‘Working Out’ Vs ‘Training’

It has been much publicised that exercise is good for your health. The motivation to initially start the gym may be driven by the aim to stay healthy, it may be driven be an upcoming holiday or it might be driven by your desire to look better? Either way you need to understand your goals and then you can look how to achieve them.

If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to plan a route to get there. There are many different types of exercise you can do achieve your goals and you can incorporate running, callisthenics, strength training, boxing, yoga, bootcamps, interval training and Olympic lifting. You need to ensure you chose the training and the programme to fit the goal.

• If your goal is to pack on muscle mass then running, yoga and bootcamps would not be the primary choice of training.
• If your goal is to run a marathon then strength training would not be your primary choice of exercise.

The difference between ‘Training’ and Working Out is that people ‘Train’ with a desired goal. They know if they either want to get stronger, leaner or fitter. People who exercise with the intention of sweating,  are ‘Working Out’ not ‘Training’.

Before you transition from someone who ‘Works Out’ to someone who ‘Trains’ you need to apply the following

1. Assess where you are? If you want to lose body fat, you first need to see how much body fat you currently have. If you want to get stronger, you need to assess how strong you currently are. This needs to be measured and quantifiable.
2. What is your target? You need to know where you are going. You can’t assess where you are going and set a reasonable target until you understand where you are currently.
3. What is your plan? What are you going to achieve your goals?
4. What are your short term goals? Very often training is a long term thing. You may want to Deadlift 200kg and currently only one rep max 145kg – this is a long term plan and it may be worth setting a short term goal such as a 160kg deadlift within 10 weeks.