Stacy Gallagher
Our modern society has become increasingly more sedentary. With this evolution average people have lost connection with their bodies. The benefits of strength training are to increase muscle mass which in turn increases the metabolism and overall vitality. The dilemma is obtaining important bio-motor attributes of strength, speed, endurance, agility and flexibility without having to devote an inordinate amount of time to obtaining strength and stamina.
We have a transformative template that includes progressive resistance training, cardiovascular conditioning, nutritional awareness and psychological fortitude. Progressive resistance builds and strengthens the body's guide wire system. Cardiovascular training improves stamina and endurance. Nutritional awareness helps to support the muscle building process. Psychological fortitude is the willpower it takes to stay connected to strength training goals. This comprehensive approach is designed to fundamentally transform the human body while simultaneously improving human performance by strengthening the body's guide wire system.
Intensity Is the Force Multiplier
Time is our most precious commodity. We all understand the need to be strong, fit, lean, capable and healthy – but who has the time to spend ten hours a week in the gym? Exercise takes time and time is precious. Optimally we seek maximum training bang for minimal time investment.
The degree of pure physical effort needed to trigger the adaptive response dictates that training sessions need to be short. It isn’t a choice, it’s a reality: train as hard as we recommend and sessions are short because they have to be. Our system utilizes two separate training modalities: resistance training and cardiovascular training. In both exercise disciplines we are exercise minimalists and champion a strategy of doing fewer things better but doing them more intensely. We narrow the exercise selections and narrow our focus.
Our approach to training is purposefully minimalistic. Short, extremely intense and highly focused training sessions are done in such a way that there is no degradation of results. The force multiplier is training intensity. What makes the short sessions effective is the amount of intensity, the degree of pure physical effort exerted, generated during these short sessions.
The Transformative Template
Progressive resistance training has many benefits. It builds functional, usable muscle that equates to more raw strength allowing strength to be maintained late into life. This means that we can retard the detrimental degradation of aging and retain function and mobility far later into life if diligient in our practice. The use of full range-of-motion movements strengthens tendons, ligaments and muscle insertion points to make the trainee more injury resistant and thickens and strengthens bone, fighting osteoporosis.
Cardiovascular conditioning improves and increases stamina, endurance, vitality and favorably alters body composition. We need train our “internal plumbing” with the same regularity and intensity we use to train our external musculature. Targeted training of these internal muscles strengthens and improves their functionality while increasing organ capacities and capabilities. To obtain results from our cardiovascular training efforts sessions need generate a degree of pure physical effort sufficient enough to trigger the adaptive response: only when the adaptive response is triggered do we reap any physiological benefit.
Nutritional awareness supports the physcial recovery and building processes of the body. Our goal is to establish critical thinking as it relates to nutrition. Our approach puts the science back into eating and relates a collective consensus of nutritional modes and methods used by professional athletes, elite spec ops, MMA fighters and competitive bodybuilders to accelerate workout recovery and muscular growth.
Psychological fortitude is the sustained psyche used to artificially induce the "fight or flight" response. By subjecting the body to intense physical effort a trainee can trigger the "fight or flight" response. The body awakens in order to cope with the severity of the training effort. This state can be achieved with astounding regularity using high intensity progressive resistance and cardiovascular training.
Practical Programming
The competent programmer creates training regimens designed to increase power and strength and stamina while preventing or rehabilitating injury. The first duty of the able and facile programmer is to determine the trainees exact needs. After absorbing the facts, data and idiosyncratic differentiations, the programmer constructs a training template, one that will enable the trainee to morph from what they are into what the seek to become. We do so incrementally and methodically; “creeping incremental-ism” deposits the athlete at the predetermined goal at the end of the allotted periodized timeframe – essentially transformed.
No one trains, diets, performs cardio or goes to the trouble to plan and periodize in order to stay the same: we train because we want to improve our physique and we want to improve our performance. One sure-fire way to improve performance is to improve the body. When we become stronger with increased stamina, when we are leaner and more muscular, performance in any and all athletic benchmarks automatically improves. When we look at the individual athlete, there are questions that need to be posed….
What is the goal?
Is that goal realistic?
How much time do we have?
What needs to be maintained, improved or corrected?
All elite athletes periodize: periodization sets goals into a timeframe then works backwards to a starting point. The periodized athlete ‘reverse engineers’ a plan based on the intended result and the amount of time allotted. To understand periodization we start by quantifying time….
Macrocycle is the overall length of the periodized cycle.
Mesocycle is for a single month.
Microcycle is for a week.
Synergy = Longevity
The synergy of these individual components creates human longevity. Our population is living longer and wanting a better quality of life later in life. Challenging ourselves to push against the tide of aging is the answer to improved functionality and happiness!
There are a lot of great benefits to strength training. As a woman, I didn’t really think it was something that could be useful to me but actually, that isn’t true. As we age we need more muscle to burn fat so stepping out of your comfort zone and pushing yourself is not only useful for athletes but just for longevity.
Thank you for your comment. I created this blog as the overarching theme for the site. I am working on a blog right now that relates specifically to the benefit to women and older average folks. I am a personal trainer that primarily works with a 50-80 year old demographic utilizing the template described in the blog to bring mobility and functionality back to their lives.
Thanks Stacy for this very informative article and useful tips.
Indeed everybody must have a plan to exercise and get out the sedentarity. As you said nowadays life style is encouraging sedentarity. SO in order to face this a plan is the solution.
Thanks for the comment. I am a personal trainer who works with a 50-80 year old demographic. These folks are interested in methods that help them maintain and improve their vitality. The methods that I use slowly build strength without beating up the trainee.
it is good to hit the gym and if the truth could be told I my self for a long time have been talking about hitting the gym and I believe that I really need to hit the gym and start working out like I use to do one time ago because working out is so beneficial to our health and well being. Thanks for sharing.
That is such an interesting article, thank you. I am retired and had done the usual cardio vs weights split for years. Just recently I have learned exercises that combine the two into more intense strength training and I can see what you are talking about here. I am hitting internal muscle groups that I didnt before and my overall strength is improving for the first time. I actually think this type of training is what we are moving into as a future fitness goal because it works. Thanks again.