Training Intro (Part 2): Foundational Health Requirements for High Intensity Training
Metabolic & Joint Integrity information needed to achieve baseline fitness & athletic standards and basic plans to improve them - Joint Health/Movement Standards + Nutrition and Fat Loss
Foundational Health Defined
Table of Contents
Foundational Health Defined
Foundational Fitness and Habits/Plans of Action
Essential Nutrition and Fat Loss
Fat Loss in a Nutshell
Food Quality
Joint Integrity and Repair
Resistance Training for Joint Preparation/Healing
Blood Work/Nutrient Profile
Supplementation
As we discussed last week, the foundation of all fitness and athletic capacity is your ultimate foundational health. (Refer to graphic below)
Your foundational health as seen here is broken into a few main parts as follows:
Metabolic/cellular health
Joint integrity
To those in a more “athletic” or youthful current status, you might think to ignore these. Your health hasn’t failed you yet (most likely). As such, it’s very likely that your pursuits in the “health” sphere revolve around being attractive to the opposite sex and performing physically impressively in action. (Which, admittedly, is what the ultimate goal of this training manual is covering) However, if you ignore the necessary foundational habits to build and maintain your biological wellbeing in order to put your entire focus on a 2nd order (or higher) goal, like muscle mass, then eventually your health will fail. Your ability to train for muscle mass or otherwise will be ruined. You will fail in those pursuits as well as suffer the consequences that can be quite severe in many cases for ignoring this fundamental hierarchy.
Often these fears are ignored by those in their teenage years, as well as those in their 20s. It is important to note that serious health concerns can absolutely and very frequently show up in peoples' 20’s especially when they do not habitually care for their regular fitness hygiene.
Joint issues are usually the first to be noticed and/or a concern of young men. Those who spend ample time lifting weights often do so poorly in some way and incur some type of injury or joint issues at some point - lower back, knee, and shoulder being the most common.
On top of this, it is most commonly experienced in one’s mid-20’s (a mere few years from one’s teens and only a year or two out from usual college years - i.e. NOT a long time at all.) that those who neglect their health begin to have some type of health issue arise at some point.
Keep in mind, this largely (esp. with males) occurs once the person can no longer ignore some lingering issue that probably began showing signs long before it “happened”.
I’ll summarize this piece further by explaining that while most of you may ignore this part of fitness because you are mostly interested in strength, power, and athleticism. However if you actually got your foundational health in order you will realize that your brainpower, strength, focus/reaction time, vitality, energy/endurance and resilience are immediately tangibly magnified.
Ironically, the most ignored aspect of physical power is one of the simplest ways to improve it.
To achieve baseline Foundational Health standards, one needs to *just about* meet all of the following criteria: