Workout of the Day

Low-Hanging Fruit

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I appreciate the imagery evoked by the idiom of “low-hanging fruit.” You have a problem (you’re hungry) and are searching for a solution (a fruiting tree); it makes sense, then, to solve this problem quickly and easily (picking the fruit right in front of your eyes) rather than overcomplicating it (fetching a ladder or a long-handled picker to get the fruit from the top of the tree). It’s silly, of course, but a potent reminder nonetheless.

I don’t doubt that every one of us, in a situation of desperate hunger and stumbling across a peach tree full of ripe fruit, would go for the easy-to-pick peaches on the bottom branches rather than opting for those near the treetop. But the same isn’t necessarily so for how we address many of the problems we come across in health and fitness.

Let’s say you’re perpetually tired and low on energy, and so you find a hormonal specialist to have your hormone levels measured; they’re off, and so you’re put on hormone replacement therapy or a stack of herbal remedies to try to address the problem. Meanwhile, your sleep habits are a disaster and you sit idle in a desk/car/couch for 14 hours every day. This is your low-hanging fruit. Of course there’s a time and place to seek professional medical help or consider that you may have a condition requiring hormone replacement, but let’s first check the box on giving yourself the basic human needs of adequate sleep and regular movement.

Perhaps this is where the analogy falls apart a bit, because the lowest-hanging fruit, though it is the simplest and most immediate solution, isn’t always the easiest to execute. It often isn’t the answer you want. It’s the answer that involves changing habits or lifestyle or making sacrifice, and so instead you go on the hunt for the elusive fix that will let you keep all your bad habits and live consequence-free. But like it or not, sometimes the best answer is right in front of you.

- PS


6/19/18

  • Power snatch - 3rm

Then...

  • For time, 12-9-6 reps of:

    • Power snatch (135/95)

    • C2B pull-ups