Unmotivation

  

We all hit these points, these ruts. Lack of motivation has many causes. Some are easy to identify, like work or personal stress, being over tired mentally, emotionally, physically, or all of the above. Some reasons are less obvious. Perhaps you’ve been working out for a fairly long period of time, been consistent with your workouts, but no real progress has occurred as far as your fitness goals are concerned. Perhaps you aren’t getting the support at home from family and/or friends, who keep undermining your determination. Perhaps your just bored, or situations in your life cause you to question the point of it all.

The reasons can be as shallow or deep as anything else in life, but it tends to leave you in the same situation: you’re unmotivated. The irony is that when in this state of mind the easiest cure, at least symptomatically, is to exercise: getting all that oxygenated blood pumping furiously through your body can clear your thoughts, improve your mood, and change your perspective of whatever shit you’re dealing with, no matter how deep your shit is.

Just getting your butt in the gym can fix a lot of things, but I know as well as anyone how tough it can be. I know as well as anyone that sometimes the thought: why bother; can be overwhelming. The longest I’ve ever gone without working out at all, as an adult, was 12 months. There have also been long periods of time where my workouts were decidedly underwhelming efforts, barely holding onto my level of fitness, and even allowing my overall fitness to drop dramatically, but getting into the gym at all can make a huge difference to your outlook.

I know the struggle. If this struggle is something you are going through, or have gone through, remember this: everyone goes through it. If you know someone who hasn’t ever hit this kind of rut, they will. Everyone goes through it eventually. More than once. Remember it’s normal. Remember to try to get in the gym anyway. All things pass.

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1 Minute Workouts…uh…no.

repeat after me: there is no such thing as magic…no such thing as magic…no such thing as magic…no such thing a magic.

Before you work out for 1 intense minute, the study had the participants warm up for 12 minutes at 60% intensity, and then cool down for 12 minutes until they dropped back to 60% intensity. Compared to the standard model of warming up for 5 minutes getting to 60%, hovering between 70-75% for 20 minutes, then cooling down for 5 minutes. Do the math. The workouts are actually statistically almost identical, and the proof is the fact they they achieved identical results in all the participants, who were all young males that were very out of shape to begin with. All 30 of them. 

Yeah, those are results we can extrapolate out to 300,000,000 Amercians. Sure they are. Please don’t be stupid. Remember, the NYT can’t help it. If they don’t publish something to get your attention, they will go out of business. So they’ll publish pretty much anything, same for medical journals and science journals, and television stations. But that’s not how science works. You want an amusing and disturbing explanation for what’s going on with the media and scientific journalism? Click the following link. It’s an entertaining and frustratingly accurate 20 minute segment well worth your time.

John Oliver explains scientific studies and the media.