Make Your Goal Clear

It's Saturday night here in beautiful BC and I'm enjoying watching one of my favorite TV shows...The Ultimate Fighter. Despite the immaturity of many of the fighters 'in the house' it got me to thinking about goals and how they relate to athletics, fitness and even health. MMA (mixed martial arts for those not in the know) fighters need to be experienced in a variety of disciplines so they can bring as much of a complete package to the ring/octagon in order for them to walk victoriously. Their goal is to win and to prepare themselves to do so they must focus on strength, conditioning, flexibility, and numerous fighting disciplines as well as develop the mentality of a fighter. A lesson to take home from this is that in order to achieve said goal the majority of your time needs to focus on exactly which will help you achieve it. Like the Pareto principle says, "20% of what you do will get you 80% of the results."

Making one's goal clear and concise can ensure one doesn't waste time on methods which won't help you advance down the path you strive. If I am bound for Colorado for some sick skiing and boarding but I've managed to get a map and directions that takes me 500 miles out of my way that's not a very efficient route. The same things happen to athletes and fitness seeking individuals. Below I've provided some examples for athletes and fitness types in order to help you possibly make your training more efficient.

Football Player: Running back
goal: increase acceleration and power coming out of backfield
maintenance: speed endurance, conditioning capacity, strength endurance
primary focus: short distance speed training (0-20yds), strength & power rep range (1-5 reps), max strength & explosive work
maintenance focus: longer distance speed work (40-80yds), metabolic/endurance rep range (6-12+ reps), low & moderate intensity conditioning work

Bodybuilder: Advanced, competing for 5 years
goal: increase size in quads, hams, triceps in order to balance out physique
maintenance: remaining body parts; base conditioning level with energy system training (cardio)
primary focus: alter program to emphasize needed muscles to grow through increase in frequency, increase in intensity or both
maintenance focus: slight decrease in volume (sets) to body parts not needing size but maintain intensity (weight lifted) and increase if possible within allocated volume, minimal to no cardio depending on whether bodybuilder performs cardio in off season.

General Health: Beginner
goal: increase muscle size, increase strength, change body composition in favor of muscle vs fat.
maintenance: for a beginner nothing to really maintain because of changing lifestyle; only thing prefer to maintain would be fat percentage but because adding muscle will inevitably drop (good thing).
primary focus: large, compound exercises providing as much muscle stimulation as possible, combination of energy system training (anaerobic and aerobic) to assist in fat loss and overall conditioning of body.

The take home message is to avoid or at least minimize what is not going to help you achieve your goal. Most power dominant athletes do way too much long duration, low intensity duration work. The farthest a running back will ever run in a game would be 99 yards so if your coach is having you run long distances to help you get 'fit' then I highly recommend giving him an attitude adjustment. The same idea can be seen with bodybuilders when wanting specific weaker/smaller body parts to grow vs others. If you keep the same volume as you have before and add even more intensity or volume to your program it's a higher level for you to recover from vs putting a focus on your weaker body parts. I've known of some guys with amazing leg development who only actually directly trained them once every 10-14 days. And finally for the general health aficionado; these guys & gals seem to make the biggest mistakes of the three I've wrote about tonight. Beginner's seeking health and wellness have many different methods available they can choose to apply. However, many choose the methods that may look fancy but will get you to your goal about as quick as a blind donkey in a quarter mile race.

Being about as blunt as I possibly can: get off the damn balls, get off the fricking bosu ball, quit trying to perform that basic exercise on one leg when you haven't even learned the basics yet. It doesn't take a genius to realize that if performing a compound exercise stimulates more muscle and you can lift more weight, which causes more muscles to come into play; then why perform an exercise which uses less muscles because you have to lift less weight and because you're not able to perform the original version of the exercise through a full range of motion you limit the range on that goofy balance device. Result: a waste of time...if you are truly concerned about achieving your results as quickly as possible.

I surely don't expect everyone to agree with me and that's quite all right. However, consider this, if you are looking to truly change your body and I mean really change it by re-shaping it and altering your body composition for the better; then I suggest you emulate those who have walked in the path before you. You'll find those that have walked before you successfully focused the majority of their time on the hard to do compound exercises building slabs of muscle and getting stronger along the way.

Hit the interstate and keep on rolling towards your goal and avoid as many detours as possible that are only gravel roads leading to a dead end.

Train Smart, Train Hard and Prosper,

B. Sims