Having some purpose around your fitness training should be a prerequisite. Just going to the gym, going for a run, doing some push ups, playing tennis or squash or soccer or some other random fitness activity will not get you anything other than tired…..sure it should be fun but is it getting you any results?
Googling something like, “what are the components of fitness training” will get a number of hits for things like speed, agility, balance, strength, power, endurance, body composition, coordination and more.
Typically a recreational gym-goer or fitness fan will follow a program from an app, from a magazine article, from someone they know that wrote a program for them, by following what others do in the gym or one of a number of other things – is this you?
If so are you ticking any of the boxes in the first paragraph? What about from this list –
- squat
- rotation
- lunge
- push
- pull
- gait
- hinge
Most often people tell me they don’t really know what to do when training. They have had some success with doing different things but there’s a lot of randomness to their approach and as they get older, success becomes becomes harder. A LOT harder.
And this is when people are actually tracking their success.
In my professional approach to helping people succeed I address a number of components including parts of what I have mentioned above but also
- specificity – what is the reason for the training, injury rehab/prehab, weightloss, sports performance, general wellbeing?
- variability – maintaining a fresh approach, keeping the enthusiasm and stickability
- duration – how long do we need to be doing this for, how long is a session, how long does a “program” need to last?
- equipment availability, location – some people are gym-averse (totally understandable for many reasons) and don’t have any equipment available
All of these factors must be addressed but the real key for success no matter what the situation you find yourself in is intensity.
At some point in your training you MUST get uncomfortable, sweat and push yourself out of your comfort zone. Too often I see steady-state cardio, gizillion rep pec-decs (waste of time exercise anyway), shoulder presses, leg extensions (dangerous exercise), leg presses and more and don’t get me started on bicep curls. I would advise you, in all seriousness that if your trainer is regularly including bicep curls in your sessions, you have the wrong trainer.
A lack of intensity is what I see missing most of in the average approach in training styles – sometimes I see too much intensity but often this is just misplaced enthusiasm. Someone charging around a gym from machine to machine, rarely pausing, rushing (usually partial) reps, getting annoyed with others that aren’t rushing like them and generally wasting their time.
Intensity doesn’t mean rushing! Intensity doesn’t necessarily mean supersets or tri-sets with little rest. It doesn’t mean a 30 minute run at 14-15kmh on the treadmill.
Intensity means focussing on the task, application to the session plan and squeezing out every rep at the right weight in your strength component and ripping hard in the conditioning component. And yes there are times when you don’t even sweat in a session and this is because we must also have deload weeks when intensity is dropped (and rest weeks when there is no intensity!). Cycling training is done to avoid burnout and training “plateau’s”.
Properly managed intensity means sessions can be as short as 30 minutes and usually 45 and include planty of recovery through the session. This results in the neuroendocrinal response we are looking for!
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