Picture this: you’re outside on a blistering summer day, doing a workout that you’re just sure is banned under the Geneva Convention. All of your muscles feel like they’re on fire, you can barely catch your breathe, you’re starting to get tunnel vision, and you’re fighting like hell not to puke. You have the vague sense that your workout partner is next to you screaming at you to keep going, but your senses aren’t working well enough for you to be sure.

Sounds like fun, right?

As a NARP (non-athletic regular person) who was caught up training with high level athletes, I often wound up being stuck doing these sorts of workouts, and let me tell you, they fucking suck. There is no way around it, especially when you’re doing it with a group and have a trainer/coach watching over to be sure that everyone is giving it absolutely everything they’ve got. These types of workouts are designed to be as physically and mentally grueling as humanly possible.

The Massachusetts State Troopers recently got into hot water for making a class of trainees do one of these types of workouts. The instructors made the recruits do bear crawls (walking on all fours without letting your knees touch the ground) for distance on hot pavement. Some of the recruits ended up with blisters on their hands and the instructors were reassigned and punished for making the recruits do this. Meanwhile, I did these a few years back, hot pavement and all, and when a couple of the parents came to pick up their kids after the workout, not one of them complained to the coach about it. They all were well-versed in the purpose behind the workout, and a few of them expressed their appreciation for the workout.

While I wouldn’t necessarily choose hot pavement as the setting for bear crawls (though I have endured them and would do them again if I had to), exercises like that are my favorites, both as a coach and an athlete.

Why do I love these god-awful workouts so much?

Because as all my Calvin and Hobbes fans know, being miserable builds character.

The beauty of these types of workouts is that they challenge not just your body, but your mind, and they push you to (and often past) your limits. We often think of our limits as being physical, but often times, they’re mental. When you believe that you can’t do something, you give up, whether you realize it or not, and it limits what you can do. However, if you can bear down, grit your teeth, and keep pushing forward, the world becomes your oyster. That is the exact skill that these workouts teach.

The first time that I did one of these workouts, it was pushing a prowler sled (seen below) with a couple of hockey players who were in significantly better shape than me. The sled was on pavement and had 180 lbs stacked on it. There were cones set up about 65 feet apart, and we would take turns pushing the sled. Person 1 would push it down, Person 2 would push it back, and Person 3 would it down. Then Person 1 would push it back, Person 2 would push it down, etc. for 7 total rounds per person. The first round was easy. The third round had you sucking wind. By the fifth round, you would throw yourself down on the ground in between your turns because your legs were on fire. By the sixth round, you’d be fighting like hell for every step. By the seventh round, it was almost impossible to pick up your leg and move it a few inches. You become acutely aware of just how much effort a single step can take, and the only thing that keeps you going is the voice in your head (that is actually from your coach screaming at you) that is telling you to just put one foot in front of the other. You finish your last round and collapse onto the ground.

Before I left the gym that day, I asked the coach what muscles that workout was designed to hit. The coach grinned like the cat that ate the canary, and pointed to his head without saying a word. It would have been a perfectly scripted moment, except for the fact that my brain was still trying to figure out if I was dead or not, so I didn’t understand what he meant. He explained that the workout is great for both cardiovascular and strength work, but that the main purpose was to toughen us up and teach us how to grind through challenges. Sometimes in life, you face challenges that seem absolutely insurmountable. When that happens, you just have to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how difficult it is.

A study about push-ups and cardiovascular health has been making its way around the media. The gist of the findings is that men who can do 40+ push-ups have a significantly lower risk of cardiovascular events than men who can’t do 10 push-ups.

So just do more push-ups and you’ll be fine, right?

Not necessarily.

Despite what the news anchors are saying, this is probably a case of correlation, not causation. For those of you who (like me), slept through your high school statistics class, correlation means that two things tend to happen together, while causation means that one thing causes the other.

Let’s say that you notice that almost every thunderstorm happens on a day when you’re wearing shorts. You keep a tally for a year and you find out that 95% of thunderstorms happened on a day when you were wearing shorts. You think about it and you realize that it’s unlikely that your clothing choice controls the weather. However, 95% is a lot – you can’t shake the feeling that there’s a link.

While your clothing choices don’t control the weather, shorts and thunderstorms tend to go hand in hand. If you wanted to sound smart, you could say that there is a correlation between wearing shorts and thunderstorms occurring. The reason why they go hand in hand is not because your shorts control the weather, because they are caused by the same thing: hot weather.

Hot weather causes us to wear shorts because they’re better at allowing us to cool off. On hot days, more water evaporates, which creates ideal atmospheric conditions for thunderstorms, and leads to more thunderstorms. In this case, you could say that there is a causational relationship between hot weather and thunderstorms and between hot weather and shorts.

Now that we have a better understanding of correlation vs causation, let’s revisit the push-ups. Think about the people you know who can do 40+ push-ups without stopping. Most of them are probably in good shape. They’re probably lean, pretty muscular, pretty strong, and in pretty good cardiovascular shape. There’s a decent chance that their overall physical condition is the reason why they are at a lower risk for cardiovascular events, not just their push-up abilities. There are tons of studies out there that demonstrate that people who are in good shape tend to be at a lower risk of cardiovascular problems, so it would make sense if this is a correlational relationship, not a causational one. I can’t say for sure what the true answer is, but for now, I will continue to do exercises besides just push-ups.

What the hell is LISS and HIIT?

LISS stands for Low-Intensity, Steady-State. Steady-state means that you’re keeping up roughly the same amount of effort throughout the entire workout. The low-intensity part is supposed to mean that you aren’t pushing yourself very hard, but that part is often ignored because LISS is generally used to describe any type of steady-state cardio. The usual examples of LISS are things like hopping on the elliptical or treadmill and jogging for 45-60 minutes or going for a long bike ride or hike.

HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training, aka doing short bursts where you give it everything you’ve got and take breaks in between rounds. For instance, you might sprint for 30 seconds and then slowly walk/rest for 30 seconds. HIIT workouts are typically much shorter than LISS workouts because the HIIT work condenses your effort into a much shorter timeframe than LISS.

So which one should you do?

Both.

LISS and HIIT involve different systems in your body, so training one way does not necessarily make you better at the other. In addition, they also both offer different benefits. LISS helps to train your endurance and your body’s ability to use oxygen for exercise (aerobic), while HIIT helps to train you to be able to handle short burst of vigorous exercise and your body’s ability to perform without oxygen for short periods (anaerobic). Being good at either short bursts of exercise or long periods of exercise can make you a good athlete. Being good at both short bursts of exercise and long periods of exercise can make you a great athlete.

To give you an example, let’s look at my cousin. My cousin has dabbled in both triathlons and weight lifting, so he has a lot of experience with both short bursts of exercise and longer endurance exercise. As a result, he has become an athlete who can only be described as freakish. He can row/run/swim/bike at a pace that approaches world records during sprints while being able to maintain my all-out sprint pace for long periods when he is doing endurance training. He is also great at both lifting heavy for a few reps and lifting lighter weights for a ton of reps. He is fairly new to weight training, but has been able to make enormous progress with it because of his triathlon training, and has eclipsed a lot of the seasoned lifters he knows in less than a year.

For my workouts, I try to alternate HIIT and LISS pretty regularly. For instance, I might do 7 rounds of 30 seconds effort/30 seconds rest of HIIT on my fan bike or rower after one of my strength workouts, and then 15-20 minutes of LISS the next time where my goal is to keep my heart rate around 140-170 BPM. On my dedicated cardio days, I’ll switch between doing something like 20 rounds of 30 seconds of sprinting/30 seconds of rest for HIIT and 45-60 minutes with my heart rate around 150-160 when I do LISS. At the end of the day though, the most important thing is that you’re doing some form of cardio; the type that you do is the icing on the cake.

If you are going to do HIIT, you should check with your doctor, especially if you have a medical condition like asthma or a heart condition. HIIT is designed to be extremely taxing on your cardiovascular and respiratory systems, so these conditions can be aggravated by HIIT.

So you understand that there are a few different components of fitness. But where do you start?

Stretch every day. I have found that doing it in the morning works the best for me because my schedule is the most consistent in the morning and I usually am stiff when I get out of bed. If you are working out that day, you can either stretch in the morning, before your workout, or both, depending on how tight you are.

Eat healthy. There are probably at least 5 things that you can think of off the top of your head to improve your eating. It might be that you need to cut back on alcohol. It might be that you treat cheese like it’s own food group. It might be that you feel empty inside if you don’t have dessert every night. It could be that you don’t get enough protein or fruits and vegetables in your diet. Addressing those things can take you farther than you think. Start reading nutrition labels too and getting a sense of the nutritional makeup of different foods, especially your favorites.

Make sure that you’re getting the right amount of sleep. Shoot for around 7-9 hours.

Do some strength training. It doesn’t have to be the absolute perfect workout – start with the machines at your gym. Most of them have pictures on them that will show you how to use them. This allows you to start getting strong and putting on muscle. Ideally, you want to try and hit most of the different muscle groups. I generally use the “Push, Pull, Legs” rule for making sure that I am doing this. I do this by splitting my workouts into three groups that are roughly equal: pushing motions where you are pushing the weight away from you (bench press, shoulder press), pulling motions where you’re pulling the weight towards you (different types of rows), and exercises that work your legs (leg press, lunges). You can dedicate a workout to each group, or you can do a mix of all three groups during each workout – whichever you find works the best for you. Doing a dedicated day for each group tends to leave you more sore (especially when you do you leg day), but some people (myself included) get satisfaction from feeling extra sore. Shoot for 10-12 reps with a weight that you can do for 10-12 reps, but not many more. Do a set or two with lighter weight, and then move into your normal weight. Once you can do 12 reps consistently, increase the weight and shoot for 8-10 reps. Rinse and repeat as often as needed.

Do some cardio. It can be before your strength training, after your strength training, or on the days when you aren’t doing any strength training. Shoot for about 90-120 minutes of cardio per week, and try to rotate through different types and intensities.

This is not the most comprehensive guide to fitness. The purpose of this guide is to get you started. Keep reading and we’ll break down more info about fitness to help you continue your journey.

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