Walking is not often suggested in the context of building muscle as an ectomorph. Your leg muscles only grow enough to support your weight, and burning calories seems (and is) counter-productive when you’re struggling to eat enough food.
Then why do I love starting the day with a 40-60 minute walk, mixed in with a short swim?
Because it leaves you feeling great.
And that, I think, is too often overlooked. As you move towards strength you lose sight of what truly matters to you – improving the quality of your life – and get too caught up in the numbers of how much you weight, or how much lean mass you’ve put on.
You don’t need to become a cardio freak. I’m certainly not. But there is value in bending the “rules” of ectomorphic strength training to find fulfilment in your life.
After spending the first hour or so of the day exploring the local area, and admiring the waking world I feel full of energy and excited to move forward with my life. Granted, this doesn’t always constitute strength training (there is more to my life than building muscle after all), but the point is simple and obvious: when you feel great you’ll do great things.
Start the day well, love your life and don’t feel constricted by the expectations and preconceptions of the strength training industry.
You may also want to read The Joy of Walking.
Lifting weights isn’t the enemy. Eating more food isn’t the enemy. Getting enough sleep isn’t the enemy.
Resistance is the enemy.
But what is resistance?
As Steven Pressfield in explains his book, The War of Art (which is mostly related to creative work, but is relevant in all aspects of living), resistance is all the junk that stops you from doing what you want and need to be doing.
He suggests that the hardest part of writing isn’t the writing itself, but the act of sitting down to write. We lack the fundamental desire to put ourselves in situations that may require hard work, even though the reality is always far simpler than the concoctions we form in our mind.
With this idea in the mind, the hardest part of lifting weights isn’t lifting the weights, it’s putting ourselves in a room with weights to lift. Think about that for a second. It may seem unbelievable, but what if it is true?
If it’s resistance that is holding you back (and I can assure you, if you’re not making progress, it is) then all it takes to move forward is to kill the resistance.
Here are 3 quick ways to kill the resistance:
- Set no expectations. Don’t tell yourself “I’m going to do 3 sets of 10 reps.” That’ll psyche yourself out. Instead, ease the pressure and only commit to putting yourself in a room with a set of weights, or maybe just doing a single rep. Give the resistance less to resist.
- Work with reality. Will eating more literally “make you explode”? Or is it truly “impossible” to get eight hours of sleep per night? Be careful of how you use your language and avoid exaggerating circumstances. Understand that your life is a series of choices and not a predefined set of events.
- Clarify importance. What about strength training matters to you so much? I see myself living life in a way that is not within my physical capabilities at the moment. That inspires me. I want to be able to explore the world and experience the best it has to offer. When you understand the importance of a goal with unwavering clarity the resistance fades.
Don’t lose your life to resistance.