Bit of an interesting conversation struck up between myself and a few clients just recently. It basically started by being asked ‘If you were to train every day…’ To which I interrupted and said ‘I do train every day’. The look of confusion and a reply of ‘Oh’, said it all really.

So where do we draw the line between training and exercise, and what separates it from being just calorie expenditure? One thing is for sure, THEY ALL BURN CALORIES.

In my view training is structured, and is smart goal orientated. The very fact that a smart goal is involved makes this very specific to a particular outcome. In Harry’s recent experience it could be from couch to IRONMAN in 6 months, or it could be body composition, weight loss or management for something coming up in the calendar such as a family holiday or a wedding. Exercise is simply something active whether planned or unplanned, which leads to calorie expenditure just by virtue of being it active, calorie expenditure is just the outcome of even the most basic of movements.

Look at it this way, if you’re walking your dog, are you training, or are you just fulfilling a role of being a responsible dog owner and facilitating the dogs exercise and wellbeing, or are you taking care of your own and being smart with your time? Calorie expenditure is something that goes off around the clock regardless of your activity levels the only difference is that it just speeds up or slows down with activity but it never stops. The whole notion of a kickstart must therefore be rubbish in its self? The notion of a ‘Kick Start’ however is good for us humans. Starting a fresh is so engrained with how we get on as humans it seems a necessary thing to do. We love the whole ‘turning the page’ and ‘starting a fresh’. I wasn’t being as active as I’d have liked and felt I needed a kickstart. I’m just using this as a bit of a kickstart. We hear ya.

The interesting thing is on the face of this there’s no right and wrong. It only gets complicated when two people who have opposing views cross each others paths and a particular exercise is one individuals training, and the other individuals exercise. Scientifically as long as there’s a progressive overload the body will become more resilient, and if the body becomes more resilient we would have to assume that an individuals health and wellbeing were on the rise and we’d also assume that there would be more training benefit if it wad just exercise, than if it wasn’t there at all.

If you’re out for the calorie burn, then anything will do even where weight management is concerned. In this eventuality the things you have to manage are your activity, your calorie intake and that is pretty much it. If you want to gain weight (and yes, it does come along more often than you might think) its simple, eat more calories than you use, if you want to lose weight, use more calories than you consume. Things get a little more complex where performance goals are concerned, and fuelling strategies are thrown into the mix due to the relationships of food groups and their roles with in the body, when to eat them, when to avoid etc.

We’re always told of how regular exercise can boost our health and wellbeing, but then on the same page we’re always being sold the next convenient hack or tech that helps us save time but, do we actually stop to think about the impacts this may have on our activity? The reason I say this is if you have a big kitchen and enjoy cooking or baking, those laps around the kitchen soon add up, all of the ups and downs into cupboards get the joints moving and actually challenge your range of motion. Then the top pudding tray tries to make a run for it so you have to use a little bit of hand eye coordination, and those core stabilisers you never knew you had to keep the culinary Jenga pile alive!

We’re living through an energy crisis at the moment supposedly and as a result its no surprise that people are switching to lower cost alternative cooking facilities such as ‘air fryers’ or ‘multi ovens’ that do everything in one go, including reducing even the most basic of activity levels. All those laps, EVEN IF they were ‘just expenditure’ are now gone. If you cook X times per week and do X laps each meal, that’s an even bigger X amount of calories you don’t use anymore. I saw two kids scooting along on eScooters the other day, and I thought to myself ‘they’re just blazing about doing what kids do, just like we did’. But then it occurred that actually, we didn’t have eScooters or eBikes, or eBooks (that might I add turn their own pages because they know where you’re looking) and tablet technology where you can store unlimited games, I had to make countless trips to the games console and switch the cartridge (SNES & Master System Owners will know). I had plenty of scooters and bikes, the only electricity I used was when I’d cut one in half to fix another (if you’re reading this Mother, it was a hand saw, honest!)

You wanna play Sonic? That’s 10 calories. Oh, you don’t want Sonic now you want Micro Machines? Another 10 calories. now you can just swipe, fling it out, select the next all without so much as moving a significant portion of your body. Don’t worry though its good for your ‘fine motor skills’… You know what else is good for your fine motor skills? Balancing the pudding tray on a moving surface area that is smaller than required and trying to balance it across the kitchen! All those game swaps add up, just like the laps round the kitchen, just like the pedal strokes or individual ‘scoots’ on a bike or a scooter, they might not be training or exercise, but they burn calories (or at least used to), and substantially more than all of this newfangled time saving stuff digitalisation has brought along with it. I always find myself struck by the same question when people say ‘I don’t have time’, yet they have all of the time saving technology… What on earth must they be doing with their time?

There’s nothing wrong with just being active, or ‘just burning calories’. In fact, your body loves to do it, its what makes it stronger and more resilient and allows you to enjoy the things you want to enjoy, as opposed to endure them when they come around. It’s what reduces stress levels and improves immune function. It helps regulate hormones which help with sleep and mood patterns, and that’s to name a few.

If ‘just burning calories’ can do all that, imagine how you might feel if you just exercised more, dragged that wanky old mountain bike out of the shed (you’ve all got one, don’t lie), dust off the saddle and bars and get down the road just for enjoyments sake once in a while! Imagine how much more accomplished you’d feel if you actually paused for a second, allowed yourself some time for you and said, ‘Ya know what, I’m gonna do this’.

I know what you’re all thinking. It’s easy to say. Agreeably it is easy to say, but in starting a journey is the most difficult bit, or committing to start. It gets easier as you make progress because you naturally start to make choices that support your goal, as opposed to making choices that constantly sabotage them. Once you see a little bit of progress, and what little you have given up just to start, you start to want more of the same and those difficult choices that held you back for so long get easier to make, and easier to make in your favour!

My own philosophy is very simple. I don’t like to think I train for anything ‘specifically’. Yes, I do endurance events but I enjoy the process. I like the state of readiness my own training gives me. I’m always in a position to do the things that might come my way, whether its lifting and shifting stuff, helping someone in their garden or garage you name it. A generally high activity level allows you to be able to do stuff like that and continue with your own day. If you’re less accustomed to that, It may be a workout in itself, and that’s also fine.

Fancy an IRONMAN?’ ‘Ooo, I always fancy an IRONMAN, when are you thinking?’ ‘Tomorrow?’… Most people would say ‘erm, I’m busy, hair appointment’ but I’m pretty sure I would get round, because I always want to be fit to do an IRONMAN. ‘Could do with a lift with this if you have a minute?’ ‘No problem’, and that to me is the real win in life.

Training should be challenging, and have its difficulties because without it, we simply wouldn’t develop. We wouldn’t keep digging deeper for more of what’s allowing us to do what we do, if we can’t muster up enough to physically do it, how can we even begin to think about enjoying it? Whether its to make a weight in a time, or be able to cover a distance in a certain time is irrelevant, without the challenge, there will be no change and the change is supposedly the whole reason we made the choice in the first place!

When I say I train every day, it may not look that way to you because you have your own ideas of what training looks like, and if someone else (as I pointed out earlier) doesn’t look like your idea of training, it won’t be. I have easy and hard days. I even have the odd day off, and yes, that is still training. A day off helps reduce levels of fatigue and allows for greater recovery, but I tend to only do this if I feel it absolutely necessary, otherwise I just take it a little easier in a particular component of my training, it might be a slower run, or a flatter cycle ride, or a mobility session but they all keep me healthy, they all bring something to the wellbeing table, and they all burn more calories than moaning about ailments and why you can’t excuses.

Whether you’re in training or want to be, or just generally keeping yourself active with exercise, feel free to introduce a little more physical hardship into your lives and burn more calories in the background.

Now get off your kids eScooter and start baking me brownies!