John Mosby wrote about physical fitness awhile back. He starts with a great quote
"It's gotta be a man thing. Every guy I know thinks he's in shape. It doesn't matter if he weighs 245, with 27% bodyfat, and the only "athletic" activity in his life is performing 12oz curls while watching NASCAR, motherfucker is convinced he's an Olympic-caliber athlete."
Please read
his post in it's entirety before continuing.
Two sayings guide my thoughts on physical fitness: "There is no such thing as being too strong, only too slow" and "I don't want to be the biggest guy, the strongest guy or the fastest guy, but I want to be big and strong and fast."
Now onto some fundamental thoughts:
On General Physical Preparation vs Sport (or whatever) specific training. If you want to be in shape you will lift heavy things, move your body and do vigorous cardiovascular activity with some core and flexibility stuff to protect you and eat well. This is the same for a guy who just wants to be healthy, a kid trying to perform better at a sport, a soldier who wants to be fit, whatever.
Aside from the same basic playbook everybody who wants to be healthy and athletic should use there are of course considerations for your specific goals. A runner needs to train towards their goals. A football player probably wants to get big/ strong and capable of short bursts of speed. A wrestler or MMA guy wants to be strong, but not necessarily bigger with a ridiculous cardio base. For each of these goals slightly different training is required. However it is a lot less different than you would think. The football player and wrestler should both lift heavy but football boy should be eating more (to grow) and doing lots of sprints while the wrestler will eat less (to not grow too much) and do more longer duration cardio.
Think of it like a bread recipe. To make any basic bread you will need yeast, flour, salt and some other stuff. One recipe might use all wheat flour and another some white, you may or may not add honey, cinnamon or raisins depending on if it is a breakfast bread or whatever. My point (and I know it is an over simplification of baking) is that things do not really change all that much. A little tweak will get the results you need without messing up the whole thing. Adding a dozen eggs or omitting a key ingredient like flour will just result in a big nasty mess.
Also it is worth briefly revisiting the concept of a point of diminished returns. This is a point in time/ place where you will either get less progress out of something, or the progress is less meaningful.
This is significant because we only have so much time. If we choose to free up 10 hours a week to exercise it is important to use them intelligently. Putting lots of time into improving a capability that is already past the threshold of practical utility does not make sense. For example, it is highly unlikely that the difference between a 45 minute 10k and a 40 minute 10k or the difference between a 500 pound dead lift and a 600 pound dead lift will really matter. The skinny runner guy probably needs to put some energy into other things and so does the gym rat.
To some specific thoughts on
John Mosby's post.
When it comes to finding time to work out it is just like anything else, you make choices. To get off work and spend a couple hours at the bar, have dinner and watch TV until it is time to go to sleep is a choice. Spending 4 hours a day on the internet is a choice. You get the drift. Also it helps to come at the problem from a positive standpoint "I am going to work out 4x a week, when does it best fit into my life?" than a negative one "I am too busy to work out."
I do not disagree that absolute strength (the sheer ability to move a given amount of weight) is important but do think relative strength (strength to weight) is important. I think it is important for a couple of reasons.
Strength to weight is what lets you move yourself and your body. If you can chin 200
pounds but weigh 250 you are sucking. If you can chin 200 but weight 150
that means you have a decent shot at getting your body, armor, kit and
weapon over obstacles.
It also has value as a way to assess ourselves (and develop group standards). Relative strength lets you more accurately measure strength and develop meaningful standards than absolute strength. A guy who weighs 150 pounds that presses 275 and squats 375 is pretty much jacked while a 200 pound dude who does the same is kind of average (for a guy who lifts) and a 250 pounder who does the same is behind the power curve. Conversely if you use absolute strength to develop standards it just doesn't work. Our 150 pound dude could be a serious competitive power lifter and not meet the sort of standards that average lifters in any gym 40-60+ pounds heavier can do with ease.
Personally I see 3 reasons to do isolated single joint type exercises. The first is body building. As a brief sidebar body builders lift weights, typically doing lots of isolated single joint exercises to develop their physiques to have bigger more shapely muscles. Olympic and power lifters lift weights to get stronger on a given set of lifts. Body building is all about show and power lifting (or oly) is all about the go. Body building is not particularly useful in terms of performance (Though a body builder is going to be much stronger than most folks
simply because he actually lifts weights regularly, even if it is in pursuit of a given look instead of performance.) and I see no reason to discuss it further.
The second is rehab/ prehab. If doing a circuit of shoulder exercises lets you stay in the gym then doing them is a no brainer. Ditto for other body parts (typically knees). Also one could make a good case for training areas like the neck which are prone to injury. Sometimes, especially if you are lifting heavy and have old injuries, it is smart to get ahead of these things and do them before you have a serious injury AKA prehab. The last reason to do isolated single joint exercises is to support or aid in the big exercises. Maybe you hit a wall on bench press so you start doing tricep extensions or shrugs to help with the lock out on dead lift or whatever.
It is still important to keep the small exercises in their place. Jim Wendler who is well, really big and strong, has a saying "majoring in the minors" about folks who give too much attention to the far less important little lifts. You do not get big and strong by doing reverse cable tricep extensions and calf raises; you get big and strong by pressing and squatting.
As to farm work for fitness John pretty much nails it. If you do a serious physical job (I'm talking stone mason, blacksmith, laborer who lifts heavy things all day, etc) then maybe less effort needs to be devoted to strength but it is still not an end point in fitness.
Some closing thoughts:
Start slow and easy then build up progressively in terms of speed/load/distance. You didn't get fat and out of shape in a day so don't expect to fix it in a day either. Exercise should be challenging but there is a fine line between hard and stupid. Trying to
run or ruck 50 miles this month when you haven't covered that distance in the last 6 months would be stupid. Going from 0 to running/ rucking 20 miles this month, 30 the next, 40 the one after that and 50 the month after that would be hard but probably doable.
For folks with lingering injuries or who are just plain old or whatever I think it is important to really be honest with yourself and consult doctors or physical therapists as needed. My first question is often about body weight. Your body is meant to haul itself around at or around a healthy body weight. If you are 60 pounds over weight and have a back, knee, ankle or foot problem getting to a healthy weight will go a long way towards fixing it. Also there may be something in terms of physical therapy/ rehabilitation to get things back to the point where you can really exercise again.
If getting to a healthy weight and rehab will not fix a problem then learn to deal with it. Work right up to the level of what you cannot do. If shoulder injuries make bench press not an option work out with dumbbells. If you cannot ruck with 60 pounds then do it with 55 pounds. If you cannot run then find a huge hill to hike up. The point is not to say "well I can't work out" and turn into Jabba the Hut.
Anyway those are my thoughts on that.
Oh yeah and I am 15.5 miles into this month's due. A bit behind glide path but not unfixable. This week I have ran 7.5 and rucked 3 so far. In the rest of the week I will probably ruck 6 more and run 3-4 more. A rough week but it will get me back to where I need to be. Also as my capacity has increased this becomes a lot more doable. I am kind of fiddling with a routine of alternating long and short ruck and run. So a week might look like long run, short ruck, break or lift, long ruck, short run. Will let you know how it works in a couple weeks if I stick with it.
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