What are your metrics?

We've established that you're not at the gym to simply be active (See here.). So, to safeguard ourselves from this apparently perpetual state of non-accomplishment we need a variety of "metrics" to guarantee that we are moving forward. First, there is the obvious and standard measurements often taken at the beginning of a training program (waist, hip and the other circumference measurements), body composition and simple strength measurements. So that secures a chance to check in on the worthiness of your efforts every couple of months or, at best, few weeks.

So, what's your standard ADD-"I want it all, I want it now"-American to use? Your first and simplest option is a notebook. It needn't be anything fancy but somewhere to record your workouts so that you can initiate and observe your progress will be vital to knowing that you're accomplishing your goals, step-by-step.

Your next option, and my personal favorite, is a stop watch. As an aside, if there is one tool that could single-handedly cut down your time at the gym, the stopwatch is it. Very few people workout for 45 minutes to an hour but a lot of people spend 45 minutes to an hour (or even more) at the gym. Get a stopwatch and start timing your workout. Push start as you begin warming-up, monitor your rest periods between sets and make a record of the time when you push stop. Also experiment with doing timed sets versus counting repetitions.

Watching your rest periods will not only cut down on total gym time but also bring a new element to improving your fitness level.

Of the many metrics we could cover here the third of my big 3 is the most costly but equally as beneficial; heart rate monitors. Your time spent trudging through "cardio" and pushing yourself with metabolic conditioning circuits will likely be revitalized by manipulating rest periods based on your actual heart rate response rather than simply time.

I'm okay with "my pants are fitting better" (from women, at least, guys don't have clue how their pants fit...) and periodically testing your body composition or weight but doesn't the idea of knowing each that you've gotten better sound much more appealing?

Engage in your training, take the time, and get what you want.

Healthfulness vs. Fitness vs. Performance

Relative to the fitness industry and the goals people bring to it, I break the state of the body into three categories;

healthfulness

fitness

performance

Most people have goals of improving their health (weighing less, improve their blood sugar or blood pressure, "core strength," etc) and many appreciate the need to achieve beyond this minimum and have fitness goals (5k time, improved overhead press strength, the ability to meet a greater variety and intensity of daily life functions, etc.). The third category receives disappointingly little attention from the sweating, huffing masses. I think of it as a culmination of of the climb up the ladder from a sedentary lifestyle and/or obesity or from wherever you started.  The bodies ability to simply perform, in any given circumstance, can and should be the ultimate crowning achievement for everyone.  It isn't just finding yourself to merely be healthy, but knowing that your physiology (anatomy, etc.) can literally perform at a high level.  It isn't having a decent ability to stabilize your spine but just being rock solid and injury free.

And let me emphasize this need not be running, riding or rowing in races or pushing, pulling or throwing heavy objects (or even people!), maybe this is simply appreciating the ability to take on any task (likely physical or otherwise) that might come your way in a given day. Pickle jars, heavy boxes, running away from... whatever might need running away from. Whatever the daily challenge may be, and it may simply be a challenge workout on your trainer's whiteboard at the gym... wouldn't it be nice to know that you're up for it, without even knowing what it might be?

"No citizen has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training... what a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable." - Socrates

And part of this, as with the lower states on the scale, is knowing that part of the bodies ability to perform is being structurally sound and stabile enough to avoid the nagging and nattering injuries that plague so many in their day-to-day lives.

The pursuit of these states of the body is not linear and they are, as stated, not mutually exclusive but there is a hierarchy. And if you read Activity vs. Accomplishment you can probably guess my thoughts on climbing this hierarchy.

"Being healthy" is not enough and the state of the body is not static. Get healthy, get fit and then, perform.

Activity vs. Accomplishment

Probably the biggest concern I have regarding the health and fitness level of the gym-going populace and the standard of practice in the fitness industry is the tendency to mistake activity for accomplishment. Doing something is great... for day one. Or, I might argue, for the first 15 minutes. Past that, let's roll. Don't just do something, do something better than before, be better than before! Walk out of the gym better than when you went in, not just tired or sweaty or sore. The purpose of a gym membership, a fitness "program," working with or even being a personal training is not to simply "be active" That is part of the equation, to be sure, but the purpose is to accomplish, achieve, improve...

At nearly any given gym at any given moment there are piles of people under the impression they are accomplishing what they set out to accomplish and that if they just keep putting in the time they will achieve their fitness goals. The most perfect example I can think of is a gal I've been interacting with recently at the big box club where I train clients. She religiously shows up and "does her miles." She carries around papers to write down the miles she covered on the treadmill and in what time. And she shoots for the miles and time she did previously. It's her "routine." She gets her daily activity and most would hold high praise for a gal in her sixties maintaining a regiment like that. And that wouldn't be unreasonable. But I wouldn't, not high praise anyway, and I've told her that. Because it is the very "routine" of activity that is holding her from any significant accomplishment. Somewhere along the line she was given the impression that she needed to "be active" and "get into a routine." And whomever told her that, sold her short, like so many others.

Even the smallest (or gigantic and glaringly obvious, as it were...) suggestions are scoffed aside because "if I don't hold on to the handles, I can't keep up with the machine." This means she wouldn't be able to walk her usual speed and probably not her usual distance... and the whole thing... the routine... out the window.

And this is not her fault. Not entirely. It is the normal state of affairs at gyms everywhere. You very likely have this same tendency. Doing workouts because they are routine and comfortable and familiar... and, dare I say, ineffective? And it isn't entirely your fault either. You, too, have likely been given the incomplete impression that activity is good.  Just move around.

This low standard of merely "doing something" rather than accomplishing something is a tone set by the gym ownership, management and fitness staff. It is my responsibility as your trainer or even as "the trainer" to bring you to question;

...are you mistaking activity for accomplishment?

Are you getting what you came here for? Can you prove it?

Proof is the difference between "activity" at the gym and "accomplishment" at the gym.

A few laps around the track some "arm exercises" and some time on the elliptical is activity - doing more squats in X amount of time than last time or reading a lower body fat percentage than 3 months ago is accomplishment. You have the proof right there and you very likely did it by breaking the routine, stepping outside your comfort zone, if not... its just another activity.