What is The Best Workout For You?
A lot of people are asking, “What is the best workout for me?” In order to answer this question, let’s take a look at what causes us to gain or lose weight. The prime and often the only reason our body weight changes is when our environment changes. Whether it’s internal or external factors such as age, location, lifestyle, or diet — just to mention a few factors that shape our environment — they are meant to affect us somehow. The way we are affected is determined by how we react physically, mentally, and emotionally. We either change our environment, or the environment changes us. Often, the latter prevails, not because we are weak or unequipped, but because we don’t realize when or how it happens.
Let’s take aging, for example. We age slowly, and changes happen inside without our knowledge. By the time the signs surface, and we become aware of them, the effects of aging are already occurring, and our bodies have already started to transform. Whether it’s hormones entering or leaving our bodies, we are simply bystanders trying to make sense of what is happening to us.
One way to stay ahead of these changes is to expect them and pay close attention to how you feel and how you react to what you feel. Your body and even your life are consequences of your environment. Your body will constantly try to adjust and adapt to the environment around. Weight gain or weight loss is just a result of that. Therefore, if you want your body to change, you must change your environment.
How you look and feel right now are products of how you eat, sleep, work, and live your life. The bigger the change you’d like to experience, the more drastic the change in your environment.
With that being said, your workout is, again, a part and creates your environment. It happens often when people take a workout and adapt it to their lifestyle. “I’m more of a Pilates girl,” I heard one of the parents talk about their workout at my daughter’s school. Another one said, “I like to swim; that’s my thing.” Also, “I’m not a morning person; I like to work out after work,” chimed in another gal joining the conversation.
All of these habits and rituals shape your environment and, therefore, your body. If you don’t like how you look and feel, instead of doing more of the same thing, start changing what you are currently doing. Your newly training routines, along with your new food choices, will shape your current environment, but they will have to be bold, powerful, and different than before. Your environment will not change if what you are introducing to your lifestyle doesn’t disturb the already established energy and patterns.
For example, let’s take a cup of water and place it in the fridge. The water will get cold but won’t change its structure. However, if we take the same water cup and place it in the freezer, it will definitely change its structure. It will freeze, becoming hard and solid.
The same goes for our bodies. The body won’t change if the environment doesn’t undergo a dramatic change. Again, our body is just a consequence of our environment.
Going back to our initial question, what is the best workout for me? The answer is the one that will challenge you the most. Probably the one you like the least is the one you need the most.
The best workout for you is the one that contradicts your current environment. If you are a walker and not happy with the way you look and feel, you can run, row, or bike instead.
If you are used to doing short and intense workouts and don’t like the way you look and feel, make them longer and less intense. If you are used to spending hours in the gym and not happy with the results, spend less time and adjust the intensity or structure of your workouts. If you have been doing things on your own and, again, not happy with the results, hire someone. Start changing your environment to see a change in your body.
To recap, the best workout for you is the one that challenges you and makes you uncomfortable. Your number one goal is to be comfortable feeling uncomfortable.
Have a great workout.