Taking the Right Approach to Training

Attaining high levels of fitness the are both meaningful and enduring requires a long term approach with a lofty trajectory to a distant horizon. Short term solutions i.e. crash dieting, pharmaceuticals and extreme programs with too much intensity too soon often are not viable solutions. These usually lead to injury, metabolic and health issues, and a roller coaster-like, on and off the wagon ride that produces stagnant and often negative progress over the long term. True fitness is a lifestyle that is reached by finding the success in daily habits that accumulate over years. Basic foundations and enduring truths of fitness that have weathered the test of time provide the building blocks for these habits that will lead to substantial and long term success.

Regain, Develop and Become a Master of the Rudiments 

Become a master virtuoso of the basics, regardless of talent or ability level. Too often athletes are quick to move on from the basic foundations and go to more elaborate, complex, and cumbersome movement or concepts.

Why are athletes trying to do muscle up before they have mastered good capacity in strict pull-ups and dips?

Why struggle through heavy squat snatches before refining and mastering positions in the deadlift and overhead squat?

Why add more complex volume and lifting in a program before being able to hit 1 simple workout as RX with good intensity in the time frame it was intended to be completed in?

Why move on to complex and advanced nutritional strategies such as nutrient timing, carb load, or intermittent fasting before having a balanced whole foods diet in the correct quantities?

Olympic sport development programs understand this. Gymnasts spend years developing basics of simple body positions and fundamental capacities before accumulating skills to perform the more elaborate moves. And even then you will find the world’s most advanced athletes and virtuosos working on these simple rudiments on a daily basis.

Refining The Basics

We know that performing a wide blend of full body, high-powered functional movements at a high intensity yields the greatest overall benefit to overall fitness. Refining the basics allows a reduction in the risk of injury as well as developing efficiency to express more intensity (i.e. you will never see someone snatch 300lbs with a poor overhead squat). Combined with a balanced diet of real whole foods in appropriate quantities, this prescription can allow athletes to reach the highest levels of physical fitness while simultaneously battling disease and decrepitude. This is the foundation on which meaningful and enduring longevity and quality of life are built on.

Attempting to override these pieces by adding additional, more complex, or elaborate formulas to this prescription often bastardize the simple and elegant effects of just doing less, better.