Quit Making Excuses…

The most common reason people don’t stay healthy is because they have some kind of lame excuse preventing them from doing so.

Fact is, strength training is one of the BEST things you can do to strengthen yourself physically and mentally, so by making useless excuses as to why you need to skip the gym is doing nothing more then shorting your long-term well-being.

Here are some of the most common excuses I hear daily as to why someone can not do strength training. If you’re using any of these pathetic get-outs, shame on you!

Hopefully, after reading this post, you’ll be able to overcome your weakness and hit the gym with renewed energy.

We’ve ALL used this first one; myself included…

“I have no time”

The most common of ALL excuses – “I have no time”. Chances are, the same people who make this excuse are those who make plenty of time to sit around binge watching NetFlix or playing endless hours of Candy Crush.

The simplest way to combat this is to get off your rear end and use your body. Going to the gym does take up time, but it doesn’t have to take up as much time as you think. When you consider that 4 hours per week strength training only takes up 3% of your week, it hardly looks like much. You can get a seriously good workout in an hour, especially if you focus on full-body workouts comprising the main compound lifts and keep the intensity high. For some people, not being able to make it to the gym is their excuse for skipping a workout, but what about a home workout? Even 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes after work can add up to a solid, effective workout. Sometimes it’s just about compromise.

Start getting up an hour earlier every morning and getting in a session before you start work, you’ll feel, look, and perform better in all aspects of your life. If you don’t make time for training now, you’ll have to make time for illness later.

“The gym is too expensive”
No it isn’t.

You can get a membership at some gyms for $10 a month, so there’s no excuse.
Even the more high-end well known gyms like 24-Hour Fitness, World Gym, or Exygon; even those who don’t like the big commercial gyms that enjoy free weights more then what those high-end commercial gyms have to offer, have plenty of choices in small owned gyms like a CrossFit gym; CrossFit Mid County, CrossFit NorBeau or a crossfitt/functional fitness style non-profit gym like SSAH Fit Lab. They don’t work out that expensive when you consider how much you spend on crap food and booze each month.

I’m not saying don’t ever eat crap food or drink booze – you have to enjoy yourself – but there’s more than likely a hell of a lot of money you can save if you miss one weekend out, or stop eating out for lunch everyday and prepare something in advance.

“I don’t want to get too big”

Probably my favorite of all excuses. People use this excuse to stay away from the weights, thinking they are somehow going to get mad-jacked and tan after only a few sessions on the ‘rope thing with the weights at the end’. You simply will not get “too big”. Come on people, it takes literally years and years of consistent training and diet to get muscular, and even then you still won’t be massive unless you’re taking steroids.

I’ll use myself as an example, I’ve been training on and off for years and have now been consistently training competitively for almost two and half years, and have put in a hell of a lot of work and effort to pack on size, yet I’m still no where near my final form.

“I don’t know what I’m doing”

There’s this thing called the World Wide Web and it includes ALOT of information about various subjects ranging from inter-species bestiality to, well, you guessed it health and fitness. Most of which is completely free, including many great articles on training programs, workout tips and videos. If you do a bit of research yourself and figure out what you enjoy doing, you can even create your own training plan pretty easily that you actually enjoy.

“Strength training is pointless”

I’ve said it thousands of times before and I’ll say it again; strength training is not just about muscle. Improving yourself physically means your brain works better – literally. Your nervous system becomes more active, recruiting more motor units, resulting in a heightened sense of awareness and the ability to concentrate for longer periods of time.
You will be more motivated to do stuff on your own, and you’ll feel better in general on a daily basis. Anyone who has been strength training for a while will know what I mean when I say you get “brain fog” when you stop training for a few days. Strength training lifts the fog from your brain and allows you to perform properly and added strength is ALWAYS useful.

Moves associated with lifting weights such as squat/deadlift strengthen you for life in general. Need to pick up your kids from the floor? Need to build some furniture? Need to kneel down to pick up a dropped pen? Do all of this more confidently, and into old age, by training with weights. Anyone who says being strong isn’t useful is just plain ignorant.

Drop the excuses, stop complaining about your weight and your lack of time to do something about it. There are plenty of fitness trainers and coaches out there that are more then willing to help you on your fitness journey but it ALL STARTS WITH YOU and it requires YOU to be CONSISTENT!