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20 February 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I gave my little impromptu unrehearsed speech at the end of our Sunday training session and found myself talking to the twelve people in attendance about balance: the requisite balance in our fitness efforts between the three key core elements progressive resistance training, cardiovascular training and nutrition. Herd II had just finished what could only be described as a kick-ass training session, pure magic, a workout where each of the five participants exceeded personal bests in each of the three lifts we practice exclusively: squat, bench press, deadlift. This was the end of the 1st week working with this crew and there was a rhythm and tempo to this session that was totally lacking last week. I knew that the feeling was mutual and the electricity of collective success had infected each participant. It was such a good session that I felt compelled to stress to them in my post-workout speech that this, a great weight session, was terrific - but not enough. My pitch was this: too many heavy people pick one or two elements of the fitness triad (progressive resistance, aerobics, performance eating) and concentrate on the favored element(s) to the exclusion of the non-favored elements. I instinctively knew the gym newbies had just experienced the progressive resistance equivalent of a runners high and they were caught up in the blissful throes of an endorphin-fueled euphoria. They now needed to capture this same feeling in their cardio efforts: walk fast enough (we walk exclusively: if an overweight individual can generate 80-90% of their age-related HR max walking, why jog or run?) and walk far enough and the same magical physical feeling can be captured during cardio. All the great weight and cardio workout results can easily, repeat easily, be undone by bad eating habits. Great lifting plus great cardio and lousy diet results in strong, muscular fat people with great endurance like a 400-pound NFL lineman. An offensive tackle or nose guard can weigh 350-400 pounds, bench press 500 and run up and down the field all day long sporting a 60-inch waistline and a 40% body fat percentile. Better to be fit and fat than not fit at all but thats not what were after: were after much bigger gamenothing less than total and complete physical transformation.
The world of competitive athletics is loaded with very strong obese people thats not what Purposefully Primitive Fitness is about. Im not going to all this trouble to train folks in order to create extremely strong, extremely fit, extremely FAT individuals! The main central idea, the reason we undertook all this aggravation to begin with was to melt off unhealthy, life-shortening body fat! In order to accomplish this fundamental goal we utilize three inter-related disciplines: lifting, aerobics, eating. Often, during the transformational process, participants fall in love with certain aspects of the training. They lose sight of the goal: shedding body fat. They get caught up in their love affair with heavy lifting or intense cardio. We need be on guard against this: lets fall in love with both lifting and aerobics super thats exactly what we want but lets make damned sure we couple it with a consistent lean protein, high fiber diet. The goal is to create physically transformed individuals, people with significantly increased muscle mass, significantly improved endurance and significantly reduced body fat. In order to achieve the totality of the goal the trainee needs balance above all else. Balance the three elements. I say repeatedly, better do a little of each than a whole lot of any one or even two of the three elements. Heavy people are naturally more comfortable with moving heavy objects for a short distance (weight training) than moving heavy objects (themselves) for a long distance (cardiovascular exercise.) This makes sense. Every single person Ive trained since mid-September has fallen in love with the group dynamic of the lifting portion of the fitness triad. A select few have also fallen in love with outdoor cardio. Only one has successfully embraced all three legs of the triad for a protracted period and guess what? Hes made the most progress. Go figure. He lost 70-pounds of fat, added 14-pounds of muscle in five months and he only weighed 240 to begin with. It wasnt like he started off weighing 400-pounds. Playing to ones strength (literal and figurative) is relatively easy and a great way to gain initial traction in the physical transformation process. Playing to ones weakness is a whole lot tougher and the true test. Those who play to both their strengths and their weaknesses make astounding progress in a short time frame. When the three legs of the Purposefully Primitive Fitness Triad are practiced in a balanced, methodical, tenacious manner, results accelerate past all realistic expectations: a truly magical physical synergy occurs and muscle is built and fat mobilized and oxidized at an astounding pace. Ive seen it happened time and again but only for those individuals savvy enough to strike the gentle, subtle balance. Are you balanced in your approach?
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