by Dave Chesser, owner of Formosa Fitness, Kettlebell Taiwan and Kettlebell Quest
This is one of the most common questions we get but I really wish it wasn’t. The problem is that few people have been exposed to real training so they don’t understand it. Training and exercising are not the same thing. Training is getting better at doing something. Exercising is simply random movement. Every time I hear the above question, the first thing that comes to my mind is,”Have you done this workout 2-3 days a week consistently?” and the answer is always no. If you haven’t done the workout 2-3x consistently then what would make a person think they can do it every single day and get good results?
Every workout that I write is based on training instead of exercising and that means a few things must be in place first.
One, are you doing the exercises correctly? If not, then you must learn how to do them. Doing them poorly will never get you results and yet I consistently see terrible form in every single group class and from every Facebook fitness guru. Seriously, this is the path to no where. Slow things down and do the exercises correctly and then you’ll see that you very rarely need to do them everyday to get results. It’s when people do exercises poorly that they think they have to do them everyday. If you have poor quality, you have to make up for it with quantity and that’s how people get hurt. I saw one Youtube fitness guru telling everyone to do situps every single day and the form was poor. A lot of people complained about how much their backs hurt. That’s what people get from following that guy.
Two, you must turn off the volume monkeys that tell you to do more. Facebook and Youtube fitness gurus tell you to do the same stuff everyday because it’s a good way to get you hooked into watching their nonsensical videos or reading their posts everyday, which drives up their site traffic. That’s the real reason behind all of this – to get more site traffic from gullible beginners that don’t know better. Once they get more site traffic and fans, companies will ask them to sell products they’ve never used in their lives and the fans buy whatever they are told to buy. It’s insane. But their popularity makes people think that the same exercises or workout must be done every single day. In order to change your thinking, you have to be smart and turn off the people telling you to do crazy volume all the time.
Three, you must use a weight that challenges your movement ability and that allows you to keep getting better. Using an 8kg kettlebell is easy and sure, you could probably do the same workout everyday with it eventually, but so what? Where are the results? You will stop getting them because your body has already adapted to the weight through those exercises in that workout. You must progress to a heavier weight in order to keep getting results. No, doing more and more and more of the same thing will not keep working. To all the people that ask can they do this workout every single day, what are you going to do after that stops working, do the workout twice a day?
Most beginners are greedy for results and are way too focused on the short term. They want maximum results right now without having to earn them but that doesn’t work. Most serious workouts should be done three times a week with good form if you are at the beginning level. Any more than that and you likely won’t be doing quality training. You need to EARN the right to train every day through getting the exercises correct and building a body that can withstand consistent, daily training. Don’t worry, with a consistent three times a week effort, you will get good results that you can continue to work on for a lifetime if you do it right. If you need more guidance, my Kettlebell Quest DVD has all the three-times-a-week workouts you will ever need. All you have to do is follow the program. Good luck in training.