I have to thank Heath Eslinger for the inspiration*. He applies the Pareto Principle to youth sports. This got me thinking about the principle of “opportunity costs” and exercise (or any dimension of growth). We have plenty of excuses not to do the things we need to do, but have no problem wasting our time on the unnecessary. I believe we need to start applying Pareto’s 80-20 rule across our lives.
Many of us find the time to exercise, but we get caught up in the fitness marketing and end up spending too much time doing things that bring us no closer to our goals. We spend too much time foam rolling or stretching and not enough time lifting heavy. We do hours of “cardio” that barely breaks a sweat and spend our workouts doing “functional training” (i.e., exercises that are best prescribed in physical therapy or prehabilitation and don’t begin to stimulate appreciable muscle hypertrophy). These are accessory exercises at best. While they may have some benefit in preparing one for the training stimulus (e.g., in the warm-up), they are of minimal benefit in stimulating a muscle growth.
Many also spend a significant amount of exercise time doing those exercises which have a certain “cool factor”—you know, the stuff you post on Instagram. Again, these may have a purpose, but often they have no correspondence to one’s actual fitness goals.
With limited exercise opportunity. Choose wisely. Apply the 80-20 rule. Spend 80% of your workout doing productive exercise that is goal-specific. This still leaves 20% for your social media. Keep to the basics (e.g., lift the ‘basic 5’—squat, deadlift, bench, row, and overhead press). Do prehabilitation where it is most necessary. Do exercises that are functionally-specific—i.e., exercises that have a degree of transferability to your sport and/or lifestyle. Scrutinize your exercise activities and cut the bull**** that does little to achieve your goals.
If you are spending 80% of your exercise sessions on “abs” and doing body-weight squats on a BOSU ball, you might have your priorities skewed. If, after you have ripped out 5 working sets of 5 moderately heavy squats and singles for the deadlift, you want to do a couple sets of crunches or arm curls (i.e., “curls for the girls”), by all means do so, but do the productive work first.
If you are exercising without specific quantifiable goals, you are probably—sad to say—wasting your time (to some degree). If you have specific goals, but you are exercising for general fitness, you are probably not making significant improvements in your personal physical fitness. Results take effort, and effort comes at a cost. How do you want to spend this opportunity??
Be your best today; be better tomorrow.
Carpe momento!
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN4EpkIpVso&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR14_3dFXDZu_7YDs3TKqG7iutgPIuoVrKNv-HB3fFOKjwH1oTKL81Okbws