Are You a Cook or a Chef?
The truth is everything works in the fitness world, it’s just a matter of how much it works relative to your goals and the timeframe you set to achieve them.
You have so many people who tell you to do so many different things to get the same results, so are they wrong? No they’re not.
If you want to get stronger you can do yoga, weightlifting, bodyweight exercises, Pilates, and CrossFit by themselves. If you want to lose weight, you can do yoga, weightlifting, bodyweight exercises, CrossFit and Pilates by themselves. If you want to get in better shape, you can also do all the above individually and they work.
There’s yoga that’s designed for strength, you can weight lift for strength, you can do bodyweight exercises for strength, and Pilates is a great tool to get stronger.
The answer to this multiple-choice question is all the above.
So, what gives? What’s the catch?
The catch is the yellow brick road.
We’ve been convinced to believe if we stay on this one path it will be much better than if we go off that “yellow brick road.” I hear this type of thinking all the time, “If I do Pilates then I have to go all in on Pilates.” Or “I’ve never lifted weights before and I’m still in great shape so why start now?” Well yes that may be true, however that’s not the most efficient path to your goals.
The reality is we need to incorporate all the multiple-choice answers in a way that’s optimal for us the individual. That is where I step in, that is now my job.
I want to take your mind out of the gym, and into somewhere we all can understand, the kitchen. Most of us can cook, a lot of us have our own signature recipe or dish we know we can make at a high level. But does that make us a chef or a cook? There’s a difference, right?
Simply being able to make one or two high quality dishes is a way we can show off how well we can cook. However, being a chef is a much higher-level skillset with far more tools in the toolkit to pull from.
A lot of us try to “cook” when were in the gym. We try to create the best individual workout, or best individual week of workouts and rinse and repeat.
That will work, there’s nothing wrong with that.
However, you’re limiting your overall potential by focusing solely on one dish or two, rather than trying to expand your overall skillset that it takes to be a chef.
To be a “chef” we must continually work on the basic skills, while also willing to try new dishes to improve our overall ability. Some days a chef needs to work on their knife skills or try out a new cuisine they’ve never experience before.
Regardless to be a chef there’s a large understanding of a much longer timeline to achieve that status. Expecting to be a chef after a week or two of cooking is unrealistic.
Being a cook in this analogy is not bad, there’s nothing wrong with it.
You will make slow progress over time.
But you are missing out if you don’t approach fitness the way people view becoming a chef.
So, you have a dish you want to make. The recipe calls for all these ingredients, and you want to make this specific dish for dinner. You know you have yoga, pilates, weightlifting, and cardio as your ingredients. Now depending on the dish you make, you must vary how much of each ingredient you use.
If you only use a few and not all of it, it won’t truly be the dish you want. If you use all the ingredients and don’t know how to measure them properly, that can also ruin your planned dish.
This is why you should invest in a personal trainer. You need someone who knows how to incorporate each ingredient depending on your current goals. Once you make that perfect dish, you’ll now need guidance on how to make an even better dish than what the recipe calls for.
Having a trainer who not only helps you achieve your current goals but can also lead you in a direction you can go on your own and make up your own fitness recipes for the future.
In the context of fitness, focusing on skillsets you may lack will inevitably help your overall goals. If you lack flexibility, prioritize a mobility phase of your training. Take a month to add new exercises that only focus on that one skillset.
That doesn’t mean for an entire month you only work on that one skillset. It just means make that one skillset a higher priority than it was before.
Once you’re able to go into the gym understanding that one individual workout is only a small piece of this massive pie you’ve constructed, your goals become much more attainable.
One signature workout or two will not make the difference on a large scale. You have to understand all of the workouts combine to make an incredible dish that is always changing.
If your goal is to do what makes you happy and are not focused on fitness goals that’s ok. If you only want to run because you enjoy it, and having other physical attributes doesn’t seem to be a priority, then that’s ok.
But if you have specific goals and a plan to achieve in the future, simply being picky with what you’re willing to do will eventually limit the growth in the pursuit of that goal.
Only using half of the ingredients required for your recipe is a waste of time and only makes it harder. Being versatile and using all the ingredients, regardless of your goal is vital to your sustained growth and success to your fitness goals.
Understanding the long approach and the advantage of focusing on different aspects of training will lead to a quicker, more efficient path to your goals.
Having multiple different skills in the gym is essential to reaching your true potential. Willing to work on certain skills throughout a certain period is vital. Once you’ve spent time on that one skill, shift your focus to the next skill.
Simply mastering one skillset limits your path to optimal training, and optimal results. Once you see the value in versatility and can walk in the gym with a plan not just for the day, but for that month, or that phase of training, everything changes.
Having an entire catalog of exercises, you can mix and match to create an incredible workout is the goal. Once that goal is achieved you can now be the master chef of your own fitness.
