Stop exercising and start training!!!

 

For the past two years, I have been exercising.

If you saw me doing my thing, you would think that exercise begun from the backyard of my grandfather's homestead.

Running was my chosen means to engage my body. At the crack of dawn, four times a week, I would grudgingly leave my warm bed and face the cold dark, dreary streets. In rain and in sunshine I would plod the road.

The leafy suburbs of Kololo know my name. The dusty and pot holed surface of Naguru held on to me like a long lost friend.  If you look carefully on the Northern by-pass, you will see my gleaming sweat. The sleepy Namugongo, would always blow its cool breeze whenever I would trudge my way through her.

I know every nook and cranny of the MTN half marathon. The seven hills of Kampala can recognize me any day. The flat terrain of Jinja keeps whispering my name. The dusty, sleepy hills of Lubowa can point out my shoe print. I even joined a team of runners and increased my road mileage.

I run on the busiest highway in East Africa: the Mombasa highway. I was enthralled by the South African Two Oceans race and mesmerized by the thought of running the Comrades marathon.

I was in good shape, or so I thought. I had the runner's bounce. I constantly experienced the runner's high. I was a walking dictionary when it came to the vocabulary of running. There was however one snag. I was not running as fast as I would have loved to. I was not as strong as I knew I could be. My flexibility was questionable. My endurance was feeble. My stamina, well I did not have any stamina. So what was the problem?

The answer came in form of an Irish coach. In one of those conversations, where I was front and center of a heated discussion on the value of running, she looked me straight into my Acoli eyes and said 'Stop running around like a headless chicken". There was a thick concentrate of saliva that formed in my throat. I elected to pull her away from the crowd and seek for clarification.

In very many words and in that accent that only belongs to the Irish, she told me to stop exercising and start training.

It dawned on me, like I am sure it will dawn on you one day, there is a world of difference between training and exercising. After some serious soul searching and flipping through a couple of books and sites, I came across enlightening stuff.

Exercising is something one does just to move. Exercising makes people feel good for the short term.  After six to eight weeks of exercising, it becomes common and boring.

Exercising sometimes leads to sweat, but rarely leads to improved health and fitness. Exercising does not provide that intensity and passion, necessary to provoke the response that alters the metabolism and affects the muscles.

Training necessarily requires a program of constantly varied, functional movements, performed with high intensity. Training means that you make a commitment to a true goal of improved human performance.  Training requires pushing through barriers - going beyond your limits and pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone. 

Training demands sacrifices so that you can train multiple times each week and continue to train regardless of excuses involving work, family, the environment, and other life obstacles.  Training means tracking your progress by logging your workouts and food intake.  Training means not giving up until you reach your goals no matter how long that takes.

It means that you reach a goal only to realise that you can better yourself by pursuing another goal. You are propelled by a relentless and obsessive desire to be a better version of you.

If you want to improve your overall health and fitness, then focus your mind.                                                                                                                    Stop exercising and start training!!!