Training Introduction (Part 1): How to Define and Create a Process to Achieve Any Fitness Goal

A sensible mental and physical approach to improving fitness & performance after a period of poor consistency/planning by setting priorities

*Summary of concepts at bottom*

Training Should be a System of Expression for What You Want to Become

Paul Drucker coined the phrase “what gets measured, gets managed”.

This is true for fitness and health just as much as it is for business, personal finance, leadership and politics. A fitness routine, performed properly, is simply the measurement and management of your physical behaviors and health proxies. When you follow a fitness program you are following a system, measuring your progress in that system, and by extension, your health markers that the system was designed to improve.

However, each of you will have differing goals, aspirations, and needs. A 38 year old, 300lb diabetic is in a different circumstance than the 19 year old wanting to walk onto the college football team. A girl that wants to be thin, practice yoga, and go hiking also has obvious different needs from either of them as well. So what does this mean?

If you have a particular goal you will want a particular system of training to achieve that goal. The variety of athletic specimens in the world are divergent enough that one should realize that training plans should be more divergent than some of the most commonly marketed fitness routines/gimmicks in the last 20+ years are. Your training is meant to help you become the envisioned athlete/person you seek to make of yourself and thus your training plan is an expression of that.

If training with my philosophy means one thing, it is to open yourself up to all training methods to allow yourself to become the physical specimen you desire without being limited to the applications of a single, all-encompassing, method. By applying the same limited system (program) to all training goals (like a generic powerlifting routine) you will end up training yourself into a limited skillset which likely does not do a good job at multiple important foundational qualities or aspirational qualities unique to you.

Powerlifting programs, despite being wildly popular the past 15 years due to great marketing, are not the ultimate fitness system for everyone. Teaching the yoga girl how to bench press and power clean 5x5 is simply not going to create great, or at least optimal, progress to her goals compared to other methods, no matter what your favorite powerlifting trainer tells you. Nothing is “wrong” with bench press and power cleans - I use them - but training is not “Stronglifts 5x5”.

“Stronglifts” is a form of training but training the body is much more broad and variable in application than that. In many cases, and perhaps yours, another approach is optimal.

As to a hammer, everything looks like a nail - to the powerlifter, everyone looks like they need barbell 5x5

Prerequisites and How to Approach Training

I’d ask you to set out a clear goal of what you want to change about your body and its abilities currently and thus we can formulate a series of blended training methods and tactics to facilitate that change.

Some key areas of your health that should be universally considered are as follows:

1. Metabolic health and blood work results; the foundation of your physical fitness, athleticism, physique etc. depends on your metabolic wellbeing. Heart disease, diabetes, increased rates of cancer and other horrible ailments are not things that we should compromise on in terms of our fitness goals, especially long term. If you are overweight, (20% bodyfat for a male) then fat loss is immediately a priority. [Outside of temporary very special cases - sumo wrestlers, linemen, strength athletes, etc. All of whom should be making worthwhile ROI (i.e. money/scholarship/etc.) off their efforts considering they are sacrificing their long-term health.]

2. Joint health; This is different than stretching and “mobility”. This is the quality of proper motion thru the joints range without discomfort within your joint, and its ability to absorb force and apply it without danger or pain. This is a very common and surprisingly ignored piece of your overall wellbeing and foundational health to build upon. “Bad joints” and pain are considered a necessary evil to endure in life and training to the uninitiated trainee. This is the second main contributor to aging and failing health and common perception of joint health is nonsense. PROPER training should *improve* orthopedic health not degrade it.

If the above areas are in decent order (they will be improved on anyway) then you can craft a set of goals you want to achieve. The way to think about this is to consider the exact qualities you want to enhance and take note of them. Make a list of what qualities about your body or skillset that you want to acquire/improve and then you have targets to aim at in terms of programming. (Without a clear goal in terms of what you want to achieve a plan can’t be formulated because it has no criteria for success)

For now, you do not need to write specific metrics for what you want, ( X lbs of muscle, lose Y amount of fat, run Z fast, etc.) only the qualities you want to improve. Then you can begin applying tactics to stimulate your body to make the necessary adaptations to build those qualities.

Common and basic qualities people want to improve usually are muscle mass/cross sectional muscle area, body fat % being lower, and cardiovascular endurance. I.e. “Arms and Abs”.

Less common but still sought after qualities include: sprint speed, max force/strength production, jump height, punch/kick/tackle power, power-endurance, injury-resilience & repair, and athletic skills.

You might have gathered that essentially these qualities follow an order of hierarchy where the most baseline foundational elements of your health must be addressed before more high order elements can be trained. This *does not* mean you can’t train for a higher order ability before you have achieved a certain adequacy in a more foundational element. However, it is important to understand that if you push your focus on a higher order physical element (like sprint speed) without getting a more fundamental quality (like joint health in your knees, hips, and ankles) to an adequate baseline you will lessen the overall results of your regimen, and decrease the longevity of both the results you *do* get and the time you can spend training to acquire those gains (because energy and health will begin to falter, eventually).

You *WILL* pay a price for not maintaining basic health factors first before embarking on a quest for more muscle or strength.

Visual hierarchy below:

This hierarchy *IS NOT* to say you are not allowed to train upper elements before maximizing lower elements but *it is* to say that lower elements should not be ignored while trying to specialize in upper elements. Foundational health is a training goal/factor at all times.

Reverse Engineering the Goal that is the Future You

By envisioning the qualities you desire to build (which I am sure you have some in mind if you are reading this) you can break down the pieces or steps you will need to accomplish that. (ask in Q&A if need help on implementation)

Many of you won’t even require the upper echelons of the pyramid at all. Some examples include:

• Those of you who may want to be “big” and also able to dunk with your friends will want to target something like this → Lower body fat % and basic strength and sport play, followed by specific dunk practice, plyometrics, and tendon/joint strength (to both improve jumps and remain injury free from high # of jump impacts/falls).

• Someone who wants to begin a combat sport with hope of competing → Basic strength and endurance (muscle & aerobic base adequate for your weight class), tons of sport drilling and “mat time”, plyometrics + tendon training + joint preparedness (basically all contact sports need lots of joint care), with some time spent on a few “special-exercises” (more on this in the future) and mental/cognitive training (also more in the future).

• Old washed up meathead or 36+ year old guy/girl who wants to get back into shape or into shape for the first time. They want to be able to try jiu-jitsu classes and go hiking with friends and family without struggle and without knee + back pain → Clean up diet, lose 30lbs, and repair knee pain to baseline function. Build fundamental movements to intermediate level strength and build aerobic base. Targeted joint strengthening to prevent Jiu-jitsu injuries. Jiu-jitsu class for sport drilling and endurance specifics.

Try doing this for yourself. If you know what general goals you have but are not sure what qualities those fall under ask in the comments or on Thursday Q&A.

The Process of Following a Program

Goals are achieved by systems. I’m sure many of you have read this before and the application to fitness is one of the most clear examples. Your goal is what we have addressed above. Your system is the collection of pieces we may have selected above (Again, Q&A on Thursday or comment below if need help with what you need) arranged in an effective way to build the adaptations you want to possess. By following a series of consistent stimuli to the body (workouts) and recovering (everything outside of the workout) you will improve and adapt over time.

By *NOT* following some type of system of consistent stimulus that can be measured and progressed over time then you will end up spinning your wheels and wasting years of energy & effort and probably eventually causing yourself some joint damage.

The broad process is as follows:

1. Identify the qualities you want to acquire.

2. Identify qualities *below* the targeted qualities that need to be prioritized first. (if you are obese, have knee/shoulder/back issues, or serious health concerns then that is your priority first before MMA and/or plyometrics)

3. Organize and execute a system (program) with which to stimulate those adaptations and recover from them.

4. Measure and track progress in each metric/quality you are emphasizing and adjust your program demands each week to maintain progress. (write down everything you did with detail every session; exercises, weight, reps, time, effort level, etc.)

5. Repeat this process until you are satisfied with the state of a quality (muscle mass, fat loss, speed, joint integrity, conditioning, etc.) and reevaluate programming to move on to maintenance of gains and emphasis of other potential goals.

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“Ok but doesn’t this seem like it’s obvious?”

Yes, because it’s a logically broken down process that is obvious *in hindsight*. When you have been working within the fitness and performance sphere for years you will realize just how little thought goes into “workouts” people do. How many obvious things that make sense once someone is told/shown that the trainees don’t do on their own. The average person, and even athlete, likely does a myriad of asinine things to “workout effectively” that are actually just a combination of ineffective, inefficient, dangerous, and wasted effort. They are simply “going to the gym” and “working out”. Which means they show up and just do something to make themselves feel tired. This, long term, gets you *almost* nowhere. You will make improvements for a short time if you are coming off of being a couch potato but very quickly you will realize you have spent years in the gym with almost *zero* change in your body & abilities - and whether you realize it or not the problem is *not* your genetics.

By breaking down EXACTLY what you need to see getting objectively better you can now lay out an actual weekly/monthly plan on how to access those results rather than just throwing hours of fatiguing efforts at the wall and seeing what you genetics hand back at you.

We are not in the business of just “working out” and *thinking* that we are making progress because we got tired. We are in the business of measuring your capacity week by week, month by month and seeing if your performance and ability is improving. (notice “working out” is repeatedly in quotes - this is because average people are just exerting effort relatively mindlessly in comparison to what you’re being encouraged to do now which is appropriate and planned training.)

If you want to excel far past your expected potential you need to be actually measuring progress with something other than if you *fffeeeeelll* like its working and you need to be making adjustments if you are not. This is the difference between success and spinning your wheels.

The person committing to a good training program that they follow and track for months on end will crush the other 75%+ of people at the gym who are wasting most of their time - Thankfully with Hybrid Athlete Training, you are the former.

Summary:

• Systems achieve goals and fitness is no different. Picking the right system is key.

• Generic “strength” programs quickly become obsolete and are suboptimal to many people who’s athletic interest and needs go beyond powerlifting competition - which is and should be most people.

• Training should be somewhat unique to you; you will have individual needs and goals and the expression of those goals should be present in the way you push and train your body.

• Whatever you decide you want to be good/get better at, your foundational health is a priority always and getting that in order or maintaining it is always a part of your fitness plan.

• There is a further hierarchy of fitness adaptations where some are more foundational than others and often need to be addressed before adequate progress can be made in higher ones.

• For long term success, you will want to consider what your general fitness goals are and what athletic/health related qualities would need to be developed in order to achieve that. This is often ignored and results in people with vague goals jumping into poor or highly marketed programs that won’t provide everything they need.

• Once you reverse engineer the qualities you want to have, an appropriate plan will need to be executed and tracked to see if you are progressing toward a goal or not. This is also shockingly obvious *in hindsight* but people often train with inconsistent plans and no actual metric and measurement method for success or failure. (They simply “workout” - no tracking of data, no plan, and no system)

Next post in this series will be on achieving foundational health standards first and why they are important (even in your 20s). This will be universally required reading for subscribers to know what you need to in order to achieve the foundation of performance & wellbeing before jumping into high intensity training.

For questions on how to approach any of this for readers, comment on the post or ask on Thursdays Q&A post and I will provide specific guidance for you.