Training vs. Working Out: Part 2

If you missed part one, click here to read that first and come back here for part 2.

Last week we ended with the reasons it is important to follow a program and how following one can benefit you. Programs helps you make improvements in your fitness and are the key in getting you to achieve your long term goals.

Since our goal here is an incremental improvement of fitness, we must also look at our exercise choice. Exercise choice is a very important component to writing a successful program. It is easy to fall into two traps when it comes to exercise choice. One is just doing what you like and find fun, and the other is just doing what your favorite social media fitness expert is doing. 

It is easy just to do the things we find fun, but at the end of the day, improving the things we are the worst at will have the most substantial impact. Unfortunately, the things we aren't good at tend to be the things we hate the most. I am good at deadlifting and love to deadlift, but sometimes will only deadlift two times in a month to leave more time to work on things that need more improvement. By working on things that you are the worst at, you have the most room for improvement and will see the biggest difference in your fitness. Find exercises you struggle with and work on improving those. Everyone is different in this regard; some people are naturally strong and may need to focus on other aspects of fitness such as speed and conditioning, whereas some people have excellent conditioning and can go forever but cannot produce power or high amounts of force. These people would need to train completely differently to see the most progress possible. It is necessary to individualize your exercise choice to meet your goals best!

To steal Mike Robertson's Madden analogy, If you were making a player in Madden, you wouldn't want it to have 99 speed or 99 strength and like 50 mobility and 50 conditioning you'd want a player with solid 85's across the board. 

Picking the right exercises has become even more difficult with the rise of social media. With social media, it is easy to get caught up with all these fancy exercises people are posting. People are posting crazier and crazier things and making up exercises just to get more views. Most often, you will get much more out of doing a more simple exercise with perfect form than trying to mimic what you saw on Instagram. Master the basics before moving on to more advanced movements. When you look at a video on social media, you never know the context of the exercise. You don’t get the reason behind the why the person is doing it and how it fits into their big picture program. So when you see a new exercise, look at what the exercise does and ask yourself, will this exercise benefit me? How will this exercise help me reach my goal? Does it improve a specific aspect of fitness? Does it work on one of my weak points? What is the risk vs. reward? Is it a big bang for your buck exercises that will get the most out of your time? If you do not have a reason for doing the exercise, it is probably best to avoid it. The big basic movements such as the squat, press, hip hinge, lunge, and row have been around forever for one simple reason; they work!

This may look cool but probably more risk than reward

Photo Credit: http://www.racerxvt.com/images/content/article_photos2/crazy_exercise.jpg

Now you have this awesome program with exercise choice, volume, and intensity all catered towards your individual needs and you are busting your butt at the gym things are feeling great. You get to the gym one day, and you hit the prescribed weight, and it flies up! The thought crosses your head "I feel great, I am going to go for it today" so you load more weight up on the bar and hit a new personal record. You leave the gym feeling great. Fast forward a few weeks, and you have a heavy day, but you feel like crap and cannot hit the prescribed weight. Sound familiar? Each training day does not live in a vacuum; what you do one-day effects the next. The extra fatigue caused by drifting from the program will have a lasting impact downstream. I know I have fallen victim to this many times.

When you are in the gym, the music is blaring, the adrenaline is running, and the weights are feeling good; it is easy to want to go off plan. You must avoid this temptation and stick to the plan. Remember the program looks at the big picture, and there are times to push it and times to pull back. You should also avoid adding in extra training to try and speed up progress. It is easy to fall into the trap of more is better, but that is often not the case. This extra training may cause you not to be able to recover properly from your current training. Also depending on what your program is currently focusing on, extra training could even be detrimental to your goals. For example, if you are in a strength block and looking to focus on maximal strength, extra aerobic work could potentially slow down your progress. If you add in additional training always look at the big picture be sure to adjust your current training to ensure you are recovering properly from the added volume. A well-designed program looks at the end goal and not just hitting PRs week to week. Sticking to the plan is crucial.

You've been following your program to a T and seeing all sorts of progress, but there are soooo many options out there. Now that you have a taste of the benefits of programming, you want to try them all… not so fast. It is critical to stick with a program for its entirety before switching to another program. There are a few reasons for this. One reason that we discussed above is that the author of the program has written the program looking at the long-term with each week building on the last. If you stop the program in the middle, you are missing out on the end of the program where everything comes together. 

Next, progress takes time. If you've ever been coached by me, you have heard me say something along the lines of "slow and steady. The turtle wins the race." This is because progress takes time. You may see some neurological and hormonal changes after one training session, but actual structural changes don't take place until 6-12 weeks into your training cycle. This means the gains you see at first are your body becoming more efficient at the movement and your body learning how to use the strength that it currently has maximally. As you continue through your training program, you will start to see changes in tissue (such as muscles and the heart), and this is where the magic happens. Be patient and follow your program through before switching to another. In an ideal world, you would be able to hire an experienced coach that could string together individually designed training block after training block to continually help you crush goal after goal! 

So, if your progress is slowing or has stalled and you want to keep making gains in fitness, it is time to stop working out and start training! You will want to find a structured periodized program that looks at the long-term picture and is individualized to your goals and needs. You will want this program to be fun and enjoyable so that you can follow consistently, and you will want to follow the program as written and not jump from program to program. Once you start to train instead of workout, you will be amazed at the progress you can make!