Fitness has many forms and they all have different requirements.

Bodybuilding

Powerlifting

Muscular Endurance

Aerobic Endurance

Yoga

Bootcamp style workouts

Metabolic Training

Step Classes

Pure Barre

Plyometrics

The list goes on and on.

But, who is awesome at every single one?

No one.

You can be decent at all of them, but you will never be a superstar at everything.

Your butt cannot ride that many horses at once.

Coming to grips with this is difficult for many people. They can be in great shape in one facet of fitness and try out another and feel like they have never worked out.

This can be very frustrating for many of you and I have seen it a multitude of times of the years.

Let’s say you are a 120 female and have been strength training intensely for the last year in the 5–10 rep range. By all accounts you are pretty strong. You can bang out pullups, pushups, and lift a good amount of weight on your deadlifts, squats, and other compound lifts.

Then one day your friend drags you to a pure barre class.

One of the things they do is hold different positions isometrically for extended periods of time.

They burn. They hurt. They make you feel weak.

But you aren’t weak, you’re just not good at doing THAT specific thing because that’s not the way you train.

Flip the script.

A pure barre disciple comes to the gym to strength train and can’t do a good pullup to save her life.

She feels weak, but she isn’t. She is weak in that modality of fitness.

Of course, this comparison goes very well with strength versus aerobic athletes as well.

Put Mr. Jacked Body Builder in a marathon and he will be crawling across the finish line as the sun goes down. On the other hand, put Mr. Marathoner in the gym and he will crumple up like piece of paper under a remotely heavy deadlift.

Neither are weak, they are just strong in their respective focuses.

My point is two fold:

1. Choose one primary area of focus with your fitness. This should be the modality in which you want to be the best at. From there, it is okay to have one or two other things that you work on, but don’t let too many things pull you away from improving upon your number one.

Example: Your primary focus could be strength training, yet you can still improve on your aerobic conditioning and yoga.

2. Most of us have a finite amount of time to spend on fitness per week. Educate yourself on what is most important to be spending your time on.

Example: Let’s say you are in your mid 50s and have 3 hours a week to dedicate to working out. You want to keep strength as you get older, have no problem lifting things, avoid joint pain, keep bone density, as well as stay mobile with good range of motion. You should probably focus on strength training and yoga. Spending your 3 hours per week running is not going to accomplish your goals.

Remember, you will always be the best at what you work on. There is some overlap between modalities, but there is no complete crossover.

Even in the same modality you will find lack of crossover.

If you train really hard all the time to cycle for 4 hours, you will not be fast at doing a 30-minute sprint race.

On the same note, if you always strength train in sets of 20, you won’t be strong in the 3–5 rep range.

You should have fun in fitness, but also make sure you aren’t wasting your time.

If you have any questions I would be more than happy to answer them. Email me at: JwaltersPT@gmail.com

or visit my website at JonWalters.CO

This is a duck outside of the gym door. In case you like ducks. Kiva liked it.