Your Results Aren’t Yours to Keep: The Truth About Maintaining Fitness Results

There’s this old Jim Gaffigan joke about working out. I don’t remember which stand-up special it was on, but I remember the setup and the punchline. Gaffigan looks at this ripped guy at the gym and says, “What are you doing here? You’re done!” If you don’t know the joke, I’m sure it’s not that funny to read now. But I’ll tell ya what, it exposes the truth about how most people think about training. That’s why it is so funny when he says it during the bit — most people can relate. They have a singular point of fitness success in their mind, and a rigid belief that follows.

The words might not fit exactly, but it looks and sounds a lot like this:

I’ll be happy if I could get back to _______ . (Insert something a person used-to-could do: run a certain mile time, fit into a clothes size, etc.)

I just want to look good at my wedding.

I just don’t want to die at this race.

I want to lift X amount.

I want to see my abs during beach season.

Singular point of fitness success. Tunnel vision. A proposed state of happiness that follows once the goal is achieved.

And it never, ever fucking works that way.

Abs won’t make you happy. Just surviving the race won’t be good enough. Letting yourself go after your wedding will probably make you feel like shit.

There is no lucky pot of happiness gold at the other end of your fitness-goals rainbow. There is no such thing as “done.”

Now, I’m not trying to piss in your Lucky Charms. And if you have the right mindset, you’re not reading this that way. However, that doesn’t mean you couldn’t benefit from a little reframing of how you think about training and fitness.

A while back, I heard someone say that life is less like climbing a mountain and more like a long swim. It’s a productive way of thinking, and one that sets realistic expectations. But I think it’s more accurate to say that life is a swim with a bunch of climbs built in.

 

 

Imagine that you’re in the middle of the ocean. In front of you is a small, mountainous island. You have to swim, otherwise you sink and drown. But you can’t swim laterally in either direction. You can only swim forward towards the island. That’s not so bad. You’d rather be on land anyway. When you reach the island, you realize you can’t walk around the mountain. The only way to get to the other side is to go up and over. There’s no going back, that’s impossible. So, you climb. When you get to the peak, you see a chain of islands strung across the ocean for as far as you can see. You can’t go back; you have to climb down to the valley and back into the water. Again, you go swimming until you reach the next island. Then, again, you climb.

 

 

All things in life, if we want them to go well, require persistent effort. That’s the swim. Though the effort is persistent, it sometimes requires different intensities. That’s the climb and the descent. 

There’s also nothing wrong with looking at the top of a mountain and wanting to reach the peak. In fact, it’s sometimes necessary for us to spur ourselves forward. Just remember that once up there, you’ll have to climb back down. And the work continues once you reach the bottom. You will swim again until you reach the next island.

This allegory also works to illustrate the emotions of progress, of never being done.

We swim on an even keel, steadily going about business. Then, intermittently, we hit the emotional highs of the mountain peak and the emotional lows of the valley. It’s all to be expected. Mostly, we go forward, doing what needs to be done with steady emotions. That’s what builds the resilience that allows us to climb the mountain. Then we enjoy the view from the peak while we’re up there. Inevitably, we will hit a low. The steady going forward is also what allows us to deal with the dip. We rise back up. We swim again.

If you’re unwilling to swim past the first island, you get stranded in a valley. 

Yes, you swam up to it, climbed to the peak, and were in great shape for your wedding or you hit your lifting goal. But you didn’t get back into the water. You didn’t swim to sustain what you earned. You won’t make the physical or emotional gains of making it to the next mountain and climbing to the peak. You’re stuck, and you’ll stay stuck. Not only that, your momentum works against you. It takes you deeper into the valley. It reclaims your results.

If, however, you realize that a single point of fitness success won’t sustain you physically or emotionally, if you realize that the unemotional work of swimming every day is the true measure and means of success, then you can achieve and keep any results you want.

You can climb each mountain and you can reach every peak.

But you must be willing to swim for it.

 

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