The Gym is NOT Boring!

Sometimes I feel like a priest, not because I have a special relationship to a higher power, but because I’m so often a sounding board for confessions. Hardly a week goes by when someone doesn’t admit to me how they haven’t gotten to the gym as often as they’d like, but plan to start up again soon. The range of excuses as to why they’ve missed workouts is broad—from job hours to family life commitments to various benign aches and pains. 

From those who aren’t quite so afraid of being judged thought I often get the truth: that they find the gym boring. “I can go out for a run, and I love playing (insert favorite sport here), but I get so bored just lifting weights!” Of course hearing this makes me throw up in my mouth, just a little, but I try to be constructive in my response by offering the following:

Consider the gym a fitness playground. The gym shouldn’t be a place where you robotically go through repetitive motions as a trainer counts reps as he texts or Tweets, or whatever the hell else he’s doing when he should be motivating you. (In fact, I say ditch the trainer altogether, but that’s a topic for another post.)

Truthfully, there is no place where you can get more creative about reaching your fitness goals than a gym. Think about the variety of equipment at even a meager one, and then consider the number of ways in which you can structure a workout, and add to that the multitude of intensity techniques you can use to change up each and every workout, and each and every set within those workouts, and, well, it’s damn near impossible to get bored in a gym as far as I’m concerned!

I'm in pretty decent shape here. From a Per Bernal shoot in early 2014.

Not following my drift? How about a simple comparison of what most people think a triceps workout looks like versus what’s possible in a triceps workout if you treat the gym like a playground?

The average gym goer might train his/her triceps like this:

AVERAGE, BORING TRICEPS WORKOUT

• 3 sets of 10 reps of cable pushdowns—2 minutes of rest between sets

• 5 minutes of rest between exercises

• 3 sets of 10 reps of machine extensions—2 minutes of rest between sets

• 5 minutes of rest between exercises

• 3 sets of 10 reps of machine dips—2 minutes of rest between sets

Total Time: Approximately 26 minutes

Intensity Level: 1

I can see how this kind of routine can be considered boring by most. Maybe not by me, but by most. Compare that workout though to the kind I’d do instead:

SHAWN’S AWESOMELY INTENSE TRICEPS WORKOUT

•  3 sets of cable pushdowns—20, 18, 16 reps

• Between each set perform 10 knuckle pushups (no rest)

• 3 sets of machine extensions—18, 16, 14 reps

• Between each set perform a light set of 15 reps of machine preacher curls

• Giant drop set of machine dips—6, 6, 6, 6 reps

• Follow immediately with a light 20-rep set of cable curls, then stretch triceps for one minute

Total Time: Approximately 12 minutes

Intensity Level: Off the charts!

By keeping active through the entire workout, mixing things up with supersets, antagonist body part supersets, and drop sets, you keep the intensity high and the interest level high as well. There’s just no way a person can get bored doing a workout like this, even if he or she was to do it for weeks at a time, which I don’t. In fact, every one of my workouts varies from the last. I’m not a big believer in carefully structured progression in my workouts, at least not at the point I’m at now. I just believe in working toward maximizing intensity while listening to and respecting your body. If you keep the intensity uniformly high your body is sure to improve through its own progressive adaptation. If it keeps getting stronger to handle the regular stress you place upon it and you keep pushing towards its threshold, then undoubtedly you will keep gaining in some capacity, until your body has reached its natural limit.

Long story short: If you’re getting bored in the gym then you’re doing something wrong.