So a reader named Hal I’ve-Got-A-Cooler-Job-Than-You Johnson left an insightful comment on Friday’s post:

In my job as an offshore helicopter pilot, I’ve flown with a few guys who I’d consider super-fit. No way I could ever keep up with them in the gym and/or on the track. But sure enough, it seemed like they all had to drag themselves through the working day. You’ve brought up a question most fitness enthusiasts might do well to ask themselves: “Am I working out to perform better in the gym, or to perform better in my life?”

He gallantly pretends that I brought it up, but in fact it’s Hal who makes the great point.  I can think of at least a half-dozen periods in my life that lasted at least a month when what I was doing in the gym was CLEARLY making me less comfortable and less functional in life.  When I was in pain more often than not.  When my body was sending me signals to chill out soon or something was going to break, and soon.

I suppose most lifters, endurance athletes, and rec sports hounds can cite instances when they’ve felt the same way.  They’ve worked themselves right to the brink of injury, all for the sake of a few extra plates on the bar, a slightly higher vertical jump, a slightly faster 10K.  Mind you, I’m not talking about pros who make millions for their troubles, for whom such sacrifice may be at least theoretically worth it.  I’m talking about average Joe athletes who have arbitrarily decided they have to train like Olympians.

‘Why are you walking funny, Mitch?’ your office mate asks innocuously. 

‘Oh man, I had a killer  leg workout…I squatted 350 for 10 reps, you should have seen it…” etc. etc. 

For these buffoons (among whose ranks, let me repeat, I’ve found myself many times in the past) pain and injury are marks of toughness.  The more we hurt, the harder we’ve worked.  No matter how much we paint ourselves as the myopic bozo, we’re really bragging. 

If you’re someone who likes to do this, next time you have the impulse to spout off, just remember as all the details of your ‘stupid’ lift pour out of your mouth and friends in earshot start excusing themselves to run pointless errands, don’t forget, YOU’RE BRAGGING, you little brag-head. 

Maybe it’s time to recognize an exercise “habit” (addiction?) for what it is:  not as something to be secretly proud of but something that can interfere with work, with relationships, with normal life functioning. 

If only we could all agree that the primary point of exercise should be to become healthier, live longer, feel better, and, in general, function better outside the gym / off the track / away from the rec hall, then no one would have this problem.  Anything that does the opposite—makes us more tired, less effective, less present outside the gym—is, in the words of Willy S., ‘from the purpose of playing.’  Seems pretty self-evident, but we screw it up all the time.

I do believe that part of this problem comes from the great media-fueled schism of ‘exercise for the sake of appearance’ and ‘exercise for improved performance,’ which started maybe 40 years ago. If we’re doing the latter, we immediately recognize when something is awry:  we’re run-down instead of energized; we’re feeling worse instead of better.  Our lifting numbers or running speed or jump shot is now less effective, so, as a matter of course, we take steps to fix it:  back off, analyze, regroup. 

But if we’re exercising solely to ‘look better,’ we can always fool ourselves and say that unless we’re a size -2 or have 19 inch arms we’re somehow not doing enough.  So we drive ourselves back to the gym for another two hours of barbell curls and elliptical machine work. 

The last thing I’m advocating is wussing out in the gym.  What I am suggesting, or underscoring, perhaps, since it was a reader who came up with it, is to evaluate a fitness program primarily on How It Makes You Feel Most of the Time.  Feel lousy, unable to do your job effectively, tired, sore all the time?  Ease up, cowpoke.  Feel great, sharper, better in general?  Green light.  

Any others out there who ever found themselves sticking doggedly to an exercise program that was clearly doing more harm than good?