Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Mix It Up for Better Results

I fall into the trap all the time, my workouts tend to lean towards one type of training method until I read or remember something that makes me go, "AH-HA!" One of my major "ah-ha" moments was to remember that the workouts don't have to be so plain and stagnant. What do I mean?

In the fitness industry we get into trends, fads, and misinformation. Believe it or not some of these things can be positive or negative. A positive trend is to have shorter, more productive workouts. Those that don't run hours long performing exercises that simply drain our bodies without having a positive training effect.

However, with the idea of shorter workouts has come to bad ideas. The first being very focused on only performing 1-3 exercises for all your routines. This goes against so much training science that basically our body needs to be introduced to many different exercises and movements. The more our bodies are exposed to, the more our bodies are prepared for heavier intensities and prevent many common overuse injuries.

The second issue is performing only one method that becomes highly publicized. Sure tabatas and intervals are great, but if you sit down and think about it coming up with over ten different training programs is easy. Each type of training has pros and cons so only adhering to one form of training allows you to achieve some success, but also makes you accumulate the negative training effects as well.

I wanted to show today how you can easily integrate different training methods to accomplish different goals. You will see we I am not promoting performing twenty different movements, but several core different movements that should be emphasized. When combined with tomorrows workout, it is a very powerful accumulative effect!

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