Kevin explains the key differences between the various approaches to fitness and why a well-rounded routine can help prevent injury while maintaining both physical and mental well-being.
Kevin explains the key differences between the various approaches to fitness and why a well-rounded routine can help prevent injury while maintaining both physical and mental well-being.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Welcome back to Get Fit Guy, Kevin Don here. Firstly, I want to take a moment to thank everyone that emailed me after last week’s episode. I have replied briefly to some, to express my gratitude. To everyone that emailed me, I want you to know I got your email and I read it. I really can't tell you enough how much it means to me that you took the time to sit down and write well wishes to a voice on the other end of a podcast. But, more than that, yes, I am a human. One that has ups and downs, like everyone else. I’m not a robot. I also never considered the number of emails I would have from listeners also having a hard time and appreciating they are not alone or from those that just realised that even people that appear to have all their ducks in a row, may also have big problems. It can help to know that we aren’t alone and also to know that we can’t ever know ‘other minds’ and it’s good to try and be kind because we don’t know the pain someone may be in behind their public facing mask.
As far as the podcast goes, perhaps it has also made me rethink my style too, in the sense that maybe it’s useful for both listeners and me to talk more openly. Useful for listeners to connect to a real person and useful for me because it’s cathartic. So, let’s see what happens. Maybe my personality and a weekly update on life might help humanise me and also help people feel more connected.
On that front, this week I did successfully move to the University of Edinburgh. I’m studying Philosophy as you know. Something that took me by surprise though, that I hadn’t considered was: ageism. It hadn’t occurred to me that this would be something I would experience. So far, I have been challenged 3 times by security in my student accommodation about who I am and to provide my student identification. Whilst I am happy that they are attentive to strangers, I can’t say that being stopped because I look too old to be a student makes me feel great! A 19 year old girl in the welcome talk asked me what made me go to university at ‘my age’. The answer to that really is complex. Firstly, I was actually kicked out of home by my father at 16 and was unable to graduate High School or go to College. I had to work to survive. I’ve cleaned cars by hand, I’ve sold items door to door and eventually, was able to use my martial arts skills to coach and embarked on a self education journey in strength and conditioning, where I trained with many Olympians and World Champions in their sports. But I always had a burning desire to use my intellect and to be able to overcome what I saw as an injustice that I never got to finish school due to family complexities. Aside from that, fitness often lacks the sense of achievement one might attain in a more traditional career. You can’t work hard and become the vice president of cardio one day. So, here we are. Kevin is at university.
But enough of that, let's get to what I want to chat about this week. That is the difference between sport, working out and training. I was inspired to discuss this when I went to the ‘sports fair’ at University of Edinburgh Welcome Week. 71 sports. I’ve signed up to judo but I have also taken the opportunity to try some new sports, which I will narrow down to one new sport to play over the next few years. Polo, Yachting and Fencing. I’m excited to try polo and hopeful I don't fall off a horse and break something on day one. I’m confident I can play these sports because I have a broad base of physical skills. Which brings me to the first thing I noticed. There were 71 sports but no preparatory systems. There wasn't a ‘training’ club or a ‘strength’ club or ‘broad base of cardio’ club. So, without a broad base, it seems a bit crazy to dive into sports one has never played. Of course, we have the enjoyment metric, but if you’ve never done heavy squats and sprints and weigh 100lbs, how are you really going to express any physicality at the rugby club? If you can't hold isometric abdominal contractions, have weak wrists and forearms, how will you do at the gymnastics club?
This to me is the first difference. Training is where you prepare yourself to be able to execute a performance. In terms of sport that is a scenario where you ignore signals from your body in order to achieve a ‘win’ over another player. You can’t possibly expect to make a successful performance without ever training for said performance. But further to this, we should recognise that sports make us move our bodies in ways that are preferred by that sport. Boxers, for example, because of the guard to protect their faces, tend to have a very internally rotated shoulder and a rounded upper back. Over time, this could maybe lead to issues in the biceps tendon on the front of the shoulder. Boxers may want to think about single arm face pulls and bent over dumbbell row to build rear shoulder strength and to balance their physiques to hedge against injury. Same with martial arts, karate, taekwondo and others that are kick focussed use a lot of quadriceps to extend the leg. So, working the hamstring, whilst not perhaps directly helping the sport, could hedge against injury by being imbalanced front to back.
So, for those of us that want to get fit, be healthy, is a sport as advisable as training? Because there are lots of sports clubs out there. The answer for me is that sports clubs have added benefits that training alone at the gym might not have. Social networking, camaraderie and so on have great benefits for mental health and self esteem. But we should be careful to make sure that we don’t give up training for sport. As noted, it could be that sport will develop a specific physique or movement pattern which may result in imbalance or worse: injury. So I think the best way to approach this is to make sure we have both. We can do our sports for the healthy competition, for the friendship building and sense of belonging, but we should also make time to train for the sport and to hedge against injuries caused by a lack of movement in all the other patterns we can make. For example, a sprinter only moves forwards. To be healthy, maybe we can consider moving backwards, sideways and maybe even inverting ourselves!
And what about working out? Isn’t training and working out the same thing? I would argue that working out is very different. Working out is something you just do for how it makes you feel in that moment. Had a whole pizza last night? Maybe you woke up and got on the treadmill today. But you wont get on the treadmill again in 2 days and try to increase the distance or decrease the time taken. So, you aren’t training. For it to be training, there would need to be a goal and intention. It might not be a long term goal or a very lofty intention, but it would have to have direction. Feeling bloated and going for a spin class isn’t intentional as part of a plan. It's spontaneous and responsive.
So, for me that's the difference. Sport is a performance, training is preparation for injury free sport or a goal in life and working out is something you just do and has no specific plan.
If you have any questions or would like to just say ‘hi’, please email me on getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, the director of podcasts Brannan Goetchius and Davina Tomlin. I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the shownotes in your podcast app