| On fun versus “optimal." The current fitness trend is to focus on efficiency. It’s to be as optimal as possible, to waste no time, waste no movement. To eliminate any variability and focus entirely on what works, what is most effective, and extracting the most value out of every unit of time and motion. All lifts are performed strictly and controlled to minimize assistance from other muscles or use “momentum.” You lift as slowly as possible to exhaust every muscle cell and hit failure more quickly, and provoke the largest hormonal response. People who promote this style do so for a bunch of reasons. - “Efficient training is safer training. You can get hurt doing too many dynamic or varied movements.”
- “The gym isn’t a place to have fun. You’re supposed to do the work and get out”
- “Training shouldn’t be enjoyable. If you’re not suffering, you’re not getting anything done.”
It’s a valid way to train that certainly works. It’s efficient in that it builds muscle and bone density, particularly in inexperienced or older people who might not feel comfortable doing other forms of exercise but still want a strong enough stimulus to improve their body composition and reduce their risk of disease and infirmity. But I have to beg to differ. There is inherent value to having fun while training. Fun itself is enough, as long as you’re not injuring yourself of course. Human movement should be joyful and hard. Hard enough to provoke an adaptive response, joyful enough to make you love doing it. I’m also a fan of dynamic movements under load, particularly with cables. You can do strict chest presses or rows with the weighted cables, making sure the angle of your torso never deviates, really accentuating the chest or the lats or the rear delts. These are great. They work. They’ll build muscle and strength. You can also do more free flowing chest presses, where you work your hips into it. Rotate at the hips, feel it in your glutes, and then press the cable. You’ll hit your posterior chain, your trunk, and your chest and triceps. You can do a free flowing, dynamic row, where you allow your torso angle to move. You can even start it as a row, then go into a tricep extension with a little help from hip rotation. Are these as “efficient”? Maybe. It’s possible—you’re cramming more movements into the single exercise. Maybe not, because it doesn’t focus entirely on one muscle group. My point is that sheer efficiency is the wrong marker to track. There’s way more to it than that. What about you? How do think about whether or not your training is worthwhile? What markers do you track? Let me know in the comment section of New and Noteworthy. | 
