Friday, March 5, 2010

The Magic is in the Program Design

So you have heard me talking about the superiority or interval training (HIIT) over long-slow-distance cardio (LSD).

Does that mean LSD is obsolete?

Of course not. There is a place for everything, as long as it meets your needs. As the saying goes "everything works, but nothing works forever". If your sport is marathon, then some of your training time should be dedicated to LSD.

It has been said by many that the best exercise for back pain is swimming. I beg to differ. Best for what? It certainly exerts less stress on the spine that say squats. But they are different exercises meant for different purposes. Comparing apples and oranges!

Again, best for what? Best for endurance training? Best for cardio training? Or best for relieving back pain? I for sure know that the last one is not. There are better to get rid of back pain (or any other injuries) than to "train around the injury", namely prehab and rehab. More specifically joint mobility and other stuff.

And what is the "best" training for anyone? Well, to tell the truth, there is no best. What works for you may not work for another person. What is a walk in the park for the fittest athletes maybe a gut busting workout for the very unfit.

The body adapts to what it is trained for. Don't believe that you can train for "everything and anything". Any specific stress promotes specific adaptation, technically called Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands (SAID).


Even if you try to, you can't. There are conflicting goals and training programs that if put together can render your training ineffective. "Cycle or circuit but do not cocktail". That is why we have this thing called cycling or periodization, whereby you training for one or a few goals in a specific period of time and change to another (maybe similar or different) goal(s) in another period.

That's it for now. We'll talk more in detail on program design next time.

Meanwhile, if you haven't tried my bodyweight bootcamp, do log on to 360 Fitness Bootcamp. There is a specific program design there that you can use off the shelf. Anyway the workout in the bootcamp is one of the best cardio (as in HIIT, not LSD) programs out there. Come and join now.

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