Monday, April 25, 2011

Just how fit do you need to be?

I've written about this before, but it always needs reiterating.

How "fit" do you NEED to be at any given moment?

Periodization is king for a reason. You do not need to be at your "peak" conditioning year round, its just ludicrous. Athletes don't do it, why do you need to?

Spend some time working on maximal strength. Doing 95 pound hang cleans if you weigh 130 really isn't that useful. Being 130 lbs and deadlifting 260 would be a much more impressive feat of strength, and much more useful to your daily life. If you're not competing in any sports, why do you need to have great explosive strength? You'd be much better off improving your baseline level of strength.

If you weigh 130 lbs, what are you doing running 3 miles on the treadmill every time you go to the gym? You don't need to lose weight. You're not challenging yourself and trying to get the time down. You're setting the treadmill to 6.7 and putting in the miles each day. What is that doing for you? If you're not training for a 3 mile race, it's not doing much. You'd be far better off going to find a basketball court and doing some suicides. Or finding a hill and crushing some hill sprints. Things that require explosive muscular force that will build hard, useful muscles.

I bring this up, because of a guy I know who comes to my gym. He weighs about 145 lbs, and I usually see him doing some sort of "Crossfit style workout". I have my thoughts about Crossfit, but now is not the time for that discussion. Basically, he does a fairly metabolic workout with short rest periods, lower weights and high reps and sets. Cool; it's a great way to boost your work capacity, endurance and burn calories. Is that really what you're looking for, Skinny-guy-that-cant-fill-out-a-small-t-shirt?


I still don't understand why guys have such a hard time asking people for advice. If you see someone at the gym who looks like what you want, coughcoughMEcoughcough, GO ASK FOR ADVICE!! Especially if he works at your gym!

Now, go lift something heavy! And if you dont know how, ASK!!

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