To succeed with any training program I need to clearly define the goals of my training. If for instance I am training to run a marathon, I can gauge the success of my training approach on whether I am increasing the distance I run while decreasing the average time it takes me to run it. These clear goals allow me to track my progress and assess the efficacy of my training approach, perhaps leading to changes or modifications that allow me to achieve my goals more effectively.

The goals of your average “workout” or what we might refer to as “self guided training” are often much less specific. I might spend time at the gym, go out running or attend a local yoga class to “get my cardio,” “get stronger”, or “get more flexible.” For some of us the goal might even be as basic as “to exercise” or “to stay in shape.”

And while there’s nothing wrong with the desire to simply “stay in shape,” my experience has taught me that this type of self guided training can result in putting our time and effort into training ourselves to perform “better” in ways that we may not intend or in some cases, even want.

What Exactly is Training?

To understand the reasons for this, it helps to understand what I mean by “training.” Training is any activity or series of activities we undertake to learn a particular skill and/or to prepare ourselves to perform in either the activity we are training with, or in some other related activity. If I am training to be a better runner, clearly part of my training program should be to run, but it may also include other activities such as jumping rope or stretching.

Training What We Don’t Want

Training is typically done with intention, but it isn’t always. In fact, many of the habits we’ve manifested that impact our health negatively, such as the habit of internally rotating the hips – a major contributor to the development of hip and knee arthritis, are habits that we’ve inadvertently “trained” ourselves to do.

Let’s say my workout is to go running because I want to do more cardiovascular exercise. If when I run my hips internally rotate, while I may succeed in getting more cardiovascular exercises, but I will also speed the degradation of my knee and hip joints.

With this approach to training, regardless of whether I intend it or not, I am effectively training knee damage, and the more I run the faster I’ll wear out my knees doing it.

Our Mental Habits Can Interfere

One of the biggest challenges of my work is not so much figuring out what movements or postures will help my clients improve their function and health, but just getting them into the habit of doing them. Typically the obstacles to establishing a regular movement program are mental habits, often long-standing ones. These habits, established through years of repetition, are like another form of training.

A while back I started working with a new client who had come to me with a back problem. During a session I introduced some movements and postures to her, and our work seemed to be going fairly well. But afterwards, when we were looking at our respective calendars to schedule a follow up, a red flag appeared – she said she didn’t want to schedule anything in the morning, not because she was physically unavailable, but because she had a daily routine of taking her time, drinking her coffee and cozying up with the newspaper, and she didn’t want to plan anything that interfered with that.

I had never had anyone tell me something like this before, and I suppose I should have been grateful for her candidness. No doubt all of us have routines that we cherish and are loathe to disrupt. And while I completely understood and respected the priorities she’d set for herself, I also understood that the impulses behind them were going to be very much at odds with the training that I was recommending for her. She had trained a routine that would make the training she needed to do to improve her back, all but impossible.

Physical Habits Can Train What We Don’t Want

While mental habits can be a major obstacle to success in training, even when we are motivated to train, our physical habits can be just as big a challenge to its success. Walking, for example, can be one of the best ways to use movement to improve health and function. But whether walking more will really help us depends a great deal on how we walk.

Many of us develop habits in our gait that place significant stress on our bodies. It’s no wonder this happens. Our gait is a complex series of movements that happen so quickly it’s extremely difficult to be aware of our mistakes. Nevertheless, mistakes we make while walking are both highly impactful and very hard to correct because every time we walk we reinforce and re-train them.

Let’s look at another example – squatting. When I work with a client who has knee pain, I always look at their squatting mechanics. Invariably, clients with knee pain overload their knees when they squat. And since squatting is a motion we must do in some form or another multiple times a day, these folks are stressing their knees, not to mention their hips and lower back, repeatedly.

Clients who overload their knees when squatting are unaware that they are doing this. They are also unaware that there is any alternative to how they squat. For these clients, squatting is essentially “training knee pain,” and therefore if they are not trained to squat differently, the squatting habits they have trained will persist until they simply can’t squat anymore.

Training For Health & Function

I’m an advocate for an approach to training that is fundamentally different from most other forms. In my view, training should be done with the goal of health and function, rather than performance. This doesn’t mean you won’t also get stronger, more flexible, more mobile and more skilled at the movements you are training. It just means you won’t be achieving these benefits at the expense of your joints and your health in general.

Training to Be Better at Living

The training I do is essentially training for human movement. It may sound strange that I’m in the business of training people to move like a human being, but it turns out that this is exactly what works best from a health and longevity standpoint. We are all designed to move and in specific ways. When we do this things tend to go well for us health-wise.

So next time you get ready to start your workout, take a little the time to reconsider your exercise habits by asking yourself this question – “What am I training for?”. Then think about whether the time and energy you are putting into your training is really serving your goals.

If you conclude that your current training is in line with your long term goals, then continue with it for as long as that’s the case. But if you discover your training is not moving in the direction you’d like, consider changing your approach until it better aligns with what you’re after.

And if you need help, get in touch!