Summer Fitness Advice: Mark's 6 Basic Principles
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Photo by Bruno Scramgnon
By: Mark Sisson
No doubt, summer arrives with its own rhythm, its own demands, and its own kind of freedom. Summer is an invitation to revitalize, rejuvenate, and redefine your fitness routine. As the mercury soars, the conventional gym walls might feel more like a prison cell than ever before. So, how about we shake things up a bit? Let’s break away from the conventional and immerse ourselves in a summer fitness experience like no other. Brace yourself for an exhilarating journey to the best shape of your life.
Here are my 6 basic principles for proper summer fitness.
Train Outside
You can certainly train in the gym during summer. I do a lot of my training in the gym, indoors, throughout all seasons. But gym training isn’t unique to summer. Plus, it’s the default option for most people. I’m trying to get you to try something you haven’t tried before, to train in a way you can’t always train.
Sure, if it’s 100 degrees out, you might want to do the gym. You might want to get some shade. But summer affords you the opportunity to train outside in most locales.
Train barefoot in your background or a park. If you have gym equipment, simply take it outside and do what you normally do in the garage, only on the grass or dirt.
Train in the forest. Climb trees, lift logs, throw boulders.
Train at the beach or at the lake or river. Bring a kettlebell out there and get to work.
Focus on Fun
The key to great summer fitness? Making it not just about the sweat and effort, but about the sheer joy of movement, the exhilaration of performance. Seeking healthy pleasure is a cornerstone of being human and thriving as a human. Pleasure is how our brain reward systems get us to do things that are good for us. Exercise is no different. If you make training fun, you actually look forward to it. You enjoy it in the moment, not just when it’s over.
And just because it’s fun doesn’t mean you’re not going to be working hard or getting a great training effect from it. It means the workout is intrinsically valuable in the moment, and therefore more sustainable.
The picture of this begins in your backyard, under the bright summer sun. In your hands, a kettlebell, that deceivingly simple yet incredibly effective piece of equipment. You swing it, lift it, press it, transforming each movement into an opportunity to build muscle, endurance, and strength. Each swing is met with a cool breeze, each lift underlined by the sun’s rays bestowing upon you a golden glow and a healthy dose of Vitamin D.
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