by Kerry Taylor
I was having a conversation with a friend the other day that has the desire to get started pushing towards some goals they have for themselves in the area of health and performance. They asked me, “how many days should I start working out a week?” My response was, “it depends”. Probably not the response they were looking for, but it was the most honest answer I could give with the information I had at that exact point in time.
There are a lot of people out there seeking the magic answer that will unlock the door to achieve instant success. Most coaches will give you a round about general answer because they do not want to leaving you hanging or they may give you the answer of “it depends”. It may seem like the easy way out of answering a question, but it’s not. The fact is, that my answer can be very different given others factors I may not know. So when we say, “it depends,” that means we need more answers to truly point you in the right direction.
For example, if someone was to ask, “should I go on a high protein diet to build more muscle?” I’m sure the general answer will be yes. But, in order to give the proper answer, I would respond with, “it depends.” I would have to start to get curious about things and ask a few questions to follow that statement.
- What does your eating look like now?
- How much protein do you get in now?
- Do you workout now? What do you do?
- How many days a week do you workout?
- Do you have any medical issues that might cause a problem with upping your protein?
- Do you like proteins?
- How’s your sleep?
- How’s your water intake?
As you can see, these questions could continue to build off each other to get us to the right answer of achieving the goal of building more muscle. Because if you answer that you already eat 1+ gram of protein per pound of body weight, and you don’t sleep much at all then my answer to the question may be “no, why don’t we focus on getting more sleep and see where that takes us.”
So when a coach answers, “it depends,” it’s because it truly depends. Until next time, continue to live a life 1 degree above the rest.