Training or Working Out?

Someone cried out during a session at the gym, “doesn’t this ever get easier?”

Their sentiment was, just when they figure something out, they get a new program, with new exercise variations, new rep ranges, new lingo to decode and a whole new routine to get into the rhythm of. Just when everything settles in and gets comfortable, you start over.

My reply was, “that’s the difference between training and working out.”

When I was in high school, my first strength coach didn’t allow us to say we were working out. We were training. He was very serious about it. He told us that athletes train, and working out is what most other people do when they go to the gym, going through the motions. Riding the elliptical while watching the news was one of his favorite examples.

We were training because we had a specific intent. We wanted to get better at our sports. We wanted to become better athletes.

These days I frequently use ‘work out’ to describe a training session, although the delineation between the two has stuck with me, and it might be helpful for you to think the same.

The way that client was feeling is a common, especially when people are coming up on 6 months or a year of training at GAIN. They get hit with a hard workout on a new program and have this thought, “wait, isn’t this supposed to get easier the longer I do it?”

That’s the big trick. It never gets easier. Since we’re training, we continually push you, challenge you and reach beyond your current limits. We’re training to improve and in order to do that, we need to challenge and stress the body. If it were to get easier, it would just mean you got better at doing the same exact thing, not more difficult things.

This can be frustrating, because it can feel like you’re spinning your wheels in the mud. Once you realize that never goes away, the smoother this journey is.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain