The Most Important Exercise Rule: Aim For Good, Not Perfect

The Most Important Exercise Rule: Aim For Good, Not Perfect 1

Hereโ€™s your free but abridged version of this weekโ€™s โ€œRun Long, Run Healthyโ€ newsletter. Subscribe below to receive the complete, full-text edition with the newest and most authoritative scientific articles on training, nutrition, shoes, injury prevention, and motivation.


The Most Important Exercise Rule: Aim For Good, Not Perfect

The Most Important Exercise Rule: Aim For Good, Not Perfect 2

Hereโ€™s one of the best and most important exercise/fitness/health maxims: “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”

We all sometimes feel guilty, and we should let this heavy weight off our shoulders and out of our lives.

A new strength training study reminded me of this anti-perfection aphorism and sent me searching for similar sentiments.

It turns out that those lifestyle-loving Italians probably invented this principle. They have a proverb that goes like this: “Il meglio รจ l’inimico del bene,” which translates to “The best is the enemy of the good.” Voltaire popularized the saying in the English-speaking world.

But Confucius and Shakespeare both took good whacks at it. Confucius: โ€œBetter a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.โ€

Shakespeare: “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.โ€ The bard really had a way with words and wisdom, didnโ€™t he?

Back to that strength-training study. Researchers followed 55 healthy, untrained adults (almost half female) for 30 weeks. They were randomized into two groups. One group did strength training for ten weeks, stopped for ten weeks, then did another ten weeks of training.

Thatโ€™s what any of us might do if confronted by a big job assignment, travel, or a family emergency. We could call this the imperfect or merely good group.

The second group did nothing for ten weeks but then was perfect in their strength training for 20 consecutive weeks.

The big question: Who was stronger at the end of 30 weeks?

Answer: There was no difference. Subjects in both groups scored equally on strength, jump, and muscle fiber exams.

The researchers noted that the 10/10/10 group lost strength when they stopped training for ten weeks but then โ€œregained rapidly during retraining.โ€

Conclusion: โ€œOur results, therefore, suggest that trainees should not be too concerned about occasional short-term training breaks in their daily lives when it comes to lifelong strength training.โ€ More at โ€‹Scandinavian J of Medicine & Science in Sportsโ€‹ with free full text.

Restated: Every time you exercise, youโ€™re doing something good for yourself. You donโ€™t have to follow a perfect training or nutrition plan. You just have to do whatever you can whenever you can.

This has been proven previously with studies of โ€œweekend warriors.โ€ The term is often used negatively. But, in fact, โ€‹research has shownโ€‹ that weekend warriors gain substantial health and longevity benefits from their bursts of activity on Saturday and Sunday.

RELATED ARTICLE: โ€‹Good News, Weekend Warriors: Studies Show No Downside To Cramming Your Workouts Into Just Two Days


How Mood Affects Food, And Vice Versa

The Most Important Exercise Rule: Aim For Good, Not Perfect 3

Many of us have pretty good diets already. But I donโ€™t know anyone who wouldnโ€™t like to improve a bit more. Me? Iโ€™d like to do something about my โ€œsweet tooth,โ€ a lifelong affliction.

A popular nutrition and fitness app, My Fitness Pal, recently commissioned a โ€œWhite Paperโ€ looking into food-mood connections, and how they can be changed. Itโ€™s a great topic, even though this is clearly a commercial entity trying to boost its business.

The paper notes the generally poor U.S. diet, especially the low fruit/vegetable consumption and the high added-sugar intake (double what the American Heart Association recommends). These have obvious health impacts like weight gain and low consumption of healthier options. However, this connection isnโ€™t universal.

Some people, aiming to do better, restrict their diet so severely that they โ€œmay experience feelings of tension, anger, and fatigue.โ€ They swing from one extreme to the other, missing a healthy middle ground.

This โ€œWhite Paperโ€ suggests nine mood boosting foods with two from the fermented foods group: kefir and kimchi. It also advises that, when youโ€™re feeling tense and upset, youโ€™re more likely to reach for less healthy, less nutrient-dense foods.

Finally, it provides strategies that can help us nourish our health more holistically. I particularly like โ€œSit with your urges.โ€ You can learn to acknowledge temptations without acting on them with bad food choices.

Also, โ€œThink flexibly.โ€ Challenge your all-or-nothing thinking to support sustainable food choices. More from โ€‹My Fitness Pal.โ€‹

RELATED ARTICLE: โ€‹The Runnerโ€™s Diet: What You Need To Know About Nutrition For Runnersโ€‹


What Makes Super Shoes So Super?

The Most Important Exercise Rule: Aim For Good, Not Perfect 4

A few weeks before this yearโ€™s New York City Marathon, but just in time for Ruth Chepngetichโ€™s astonishing 2:09:56 marathon world record in Chicago last Sunday, the New York Times took a thorough look back on five years of super shoe development.

The article used the provocative term โ€œshoe dopingโ€ in its title but disappointingly didnโ€™t discuss the 2016 Olympic results when Nike runners quite clearly had a shoe-doping advantage over their competitors.

Otherwise, itโ€™s a great piece based on deep interviews with a handful of top-running biomechanists. Their main points:

1) The shoes clearly work; just look at how fast everyone is running, from the Olympians to the increasing numbers of runners hitting the Boston Marathon qualifying times.

2) The plate is important, but it must be a curved plate.

3) The new super foams provide more energy return than old EVA foams.

4) The plate and the foam work in concert to improve performance.

5) The โ€œteeter-totterโ€ effect is unproven.

6) Individual variation in โ€œresponsivenessโ€ to different shoes is real and can be dramatic, which explains why thereโ€™s no one best super shoe for every runner.

The article concludes by noting that itโ€™s impossible โ€œto predict exactly where marathon runners will be in five years.โ€ Or where shoe innovations will be. Thereโ€™s only one certainty: โ€œThe times, from new heroes, will be faster.โ€ More at โ€‹NY Times.โ€‹

RELATED ARTICLE: โ€‹The Shoes That Won The 2024 Chicago Marathonโ€‹


SHORT STUFF You Donโ€™t Want To MissSHORT STUFF You Donโ€™t Want To Miss

โ€ข โ€‹Get wood-y: Use of the popular core-training exercise, the plank, could improve long Covid outcomes.โ€‹

HEREโ€™S WHAT ELSE YOU WOULD HAVE RECEIVED this week if you were a subscriber to the complete, full-text edition of โ€œRun Long, Run Healthy.โ€ โ€‹SUBSCRIBE HERE.โ€‹

  • Why Ruth Chepngetichโ€™s 2:09:56 deserves close scrutiny
  • Long intervals vs short intervals–And the winner is ???
  • Why itโ€™s time to give orthotics another look
  • Here it comes again: The excruciating โ€œBigโ€™s Backyard Ultra.โ€
  • Some brain supplements might actually work, and here they are
  • Extraordinary results come from ordinary training days

Thatโ€™s all for now. Thanks for reading. See you again next week. Amby

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Avatar photo

Amby Burfoot

Editor At Large

Amby Burfoot stands as a titan in the running world. Crowned the Boston Marathon champion in 1968, he became the first collegian to win this prestigious event and the first American to claim the title since John Kelley in 1957. As well as a stellar racing career, Amby channeled his passion for running into journalism. He joined Runnerโ€™s World magazine in 1978, rising to the position of Editor-in-Chief and then serving as its Editor-at-Large. As well as being the author of several books on running, he regularly contributes articles to the major publications, and curates his weekly Run Long, Run Healthy Newsletter.

Want To Save This Guide For Later?

Enter your email and we'll give it over to your inbox.