Should exercise be fun and enjoyable or should it be downright hard work? The old adage of "no pain, no gain," comes to mind. This question - I believe - has a very simple answer but there are also other issues that have to be factored in as well.
The short answer to the aforementioned question is that yes, exercise should be hard. It should be difficult. It should be challenging. Why do I say this and what evidence to I have to backup these claims?
First of all, you have to ask yourself: what am I trying to achieve with this exercise program? Am I trying to lose bodyfat? Am I trying to gain muscle and strength? Am I trying to improve cardiovascular performance?
If you take any of the above scenarios, a properly applied high-intensity exercise routine will give you the best results. Want to reduce bodyfat? The best way to do it is to control your caloric intake AND increase your muscle mass. How do you increase your muscle mass? Through a properly applied strength training program.
You want to gain muscle and strength? Same answer: a properly applied strength training program.
Want to increase your cardiovascular performance and endurance? Use a high-intensity strength training program done in circuit-style fashion. Don't think that you can get a good "cardio" workout from weights? If that's the case, then you've never tried performing ten or twelve exercises - all to momentary muscular failure - immediately after another, until you're finished. After a single 20 minute circuit, you'll be physically exhausted and have maintained a very high heart rate (my guess is that the average trainee would be between 80 and 90% HR Max during most of the training). Congratulations: you've just given your body one of the most efficient aerobic workouts possible. Oh, and you're building muscle and strength as well. Not a bad bang for your buck, right?
Remember: you don't have to fall into the trap of thinking that you have to do long, drawn-out exercise in order to build your cardiovascular system. For a very long time science has shown that is simply not the case. Enter high-intensity cardiovascular exercise.
Years ago, Dr. Tabata, published several studies (forgive me for not giving references but you can easliy find the research through Google) showing that very brief, very high intensity cardiovascular exercise produced superior results compared to the traditional steady state exercise that is typically prescribed by exercise experts. To summarize the results: collegiate rowers, who had already acheived a high level of fitness were instructed to ride a stationary bike for approximately 20 seconds at a high-intensity, all-out pace. After this 20 second period, they would then rest for 10 seconds. This process constituted one repetition. They completed eight of these repititions. I believe that they followed this routine three times a week for several weeks. The results: they had far better cardiovascular improvements than the steady state cardiovascular group. In essence, only an hour's worth of high intensity training yielded superior results as compared to the hours and hours of steady state exercise that the other group engaged in.
The fact that very high-intensity cardiovascular exercise could yield such good results -results superior to traditional cardio training - shocked many people out of their slumber. Even though I believe the research was done nearly ten years ago (with more recent studies showing similar results), other research, conducted in the early 70's came to that same conclusion and were largely ignored by the exercise community. These studes were known as "Project Total Conditioning" and they were conducted at the famous West Point academy with West Point football players. To make a long story short: the study clearly showed that an exercise program built around proper equipment, proper form, at a fast pace, and done brutally hard can produce phenomenal strength and muscle gains but it can also produce equally impressive cardiovascular improvements as well.
Based upon my observations, I see a many parallels in the Tabata training protocols and the research done by Arthur Jones back in the 70's and 80's. Jones hit the nail on the head with his training and, although his research was all but ignored by the academics, successfully showed that impressive cardiovascular benefits can be achived strictly by doing weight training.
This brings me back to my original topic of "Enjoyable Vs. Hard." Research dating back nearly forty years ago, has shown that to get optimal results (whether it's muscle/strength or cardiovascular improvement) one must train hard. There's no way around it. If it's pleasant, then you're not optimizing the benefits that you could be achieving. I know a lot of people don't like to hear that and feel that the cliche of "no pain, no gain" should be placed in the history books but research consistently shows that the harder you push yourself, the greater the benefits.
The only trouble is most people are not willing to push themselves very hard. I've been involved in the fitness/exercise industry for sixteen years and most people are just not willing to exert themselves to the levels needed to see optimal benefits. Getting someone to push themselves hard can sometimes be virutally impossible to do. This is especially difficult to do with people that just want to "tone-up" or just drop a few pounds. The way that I try to explain it to people is simply: "The harder you work, the better your results will be. If you hold back and don't physically push yourself to 100% then you're compromising your results. The choice is yours."
Think about it, you're already in the gym. You can either make yourself a little miserable for an hour and get mediocre results (if any) or cut your time in half and make yourself miserable and leave knowing that you've put forth 100% of an effort to build muscle/strength/conditioning possible. I don't know about you, but the discomfort that I feel after a workout is worth it knowing that I've done everything within my power to accomplish my goals. Anything less is a compromise.
Some may argue and say, "Well, true. We know that high-intensity training yields excellent results but it's hard to find the motivation to train in such a fashion. " That's fine but it doesn't change the facts of the matter: to get optimal results, one must train brutally hard. It's kind of like saying, "Well in order to score well on a test I know that I must study the material for eight hours. I can't really find the motivation to study that long. I'm only willing to study for two hours." What do you think will happen? Of course, you'll get compromised results. You may still get some type of results, but they won't be optimal results. For some people that may be enough but you're leaving untapped potential.
Think about that next time you're in the gym.
