People at the gym engage in every sort of Smartphone distraction—voice calls, Facebook, their playlist— then tend to bitch about their lack of progress, you know, like people eating everything in sight and then complaining they’re not losing weight. As I make my way around the gym I occasionally glance at what the Screen Zombies are being sidetracked by, and tellingly, it is NEVER a youtube video instructing them how to correctly perform an exercise. And their form, predictably, is always crap.
People not only gab between sets, but they gab during sets. If you’re doing your set properly, with proper form and full intensity, you’ll be fighting a blackout during the set and struggling for breath between sets—you won't be physically capable of gabbing to your phone buddies or gym friends. You’ll be spent and dizzy as you struggle to complete rep number ten, then you’ll need a full minute or more to recover, feeling a bit sick for the duration, before you can tackle the next. That’s what working out productively feels like. Otherwise you’re just going through the motions, phoning it in, not challenging your muscles at all, and wondering, “why don’t I look like an Instagram fitness model? Those people must be taking steroids!”
So now every month it seems we have a trendy new workout being heavily promoted online for all those who made no headway with trusty and proven Old School. We have circus stunts carried out atop inflated balls, joint-grinding CrossFit moves, twenty year old experts coming out of the woodwork eager to share their months of experience. We have bored Millenials chasing the next trend so they can gloat about how ahead of the wave they are and new boutique gym-studios opening in vacant storefronts that cater to the newest craze and charge a hefty fee for the privilege.
Whatever ones’ choice, the old axiom will always hold true: You’ll get out of it only what you put into it.
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