Who's Responsible For Your Health?

Your health is your responsibility. It’s not mine, your neighbor’s or the government's. 

It is 100% yours. 

You are responsible for it. 

Don’t shrug off that responsibility or give it away. 

Own it. 

After all, you’re the one who has to live with it day in and day out. 

The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can start making the changes necessary to ensure that you’re in the best possible shape. 

Before you get to the changes in diet, exercise, and routine, you’ve got to tackle this change of mindset. 

As long as you think your health is someone else’s responsibility you’ll never grow or improve. In short, you’ll be stuck with the same health issues you’ve always had. 

Exercise or Training?

Training has a specific goal or destination in mind. You form and structure your workouts around reaching your goals. Goals are paramount. If something doesn’t get you closer to them, it’s disregarded. It’s all about getting results and you only have time for those things that produce them. 

Exercise is the opposite. 

Training takes the long-term view. It designs each day’s workout around goals. Every set and every rep moves you closer and makes you better. 

Exercise requires less commitment, feels less risky, and requires little of you. Training requires forethought, planning, and accountability to results. 

Discipline takes the long-term view and training is the preferred approach. It is planned, structured and delivers results time and again. 

Exercise or training? 

Why do you workout?

Deep down in your bones, you know that exercise, or working out is important to your long-term health. You've known this since childhood. 

How often do you pause to think beyond the vague promise of a healthier life? How often do you consider a deeper reason for our sweat and tears? 

Working out is hard. It’s uncomfortable. It often hurts. And it pushes you to the breaking point on a regular basis. All that pain and all that suffering have to be about more than the promise of avoiding sickness. There’s no guarantee your time in the gym will help you avoid a cold or prevent real systemic disease from darkening your door. That promise can’t be made. 

So why put yourself through all that difficulty and pain, if there isn’t a guarantee? 

Because working out is about far more than empty promises and disease prevention. It’s about preparation. Preparation for future challenges of both a physical and mental nature. 

Running and lifting get your body ready for the next physical task. Be it a competition or a fight. It disciplines your body by exposing it to a milder form of pain today to prepare it for far greater pain at some later date. 

Showing up every day builds the discipline and mental toughness you need to conquer challenges that take place in a different arena as well. If you’ve been getting under the bar and placing yourself in uncomfortable situations for months and months, you’ll be less uncomfortable and stressed by life’s trials. You’ll have the mental resolve to power through and finish no matter how hard things get.

Workouts become training sessions in this new light. Each workout takes on a new meaning and purpose and either moves you closer to your goal or farther from it. 

Make each time you walk in the gym the training ground for life’s next great adventure. Look at all that sweat, time and pain as your best friend. Because that’s exactly what discipline is.