The three most effective ways to waste time in the gym.

Time is money.

Money is scarce these days everywhere except Washington, D.C.

You want to be stronger.

So you go to the gym.

The best use of your time there is the simple progressive barbell training program we have discussed before,

one that drives an upward strength adaptation with a programmed increase in load over a full range of motion using as much of your muscle mass as possible.

This approach allows you to lift a gradually increasing amount of weight,

thus making you stronger.

Stronger means only one thing, that you can apply more force with your muscles.

The process of getting stronger improves the capacity of every aspect

of your physical existence. So getting stronger in the gym is the best reason to go there.

But it is incredibly easy to waste precious time once you're inside the gym. Here are the top three. Number one,

stretching. Long regarded as the first thing you should always do inside the gym. Stretching, for most

people, and by most people, I mean you, probably, is not only unnecessary, it may be counterproductive.

What a way to start an essay, huh?

The most fashionable aspect of modern fitness is the newly rechristened mobility.

Same thing as flexibility, except it sounds more Californian. And here I go again, pooping on the most popular thing in the gym. It's a part of every

trendy fitness approach in existence, from CrossFit and functional training to Pilates and yoga. In fact, Pilates and

yoga are stretching, mobility, flexibility, stretching, and that's about all. It has been assumed

by almost everybody for the past 40 years that every workout should begin with the physical preparation known as stretching,

which is an attempt to increase the range of motion around a joint, like the knee, hip, ankle, shoulder, elbow, or around a group of joints like the spinal column.

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