Let me tell you why Im not the biggest fan of long, slow cardio exercise and time-consuming workouts in the gym.For one thing, I think most people waste far too much time in the gym. I dont know about you, but Id like to be doing other things. Like playing tennis or writing books on energy. And I think a lot of what passes for workouts is actually pretty mindless activity that looks, frankly, kind of joyless to me. I see people on the treadmills at the gym running like rats, iPods in ears, staring at the TV monitors, and not looking all that happy.Less time, more resultsIve been touting the benefits of shorter, more concentrated training for a long time. Coming from the gym culture, Ive seen routines that too less than 12 minutes to perform that would leave the average steelworker collapsed in a puddle of his own sweat.Im not saying you should give up enjoyable long distance stuff such as hiking, biking, walking, or running, but I am saying that a lot of what passes for workouts is a waste of time. You can accomplish more with full-body circuit training and high-intensity interval training. Thats what I do for energy and for exercise, and its what I recommend. like everything else-should have a quality of mindfulness to it.Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his pre-Terminator, pre-Governator days, was fond of saying, Put your mind into the muscle. Schwarzenegger claimed that it improved his results if he visualized his shoulders growing to the size of grapefruits while doing shoulder presses. In his minds eye, he could actually see his deltoids expanding while he hoisted the weights.Old-time bodybuilding gurus such as Vince Gironda (who was the owner of the legendary Vinces Gym in Southern California) didnt even allow music to be played in his facility, claiming it was too distracting. Youre here to lift, not to listen to music, hed says.Maybe you dont want to go that far, and you probably dont care about your deltoids looking like grapefruits, but theres looking like grapefruits, but theres more than a kernel of truth in the weight training philosophy of both Schwarzenegger and Gironda. Moral of the story: dont multitask when you work out. Use it as a laboratory for practicing mindfulness and concentration. Youll get a lot more out of it, and youll be able to accomplish much more in a lot less time.
