What do recreational activities and relative strength have in common?

I fully realized some of you reading this don't have the goal of losing weight.  Others of you do, some of you want to get strong.  Others just want to age gracefully, I’ve got news for you, all the recreational activities you want to do, they all require relative strength to be enjoyable.  

What is relative strength? It's all about how strong you are based on your bodyweight.  Now why does this matter when it comes to activities like hiking, biking, running, etc?  The stronger you are the more enjoyable those activities are going to be!  

Ask yourself a question, think about the people that love to hike, I mean REALLY love it, like “drop me in the woods and pick me up in 3 weeks” love it.  What do they normally have in common? They are slimmer and more often in fantastic shape.  No activity allows you to enjoy it to its fullest when you spend 50% of the time stopping to gulp air.  

Now...does that mean you have to be slimmer to be more relatively strong? Nope BUT it is the easier way.  If Im standing next to someone 40 lbs lighter than me that can lift the same amount of weight as me, or its at least close...guess who’s going to be sucking wind after 20 minutes...yup it's me!  

Think about it this way, if I gave you a 40 lb dumbbell and asked you to do a step-up on the bench, how tired are you going to be after 10 reps? Pretty beat right!  Now I take the weight away and ask you to do it again? Sounds like it would be quite a bit easier right!  I mean it's the same distance, same speed, same amount of times, but because there's less weight to move it's so much easier!

Want to make the most out of your recreational activities?  Get strong relatively, which means either A.) lose some weight, or B.) you’ve got to gain some serious strength.  Either way you slice it the only way it gets more enjoyable is by taking one of those two paths!

Coach Adam