As a person in the fitness industry, I am often asked “what do you think of this exercise?” While my thoughts on various exercises run the gamut, I am more concerned with people’s mindset. A good friend of mine said, “A person doesn’t buy a drill because they want a drill. They buy the drill because they want a hole.” Most likely, you don’t give a shit about a certain exercise, and neither do I, what you are really asking me is, “Will this exercise help me reach my goal?” And your goal may be to lose weight, get stronger, look better or whatever. Chances are one exercise is not going to magically get you to your goal.
So instead of talking about what exercise will get you to your goal, let’s talk about your goal and really look at it. Do you think this new sit up variation is really going to help you look great for swimsuit season? Chances are no. You probably have to look at your nutrition as well as your entire fitness regimen and come up with a plan beyond ‘do more crunches.’
It’s like asking your financial planner ‘what do you think of this stock?’ Chances are your financial planner is shaking their head because you think buying 100 shares of some stock is going to make you rich while at the same time you constantly max out your credit cards and outspend your income and exceed your budget.
You have to look at the goal and the whole system. Life is not linear. There is no single variable that we can change to suddenly become awesome. It’s a lot of little things all added together that makes improvements and gets us to our goals. Sure, one good thing can lead to another but don’t fall into the trap of discarding one thing after another endlessly looking for that magic bullet that will fix it all. Success is an additive process: do one positive thing, then another and another until you succeed. Don’t stop until that happens.