Apologies in advance,

this post may sound a little cynical. It isn’t supposed to be, it is coming from a place of weariness with the fitness industry and also an awareness that I’ve done what they are doing. Mea culpa.

Around this time of year, you’re going to be bombarded by fitness and nutrition offers. All of them promising the same thing, a cure-all. Just do “non spiritual yoga” or “strength training for middle aged men” they will shout from your Social Media accounts and all your problems will go away for the low, low price of…. There may be before and after pictures (probably faked), there may be glowing testimonials (probably also faked). Claims will be made that this is the ‘best’ class/ gym/ solution to get rid of your tummy, post menopausal blah etc. etc. etc. There will be pictures of fit, attractive people obviously having fun and high-fiving.

I get it, I was there as a CrossFit box owner for a decade and a half. You sell the product you have, especially if it has worked for you and you’ve got rent to pay.

Do most of the people selling their wonder cure believe in what they do? Of course, and there are a few really good people, gyms and methods of training out there (along with lots of faddish, non-scientific bollocks), this isn’t criticising the good coaches or training methods and god knows, anything is better than nothing. However… there is also nothing like fitness or nutrition to get a bit culty and take on hints of religion. ”Ours is the one true solution”, kinda puts me in mind of the Life of Brian, the acolytes following Brian shouting, “follow the gourd, the holy gourd” and then having a big fight about whether they should follow the shoe or the gourd. Again, I’ve been there with CrossFit, Paleo, Keto, Intermittent Fasting etc. etc. This isn’t a criticism of people selling a solution, or the solutions offered, it is more of a chat about principles because the majority of people are not particularly well informed about it.

Here are two seemingly opposing truths, to hold in your head at the same time:

1. There are many paths up the mountain. Meaning that there isn’t only a single solution that works. Everyone is different. What works brilliantly for me might not work so well for you, regardless of however well it worked for me and however much I believe in it.
2. No single solution can deliver everything. You need more than one aspect of fitness, training or nutrition in your life. You have to engineer this in, not hope that it’ll occur by accident or as a by-product of turning up to a particular class at your gym.

Put this into a nutritional context and it becomes self-evident: We all react differently to a particular food. So depending on your genetics and micro-biome, a food could be great for you, or could make you bloat and give you diarrhoea.

Now ask yourself how healthy you’d be if you only ate that one ‘great for you’ food? Probably be missing some key vitamins, minerals, protein, fat. Bored out of your head etc… You get it.

Here is a third truth that the fitness and nutrition industry rely on.

1. Most people do so little fitness training and have a diet that is so full of crap that any small step in the right direction will make a big difference.

You’ve heard of diminishing returns? Beginners get the opposite. Diminishing returns means you have to put in more effort, time, training volume, money, etc. to get less and less of a pay off the further you go. But think about the beginning of that curve, you get the opposite. Huge returns for little effort. Blissful newbie gains. If you are unhealthy, unfit and generally on the slide into becoming a long term chronic health statistic and you add one healthy habit into your life, your body leaps to respond. Start walking to the station, swap in a salad or get off the bus a stop or two early and see the difference it makes. For the first 3-6 weeks of a training program, learning to deadlift will improve your aerobic capacity, learning to ball-room dance will improve your deadlift and so on. Anything effects everything. This isn’t a criticism of the first step, you need to take the first step before you can take the second and third. It is a criticism of anyone (governments included) who tell you that this is all you’ll need or you can leave it at that.

What happens subsequent to that initial 3-6 week window? Your fitness, work capacity, skills and abilities, will reflect the training blueprint you are following multiplied or divided by how well or badly you apply the principles of training, within the limits imposed by your physiology. No more, no less.

You will not magically get a 3 hour marathon by deadlifting, you will not happen upon a 200Kg deadlift by power walking. Your aerobic capacity will not become top 10% by adding strength. At this point you will only get more out of the training stimulus you are putting in. This means to be a healthy, high functioning human, feeling great with no aching back and a decent chance of independently living into your dotage, you need to be an all rounder. You need multiple training stimuli and each one needs to apply the principles of training correctly.

Now for some bad news. What got you here will not keep you here. Your body adapts and becomes more efficient. You need to keep pushing a little just to stand still.

You can’t avoid principles. They govern us and the universe, they are unchanging. The principles of training are in full effect, even if you don’t know what they are (yet). The better you apply them, the greater your returns will be.

So what do you need?

This list is not meant to be comprehensive, but here are some of the key elements you should include in your training plan:

1. Aerobic exercise to increase your aerobic capacity, this looks like Zone 2 exercise for the most part, could include Zone 1 as recovery or commute, could include an occasional Zone 3 blast. Could be done as straight up cardio or you could get it done as a mixed modality functional workout. 3 hours a week is the sweet spot for non specialists, but more is more until you have to compromise some other aspect of your training. If you do a single cardio modality, this is taking you into the realm of being a specialist, which could be ok if you’re training for a sport like running or cycling, but has the inherent downside to not providing as many transferable benefits as you may get from changing things up a bit. It should be noted that walking & running is fairly close to being free.
2. Mobility work to get more flexible. 5-15 minutes most days, a bit more on a recovery day. Yeah you can do more, but there is a trade off with things that’ll actually keep you alive.
3. Stability training to improve joint stability, resistance to getting pulled out of alignment and strength at end of range. If you’re doing mobility and strength training, probably 5-10 mins every day is all you’ll need.
4. Strength work to get stronger and improve muscle mass, this tends to have the added benefit of preserving your hard earned bone mineral density and oh so much more. 2-3 hour long sessions a week, spread out with recovery in between is perfect.
5. Sprint/ high intensity work to improve VO2 max and your ability to generate a high power output. Zone 5. Once a week is enough for a generalist.
6. Impact. This could be plyometrics like bouncing over hurdles, but it could also be jump rope or just running or jumping on the spot, works alongside the load bearing strength work to give you hard bones even at reduced bone mineral density (if you’re over 40). Use it or lose it, tendons & connective tissue need to be stretched and loaded. Build it in whenever you can.
7. Loaded carries. Picking up heavy things and lugging them around is as functional as strength exercise gets. There is an added benefit of connecting up the strength gained in static movement patterns like squats and presses, plus the bone density benefits, plus grip benefits. Add a little in anywhere you can, like spices in good cooking.
8. Not forgetting coordination, balance, agility, jumping and landing.
9. Recovery workouts on the days you need them. Zone 1, 50% max HR, nothing eccentric. 30-90 minutes. Swim, stretch, cardio, loaded carry, static holds etc. Mix and match, you’ll recover quicker than just vegging on the sofa.

As I’m sure you can now see, some things are the big rocks that need to be programmed in as the day’s main effort. These would be Strength, Aerobic and Sprints. These workouts should/ could include several aspects of training in one session E.g. you could have jumping and landing, cardio, loaded carries and muscular endurance in a single aerobic workout. Or you could jump & land + work coordination + add in impact by skipping as a warm up for a strength workout. Other things can be added into your normal daily life, think balance work. Yet other elements could be folded into your morning or evening routines (E.g. 5 minutes of mobility and stability respectively). Some days you’re going to have to take a recovery day or a day off or you’ll hit fatigue and burn out. Other days will go completely to shit and you’ll have to accept an involuntary rest day.

As I said, this isn’t aiming to be comprehensive, but if you trained and hit all those elements mentioned above in a sensible way that applied the principles of training, you’d be on the path to being the fittest person you knew and probably also have the best chance of living a long and healthy life.

Who is as important as what:

Something I’ve noticed over the last couple of decades in the fitness industry is that you are as good as the group you surround yourself with. The best gains I saw were in people who formed partnerships, groups or teams and pushed each other to turn up and train hard. If I’m honest, just turning up will see you sail past most people. My wife and I see most consistency when we train together and do almost no training when one of us is not available or not feeling it. A program that doesn’t include strategies for improving your consistency will fail.

What you don’t need:

1. To be amazing at a sport. Most sports have a pretty steep diminishing return for health & longevity compared to performance. You may have the maximum fitness benefits from running if you achieved and maintained a 3.5 hour marathon. Any training beyond that might actively make you less healthy even as it your performance improves. I include in this lifting sports like Weightlifting and Powerlifting here. Strong enough is good enough, you don’t need a 300Kg DL to be strong enough for most things in life. Getting super-strong means compromising everything else, and the trade off isn’t worth it. Most of the time, nature does not reward a specialist. Usually the injuries offset any perceived benefit. You only have to look at the injury rates in Yoga to understand that while a little of something might be great, too much is too much.
2. Advanced gymnastics or barbell movements. You could get all the benefits of strength and mobility improvements in a far safer way than snatching or doing muscle ups. There is a reason NFL teams don’t snatch or even deadlift, the risk to reward isn’t worth it when you can’t afford a tweaked back or shoulder on game day. Find a way to get the same training response in a lower risk way.
3. To go hard all the time (sorry CrossFit). This is just stupid in retrospect. You can get away with a lot when you’re young. As you get older, you have to get smarter or you’ll break. One of the principles of training is balancing training stimulus with recovery. Look at athletes even like top level sprinters and the average intensity of their training is about 70% max. That’s zone 2/3. Now tell me why your intensity needs to be higher than an Olympic level sprinter?
4. Too much variety (sorry CrossFit) You have to do something repeatedly to see improvement. A small amount of variety improves training outcomes, but jumping from lifting to cardio to whatever else without having a plan is silly. Mixing Strength and Aerobic in a single session blunts the training effect of both. There is a reason why the CrossFit Games competitors don’t just do one CF workout a day, they have well structured strength, gymnastic, Weightlifting and aerobic development programs. Nothing random or constantly varied in sight.
5. Too much focus on foam rolling or rehab movements unless you’ve been prescribed them by a grown-up.

If you’ve read this far, then I’m proud of you champ!

Here’s the plug:

FitSpring.co.uk puts out free daily programming.

We program for:

Strength a 2-3 times a week

Mixed modality aerobic training that includes basic gymnastic elements, muscular endurance, impact and cardio 2-3 times a week

Weekly mobility and stability work practiced 5-10 mins a day each

One sprint workout a week

A recovery swim/ workout once a week and the option of turning any of the aerobic days down in intensity and duration to become a recovery day

We build in core work.

We encourage you to fit out a garage gym and find a friend, partner or neighbours to train with.