Thanks for a wonderful and important article and for stimulating a compelling, interesting discussion. Your point about form and safety is key and I enjoyed your solutions and excellent references. I got to visit Nick Ritchie and his lovely wife, Eunju, last month in London. Nick is motivated, pumped, looking strong. Good luck and best wishes in your training. I think that having an inspiring training buddy, like Nick, is a reciprocal blessing, and it can keep you on track, authentic, and accountable.

I agree with Leanrainmakingmachine about the benefits of cardiovascular/aerobic and strength/resistance training. I’d add to that the importance of practicing flexibility training for injury prevention, relaxation, and lifetime range of motion.

There are many physical activities to enjoy and it is possible to fit fitness into your (busy) life. Sometimes it’s helpful to think about what activities you enjoyed as a child, for inspiration. Walking briskly is one of the best lifetime activities and I’m glad that Marty Seligman, by way of Ray Fowler’s inspiration, is on the 10,000 steps a day Love Train.

Shallow or deep water vertical workouts, like water running, offer potential mid-high intensity results with a non-impact expenditure, rehabbing sports injuries and providing balance of major muscle groups. I t’s possible to program an effective and refreshing bout in the pool. Aqua powered physical training lets you considering laws of action-reaction and acceleration, and the principles leverage, viscosity, and buoyancy, to create a program to meet and challenge your fitness needs. I believe in the power of keeping it fresh, fun and challenging. Outdoor active recreational activities, like hiking, can boost positive emotions and appreciation of nature and beauty

I personally enjoy the Social Fitness aspect of exercise. I’m lucky to teach group training. If it’s enjoyable and fun, you’ll keep doing it. Music can help you get moving and keep moving well. Group training has helped me
complete races including the Dublin Marathon, and the Brollopett Half-Marathon from Denmark to Sweden, something more out of my comfort zone. I know that feeling of communitas, moving positively together in unison, sustains and nourishes me.

Gavin’s 2005 research on Exercise and Personality offers clues about how to find activities you’ll enjoy.

Finally, thanks MarieJ for mentioning Peak-End. I agree that it’s important to cool down, breathe and savor positive feelings luxuriating in a job well done. Merci, MarieJ and PPND!

Best to all,
Elaine O’Brien,
PS George Vaillant rocks and I love that he is a great “mover and shaker.”

Charles – glad you now have a few less excuses! Don’t hesitate to share your favorite excuse-busting technique with others!

Nick – I couldn’t agree with you more on the life commitment part. It’s great to read your enthusiasm. Not everyone will want to make it to power lifting nor 5% body fat however (nor should they!), and I’m sure some might even be intimidated just reading about your accomplishments!

I like the alternative of working on ever-better technique: quite mind-engaging, but not as overwhelming. Impeccable technique also greatly diminishes the risk of injuries, so it’s an added benefit. Plus the elegance of it can translate into other life contexts, another bonus. Another alternative would be to discover new disciplines, and add them into the mix, such as yoga or martial arts.

LRM – I was wondering if you’d join the conversation! Glad you’re here! Great addition on circuit training also! Thank you for that contribution.

Best to all,

MarieJ

Wonderful article

3 Additional Points that may help:

1) Make it a life commitment

I had several Chinese professors that practiced Tai Chi for well over 20 years — and it shows. My gym partner’s been training over 25 years — those I want to be like have health as a life commitment — not a specific “10lb weight loss goal then I’m done exercising.” If people get over the short term, and make long-term goals they WILL reach their goals — and it’s a lot less painful.

2) Do something you can always progress on & enjoy.

I hate maintenance… after my first 2 years of weight training I got down to 5% bodyfat. Then what? Maintain and feel miserable due to calorie deprivation but hope the external support will fuel me on? I’m now into powerlifting because I can get stronger for the rest of my life. Someday when I can squat 4x bodyweight — which probably take a good 10 years or more, then I can do strongman competitions, olympic lifting (though better to do young), etc. Some people may be content with maintenance, losing 10lbs, etc… but most don’t want to spend 4 hours a week in the gym to maintain a 10lb fat loss from their set-point for the next 40 years — the benefit / time ratio is just too poor. Do something you can continually improve on and the rest follows — you have to improve technique to improve more, have to keep training to keep improving, and enjoy your gains the whole way.

3) Train for performance => fat loss

If you train to be faster / stronger / better at what you’re doing, it will be easier to lose fat. If I’m doing bicep curls, I’m engaging far fewer muscles than doing snatches — which puts on muscle faster? — snatches! Unless you’re already a professional bodybuilder, complex movements trump “isolation” exercise anyday, and if you improve the big lifts, your work capacity increases. Greater work capacity = greater calorie expenditure… so improve performance first — if you still eat cakes 5x per week, the fat loss may be minimal, but when you decide to clean-up the diet, it will be much easier when your stronger self is fighting for something than a weaker self.

I hope you are publishing this article in more places (like maybe the bulletin board at wherever George Vaillant hangs out when he’s not at the gym). It was so well written and even the “appendix” of your answers to questions in these comments is incredibly thorough and valuable.

I think another excuse people use is that exercise is superficial and only beneficial for improving outward appearances and some people would rather spend their time pursuing more academic/intellectual pursuits. (i.e. exercising their brain rather than their body–perhaps George V. fits into this category since he seems to be quite well developed in this area!) The research presented in “Spark” by Ratey shows the astounding effects of exercise on the brain and this information can be very motivating to a population of bookworms that have previously been unmotivated by the other benefits that exercise has to offer.

Jeff – you bring up very important points and you are very well informed! Ideally we need to do both cardio and muscle mass training (which is, for the record, very different than body building – no need to go to such extremes to get benefits!). Cardio capacity starts declining as early as 2 weeks without stimulation, so it’s important to keep it alive! Muscle mass can be preserved a bit longer without maintenance.

One will start achieving interesting results in as little as 35 minutes, 5 times per week, which I normally recommend to be 2 days of lifting and 3 days of cardio including 5 minute stretching at the end of each session. So you see, there is more cardio than muscle mass building in this beginning program.

Good job on explaining why people lose more weight at the beginning than at the end, BTW. There is also the fact that decreasing from 3000 to 2500 calories per day is usually a bit easier than going from 2500 to 2000, for example. So someone who is eating 1000 calories per day over their needs will usually not cut the full amount right away. It’s usually done in stages, and incremental stages are not all equally easy. But then again it varies from person to person.

Now on the question of healthier, I think we really do need both. Cardio is – by definition – necessary for the heart’s health. Lifting helps build and maintain bone density and, obviously, strength. So when we want to talk about healthier, both are obviously really important. But to take a stab at the question, I would ask healthier for whom? A 55 year-old woman who is a vegan and suffers from oestheoporosis would probably be better served by weight lifting first. It would help preserve her bones and since she’s a vegan, she probably has an OK cholosterol level. On the other hand, a 40 year-old obese man probably needs to get the cardio working first. His bones are probably in better shape than his heart is (unless he has been morbidly obese for a number of years, in which case his joints are probably not strong enough to take much cardio right out of the gates). That being said, I wouldn’t put him on the treadmill for a 30 minute jog right away! Walking would be enough of a cardio stimulation to get him going!

Hope that answers a lot of the questions that our exercise contemplators might have! More to come in future columns!

Warmly,

MarieJ

Personally I think that muscle building is *probably* a better value for effort expended, because it does seemingly increase your daily expenditure of calories. I have reviewed caloric expenditure charts by Brian Sharkey, author of a text called Fitness and Health. They adjust their caloric expenditure charts +/- 10 percent for every 10 pounds over and under 150 pounds, the base rate sample.
Muscle building burns a small to moderate amount of calories while completing the activity, then probably burns some through repair and increasing muscle fiber size. Then you are heavier/denser so your daily movements are more expensive. Does that indicate that a fast run will burn fewer calories than muscle mass workouts? Probably not, but all else equal if you miss a string of muscle workouts, you still have muscle. After 8-12 weeks of detraining with cardio, you are close to square one. You can’t run at the same intensity. Also if you miss cardio workouts, you are not burning anything those days. Plus cardio makes you lighter in bodyweight…burning less than a musclebound runner at the same pace.

Put differently, imagine wearing an 80 pound backpack through your daily life. Would that require more, less, or the same amount of effort to overcome inertia? It takes more fuel to move a semi than a compact car the same distance. Of course there are upper thresholds for how much muscle mass you can add.

This explains why people who are extremely heavy can lose those first pounds fairly quickly with some effort but as they approach their target weights, they have a hard time. Their bodies in fact expend less calories in activities of daily life.

Some say that cardio workouts are healthier than mass building workouts. I doubt that is true. Any activity that moves you from sedentary to active decreases risk factors. So too do workouts that reduce your body composition. If strength training can do both, then it is healthy. Besides, please show me a precise definition of fitness that does not include being able to complete activities of daily living. Strength can only help those activities.

I have absolutely zero training in exercise science. I do read, however, and the above explanation seems to fit my experiences and what I’ve read about exercise science.

As usual, well-written, fun, informative, and insightful. Your columns are great! Keep them coming, and thanks.

Dan B