What if? If they did, you'd need to change your approach. Here's why.
If you follow football on some level, 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 initial kickoff to the final horn knows that it requires more than a few bathroom breaks as well as a similar number of visits to the refrigerator and, thus, much more than an hour to watch from start to finish. 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? Take a guess.
The answer is eleven minutes! Yup. It's true. On average, actual playing time adds up to eleven minutes. A typical play lasts just four seconds. Then there are 75 minutes of advertisements (this number has been creeping up lately, right?), 67 minutes of players just standing around or untangling from a pile up or getting off the turf or huddling up or lining up for the next play, and 17 minutes of replays. Add in penalties and way-too-long officials' reviews. And injury timeouts, too. Then you can see how the television networks have become wizards in the way they hold our attention. Think about it - the game telecast is 174 minutes long and there are just eleven minutes of actual game action.
Here's what this is all about... I spend a lot of time in the gym as a personal fitness coach, and I see too many individuals replicating NFL broadcasts. They may do a set of bench presses (lasting maybe 5 or 10 seconds) and then sit up on the bench or machine to scroll through their phones for the next 5 or 10 minutes. Leg extension machines are popular places to park asses as well. Really, I could name (and so could you) plenty of places in a gym where people lounge under the guise of recovery. 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. So, think about it...5 or 10 seconds of relative exertion followed by 5 or 10 minutes of rest.
You're thinking that they're thinking..."So I'm recovering for the next set. What's wrong with that?" A lot. Even if recovery is what's in play here - most of the time it's really not - 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. Even better, they can implement a push-pull paradigm and move from one exercise to another while working different body parts that work together. Instead, too many are wasting valuable time in the gym doing...nothing. And then they walk out of it thinking they just put in an hour workout. In reality, it was more like an 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 task and on time. If you do, you'll feel the benefits of compound interest.
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