The Fitness New Rules
Online, May 5, 2014 (Newswire.com) - Today I want to start a piece about the New Rules of fitness, I am basing this title off of a book I am currently reading called the New Rules Of Lifting: Supercharged. It is the third or fourth installment of the series and has been a great read so far.
So here are my New Rules of Fitness 2013: Non Supercharged (for now)
New Rule 1: There is No One Size Fits All Fitness Programs. A certain program that worked for Willie Joe may or may not work for Sallie Maye might not work for you but it could work for me.
Te point here is that many times a particular fitness program will need to be adjusted and made a bit more personal through general progressions and regressions of certain exercises, on top of adding in mobility and corrective strategies when appropriate.
New Rule 2: A Warm Up is More Than Just Body Temperature In the old days it was a just go and run around the track or just hop on the treadmill for 5 minutes. (Insert loud buzzer sound please) Those days should long be gone.
As mentioned above each person has his or her own unique abilities and limitations that need to be addressed in a both general and specific warm up. This Warm Up 2.0 should include some corrective, mobility, activation and range of motion work that will do wonders for your upcoming workout and aid with keeping you healthy long-term as well.
New Rule 3: Resistance Training is Still King -A great workout can be achieved with a pair of dumbbells alone. It is a thing of beauty. If you want ultimate fat loss there should be a wide range of exercises done performed with some level of resistance from Dumbbells, Sandbells, Kettlebells, and heck even bodyweight can sometimes be turned into a more resistive form when done properly. Study after study show and support the benefits of strength training, to ignore that would be a bigtime mistake.
New Rule 4: Heart Rate Recovery and Variability- This is one that I am still trying to learn more about and have recently discovered in my research and studies. But there are more and more fitness professionals implementing the use of heart rate tracking through heart rate monitors and more that allow for more precise training and recovery methods.
A good starting point would be to pick up a garmin or polar heart rate watch to strt tracking your bodys response to certain worouts or a particular fitness program. This stuff is just stating to emerge as a big player in the field so stay tuned for more information on this one.
New Rule 5: Train for Movement- This one seems to be recognized more now than it used to be but it still bears repeating. The old school method of training for body parts aka the bodybuilding method is not the best way to go for general fitness. Although these guys look good, very few adults would actually say "hey, I want to look that overly muscled up jacked guy or girl over there".
Instead of the bodybuilding method which views and trains the body as parts, the movement paradigm looks at us as one flowing, dynamic unit that must be trained in a more functional manner that is based on moving, looking and feeling your absolute best. Aim for some pushing, pulling, Bending, and Throwing among other things, and always do them with near perfect form for optimal results.