyle in place. Conversely, it would be absurd to suggest to a sedentary person to work towards participating in fast club rides if all that person is doing is 150 minutes a week of light exercise on a treadmill.
In conclusion: Yes, there may be no point in going to the gym and doing crossfit training on top of that if that’s not what you want to do. On the other hand, adopting an active lifestyle with some weight training may be all what one needs to do and any athletic pursuit can be easily added on if one is so inclined.