The Other Ways the Gym Changes Your Body
There Are Two Types of Fitness Folks…
Type 1 -- Those who understand that the body adapts to what you make it do.
Type 2 -- Those who choose to believe that the body adapts, but only when it comes to the adaptations they want.
Now I want you to read this with an open mind, because I'm coming at this with zero judgement.
Instead, I'm coming at this as a problem-solver.
The problems?
Strength with unwanted stiffness.
Mobility without stability.
Badassery in the gym, but none outside the gym
Injuries coming "out of nowhere"
If you consistently invest time into your fitness routine, and you don't feel stable or connected in your body -- you might be thinking like a Type 2 -- and this one's for you.
Different Ways You Can Change Your Body
Once again, no one is judging, so let's be honest with ourselves.
We've all been conditioned to hyper-focus on the adaptations we want from exercise.
Most often, these are the metabolic adaptations — the changes in your body that have to do with how it uses energy. Examples:
🤩 Eating less causes weight loss.
🤩 Strength training causes muscle growth.
🤩 Aerobic exercise leads to better heart health.
But are all adaptations to exercise positive? You might struggle to think of ways that exercising can cause harm, but let's keep thinking.
You're actually more familiar than you think with what we'll call structural adaptations. That is, the way your muscles and joints "mold" to their experiences:
🫤 You know sitting too much leads to hip and spine sitffness
🫤 You understand that staring down at your phone too much can lead to neck issues.
🫤 You realize how taking shallow breaths all the time restricts your deep breathing muscles, making it even harder to take a proper inhale.
Essentially, what you do all the time is going to affect your posture and movement. Sounds like a no-brainer when you put it that way.
But why do we have such a hard time applying this logic to fitness?
🤔 We know the downsides of sitting too much, but we ignore the downsides of going to too many spin classes.
🤔 We know that "tech neck" is a problem, but we have no problem bench pressing or crunching with our chins shoved into our chests.
🤔 We know that hyperventilation is cause for concern, yet we huff and we puff out of pure habit when it comes to exercise — even before we start working hard enough to warrant it.
🤔 We worship stretching without considering whom it actually benefits (and whom it doesn't).
You might think a little pain and stiffness is harmless — and I do think moving in some way is way better than not moving at all.
But in the words of Dr. Andy Galpin:
"The worst thing you can do for longevity, by a trillion miles, is to stop exercising. The first thing that gets people to stop exercising is things hurt."
Meet Juan
Juan is a friend of mine. I met him at one of the gyms in Tangier.
He is 68 years old and goes to the gym at least 3 mornings a week.
Impressive, right? Yes and no.
While he works hard at his resistance training, Juan is overweight and is always experiencing some type of joint pain.
And what's worse is that he's always ignoring the pain and training through it anyway.
He tells me all about his shoulder pain before going to the bench press. He complains about his knee before going to squat the way he's always squatted.
Juan is strong. He's got muscle. But he moves like shit -- and he's paying the price.
This is not Juan. But this is the gist of Juan’s physique.
See, Juan used to be a powerlifter and a bodybuilder. So his main metrics for success in fitness are strength and muscle mass.
"He needs to do cardio," I hear you saying. And he does do cardio...sometimes.
If he skips his cardio, do you know why? Let's rehash our quote of the day...
“The worst thing you can do for longevity, by a trillion miles, is to” stop exercising. The first thing that gets people to stop exercising is things hurt.”
You guessed it -- Juan skips cardio because moving his body through space is painful, restrictive, and uncoordinated.
How do I know this? He’s told me.
And while I try to help Juan in whatever ways he'll allow me to, he's ultimately battling his long-held beliefs about what types of training he needs to do to stay fit.
I don't want you to be like Juan.
I mean, he's a great guy. So I do want you to be like him in lots of ways. But not in your approach to fitness.
So let's talk about how we escape that trap, shall we?
Training for Non-Juans
You need to understand this: The body molds to its experiences.
This means that in order to train smarter, you have to acknowledge the negative adaptations along with the positive.
💡Strength training builds muscle, AND it causes joints to favor the positions/movement patterns you use.
Juan, while strong and muscular, has joints that have adapted to bodybuilding machines. And they're stuck there.
So to be a Non-Juan, you need to train in a way that respects natural movement first.
And how do we know what's natural? Look at how/why the human skeleton evolved.
Ape Ancestors:
Quadrupedal (move on 4 limbs)
Brachiators (swing from trees)
Humans:
Bipedal (move on 2 limbs)
Non-brachiators (we don't have a shoulder joint meant for swinging on trees)
Using this logic, and further anthropological research if you like, walking and running are the cornerstones of natural human movement.
The movement pattern associated with walking and running is called the gait cycle.
"So I'm supposed to just walk and run?"
No. Here are some examples of what it means to train while respecting forward locomotion:
Walk as often as possible. Make it your baseline for physical activity.
Use running as a personal assessment tool. If running hurts, it's a sign that something is out of balance.
Seek alternative approaches to strength training, those that account for postural adaptations and how they affect your gait cycle.
"How am I supposed to strength train like that?"
There are some things to look for in a strength training system or approach:
✅ Treats the body as a system -- Instead of just trying to put maximum tension on a muscle while ignoring the rest of the body, a smarter approach considers the position the rest of the body is in as well.
✅ Trains active length -- Associating lengthened muscles with stretching and shortened muscles with strength training is a huge mistake. Instead of hammering out reps, a smarter approach is to spend lots of time under tension in the lengthened position. If a muscle can handle forces at length, it can do so while shortened (the opposite is not true).
✅ Doesn't Overdo Flexibility -- There is such a thing as too much range of motion. Instead of training a muscle to its maximum length, a smarter approach trains them to the length they need to go. This reinforces coordination between muscles and joints as it applies to real-world athletic movement.
"Wouldn't Juan be fine if he just added mobility training to his current routine?"
Maybe. But he'd have to make sure of two things:
That he has extra time to add to his fitness routine (most of us are in the opposite situation).
That his mobility training is as intense and as frequent as his strength training.
If you'd like to take that approach, be my guest. But I'm looking for the most band for my buck when it comes to time and overall efficiency.
"I like my current routine."
Do you feel amazing? If so, don't let me stop you. If not, do you like being stiff and in pain?
I get it. Change is hard, especially when other things are uncertain. Who doesn't want to rely on a tried and true routine they've been doing forever?
Except it's not tried and true (your joints don't feel great), and having done it forever is probably what got you here.
I know what it's like to be attached to the positive adaptations that have come from your routine, so if that's you, start treating fitness like a game instead of a chore.
Make this a fun experiment. Can you keep the gains that are important to you while also improving the way your body holds itself?
Shake things up and find out!
The Point Of It All
If we committed ourselves to positive structural adaptations as much as we do positive metabolic adaptations, we'd all have a healthier and happier relationship with movement.
We'd be more likely to carry healthy habits into everyday life, because when movement feels good, we stop designating it exclusively for the gym — and instead welcome it as an integrated part of our lives.
And that means we'd have cultivated another fundamental tool for self-expression and connection.
That's a better world if you ask me.
When movement feels good, we stop designating it exclusively for the gym -- and instead welcome it as an integrated part of our lives.
I'm living proof. I've been to both extremes.
I was sedentary growing up, clinging to the belief that exercise and physicality were only for jock types.
Then when I got into fitness for reasons related to self-esteem, I became obsessed.
I was doing 7 hard workouts a week.
I'm serious. The only form of cardio worth doing to me was HIIT. And the only valid form of strength training was heavy power lifts.
I was ignoring breathing. I was ignoring how this was negatively affecting my structure. I was ignoring how my anxiety and fear of rejection were fueling my behavior.
I was only seeing the positives.
Then I started injuring my low back while doing martial arts in my early 20s.
Unknowingly over-breathing all the time (former mouth breather here), I started to develop anxiety about exercise.
Anticipating my grueling workouts made me anxious. But missing a workout made me even more anxious.
Exercise, deep down, was a way for me to punish myself.
And because of this, I wasn't interested in being active outside of my workouts. It was like I was rebelling against physical activity itself by only doing what I absolutely "had" to do.
Fast forward to that time the entire world shut down in 2020, and I finally allowed myself to (sort of) slow down.
I went down the mobility and corrective exercise rabbit holes and got my first glimpse into how improving movement quality can make you feel.
I haven't looked back, but I've had to parse out a lot of B.S. before adopting the principles that have lead me to where I am now.
It's been a slow process, and I'm still working on it, but both working out and being active outside the gym are genuinely fun for me.
I don't care if I miss a workout, and I'm leaner and better looking in my late 30s than I was in my 20s. It's kind of crazy.
I'm telling you this because for me it's never been about being or training the best athlete.
It's about releasing the grip that our outdated, unhelpful ideas about fitness have on us.
It's about unlocking the humanity behind a body that feels and functions its best.
That's my hope for all of us. Sincerely.
Have a great day,
Griffin
P.S. If you'd like to learn more about how to train smarter, you can...
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