There Is A Method to the Madness

Holiday Fitness Without The All-Or-Nothing Trap

• Rob Maxwell, M.A.

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Welcome to There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell, and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Program, and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really worked and most importantly why things work. Hence the name, there is a method to the magnet. Before I get started today, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gilding Group Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. Hello, everybody. Coach Rob here to talk about some fitness. It is Sunday mid-morning for me. Not quite sure when you're going to listen to this, but hopefully you're having a good day. Hopefully you have taken advantage of the many, many benefits of exercise or you are going to at some point today. Before I get started with the main theme today, I want to do a little bit of uh, you know, house cleaning here. So hopefully most of you, if not all of you, have purchased the new book. I really like it. I think it's got a great message in there for what the problem is as far as people not getting in all their activity that they should get if they want to reap the benefits, and then what some solutions are. But um, reading through it as I'm reading through my copies myself, I'm finding some typos and some errors, and it really frustrates me because you know, we pay good money for the editing services, and uh, you know, there are things that always tend to happen when we do books. So, you know, ultimately the responsibility lies with me because I didn't see it, but at the same time, professional editors are supposed to catch these things. So if you catch any of them, just be aware that we're aware and hopefully you see the uh forest through the trees, so to say. The one that is frustrating, though, is with the Hippocratic Oath, and they called it the uh Socrates. I don't know if they said Socratic Oath, but mentioned Socrates, it's Hippocrates, and I know this very well. Again, who knows how that happened. But anyway, forgive me on that, and uh let's uh move forward. So I want to talk a little bit. I had a question about the holidays and what people should do, what this person should do through the holidays with their physical fitness, and uh, I think that's very apropos, of course. This is uh the last day of November that I'm recording this, and you will hear this either today or tomorrow. So it'll be going into December. Um, look, this is what tends to happen every year. People kind of like count the holidays as Thanksgiving or probably the day before Thanksgiving, all the way through the first Monday of the new year. That is a long time to be on break, right? So that's like the very last week of November into the very first week of January, that a lot of people just kind of like put on hold the whole time regarding their health and fitness. And um I don't think that's a good idea at all. I talked about last time and we put out some emails about we don't want to be fanatical, like I don't think that's good anyway. We don't want to say don't have any of the you know fatty stuff like the gravy or the mashed potatoes with gravy on Thanksgiving. Like, I I don't think that's a great way to go through life. I think there is a uh you know a happy medium. And as I said in the last podcast, and I say pretty much often, we just need to be good 80% of the 80% good 80% of the time. And I think if we're mostly good, I mean, we're gonna come out of everything okay. Now, the people that tend to have a lot of trouble are those people that can't turn off that black or white thinking through the holidays. You know, they either go one extreme or the other. Now, I don't see too many people going through the extreme of dieting, you know, even though I really don't like that word. It's really more about a healthy lifestyle. But you don't see too many people going to the far extreme that one direction of dieting the whole way through. But what you do see is people basically saying to hell with it and doing everything they want to do, and then say, you know what? Come January 1st, I'm gonna fix this. So for now, I'm just gonna do what I want to do. And that is very, very common. And it may not be that extreme with you, but there might be a level of it. And the bottom line is it's just not necessary. We don't have to throw everything out and then pick it up come the first week of January. I mean, for one thing, your muscles begin to atrophy after 96 hours. That's four days, they begin to atrophy. So if you're like throwing everything out muscle-wise, like, well, I'll pick up my strength training come January, but in December it's going to be hit and miss because of the holidays. That's not a good idea for that reason. Does that mean you can't pick it up and start to get benefits again? Of course you can, but you don't really have to take that step back to do that. You can maybe not be as uh, you know, frequent with your strength training sessions, maybe. I don't even see that that's really necessary. I mean, if we're strength training and doing our cardio correctly, it's not really going to take up that much time. But like, yes, you can pick it back up, but why would you want to have to pick it up? Like, why can't you just maintain some semblance of it through the holidays? I mean, the answer is you can. You're just gonna have to be motivated to do so. So, one thing to keep in mind is that you will begin to atrophy after 96 hours. So that doesn't mean your muscles go away in 96 hours. That means that the process begins. So, why would you want to take unnecessary time off? I mean, the the only reason could be because number one, it's not a big enough priority for you. Or number two, you think you have to do so much to maintain it. And that's gonna be the meat and the potatoes of this podcast. I want to really dispel those myths. I want to get rid of them. All right. The other thing we don't want to really do either is why would you want to say, quit doing your cardio? Why would you want to stop over the holidays and say, again, just like strength training, well, I don't really have the time, or I'm gonna really go at this full swing come January 3rd or 4th, you know, whatever it is this year that that Monday lands on. I haven't looked that head in ahead in the calendar yet. That's probably a good thing. But why would you want to do that when you don't have to do that? You don't want to always go one step forward, two steps back, because that's what that would be. Again, that the the cardiovascular muscles, such as your heart itself, it even begins to atrophy a little bit. We do start to see some deconditioning occur in just a week, let alone a month. I mean, and it's just unnecessary. Sometimes it is necessary. You get injured, um, you have to take a physical break. I mean, sometimes it's necessary, but the holidays really isn't necessary to just totally make your exercise routine go in the backseat. It's just like, why would you want to do that? And then finally, why would you want to just throw out all the work you've done on your weight maintenance and just eat however you want for basically five weeks? I mean, it doesn't have to be like that, you know? It's just why would you want to put on the five or six pounds? I mean, a lot of times people overrate how much they put on, but you know, maybe you can put on a few pounds. Why would you want to do that when it's just not necessary if you are trying to lose weight 12 months out of the year, or I should say 11 months out of the year, why would you want to throw it all out for one month? And the so it comes down to two real answers, right? Number one is you're not motivated enough. You don't care. Um, and if that's the case, I mean, what can I say? I mean, I learned in my psychology studies in my undergrad, you know, you can't motivate anybody else, meaning I can't motivate you. You're gonna have to motivate yourself. All we can do is really teach the facts, and then someone will pick it up where they think they need to. But that's all really I can do. So I can't motivate the unmotivatable. That's just impossible. But I can give everybody the knowledge that's out there, the knowledge I have. And so that's could that's the second reason if it's not motivation. It's you don't know better. So there's a level of ignorance. You think that you have to do so much to maintain or so much to make progress. And that's not true any months of the year, let alone during the holidays. Like that's a big myth. More is not better. I don't know why. Well, I kind of do. Marketing and all that, you know, is why people believe you have to do so much. Or, you know, oftentimes the role models that you see for fitness oftentimes are the people that are thin and they seem to be doing so much all of the time. But what I want you to keep an open mind to is you might be seeing more of a correlation versus a causality, meaning that, you know, they may do a lot of work. They may like run six miles a day. You might see that. And, you know, they're thin and they're fit, but that might be like the correlation. Like that they might be thin and fit because they're genetically predisposed to that. There's a combination of genetics and hard work and weight maintenance. Like, you don't know. So oftentimes that is sort of the stereotype we have that this person is doing so much work. And the reality is this we get more fit, we increase our fitness via intensity versus volume. We know that we all need a certain amount of reps per se, but it's not as much as you think. And when you are in a situation where you feel like you don't have enough time, and I think that happens with the holidays. So look, I'm not busting on anybody, I get it. It gets very stressful. We get family coming in, we are entertaining, or we're being entertained, or we are traveling. All these things are going on where the world is grabbing our attention. I get it. But what I'm telling you is if you just took a little time each day to just make sure you're getting in some form of exercise. You will thank yourself come that first week of January. You won't be starting over. If you just exercise for 10 minutes a day, or even five, if it was like the last resort, you are going to get the benefits. Too many times people say, I hear it all the time. Well, if I can't do this much, why bother? Here's something pretty uh similar to this. So, you know, social media when it comes to physical fitness is pretty horrid. Like it's bad. It's just like, I think if I was trying to get in shape and I didn't know better, I'd be so freaking confused, or I'd be irritated with people, you know. And so I saw somebody on um, I think it was Threads, and they made a comment. They were a runner and they were part of a running group or something. And the person said, you know, I'm at that point where if I can't do a 10K, which is 6.2 miles, then I don't know why I even bother to run. And I and I was, I read this and there's all these comments, yeah, me too, you know, all this stuff. And I just kept scrolling, of course. But in my mind, I'm thinking, you know, this is such a problem to think that you have to run a 10K when you run. And I'm also thinking to myself, in sort of this judgmental way, it's like, oh yeah, why don't you come out and do like a really hard mile? Like, let's push you for five to seven minutes, whatever their capabilities are, and let's see if they really feel that way. Because the bottom line is we get more fit from intensity, not duration. I hate to break it to everybody, but people that do really, really, really long workouts all the time, it's usually there's some disordered eating patterns in there, like they're doing it to burn too many calories or or whatever. Sometimes they're training for long distance endurance events. So, you know, that's fine, whatever. But the bottom line is we get more fit from intensity, not duration. A hard 10-minute run. I'm just using running as the example. You could say swim, you could say bike, you could say whatever you want. But a hard 10-minute run is gonna do more for your cardiorespiratory system, more for your slow twitch muscle fibers, more for your endocrine system than a moderate 30-minute run ever will. So, yes, we need to accumulate a certain amount of volume in the week, but we don't have to do nearly as much as we think. I have a client now who uh has really gravitated towards the zero, zero days. Like she really gets that. Let's have no zero days. And the other day I texted, I said, Hey, go out and get a mile in. And they check, they texted back. They said, Check, I did it. It's like, that's so great. Like if you'll just go out and walk a mile, if you'll do 20 push-ups or 20 squats, it doesn't have to be a lot. You just really, I believe, want to get in the habit of doing some form of exercise every day. Just look at your schedule in the morning through the holidays and say, you know what? Today's a horrid day. I have to go shopping for the meal. I've got so-and-so coming over. I've got, you know, I have 15 minutes. It's like, okay, to do a five-minute walk jog, do as many squats as you can and as many push-ups as you can, call it a day. I mean, that is gonna benefit you. Too often we get locked into the thinking of if I don't do this, what's the point? And I'm telling you right now that that is the false mindset. Instead, tell yourself you're gonna do something positive towards your physical fitness today. Something positive. My piano teacher, who who teaches me remotely, she knows that we're all guilty of it, no matter what the discipline is. In this case, it's music. And I'll say, Oh, Natalie, you know, when am I gonna have the time? You know, I'll do the same thing. Actually, I don't complain like that. But she just reminds me, she says, Rob, 10 minutes a day at the piano, 10 minutes will do you so much more good than if you sit down and try to do a marathon one day and then don't play with the keys for a whole week. She's so right. And when I sit down for the 10 minutes, I enjoy it, I like it, I often spend more time doing it. All right. So this holiday season, every day, do something, one thing positive towards your physical fitness. And I promise you that the new you in 2026 will thank you. Thanks everybody for listening to today's show. I want to ask you to please hit automatic download from wherever you get your podcast from. It really helps me and it really helps the show. Now I'd like to take a second to thank our sponsors. Without them, we would not be able to have the podcast. First overhead door of Daytona Beach. They are the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product and the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk. They are great people. If you have any garage door needs, please give them a call. 386-222-3165. Now I'm very, very happy and excited to announce we have a new sponsor, Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer. Each container has 40 grams of protein. And what's really cool about this is it's very portable. You can throw the tiny little containers into a suitcase, take it wherever you go. Now you don't have to worry about spilling. And you know what? It tastes really, really good. Just open up the cap, suck down the protein. It's that easy. If you want to try it out, you can check it out at my website, fit to themax.net, and click on Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer, or you can go directly to their website at www.prochargeprotein.com.

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Rob Maxwell

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