How to pull the trigger of improvement.

If you read Exercise vs. Activity, you know that exercise is intentional. Its purpose is to trigger a response by your body that makes it functionally better than it was before.

So, what is the trigger?

Creating a gap between what you want your body to do and what it can do.

It’s economics: supply and demand.

Consistently expose your body to high demand and it will adjust to meet that demand.

Your muscles get stronger, your bones get harder, and your cardiovascular system gets stronger to meet this new level of demand. As a result, you look better, feel better and perform better in every area of life.

Few people exercise this way. They consistently expose their body to what it can do, which does nothing to make it better. Time and energy are expended, but nothing improves. In fact, over time it gets worse.

How do you create the trigger?

By safely pushing your body beyond its current limits.

Using a push up for example, you do a pushup until you barely can complete one, then you hold at the top of the pushup until you cannot hold it anymore, then you control your movement back down to the floor as slowly as you can until you rest on the floor.

That’s it. One set taken to momentary muscular failure. Once completed, you move on to your next exercise.

Exercising this way creates total fitness while only exercising twelve minutes a week.

It can be learned by anyone who is willing to make the tradeoff between time and effort, and between intentionally creating change and hoping it happens.