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The Three Critical Exercise Routine
Success Factors
1 Consistent Progression: Needs 80% of your
time and attention.
2. Sufficient Intensity: Needs 15% of your time and attention.
3. Intelligent Evolution: Needs 5% of your time and attention.
Sufficient
Intensity Explained:
Make sure you’re doing resistance training folks. Not aerobics. Not LSD
(long slow distance cardio). Or any other fitness fad that makes your
lungs burn more than your muscles. If you’re consistently getting 20+ reps
on all your exercises, then you need to choose more difficult exercises.
Period.
Cardio and aerobics have health benefits no doubt, but if you’re really
looking for “bang-for-your-fitness-buck”, and you’re short on time, then
stick with resistance training. It’s the only kind of exercise that builds
muscle and boosts your metabolism permanently--not just during your
workout.
Shoot for exercises that are so difficult, you can only perform between 1
and 15 reps. This could be weightlifting (if you lack the creativity and
sophistication of a "Tao Of Functional Fitness" devotee who relies solely
on portable exercise equipment--like Fitness Bands--and their own
bodyweight), but it doesn’t have to be. If you know how to manipulate
leverage, even bodyweight only exercises can be made difficult enough.
Why just 15% of your time worrying about this? Because all you have to do
is make sure most of your exercise (excluding a proper warm up of course)
falls within this rep range. Not exactly rocket-science.
Intelligent Evolution:
This is just another term for “periodization” or “cyclic training.”
Basically it means that you need a strategy for changing your exercise
routine over the long haul as you get stronger and closer to realizing
your goals. Most of the time the Consistent Progression rule takes care of
this, hence the paltry 5% of your noggin that’s required to intelligently
evolve.
But over the long haul, you sometimes need to dramatically change your
workout protocol. There’s not space here to explore all the ins-and-outs
of doing this, but a simplified recommendation would be to cycle between
phases where you focus on increasing the Average Load you handle during
your workouts, and phases where you’re more concerned with the Amount Of
Work Per Unit Time you perform If you have decided to start a
weightlifting/toning program, here are a some important points to ponder:
-Always see your doctor before starting a dieting or conditioning program.
-Seek the advice of a professional trainer for workout routines and proper
form.
-Are you going to join a gym or set up your own home gym?
-Don't forget to stretch before any physical activity. Stretching makes
the muscles loose and pliable.
Breathing
It seems kind of silly for someone to remind you to breathe, but you would
be surprised. People tend to forget this and when they exercise they take
these tiny little breaths. Anyway the debate rages on but I have found
that the larger volume of air I get in and out, the better. So I breathe
in through the mouth out and out through the mouth. I'm not saying this is
the correct way all I'm saying is that's what I found works for me. For
weight training, when you are in the lifting phase of the exercise, breath
in, you should exhale on the lowering part of the movement. Like I said
before, this is what works for me. Others feel that you should just
breathe naturally throughout the exercise. |
