A Word From Art
Why I donât exercise, why you should, and why I will I get the biggest kick out of people who tell me, âYou donât need to exercise! Youâre already skinny!â It tells me a lot about their attitude towards their health and their knowledge about exercise. It implies this idea that once you achieve a certain level of physique, youâve won the fitness game and you never have to exercise again. No one wants to believe that exercise and healthy habits are for life, and that if you stop, you will lose the progress you have made. Trust me⌠I know firsthand. But Iâm getting to that.
Because I kept a detailed log of all of my workouts, I can tell you the exact date of my last workout: July 27, 2011 (three months before we opened Rocksteady Fitness). Hi. My name is Art, and I used to be an exercise addict. Considering the fact that I spend so much time sitting at a computer NOT exercising at the gym that I co-own, it might be hard for some people to believe that I was really into fitness in my not-so-distant past. Back in those days I spent about 8-10 hours exercising per week. I would enthusiastically wake up at 5:30 AM to do my cardio at the gym, then return again in the evenings after work to lift weights for an hour or two. I loved everything about exercise: the mental and physical challenge of it, the satisfaction I felt after completing a workout, the fact that I learned I could follow through and accomplish a very difficult goal. And, of course, I loved the way it made my body look!
Me hitting the pull-up bar in 2010
All of my life I had been a tall, super-skinny string bean, and didnât have much confidence in the appearance of my physique. As idealistic as weâd like to be, the reality is that all the positive affirmations in the world canât build up a broken confidence, so âappreciate yourself as you areâ didnât cut it for me. I had always thought it would be awesome to get buff âsomedayâ, but in retrospect I never truly believed I could. Through my mid twenties, things got worse physique-wise as I put on a few pounds and developed a very mild case of skinny-man gut; I lived with it, but of course wasnât happy about it.
Then in my late twenties, I realized something: If I was unhappy with something in my life, I could and SHOULD change it. And if my body was something that I wanted to improve, I should do it NOW, not âsomedayâ. After all, I wasnât getting any younger.  If I was to attempt to get the body that I always wanted, I should do it while I am able to, and while I can enjoy it in my youth!  I wanted to be able to look back at pictures of my young self when Iâm 90 years old and say âYes, I had THAT bodyâ. So I put the necessary time and energy into learning what it would take to achieve the goals I had in mind. After months of clean eating, regular exercise and general hard work, I looked in the mirror one day and⌠well okay I was still a string bean. BUT I realized that I was now a string bean with muscles! I had the chiseled abs, the strong back, the bulging arms, and the defined legs. It was awesome! I wanted to keep at it for the rest of my life!
Me in July 2009 vs. me in October 2010. Hard work does pay off!
So Iâm sure the natural question on peoplesâ minds is âWhy did you stop?â The best way to answer that question is to point out the funny (and yet, sad) irony of my situation: I had to quit exercising so that I could start a fitness business.
I had taken the round-about way to arrive at the realization that I had a passion for fitness. My wife and Rocksteady Fitness co-owner, Melissa, had arrived at the same realization for herself years before. When we realized that we had this passion in common, we decided that we must use our combined knowledge and talents to share our passion for fitness with others, and attempt to make a career of it by starting our own gym.
Being business âbootstrappersâ of modest means and resources, neither Melissa nor I could afford the luxury of quitting our day jobs âcold turkeyâ to jump into self-employment. Over time we were able to wean Melissa from her job as a trainer at a chain gym so that she was eventually self-employed at our gym full time. I, however, have not yet been able to take that leap. Currently I am working a full time, 8-5 day job, and I also put in at least 40 hours per week running Rocksteady Fitness. Believe it or not, I DID know what I was getting myself into when we started Rocksteady Fitness, and I willingly took on the workload to help make our dreams come true. Of course, the downside to working so many hours is that I have little time for much else⌠and no time for exercise!
Looking at these pictures years later⌠I canât believe how crazy my arms looked. Me working at 24 Hour Fitness, and in Yosemite in 2010.
Now let me be clear about something: I think that when most people say they have no time to exercise, they are full of it. To those people, I say: be honest with yourself. Do you regularly have time to watch T.V.? Read a book/magazine? Go to bars, concerts, movies? Hang out with friends? Home projects, hobbies, games? If your answer is âYesâ to any of the above, your issue isnât time, it is prioritizing. Personally, I find it baffling that people would prioritize some of these things over their healthâŚ
âŚbut people do it. They do it because they think that as long as theyâre breathing, they are healthy. But itâs not true. And the sad result is that these âhealthyâ people end up getting sick or injured sooner or later, then theyâre surprised that it could ever happen to them! (Thatâs a bit like sticking your head in a door frame and being surprised that it hurts when someone slams the door shut.)
Of course, there really are some people who just donât have time to exercise. Some of them are our very own members who somehow manage to drop in for classes every so often: single mothers with no family support; working mothers who are also students; others who are hustling as hard as me and Melissa to make their own dreams come true. I canât completely relate to all of those situations, but I can relate to struggling to squeeze in at least 5 hours of sleep for all 7 days of the week (I donât really have âweekendsâ; in fact, Iâm writing my first draft of this blog on a Saturday morning at 3:30 AM. No, I havenât slept yet) between trying to honor all of my family and work commitments. So if you are one of those people who has the time to exercise but just canât seem to find the will to do it regularly, hereâs yet one more reason why you should: do it for those of us who would if we could. Go ahead⌠dedicate your next workout to me.
Another good question someone might ask me is this: If I believe so strongly in the importance of exercise and good health, why do I do to myself what Iâm doing? The answer goes back to a word I previously highlighted: priorities. I made a conscious decision to change my lifeâs priorities. If I had the luxury of being able to quit my day job, I would have plenty of time to exercise; however, being of modest means, itâs not that easy. This means that I must work for it. And even though I am doing something that is difficult and not-so-healthy, I am willing to sacrifice a bit of myself for two reasons: (1) for the benefit of my now and future family, and (2) for the members of Rocksteady Fitness, so they can have a cool and supportive place to better their own health.
Considering that Iâve had to give up something important to me, it does sting a little to see people who have the time to exercise struggle to find the will to actually do it. Especially those people who I know could easily achieve their goals if they just dedicated some time and energy to it. But I can cope with a little envy because I know I will get back to it soon enough. Plus, even though I miss it, I really love my role at Rocksteady Fitness, and love the company that Melissa and I have created (so donât take this blog as a long-winded whine).
Me and Melissa in July 2010. She is way leaner and muscular-er now! The opposite is true for meâŚ
In the time that I have been away from exercise, I have remained relatively lean because I maintain a decent diet and have a super-hyper metabolism. But by the standard that I set for myself when I was really on my game, I am slipping. Iâve since become sort of an experiment for myself to see what happens to a fit body when it stops exercising. My very first hydrostatic body fat test on 8/16/12 measured me at 5.9% body fat, with just 8.5 pounds of fat occupying my total weightâ and at that point I had not exercised for over a year and had already lost several pounds of muscle. On 10/19/13 I was measured at 9.6% body fat with 14.4 pounds of fat. That is an increase of 4.1% body fat, and nearly 6 lbs of fat. Maybe that doesnât sound like much to some, but you can definitely see it on me. I do not look like those pictures any more. My chest, back, arms, and legs have shrunk, and that six pack is buried under a layer of fat. Iâm not sad about losing the muscle, because I know I can get it back. The thing that bothers me most is that Iâm not as healthy overall as I used to be.
R.I.P. the old me. And donât laugh at my hat. It keeps me warm when my shirt is off.
But thatâs about to change. I am announcing that starting on November 1, 2013, I will be participating in a 2 month challenge with myself to exercise regularly and eat better. I wonât go into the specifics of my plan here (Iâve written enough already!), but my goal is to cut 6 lbs of body fat, and increase my lean mass by at least 1.5 lbs. I will be utilizing our Group X program to accomplish my goals, and will have no private guidance from Melissa. I should also note that I am not just doing this for my health; I am also doing this to see if it is possible for an extremely busy person to fit exercise into their weekly routine⌠because there are too many people who say they donât have time! Iâm going to document everything and also try to blog about it (no guarantees on that), and will report on the results of this challenge on January 12, 2013. Iâm not sure if I will be able to sustain my regimen beyond the length of my challenege (this is a really big experiment), but we will see. Be prepared to see me in classes starting on November 1st! And apologies in advance if you canât seem to find me at the front desk. Iâll probably be working out! Thanks in advance for your support!
-Art H
PS, I am prone to pushing myself too hard before my body can handle it, so if I barf, donât freak out. Believe me⌠I will try not to, because Melissa scolds me when I do that! PPS, Sorry this blog was so long, but I knew youâd read it because I knew youâd be nosy.
Art is the co-owner (along with his wife, Melissa) of Rocksteady Fitness, a personal training and group exercise studio in Ventura, Ca.,
