Is Exercise Sometimes Not Worth the Time You Put In?

I’ll sometimes talk with people I know about their weight loss plans, and how they expect to lose weight. When I ask them what they’re doing they’ll give me a report of drastically reduced calories, and a workout plan that involves a few situps and walking once or twice a week.  In most cases I don’t think that type of a plan is going to be successful, just for the small amount of exercise they’re doing, and because their diet will cause their metabolism to shut down, and harm their prospects for weight loss.

In an article I was reading today people were having a different issue.  They were exercising for too long, using a exercise that wasn’t as beneficial as they thought.   One reader of the MSNBC site emailed in:

I exercise every weekday morning in my hot tub, doing 2,000 forward bicycles, 2,000 reverse bicycles, 2,000 frog kicks and 2,000 reverse frog kicks. It takes me almost three hours. Am I doing too much exercise? I’m trying to lose weight this way because I have leg problems that keep me from doing any other type of exercise.

doing leg kicks in a hot tub for 3 hours?  Are you kidding me?  Who does that?  I know some people  do have some physical limitations that preclude them from performing some normal exercises, but there has got to be something better out there for this person to do.  I seriously doubt they are getting much actual impact from their bicycle and frog kicks!

photo credit: Tigerzeye

The fitness expert answers the question:

There’s a lingering misperception in fitness that if 20 repetitions of an exercise are good, then 200 — or 2,000 — must be better. But sometimes — such as when doing 4,000 frog kicks and another 4,000 bicycles consumes your entire morning — exercise may just not be worth that much time and effort. In fact, you may be pleasantly surprised to know you can restructure your program so that you actually work out for less time and get more bang for your buck.

The person writing in probably needs to look at some other options for their workout plan.  Some low impact whole body workouts like swimming in a pool, riding a stationary bike, or something along those lines.   Even though they’re exercising quite a bit currently, the exercise that they’re getting really isn’t that helpful – especially since  it takes so long to complete.

Sometimes we all need to take a look at our workout plans, and decide for ourselves if the work we’re putting in is worth it.  Is our plan well thought out?  Will it actually have the result we’re looking for?  If not, it may be time to sit down and come up with a new plan of action with someone who knows what they’re doing like a personal trainer at a local gym, or a friend who is a fitness guru.

Set goals, make a plan of attack, and carry out the plan in such a way as to attain positive results.

Have you ever had a workout plan that didn’t work? What was the reason for the plan’s failure?

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