Do Your Gym Workouts Take On the Look of an NFL Game?
Do your gym workouts take on the look of an NFL game? If they do, you need to change your approach. Here's why.
You likely know that an NFL contest consists of four 15-minute quarters, meaning that the game is theoretically an hour long. But anyone who has watched a game from the first kickoff to the final horn knows that it requires at least a few bathroom breaks (and a similar number of visits to the refrigerator) and, thus, much more than an hour to consume. Actually, a standard televised broadcast lasts 174 minutes - or 2.9 hours. So, of those 174, how many minutes are players actually in motion playing the game - running, blocking, tackling, throwing, kicking, catching?
Would you believe just eleven minutes? It's true. On average, actual playing time adds up to eleven minutes. A typical play lasts four seconds. Then there are 75 minutes of advertisements (those seemingly endless commercials), 67 minutes of players just standing around or getting up off the turf or huddling up or lining up, and 17 minutes of replays. The television networks have become wizards in the way they hold the audience's attention. Think about it - the game telecast is 174 minutes long and there are just eleven minutes of actual game action.
Well, I spend a lot of time in the gym as a personal fitness coach, and I see too many individuals replicating NFL broadcasts. They do a set of bench presses (lasting maybe 10 seconds) and then sit up on the bench to scroll through their phones for the next five minutes. Leg extension machines are popular places to plop down as well. Or they may stroll leisurely over to the water fountain and decide to catch a glimpse of whatever is playing on the TV monitor while on their way.
You might be thinking..."so they're recovering before their next set. What's wrong with that?" A lot. Even if recovery is what's in play here - and most of the time it's really not, given how much (little) effort was put into the previous set, they can get up and walk briskly around or do a set of a farmer's carry or a set of planks in between sets. Instead, too many are wasting valuable time in the gym doing...nothing. And then they walk out it of thinking they just put in an hour workout. In reality, it was more like a 11-minute session...kind of like an NFL game.
So, you know what you could do in 2.9 hours of watching football? You could watch all of the games played in the NFL in one week - just actual playing time. Think about it. What would a week's worth of your workouts look like when condensed into actual movement?
Make the most of your time in the gym by working out most of the time you're there. Go in with a game plan and commit to executing it...on time.