Training for your gOals

Make sure you are basing your training program on your specific goals. If you are just lifting weights but your goal is to lose fat – then you aren’t training properly for your goals – or if you want to build muscles but are running hours per week you will be burning muscle versus building them.

For majority of the population – they want to lose fat and tone. Even if you are one that only wants to lose belly fat or back fat…..regardless you want to lose fat and the only way to do that is calorie deficit and/or burning calories. You can’t spot reduce so you will have to lose the fat and then build the muscles. I briefly wrote about the split I believe works great and base my class approach on this style. Cardio is key for this goal, since we want to burn calories aka shed fat. Cardio is 5xs per week, consisting of 2 HIIT sessions and 3 cardio circuit sessions. Weights are 3xs per week and abs are trained for 10 minutes twice a week.

HIIT sessions are when you bring your heart rate to 80-90% of your maximum and let yourself recover. Here there are periods of exertion and recovery. These sessions are shorter in nature as they are more taxing. With HIIT sessions, it is proven that you continue to burn fat even after the session is over. The other two cardio sessions are total body, circuit type cardio so you can work different muscle groups while still getting the cardiovascular component.

I believe that steady state cardio (jogging, stairs, bike, etc) - any repetitive movement over and over and over again is not good for the body in the sense that you are continuously fatiguing/overusing the same muscles. After every class I ask everyone to stretch. Many barely put in the time required but I highly encourage stretching as tight muscles do not allow fluid movement – it will cause restriction, compensation, body misalignment, and pain. Stretching also assists in recovery and overall aesthetics.

So what are your goals? Are you training accordingly? Spend your time inside the gym wisely, supplement with proper nutrition/caloric intake to reach your goals, celebrate your progress along the way, while continuing to stay focused and positive, and you have a winning formula.