Compounding.

I had an interesting exchange with a client earlier today.  Actually, “exchange” is too polite a term; let’s call it what it was – a full-on argument.  The fundamental disagreement: We spend too much time talking about the exercises and not enough time doing them.

What my client wanted to do was to bang out exercises, full speed ahead, without having fully mastered proper form on any of them.  She felt that unless she was “feeling it”, the exercise was failing to do her any good.  What she failed to understand was not only that she would derive more benefit from performing the exercises with proper technique, but that proper technique would minimize risk of injury.

Bad form (eventually) leads to injury.  Injury means you can’t exercise, or, at best, can exercise in a limited fashion.   And exercising in a limited fashion or not exercising at all is a great method of getting diddly-squat in the way of results.

I’ve already gone on too long with this, so let me get to the point:  Exercise compounds, just like mathematics.

What do I mean by that?

Can you teach someone algebra?  I mean, just algebra?  Not if they don’t understand basic arithmetic first.  To solve (5x-7)(4x+1) = ?, you’ve got to know how to multiply and divide.  And what those funny little ciphers “5″ and “1″ mean.

When you learn math, what you’re taught at your current level builds upon what you learned at previous levels.  And as we saw in the preceding intellectual exercise, there’s no way to circumvent this process (i.e., you can’t learn calculus without prior knowledge of fractions).   In other words, math skill is compounded over time.

So is exercise.  Not only do you develop more proficiency in exercise technique the more you perform an exercise (more practice = more skill), you stand to gain more from the exercise the longer you keep at it (just ask Bill Pearl – young, and older).

What lets you ultimately realize the massive gains from compound interest are the foundational years of socking money away.

We as human beings are, in general, terrible at looking at the long-term.  We prefer the giddy pleasure from short-term gains. (This is one of the main premises of The Black Swan, BTW.  Yes, I know I’m two years behind the curve).  However, we do so at the peril of our long-term benefit.

Take Home Lessons:

1) The workout you perform today is setting the stage for the results you’ll reap later, so pay attention.

2) You can jump your workout level from 0 to 60 if you so choose; many people do.  But do so at your own risk (of injury and of short-circuiting your future gains).

3) Learn how to properly perform exercises before you ‘take it to the next level’, please.  Pretty please.