Where's The Easy Button?

I had the privilege of staying at the Four Seasons Hotel in St. Louis over the weekend as I returned home for a good friend’s wedding.  I was excited to use their incredible fitness center that included all the bells and whistles.  I had a fantastic workout and used almost every machine there, including the dumbbells.  Ok, I think I might have overdone it a little bit, but I took full advantage of their fantastic facilities while I was there.

There were about six other people working out at the same time I was there.  Unfortunately, there was a common theme.  NONE of them were putting in much effort into their workouts.  A couple of people were sort of just dogging it out on the treadmill; one guy was reading a newspaper as he slowly pedaled a recumbent bike; and one woman would do a leg extension, slowly flip through 3-4 pages in her magazine, then quickly do another one, flip pages, repeat…  That was the same woman who was yelling at her slow moving husband about why they needed to be there working out.  Another man whipped through every machine in only about 10 minutes.

I used to be guilty of this too.  I was just going through the motions and calling it a “workout”.  Not any more.  Now, I make every second of my workouts count.  Who has time to waste?  You need to break a sweat, grunt, scream, push hard, do whatever it takes to maximize your efforts.  You absolutely get out of it what you put into it.  Make it hard and make it count…go big or stay home.  It’s brutal, but honest!  There is no easy button in the gym.  What will be easy is looking at your results in the mirror.