After you answer the question of why to train, you have to ask: How? Like almost all questions in fitness, the answer is: It depends.

Most people train for aesthetic reasons, and that’s cool, but even if your main goal is to lose weight and look great, it’s best to start by getting strong. Muscle is more efficient than fat, better at keeping your metabolism humming, and looks better, too. It’s also easily manipulated. Fat is not.

Strength transfers into everyday life almost universally. Pursuing it and having it can lead to a multitude of positive benefits for your body. What you learn from strength training are natural movements that your body loves to perform and are easy to improve and maintain. The movement patterns transfer seamlessly into daily life tasks, from getting a bowl off of a lower shelf to putting your carry-on luggage in the overhead compartment. So, you may ask, what’s the best way to get strong? Well, it depends…

There are several schools of strength. The most well known, in no particular order, are Olympic lifting, power lifting, and bodybuilding. Somewhere in the middle of that is the rage that is CrossFit. The last decade has seen kettlebell lifting become popular, and there is a small, dedicated cadre of bodyweight enthusiasts. It behooves the beginner to investigate all of them and find one that intrigues then enough to want to train that way.

All training protocols have a learning curve, but the Olympic lifts (yes, he ones seen every four years on T.V.) have the longest. There are only two competitive lifts, but each one has an explosive and an isometric element that must be correctly developed to get the biggest benefit with the least chance for injury. It’s a great way to develop total body strength, and there’s lot’s of opportunities to compete, should those juices start to flow.

Power lifting offers competitive opportunities, too, and might be easier to learn and improve than the Olympic lifts. There are three competitive lifts, the bench press, the squat, and the deadlift. Even if you never competed, and did only those three lifts, you’d be as strong, mobile, and conditioned as you need to live a healthy life. Add the overhead press, and you’re own the road to beast mode.

Everyone has a pretty good idea of bodybuilding, and most of the generalities have a kernel of truth. Bodybuilders use more exercises than anyone. The sole purpose is to build muscles. If you don’t mind the uniforms and the required moves, there are also plenty of opportunities to compete. Mainstream fitness, both media and personal trainers, espouse a philosophy combining power lifting and body building.

The people competing in CrossFit look amazing, they do amazing things, and help market CrossFit as something you can do, too. You can, too, eventually. Gaining expertise in CrossFit may be harder than the Olympic lifts. CrossFitters do the O-lifts, some of the power lifts, and other exercise, like pull-ups, rope climbs, and medicine ball throws, but they do it for time, usually. Each Cross fit box posts a Workout of the Day, or WOD, with two to six exercises in a circuit. You perform all the reps of each exercise through the circuit order as fast as you can. Then, you write your time on the board, and se how you compare to everyone else. Of all the ways to train, CrossFit is the hardest to learn to be safe and effective. If you decide to become a CrossFitter, it makes sense to spend as much as time as possible being a beginner, learning all the lifts.

Pavel Tsatsouline, a former Spetznas operator for the Evil Empire (the former Soviet Union, not the New York Yankees), is largely responsible for the popularity of kettlebells in the United States. Kettlebells are cannonballs with handles, and the lifts are hybrids of of Olympic lifting and power lifting. The lifts are divided into two groups; grinds, like the get-up, and ballistics, like the swing. Of all the methods using weights, kettlebell lifting is the most versatile, because you can do so many things using just one bell, including traveling with it, if you’re really dedicated. Most kettlebell enthusiasts combine the kettlebell lifts with bodyweight exercises.

It seems pedantic to describe bodyweight exercises. Lately, a serious army dedicated to using solely themselves as implements of physical change has started marching, and growing almost daily. If you want to see how you can strengthen and shape your body with just it’s own weight, and do some really cool moves, Google Al Kavadlo and/or the Barstarzz. Calisthenics (from the Greek, Kalos Sthenos, beautiful strength) can be performed anywhere, and there’s more to it than simply push-ups, pull-ups, and squats. Some moves, such as handstands, levers, and hangs, like the human flag, are better learned by practicing than by counting reps and sets, creating a relaxed atmosphere of steady accomplishment that nourishes enthusiasm.

So, given that you want to train, and now know of severals ways to do so, how do you begin? All of the aforementioned protocols, properly employed, will produce positive results. Any one of them will build strength and shape. Now, you simply have to find a style that excites you. I firmly believe that you have to find a training model that, to you, looks like fun.

Do some research. If you do a Google or YouTube search for any of the people or protocols mentioned above, you’ll see some excellent examples of every form, and discover other fine practitioners, too. Then, seek out a trainer and/or gym that focuses on that training style. Good trainers in every system will start by building a foundation of strength. You’ll progress naturally, because you’ve discovered that the key to compliance is enthusiasm.

That’s the way to begin.

Because exercise is simple, it seems easy. I think that if it was easy, everyone would do it. Everybody doesn’t, and most of the ones who do don’t train.

Exercise is simply movement. Training is movement with purpose. Training requires an understanding of how the body moves and how strength is developed. Then, you create a system, applying that knowledge in a progressive manner to create the desired outcome. Now, you’re training.

So, what’s the best way to start? Hire a trainer.

What did you expect me to say?

Obviously, a trainer knows lots of exercises, and their effects, and how to build a plan with those exercises. with short, mid, and long term goals. More importantly, though, is accountability.

Now, lest you consider that all I’m about to do is advocate for me and my brothers and sisters, please consider this: If you bought a DVD from Jane, or Tony, or Beto, or Shawn T., you hired a trainer. If you tore out the training program for “A Tighter Butt in Two Weeks” from Self magazine, you hired a trainer. Hell, if you watched a you tube video on how to do a pull-up, you hired a trainer.

The minute you hire a trainer, you commit time and money, but more importantly, you’ve expressed, usually to a total stranger, a desire to make a change. The trainer then commits to helping you make that change. You agree to appear at a designated place at a designated time and participate in a program that will change your body, and the trainer commits to fully participate in that process. You’re teammates.

There are multiple studies showing that group exercise is very effective for weight loss. Two big reasons are the accountability to, and the encouragement of, the group. The relationship with a trainer and an individual is the same thing. Though small, you’ve entered into a community where both of you are dedicated to your success.

The adage that the best exercise program is the one you’ll do is not true. The best exercise program is the one that you’ll do that will consistently produce the desired results. The program is everything. Job one, for the trainee, is to find a trainer with a style that excites you.

There are people who thrive in a group, and others who prefer to train alone. You have to discover which type of training suits you best. Lot’s of good trainers train small groups. You have an instant community, and it’s usually less expensive than training privately. Some people, of course, will do better working one on one. Find out what type of trainee you are. You will always perform better when you’re most comfortable.

Simply overstating, training is different from everything else you do in a day, and this should be part of it’s appeal. By designating a particular place and a particular time, you make training significant. It is your time, much like recess was when you were a child. Your regularly scheduled program becomes an easy part of your life.

Your trainer wants you to succeed. I think it’s important for the trainee to understand that your regularly scheduled program is part of your trainers life, too. He has a vested interest in your success, and it’s not just financial. Trainers are validated by their clients successes. We take the information you provide, build a plan based on that data, and put it into action. Your success says the plan was solid that you bought into it, and goals were achieved. The proverbial and banal “win/win”.

To successfully make the change you seek, you need a regularly scheduled program, a designated place and a designated time. Hiring a trainer buys you all three.

I believe in strength, conditioning, and mobility. Strength is a transferable skill,and a strong person is likely reasonably mobile and conditioned, with a lifestyle dedicated to health and longevity.

What is strength? Why do we need it?

Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (deluxe second edition!) offers nine definitions. My favorites are the first three: 1. the state or quality of being strong; force; power; vigor. 2. the power to resist strain, stress, etc.; toughness; durability. 3. the power to resist attack; impregnability.  Notice that the word power appears three times, and twice power is used to resist an outside force.

Power, force, vigor, resistance, toughness, durability, impregnability. Pure and unadulterated, these qualities are traditionally and universally admired and sought after, the qualities of superheroes. These are the benefits of strength, and the building blocks of a long, happy life.

Typically, when we speak of physical strength, we’re talking about muscles and the ability to lift heavy things. Strength, and the pursuit of it, is often misunderstood. Perhaps we’re really talking about overall good health.

It’s rare to get to the mid-century mark and not have at least a trace of arthritis. No matter how strong a muscle is, it cannot move a non-functioning joint, but when you load your muscles and move through a full range of motion, you resist the conditions that attack your joints. Movement keeps them at bay, and loaded movement strengthen bones, tendons, and ligaments.

Being strong helps you resist sickness and disease. It’s impossible to be strong and unhealthy. Healthy habits are required to build strength, and being strong helps you avoid getting sick. The strong bones you build become impregnable to osteopenia and osteoporosis, your strong ligaments resist sprains, and your strong tendons resist tearing. Strength training will help you resist the attempts of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome to hinder your vigor.

Who doesn’t want vigor, toughness, and durability? Modern society asks us to define ourselves by the amount of stress we accept, venerating those who accept the most. Vigor, toughness, and durability are qualities of strength most palatable to the world at large today. We love energetic people, and people who survive tough times. We love people who last a long time. Strong people are tough, durable, and energetic.

Getting strong requires more than just lifting heavy weights, like a healthy diet and plenty of rest. The same diet of lean protein, fruits and vegetables that builds strong muscles also builds healthy hearts, lungs, and organs. You avoid the complications associated with obesity, like type II diabetes and heart disease. You can manage your digestive system naturally, without the need for supplemental probiotics or over the counter heartburn medicine. Strength training requires a lot of sleep, and I submit that you need a lot of sleep to recover from everyday life, too.

So, we need strength to be powerful, forceful, impregnable, vigorous, tough, durable, and resistant to the attacks of stress and strain. We need strength to be healthy. We need  strength to live long, happy lives.

When strength is defined as good health rather than big, bulky muscles, it becomes a highly desirable quality. Instead of the requirement for lifting heavy weights, it becomes the key to the door of life. If we view strength as more than toned arms and six-pack abs, it becomes a noble goal worth pursuing. Living well should not be a chore.

Mark Rippetoe, the Will Rogers of the strength and conditioning world, has said the strong people are generally more useful, and harder to kill. If you’re powerful, forceful, vigorous, and durable, you’re more useful. If you’re tough, impregnable, and resistant to stress and strain, you’re harder to kill.

Reasons enough to be strong, I say.

The number one reason given for not training is lack of time. Often, after an opening sentence like that, you’ll see a pithy motivational quote.

When you look at the mainstream Health and Fitness industry, it’s easy to understand the lack of time reason. The industry seems to be almost evenly split into two camps; weight loss and body shaping. Noble goals, each, but the protocols used have a lot of moving parts, from programs with a lot of exercises to menu planing and food preparation. It’s easy for a beginner to get overwhelmed. Consider, too, that failure to get the desired results, either fast enough or at all, can be a real blow to motivation. Training is hard when you’re discouraged. Sometimes in posts like these, you’ll see a picture of Hugh Jackman.

However, if you train for strength, you make your goals measurable and attainable, because the process is simpler. Consequently, it’s easier to embrace the program. If you embrace the program, compliance is easy. Well, easier, anyway.

As you train and grow stronger, there’s an excellent chance that your weight will regulate, and your body will change shape. While it’s important to monitor the quantity and quality of your menu, with a strength training plan, it’s not the focus. As your knowledge increases, and your body changes, you’ll make some natural shifts in how you eat.

“The Four Hour Work Week”, by Timothy Ferriss, introduced me to the minimum effective dose. Essentially, you look for the smallest dose that will produce a desired outcome. Not a small effort, an efficient one. For physical training that will get and keep you strong, mobile, well conditioned, able to save the world daily and still have a life, general physical preparedness is the minimum effective dose. Batman is often used as an example of G.P.P

He’s down with G.P.P

In the strength faction of the Health and Fitness industry, just as in society at large, there is a minimalist movement afoot. Power lifting legend Jim Wendler uses four lifts and a simple set and repetition scheme. Pavel Tsatsouline, the Russian evil genius behind the kettlebell movement, has reduced it to two twice. “The Naked Warrior” uses two body weight exercises, the Pistol squat and the One-armed Push-up to build and maintain strength anywhere, anytime, and his “Simple and Sinister” plan uses one kettlebell and two movements, the Get-up, and the Swing. These guys experimented with all they knew about strength training and reduced it to the minimum. Photos of Madonna are used a lot in motivational posts.

Madge is, too…

Now getting as big and strong as you possibly can does require a lot of time, although not necessarily a lot of exercises, but gaining the strength to be healthier and more productive overall really doesn’t take much time. Riddle me this:

You’ve decided to start training. You’ve tested, and you can manage a set of five push-ups, twenty body weight squats, and you can even manage one pull-up. Pioneering mid-century modern minimalist that you are, you’ve allotted thirty minutes a day, three days a week for physical training. Because it takes a little time to recover from the maximum effort you must make to execute the pull-up, you get only two sets done in your thirty minutes. Ten push-ups, two pull-ups, and forty squats. For the week, thirty, six, and one hundred and twenty movements. Not bad.

Because you feel pretty good, you persevere, and after four weeks, you test yourself, and you can do three sets of each exercise in thirty minutes. Your work capacity increases, and in a couple of more weeks, you get four sets in thirty minutes, and now your maximum pull-up set is two. People are asking you if you’ve been working out.

Flash forward a year. Now, you sometimes do push-ups with your feet elevated twelve inches, sometimes with a diamond hand position, sometimes with your hands staggered. Your one set maximum is twenty-two, and in your still thirty minute program, you often do three sets of fifteen. You can do three sets of five pull-ups, and because you saw a cool YouTube video, you bought a kettlebell and now you can do a hundred swings in five minutes. The coolest thing, though, is that you are crushing your buddy Baxter on the tennis court regularly.

Now, it won’t last this way forever, because progression is never strictly linear for long, but you will make progress. You will train a theory, test it, train some more, re-test, refine, add, subtract. You will develop a process, in this example, based on three simple exercises. You work on you.

Be your own experiment. If you wonder how strong you are, find out. Test yourself. Develop a plan, work it, and see what happens. Keep what works, toss what doesn’t. Tinker, as they say.

Allow for surprise.

You’ve decided to get in shape. You want to feel better. You want to look better, and wanting to look better is a noble goal. Perhaps you’ve tried before, and stopped. Time passes, your conscience nags, you start again. The pressures of time squash motivation. Starting, stopping, starting again, and again. You don’t know what to do, and so, you do nothing.

Getting in shape, whatever that means, is more about mindset than anything. Becoming active after being largely sedentary for a length of time requires effort, but training your body is one area in life where you genuinely are rewarded for repeatedly showing up. However, you need to show up with a purpose, and a plan.

Training for strength is much easier than training to improve appearance, because the results are objective. If you can lift more weight than you could last week, you’re stronger, it’s as simple as that. Beauty being held in the eyes of the beholder, how do you decide if you look good enough? When you get beautiful enough, what then?

If you train to get stronger, the odds are better than even that you’ll look better, too. Train correctly, and you’ll feel better and stay motivated. Still, the question remains how to start.

Strength is a skill, and like any skill, it requires practice. If you approach training your body by learning skills, like practicing the guitar, it becomes easier, and something you want to do. When you start practicing the guitar, you learn maybe three chords your first session. You gain some ability moving between them, maybe even a simple song, like “Happy Birthday”. You learn three more, and add “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to your repertoire. Now, you have skills.

Strength training is the same way. The first thing to learn is how to control your body by learning simple body weight exercises, like push-ups, glute bridges, and squats. Maybe you can even force a pull-up.  Consider them the easy chords, like C, A, and E. Still, the question, how to begin.

How about learning one skill? William of Occam said, “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less”. I agree. So, choose one strength skill, and practice it until you own it like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

My suggestion is the humble push-up. The push-up is the kindergarten of strength training. Master it, and you’ll learn everything there is to know about strength, from neutral spine to correct breathing. It’s easy to learn, and can be practiced every day, anywhere, anytime. It’s a measure of both strength and conditioning. If you can’t do five perfect push-ups, you’re weak. Being able to do double-digit repetitions is both gratifying and impressive.

Since I’ve presumed to give you a goal, I must give you a plan. A goal without a plan is just a dream. So, how do you go from zero push-ups to five to ten perfect push-ups? You “grease the groove.”

First, pick a starting day, and see how many perfect push-ups you can do. It will help to have someone watch your form, but if not, be honest. Perfect form means a straight back, level head, elbows about forty-five degrees form the body, and no sagging of the lower back. Ramrod straight. The total is your one set maximum. If you can’t do one, your one set max is, well, zero, but have no fear. Now, set a goal, because in four weeks, you’ll test again. Be reasonable, but make it a challenge. Perhaps you’ll decide to double your test number. That’s a good goal.

On day one, do twenty push-ups, no matter how many sets is takes. Since five repetitions is a classic training scheme, why not use it? Take as much rest between sets as you need. Power loves rest. You might do two sets in the morning, and two in the afternoon, whatever it takes to get your twenty reps. Day two, you’ll do twenty-one. The program looks like this:

Day 1) 20… Day 2) 21… Day 3) 22… Day 4) 23… Day 5) 24

take two days off…

Day 6) 24… Day 7) 25… Day 8) 26… Day 9) 27…Day 10) 28

two days off…

Day 11) 28… Day 12) 29… Day 13) 30… Day 14) 31… Day 15)… 32…

two days off…

Day 16) 32… Day 17) 33… Day 18) 34… Day 19) 35… Day 20) 35…

Rest for two days, and then test again. I’ll bet you double your baseline.

Now, what if your baseline was zero? Do a modified push-up. Lean against a wall, and perform the push-up. You can use a desk, a coffee table, a sturdy chair. Kitchen counters work great, so do bathroom vanities. The further away from the wall or counter, the harder the effort. If you do a modified push-up, try to get lower as you proceed through the program. Again, I’ll bet that after four weeks you can do at least one real push-up, and if that’s all you can do, it’s more than when you started. You are stronger, and you have a new skill. Perhaps by now you can even rock “Smoke On The Water”.

It’s that simple. Rock on.

In 1955, the year that I was born, the average life expectancy in the United States was 68.2 years. In 2015, my 60th year, it will be 79.12. Ready or not, barring some accident, I will easily live another twenty years.

The reasons we live longer now are manifold, and pretty simple. Dupont wasn’t just being clever when they promised “Better Living Through Chemistry”. Advancements in the fields of medicine and pharmaceuticals make it easier to treat and control infectious diseases and chronic conditions. Smoking cessation, better diagnosis and treatment of heart disease and stroke, more and better coronary units, changes in diet, all contribute to the steady rise in longevity.

Ironically, many of the same factors that increase our longevity also contribute to our poor health: Technology, chemicals, urbanization, and income, both having it and not having it. We can live long lives, even if we’re not healthy. Watch enough television, and you can compile a long list of drugs to ask your doctor about. With the right chemicals, technology, and enough money, we can survive, if not thrive. We can buy quantity of life.

So, if you’re fifty, or almost fifty, or, like me, almost sixty, and you’re looking at another twenty to thirty years of life ahead of you, what can you do to maintain a high quality of life? You can do something pretty primitive. You can get stronger.

There are probably a dozen studies that show stronger people live the longest. Allow me to offer that they live long lives easier than, um, the others.

Strength is usually defined as the capacity to do work. Aging is often illustrated by the inability to do work. Simple tasks, such as opening a jar, climbing stairs, rising from a chair, or placing an object on an overhead shelf, are all markers of strength, and losing the ability to do them reduces independence. Lose your independence, you might as well die.

Getting strong is simple, doesn’t take much time, and guarantees independence. You’ll become a freedom fighter. You’ll be taking care of yourself.

If you’re fifty, or approaching fifty, there’s a good chance you’ve thought about your remaining years, what they might hold, and how you might spend them. You’re planning retirement. No matter the size of your portfolio, or the climate and tax rate in your state, if you really want to retire well, you need to be strong. Freedom fighting, mid-century modern strong.

If youth is indeed wasted on the young, then living well is truly the best revenge. Being strong is the best way to live well.

So, muscle up, fight for your freedom, and live well.