KickAssLifeStyle.com » Fitness Training Plan

Is Your Fitness Training Plan Flawed…?

Curt Nelson — Sun, 23 May 2010 16:53:06 +0000

There are many areas of fitness to focus on. If you just focus on one area of fitness, your fitness training plan is FLAWED.

Heres how you know if your on the right track. When you go to the gym and other people ask you what the heck your doing, then you know your fitness training plan is headed down the right path.

Are you a body builder type who doesn’t work on conditioning, and functional flexibility & mobility…?

Are you a runner that just focuses on running and forgets endurance strength, power and mobility…?

Are you a triathlete who just swims, runs, rides bike but don’t do anything for functional flexibility or mobility, core stability, strength, or power training…?

Do you do Yoga and Pilates but skip any strength, power, and conditioning workouts…?

To have a complete well rounded fitness plan that focuses on “whole fitness” or holistic fitness you have to incorporate 6 main areas of fitness.

Functional Flexibility and Mobility
Core Strength and Stability
Strength
Short & Long Range Power
Interval Training – Anaerobic vs. Aerobic
Speed
Proper Recovery & Nutrition

Old Way Of Working Out - 50% free weights, 50% machines. Do 4 sets of 12,10,8 and rest 2-3 minutes between each set. Workout 3-5 days all in the gym. Each day you work a specific body part like chest and back or just legs. If this is your fitness plan your wasting your time if you actually want to have a high level of fitness. Following this plan makes you one dimensional or a one-trick pony.

New Way Of Working Out - 95% time spend on free weights, 5% machines. Your sets and reps vary all the time. Depending on which workout your doing you may not even rest at end of your sets, especially if your doing Crossfit. If its a strength or power day you may allow more rest between each lift. You may only need 1-2 days in an actual gym and a couple workouts out of the gym. Instead of working specific body parts your working a combination of the 5 categories above. Your targeting your whole body not just body parts.

We want to be generalists in our fitness not specialists.

Outside Magazine gives you some simple tests to see where you are at for each of the 5 main categories above and remedial training if you can’t currently pass each individual performance test.

If your not able to do the basic movements provided in the performance test for each area, add the remedial training exercises into your current fitness training plan.

1. Functional Flexibility

If your tight in the hips or shoulders you should work more on your functional flexibility and core stability before getting really serious about strength training.

Functional Flexibility is your ability to move completely through the range of motion required for a sport or activity.

Any number of factors like, age, jobs where you sit a lot, or watching too much TV make muscles chronically tight, limiting your full power and strength potential and increasing your risk of injury.

Flexibility shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should be one of the most important things you focus on.

Most functional flexibility tests gauge flexibility in your core, which are where the most problems are.

2. CORE Strength and Stability

Doing core exercises aren’t just about making your six pack better. What everyone should be after is core stability, which is achieved when your entire core, from lower back to upper legs is equally strong.

Having a stable core will give you maximum control of your body, make you less likely to get injured and provide you with greater performance and power and strength in all types of sports and activities.

Everyone of your workouts should have at least two of the major Core Stability exercises.

These would include:

Side Planks, Forearm Planks and Pushup planks
Inchworms
Renegade Man Makers
Wood Chops
Windshield Wipers

3. Explosive Power & Long Range Power

Power is simply energy production, whether its over a short period (sprints, power lifting) or a long period (1-4 hr. mountain biking ride).

Explosive power is usually in the 1-3 rep range with 85% – 100% max weight.

Typical explosive power training workouts are done with a variety of these main compound exercises:

Squats
Cleans
Deadlifts
Bench Press

Keep in mind these are also strength exercises but what makes them a power or strength exercise are the reps, rest between each set and the weight used.

Long Range Power Exercises:

Plyometrics in the 10-20 rep range
Running Intervals
Cycling Intervals

If your a tri-athlete, mountain biker or adventure racer your long range power is crucial to your sports.

4. Strength & Strength Endurance

Strength would be considered doing an exercise for 4-6 reps with 75% – 85% of max weight. Strength Endurance is the ability to do a lift for 8-15 reps or more with 65% of your max weight.

Doing exercises to increase your strength will increase your muscle mass, and keep you burning calories all day long with your increased metabolism. To increase your strength and power you should be doing these types of workouts below.

Bodyweight Workouts
Strong Man Training
Kettlebell Training
Free Weight Power Lifting Exercises
Ring Training
Sandbag Training
Gymnastics Training
Crossfit Training

5. Interval Training – Anaerobic vs. Aerobic

Long boring aerobic exercise doesn’t make much sense unless you just want to run marathons and have a skinny little body with no muscle…

Efforts at moderate to high power and lasting less than several minutes are anaerobic. Efforts at low power and lasting in excess of several minutes are aerobic. The 100, 200, 400 and 800 Meter Sprints are mostly anaerobic.

Events like 1,500, the mile, 2,000, and 3,000 meters are mostly aerobic. Aerobic exercise shows decreases in muscle mass, strength, speed and power. Aerobic activity also has a pronounced tendency to decrease anaerobic capacity.

Anaerobic exercise is more superior to aerobic exercise for fat loss and also has benefits of cardiovascular function. It also allows you to improve power, speed, strength, and muscle mass. So why would anyone even consider doing anything aerobically…?

You will use anaerobic efforts to develop aerobic condition through “interval training”. With interval training we get all the cardiovascular benefit of endurance work without the loss of strength, speed and power.

6. Speed & Quickness

Speed is the ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement. In this article we’ll refer to this as being able to do your workouts faster and get them finished quicker while still being safe. Speed increases with time as you get better in the 5 main areas of fitness. If you only focus on 1-2 aspects of fitness your speed will be affected.

You can also do specific drills to increase your speed but most people don’t need to focus on this. You can, but it would mainly be for professional athletes who would have a distinct disadvantage if they didn’t practice certain speed drills.

7. Recovery & Nutrition

Much of your training will go to waste if you’re not devoting equal time and effort to your recovery. The physiological gains from exercise take place while you’re at rest. Blood flow into damaged muscles and joints, capillaries expand for improved oxygen delivery, and tissues prepare for the next assault.

After a workout is the perfect time for foods that are high in the glycemic index. Eating foods that have a high GI replenish your glycogen stores. This is really the only time to eat high GI foods.

If you have questions about the 6 main areas of fitness please submit your question below in the comments box.

Your Fitness Training Plan Blueprint For Creating A Sexy Body That Can Kick Ass In Any Activity or Sport

Curt Nelson — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:00:21 +0000

To learn how to work out effectively you first need a foundation or blueprint. This foundation will give you the best methods and ways of working out to burn fat and gain muscle that exist.

It doesn’t matter if your 15 years old, 80 years old, man or woman, an athlete, fat, really fat, or already working out. Anyone can utilize these strategies to get better results!

If you want to workout smart and get rewarded with an athletic and lean body that can kickass in any type of activity or sport lets get started.

STEP 1 – Read this Crossfit article on –> What is Fitness. This 10 page pdf will expand your mind to what fitness really is and will give you some AH HAs for your fitness training plan and what you should incorporate into it.

STEP 2 – Read this article –> Is Your Fitness Training Plan Flawed…? – this article talks about having a “whole fitness” or Holistic mindset approach to your fitness results. If you don’t have this BIG PICTURE thinking you won’t really be achieving optimal results when it comes to your fitness. You will have “Flawed Fitness”.

Your Fitness Training Plan

I call this the Ultimate Training Program. It consists of 3 days of exercise each week, for the rest of your life. You can choose the best days for yourself, but Monday, Wednesday and Friday are good for most, allowing enough recovery from day to day.

Each day should either be filled with a Crossfit workout, an interval training workout, along with your choice of strongman training, free weight exercises, body weight training, kettle bell training, ring training, or sandbag strength training.

You pick and choose what you would like to do. Maybe you want to combine KettleBell Training with BodyWeight workouts. Or combine strong man training with sandbag strength training. Its up to you, its your program. The key though is to mix it up.

Heres an Example below, of how you might schedule your weekly workouts.

Monday – Prison workout focusing on only 6 reps and 3 sets using free weight exercises. Do dumbbell incline bench presses, squats, clean & press, and deadlifts.

After your done with the main workout do 2 sets, 6 reps each leg, of raised 1 arm walking lunges for Functional Flexibility and 2 sets, 12 reps each of wood chops with a 10 pound medicine ball for core stability.

NOTE: This is just 1 example of using free weight exercises. Next week you wouldn’t do this same workout. You could do a sandbag strength training day combined with some strong man training. Then on the 3rd week you might do bodyweight exercises with some ring training. Keep changing it up!

Tuesday – is used for complete recovery and rest. Your shouldn’t be doing anything too physical on these rest days.

Wednesday – Interval Training. Use the Fig. 3 chart in the What is Fitness article to determine your duration of exercise, duration of recovery and how many times to do it. I want to work on short distances so I’ll work on the Phophagen energy system for sprints.

I’m going to run 20 second sprints on a track field of my high school. After 20 seconds, I’ll keep walking for recovery for 60 seconds. Then sprint for another 20 seconds, recover but still walk for 60 seconds.

I will do this until I have at least 25 repetitions. Each 20 seconds sprint counts as a rep. You can also add pushups, sit ups, when you get done with each sprint to make it harder.

If your out of shape or fat (300 lbs or more), you can walk at your fastest pace for your sprint. Then slow down to your slower walk pace.

This Interval training can be done with anything like, running sprints, swimming, stair case workouts, mountain biking, boxing, jumping exercises or jumping rope. Or doing a combination of these things. Interval training simply means you go real fast (or as fast as you can) and slow down and speed back up and then slow back down.

Thursday – is a rest day.

Friday – I go to www.Crossfit.com and pick one of the many type of crossfit workouts and then watch the video or search Google for one as Crossfit.com only shows videos. So search Google for Crossfit workouts for an exact list of what to do. You can also watch the single exercises of some videos and combine with others to form a workout.

If I don’t know how to do something I look at their video demonstrations by clicking on exercises and demos. If your not still sure or are more of a beginner its probably smart to go to a local Crossfit gym for the first couple of months and workout with a certified crossfit trainer if you currently don’t go to a “typical gym”.

Saturday - is a Yoga day

Sunday – rest and relax day

Note: You can also do a sport or activity on non-workout days. I usually throw in some mountain biking twice a week. Just structure it so that you get the most rest after your hardest workout day.

The reason why this Ultimate Training Program requires only 3 days is because that’s all you really need to do. Stress your body, and let it recover. If your an athlete you may need to structure more training days.

Another reason is that 3 days is easier to commit to and sticking with it long term. You don’t wear yourself out. Keep in mind though, that you should still be somewhat active on your days off but make sure you get plenty of recovery time.

There are all kinds of different variables you should always be mixing and changing in your workouts. A workout should never be the same. Don’t subscribe to any one thing, low reps only, high reps only, long rests, etc..

The real secret for having an effective fitness training plan is taking stuff from a variety of things like gymnastics, powerlifting, interval training or whatever it is and blending them in, this is what Crossfit does and its very effective. But you should not just focus on Crossfit. Its just one of your many tools for achieving maximum fitness results.