The Best Exercise There Is, Hands Down

Throw
reality out the window for a second and entertain a hypothetical.
Imagine you can only do one exercise for the rest of your life. If you
had to choose a single exercise to do for the rest of your life, right
here today, what would it be? It’s a popular question with a divergent
set of answers depending on who’s being asked, and for the most part I
see where everyone’s coming from.

If you ask the AARP, it’s the plank,
which is easy on the joints, involves every body part, strengthens the
core which can help prevent falls, is very safe for seniors (the
intended audience of AARP), and you can do them anywhere without
equipment. I have no fault with the plank.

If you ask the NY Times to ask various experts, it’s the squat, or maybe the burpee, or maybe sprinting
uphill. These are all exercises that stress the entire body, that can
be performed with high intensity to elicit the highest possible training
effect in the least amount of time. You could do a lot worse than
squatting, doing burpees, or sprinting.

If you were to ask Mark Rippetoe, I’d imagine you’d hear “the low-bar
back squat” because it supposedly elicits the greatest hormonal
response, builds oft-neglected posterior chain strength, makes your
entire body stronger, and simply “makes a man outta ya.”

If you ask Rich Froning (top CrossFit athlete), it’s the barbell thruster, a fairly simple to learn “two in one” exercise combining a squat with an overhead press.

If you ask Charles Poliquin, it’s the snatch grip deadlift done on a platform, which increases the range of motion over the regular deadlift and builds overall strength and size better than any other exercise he’s seen.

Those are good candidates. A person could get and stay very strong,
fit, fast, and healthy doing any one of those exercises for perpetuity,
even to the exclusion of all others. But a thruster isn’t the best
exercise there is, hands down. Nor are squats (of any kind), deadlifts
(of any kind), or planks. Sprints are cool, but they aren’t the best.

The single best exercise there is, hands down, is the one you’ll do.

If I were giving a talk, this is where I’d pause until the
eye-rolling, scoffing, and guffawing stopped. Go on, I know you’re
thinking it. “The best exercise is the one you’ll stick with!” is a
cheesy, cliche answer that you’ve heard a thousand times before.

But it’s true. By the most objective definition, the most effective
exercise is the one you’ll do. Because heavy squats are fantastic for
strength, unless you don’t do them. Because sprinting makes you lean and
fast, unless you’re not sprinting. The same is true for everything. It only works if you do it.

One reason is consistency: adherence begets success. You don’t get
stronger or fitter or leaner because of a single workout. You get
stronger or fitter or leaner because of the cumulative effect of many,
many workouts done on a consistent basis. Search the literature
for research on exercise adherence and you won’t find much about the
“benefits of exercise adherence” because the benefits are accepted as
basic law. They’re implicit. You will instead find dozens of studies
that seek to figure out the best way to promote adherence in various
populations, because adherence is the most important factor in an
exercise program’s effectiveness.

The key is figuring out which exercise you’ll actually do. And I
don’t need scientific references for the notion that you’re more likely
to do a physical activity that you actually enjoy doing. It’s a
fundamental law of nature.

To me, the reason doing something you like is the best exercise isn’t
only because it’ll promote consistency in your workouts. It’s also
because doing things that you legitimately enjoy doing benefit you in
other ways. This is called voluntary exercise – physical activity in
which you willingly and readily engage. Certain animal studies confirm
that voluntary exercise is more beneficial than forced exercise:

In mice with colitis, forced treadmill running exacerbates intestinal inflammation enough to kill the mice; voluntary running attenuates it and keeps them alive.
In a rodent model of Alzheimer’s disease, voluntary exercise was superior to forced exercise at reducing plaque deposition and memory impairment.

While some research
has found forced exercise to be more beneficial in certain conditions
like Parkinson’s disease, that’s probably because those conditions are
inhibiting or preventing any meaningful amount of voluntary exercise. A
mouse with Parkinson’s disease isn’t going to use the treadmill much at
all unless you force him to. He needs forced exercise because
voluntary exercise isn’t good enough due to his condition. In healthy
people, though, without physiological impairments that directly impede
the initiation of voluntary movement, doing exercise that you
legitimately enjoy doing will be more beneficial.

Consequently, what many people do “voluntarily” for exercise looks
pretty forced to me. Forcing a hamster to run on its wheel for a couple
hours by using the threat of electric zaps isn’t so different from
willing yourself to the gym, the influence of those break room donuts on your waistline hanging over your head.
Most animals (and certainly not lab rats) can’t and won’t perform
unpleasant tasks unless they absolutely have to; they won’t decide to do
them because “it’s good for them.” Humans however can act as
authoritative enforcers looming over their meat bodies, directly
overriding the natural inclinations for the “greater good” of the
organism.

When you’re summoning the willpower to grimace your way through a
miserable workout routine, you’re not doing “voluntary exercise.”

When you dread your workout and feel physically ill at the prospect of going to the gym, you’re not doing voluntary exercise.

When you either love what you’re doing or feel a powerful calling to
it – even if it’s physically grueling and not exactly “pleasurable” –
you are doing voluntary exercise and the benefits will likely be greater
than if the reverse were true.

I submit my non-peer reviewed N=1 experiment: when I started doing what I actually enjoyed, like playing Ultimate, going on hikes, stand-up paddling, running the occasional sprint, and lifting weights for about an hour a week, my health, fitness, strength, and body composition
improved immensely. This jibes with the current research showing
that finding an activity you enjoy doing and doing it consistently
likely promotes adherence to other forms of general physical activity, too.

There’s just something about fully committing to an activity with
every fiber of your being that elevates it above other activities and
even makes it more effective.

You see this in the Olympic weight lifter that lives and bleeds for
the sport, who’s really only at home and at peace with a cloud of gym
chalk dust swirling around his head. You see it in the dancer making the
immaterial material, the basketball player pulling off impossible moves
even she didn’t see coming to weave through the lane, and the cyclist
reaching the summit just as the sun comes up. You see it in the
bodybuilder who can trigger and engage specific muscle fibers by angling
the weights a little differently and who likens the post-workout pump
to really good sex. And you see it in the elderly but sprightly woman you see walking her elderly but sprightly dog every morning, noon, and night like clockwork by your house.

Would the cyclist be better off in a spin class doing intervals set to Lady Gaga songs (that happens, right?)?

Should the bodybuilder lay off the isolation exercises and focus on “real strength”?

Would I be better off doing CrossFit instead of playing Ultimate on the weekend?

No. These are people doing their thing. These are people who have chosen wisely, who’ve found it. And it doesn’t matter what it looks like, or what it involves, as long as you’re doing the thing. Even if, according to gym lore or the latest research, the exercise isn’t quite as “effective” as another one.

Of course, this is a hypothetical. A thought experiment to help you
take stock of your fitness life. Are you currently mired in an
involuntary workout routine that you read about on a legitimate training
blog? If so, consider switching gears. Try something else, something
fun, something you’ve always wanted to do or maybe once did but for
various reasons (“growing up”?) stopped doing. Try it for a month and
deemphasize your previous routine. Find your thing.

Once you do find it, you won’t look back.

Thanks for reading, everyone. What do you think?