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  • Stop Exercising, Start Training!

    More Than Just A Slogan

    Nike has long been the industry leader when it comes to using compelling and motivational advertising – while applying simple slogans and mantras – to promote their athletic apparel. In 1988, they coined one of the most famous corporate slogans of all time: “Just Do it”. Effectively turning the psychology of hesitation and inaction, whether in sport or life, on it’s head.

    Now in 2017, they have coined a new one, specifically for their Nike Training line: “Stop Exercising, Start Training”. Whether this new slogan ever gains the household notoriety of their original signature slogan remains to be seen, but it definitely has some real substance.

    One of the single most important facets of any training regimen is goal setting. Whether you are getting off the couch and into a gym for the first time, or preparing for your third Olympic games, goal setting is imperative to achieve and maintain results. It’s a cycle that never ends.

    I firmly believe all human beings are athletes innately. Naturally, we should all work out the same way athletes do. Athletes don’t exercise. Athletes train. They set goals – short, medium and long term. They make progressions and regressions. They think and strategize ways to help facilitate their goals constantly. They eat and hydrate to compliment their goals. They rest and sleep to compliment their goals. They re-assess and adjust their goals. Most importantly, they teach their bodies to perform, react, and inevitably look they way they want them to.

    Change Your Mindset

    For the sedentary individual, EXERCISE is often seen as a chore. It’s a terrible torture session one must endure in order to achieve the physical / health goals of fitness. It’s the 2 or 3 hours of the week they dread, only to return to – and find solace in – their existing lifestyle. They focus on the physical and mental discomfort, which the body experiences often in the early stages of “exercise”. For a while this is tolerated, but this mentality of negativity towards physical stresses and challenge ultimately leads to quitting.

    Athletes, on the other hand, look at their workouts or TRAINING sessions, entirely different. Do they absolutely love every minute of them? No. They find value, reward, and achievement in every step, which in turn results in appreciation, satisfaction, and empowerment in each moment and enjoyment of the PROCESS. In the end, this is far more effective than pure “enjoyment”, and results in long-term maintenance of a “training” lifestyle.

    You don’t have to be Penny Oleksiak, or as Nike once famously stated, “Like Mike” in reference to Jordan, but you can certainly think and train like them on your own level. This shift in mentality, goal setting, and progress will ultimately prove much more likely to forge a lifelong healthy and active lifestyle.

    So STOP EXERCISING. And START TRAINING!

    -Thomas Heffernan
    Owner / Head Trainer
    Primal Gym

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