Priorities
May 15th 2007 12:35
Yesterday I listed some questions that should be answered in advance of a weight training session. Everyone who works out has to organize their workouts and questions like yesterday's are a beginning. No better example of planning and execution can be found than that of UCLA's famous basketball coach,John Wooden. Wooden"s practices were a preplanned series of timed drills that took his team through all aspects of their game. Every practice was thus an attempt to perfect what was already familiar. The games were simply an expression of this perfection process.
Lifting weights for fitness is also really more about planning than performance. Workouts that are properly planned and executed will ultimately yield results. Haphazard approaches to weights will yield nothing more than boredom and disappointment at results. I firmly believe that the great Arnold achieved what he did with his body,because he used his intellect to plan every aspect of his training and after that his career. At the core of Arnold' personality was an ambition to succeed that few possess,but it was his planning and attention to execution in all area's of his life that yielded what we see today.
If you are going to engage in planning in a real way,what is the most important decision you will have to make? I think it is the priorities you give your body parts. To become a real fitness specimen you will have to train your whole body and concentrate your greatest effort on the body parts you find the weakest and often the least satisfying to train.
As I have written before, the gym is full of people who have a pet body part which they train all the time and from which they get obvious results. If you wish to reach for a higher level of fitness and train your entire body, you will incur problems that these limited trainers will never encounter. You will,for instance, discover that you have body parts that lag behind other in development and these will frustrate you as much as responsive body parts make you happy.That is where prioritizing comes in.
If you have a weak body part it is important that you put it first in every level of your training. It should be the first thing you work after a rest day. It should also be the first part worked in a given workout. It should be given the best of your energy, even if body parts that follow it are shorted a little.If you do not enjoy training a weak part(or any part for that matter) you should be prepared to learn to love it. Seriously, you can use you intellect to convince yourself that conquering a laggard is something in which to take great satisfaction.
The real test comes is when that you have a weakness, begin to train it hard, and then realize that the rest of your body still has to be worked. This is where the tire meets the road, so to speak. This is where your visceral love for training will either come to the forefront or you will not reach optimum results. I repeat,though, that this kind of prioritizing is the key to a fully fit body produced with weights. Your servant, as always.
Lifting weights for fitness is also really more about planning than performance. Workouts that are properly planned and executed will ultimately yield results. Haphazard approaches to weights will yield nothing more than boredom and disappointment at results. I firmly believe that the great Arnold achieved what he did with his body,because he used his intellect to plan every aspect of his training and after that his career. At the core of Arnold' personality was an ambition to succeed that few possess,but it was his planning and attention to execution in all area's of his life that yielded what we see today.
If you are going to engage in planning in a real way,what is the most important decision you will have to make? I think it is the priorities you give your body parts. To become a real fitness specimen you will have to train your whole body and concentrate your greatest effort on the body parts you find the weakest and often the least satisfying to train.
As I have written before, the gym is full of people who have a pet body part which they train all the time and from which they get obvious results. If you wish to reach for a higher level of fitness and train your entire body, you will incur problems that these limited trainers will never encounter. You will,for instance, discover that you have body parts that lag behind other in development and these will frustrate you as much as responsive body parts make you happy.That is where prioritizing comes in.
If you have a weak body part it is important that you put it first in every level of your training. It should be the first thing you work after a rest day. It should also be the first part worked in a given workout. It should be given the best of your energy, even if body parts that follow it are shorted a little.If you do not enjoy training a weak part(or any part for that matter) you should be prepared to learn to love it. Seriously, you can use you intellect to convince yourself that conquering a laggard is something in which to take great satisfaction.
The real test comes is when that you have a weakness, begin to train it hard, and then realize that the rest of your body still has to be worked. This is where the tire meets the road, so to speak. This is where your visceral love for training will either come to the forefront or you will not reach optimum results. I repeat,though, that this kind of prioritizing is the key to a fully fit body produced with weights. Your servant, as always.
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