You will have heard of 'no pain, no gain'. Is this old saying just a fitness myth and downright bad advice? A lot of people seem to think so as when anything gets a bit hard these days it is immediately traded for an easier option. But, the reality is success with your body and in every area of your life is all about stepping outside of your comfort zone from time to time and that means embracing a little bit of discomfort, but it should not be a painful process.

To reach high levels of physical and personal success you must approach your exercise training, and your entire life, as an enterprise in constant growth. The ultimate truth is, you are either moving forward or moving backward; growing and getting stronger or decaying and dying. There is no such thing as comfortably maintaining. Your body is not just frozen in time waiting for you to get things moving.

To grow or even just hold off the aging process for a bit longer, you must step above past achievements; beyond your perceived boundaries and limits. That means stepping out of the familiar and into the unfamiliar; out of the comfortable into the sometimes uncomfortable. You must get out of your comfort zone from time to time with your exercise program to make progress.

It is a shame that misleading advice is out there about how exercise should be 'easy' and 'fun' and you should find something you 'enjoy'. So people think they can just go for a walk or do some gardening and that is enough to get them a brand new body. Well, the truth is it won't. These activities do not even begin to meet the requirements of a proper exercise program. They are really just part of an active lifestyle and can never ever replace a proper structured program that includes strength training exercise.

To stimulate the hormones (the chemical messengers) that tell every cell and tissue in the human body to renew, replace, repair and rebuild you need to put some effort into your exercise program and work at getting stronger each time you perform your program. You can't grow or change by doing what you have already done previously.

You have got to train hard just to prevent yourself from going backwards and aging faster than you need to be. Maintenance of your body's strength and fitness doesn't occur when you do nothing; even the most basic level of maintenance involves working hard at your exercise program to fight the downward spiral of aging.

Your housework, gardening, walking are all considered 'light' activity and are simply not intense enough to have any meaningful health benefits. Your proper exercise session is 'over and above' these necessary activities of living.

The modern way is to exercise at a higher level of intensity but for much shorter times. This is great news for time pressed people. As little as 20 minutes of strength training exercise performed at the right level of intensity (degree of difficulty) can work magic to protect you from modern lifestyle disease and illness and hold off the aging process.

Yes, you will have to work a bit harder, but it shouldn't be painful just a bit uncomfortable. Most people would rather zip through 20 minutes of higher intensity exercise than laboring away for an hour a day with some ineffective time consuming activity that isn't producing any results anyway.

If you are not sure about how hard you need to work at your exercise program seek the help of a fitness professional to show you how to work at the right level so you can receive the maximum results in the minimum of time. We don't want the pain but we certainly want the gain.