Principle: Balance the Triangle of Fitness
Spurred by our interests and proclivities, we naturally tend to overweight certain areas of training. For those involved in sports, the demands of the sport can help push us towards this overweighting. To maintain longevity in sport, however, it is important to balance the triangle. Think of exercise as an equilateral triangle of 1) motor (endurance), 2) muscle, 3) mobility. Endurance is the ability to partake in long duration steady state cardiovascular exercise. Muscle, refers to all types of resistance work (strength, power, hypertrophy, etc). There are many ways to train muscle. Choice of training will depend on your goals. Mobility refers to ability to move functionally. This needs to be individualized. Not everyone will be able or will need to be able to do a split. But soft tissue maintenance is essential to prevent injury and promote performance. Combine the motor/muscle/mobility triangle with the triangle of sleep/nutrition/mindset and you’ve got a complete athletic program.
Practice
Training cycles do not have to be based on the seven-day week, but that framework seems to work well for many people. Design a weekly schedule that will address motor, muscle and mobility. Weight the time allotted to each according to your goals. Then ask yourself if and how you are giving too much priority to the activities you enjoy most. A typical pitfall example would be the endurance athlete who doesn’t give enough attention to functional strength. She may acknowledge the necessity of incorporating resistance training into the program and then bail on weight training sessions in order to fit in more endurance work. The benefits of cardiovascular training accrue with 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous training per week. That means just 25 minutes, three times per week of vigorous cardio can give you a substantial health benefit. That’s the recommendation of the American Heart Association and Centers for Disease Control. But they just picked a number that they thought people could do. If you exercise more, you get more benefit.
Endurance athletes may spend much more time in cardiovascular training. Strength training dosing can be widely variable depending on athletic goals as well. However, every adult should incorporate resistance training into their week. Muscle is an organ system of critical importance as we age, providing resilience by decreasing the likelihood of falls as well as the likelihood of injury from a fall. Muscle is metabolically active and having more lean muscle as we age can prevent insulin resistance, the precursor to diabetes. Two sessions per week is the minimum effective dose to start seeing benefits. Mobility often works best when incorporated in smaller sessions throughout the week. This is in part because it is so freaking boring to sit there on a foam roller or to stretch. Certain movement practices, such as yoga, can address soft tissue mobility while also providing strength and meditative and breath work benefits. Alternatively, fifteen minutes of foam rolling before bed can provide soft tissue maintenance and serve as a wind down routine.
Whatever your goals are, be thoughtful about choosing an appropriately balanced and weighted approach to your motor, muscle and mobility and avoid one-dimensionality!
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