Why Running Is Pretty Much Useless

‘Never skip a workout’

That’s bullet no.2 in my brilliant ‘Real prepper checklist’.

Now does this relate to bullet no. 1 about always staying in supreme physcial shape? Yes. Is it the same thing? Absolutely not. Because you actually can stay in supreme physical shape even by skipping workouts. However, that applies to people who already have been working out consistently and eating healthy for years. If you’re just starting out, then you really need to focus on lifting that weight or running those miles every single day.

In fact, let’s diverge a little bit from the original topic.

There’s a reason I say workout and not training session or whatever you’d like to call it.

When I think of a workout I think about going to the gym where you actually lift weights up and down until fatigue gets you. So that you actually work on your strength. Now, if your plans are to climb Mount Everest, cross the North Pole or some other extreme outdoors venture, it probably won’t hurt to run a little either.

But in general I’ve found (and this is strictly based on my opinion) that running doesn’t help you much.

Yes, you’ll get better conditioning and stamina. You might endure longer than someone who hasn’t been running at all. But you risk wearing your joints down, especially in your knees. And with respect to body mass, if you want to lose fat and gain muscle, running isn’t going to help you a lot. You need to run for many hours to even start losing significant amounts of fat. And even then, you’ll become scrawny and without any particular muscle mass.

I’m not saying you should work out to look like Arnold or some other extreme bodybuilder.

I’m just asserting that you actually need muscle mass to stay healthy. And the best way to lose fat and build muscle fairly fast is to do strength exercising.

Of course you need to do the proper exercises. I don’t want to go into details about that here because everyone and their mother is an expert on working out. But I’ve found that focusing on compound exercises such as squats, deadlifts, burpees and bench press have helped me a lot. You might have a different opinion though.

Anyway….

If you want to remain in supreme physical shape, you cannot skip a workout. If you skip one workout, then you want to skip another one and before you know it, a whole week has gone by where you simply ‘didn’t feel like working out’ at all.

Trust me, I’ve gone down that road.

If you show up every day and you give it all you’ve got, you *will* get stronger, pretty quickly too.

Plus it helps you mentally.

Imagine when you’re dealing with a crisis and you just want to lay down and relax and let things play out the way you want them to do.

You have a power outage. And you need to actually go outside and dig a hole in your backyard even though it’s freezing cold to locate the spot where the elecriticty has stopped running.

Yes, I’m aware that’s probably illegal to do in most places. Because the cable company has to do it. But let’s just assume that you had to do it.

It’s so cold outside your spit turns into ice crystals. Your breath almost condences into snow.

The shaft on the shovel is so cold you dare not touch it.

But you have to do it.

And you’re able to do it as well. You actually manage to complete this daunting task fairly quickly because you’ve been working out every single day for the past year. Even on those days where your body feels sore and you’re aching here and there.

You’re used to the pain.

The resistance.

The feeling of defeat. But you’ve overcome that feeling by actually working out because you thought ‘I’m not going to be the one who’s backing down just because it’s uncomfortable.’

So you actually dig the hole.

Because you have the mental fortitude to do so.