My Biggest Fitness Mistake but Not Regret

It was a mistake. It could even be considered a big mistake. This is something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. With so many different ways to train and fitness methods, we can get lost in all the noise of it. When I started there wasn’t as much popularity for fitness, and the fitness industry was a fraction of what it is today. Knowledge and information wasn’t as accessible as it is today. Added to that, social media wasn’t really a thing yet either. Imagine that, fitness with no Instagram.

I was extremely overweight and when I started to work on it in my early to mid teens, I didn’t know very much. What I did know was that if I cut down my food intake and did some sort of exercise, I would lose the weight. My family had just bought a treadmill. It wasn’t a very good one, but it worked.

I challenged myself and set my target on running on the treadmill every day for half an hour upping the speed whenever I could until the point that I was running every day at the top speed the treadmill could manage. Because I didn’t know much about fitness, all I knew was to run. Just keep running and I’d get healthier and lose the weight.

However, what I started to learn as time went on and know now with all the research, work, and study I have done is that there is so much more to fitness and training. There are so many methods, each one with their own benefits. While all the cardio was indeed slimming me down and bringing up my cardiovascular health, I was losing out on all the other physical and mental benefits that the other methods brought with them.

For example, the endorphins that are produced more so when weight lifting or resistance training, they aren’t produced as much with just doing cardio. There was also the issue that I was burning calories and weight including muscle without developing new, building, or strengthening my muscles at the same time. Other elements that come with resistance training are the lean muscle which can help tighten the skin, the collagen and elasticity fibers are tightened with lean muscle growth, or at least the appearance of tightening the loose skin as well as the longer lasting elevated metabolism, both of which occur much less or not at all with only cardiovascular exercises.

By way of challenge, the potentials that I became aware exist with adding resistance training were unmatched. The fact that every session you can potentially break a previous personal ceiling in one way or another and achieve new heights is in itself rewarding. I learned my potential, and I learned what I could overcome by simply pushing further. Progression could become a part of the process. Cardio, while challenging in its own way didn’t offer these same benefits.

This was my biggest mistake. It was the fact that I only did cardio. I didn’t know any better and of course the fitness information, knowledge, and tools weren’t as readily available. This meant that I didn’t get the health benefits and progression that would have come with resistance training which are paramount in achieving good health, wellness, and fitness, goals and results as well as self-improvement.

However, I have absolutely no regrets. I am happy I did what I did when I did it. I could have done it differently and probably better, but the important thing one hundred percent is that I did it, that I lost the weight. I don’t even want to think what would have happened if I hadn’t decided to challenge myself and start out on this fitness journey. I may have never lost the weight as time went on and it may have even gotten dangerously worse. I got myself to a much better and healthier state.

This isn’t me complaining. I have no complaints just as I have no regrets. This is just me understanding and learning from my mistake and hoping that I can help others understand this mistake, this difference in training. Understand it and learn from it. Learn from it, not make the same mistakes as I did, and reap all the rewards and benefits that exist.

Two things to keep in mind, however, are that first it’s not all or nothing and second, there are important differences within the different methods, but it’s still important that you find what works for you. If I was to do it all over again, I would probably do it differently, but I would happily do it the same way if that was my only option.

This blunder of mine has definitely been part of my motivation behind founding, developing, and promoting LIFE ON FITNESS as a place where individuals looking for that extra bit of help in setting, working on, and achieving their goals can find unique life, health, wellness, and fitness knowledge and information offered up by individual qualified professionals.