Fitness: Plan for success

By Josh Luck
CPT
Bay Tennis & Fitness

There is a common theme to fitness no matter where I go or with whom I speak. I was privileged enough to be accompanied by some of the top strength and conditioning coaches in the world recently, and throughout their speeches and hands-on clinics, they focused on four factors to fitness: mindset, nutrition, movement, and regeneration.

The Bay Tennis and Fitness staff took a long weekend trip to Chicago to attend the Perform Better Fitness Summit. We were graced with the presence of some of the best fitness professionals in the world, including Mike Boyle, Mark Verstegen, Grey Cook, and many others. The subject content included 21st century fitness, running mechanics, functional movement, and lots of pre-habilitation information on areas of the body. After listening for 8 hours a day for 3 days, I walked away with a common thread. We don't plan enough for our yearly workout routines.

We all find ourselves guilty, myself included, of pushing for the best workout possible and sometimes miss out on the big picture. When I speak of big picture, I am talking about the overall appreciation of fitness and all of its components.

Mindset

Mindset is the most underappreciated aspect of getting yourself prepared to commit to a fitness program. If we don't believe in ourself or our body and its capabilities, we limit our potential and eventually we could fail. Believe in what it is that you desire and put forth the time and effort to achieve it. Without it we are unable to even begin to think of any of the other aspects and be successful.

Take the time to think it out thoroughly, and begin to plan how and what changes or sacrifices have to occur. We have all heard the saying: fail to plan, then plan to fail.

Nutrition

Without proper nutrition our potential for success is also limited.

We have heard enough about diets, diets, and more diets. Let's get out of the mindset of torturing ourselves with the new fad diet and depriving our body from the proper nutrients that we need, and focus on cleaning it up.

Control your portion sizes and ease your way to more organic, less processed daily consumption. Let's be honest. Most of us can't go from one extreme to another and expect to stick to it. If you can great! More power to you. But, for most this isn't realistic.

Slowly work your way to a cleaner, leaner, you. Look at your daily intake and start eliminating the bad one at a time. Also, look at how much or how little you are consuming. Eat less, and more often. Speed your metabolism up through proper intake and exercise to lose that weight or to meet your caloric needs for sport and performance.

Movement

The third aspect that I heard over and over was movement, get moving! Functional training has been one of those buzz words that has been overdone. What they mean is movement training.

Our bodies are meant to move in 360 degrees full range of motion and we are multiplanar. However, we tend to get caught up in training in just one plane of motion and that's when we get hurt or injured.

Whether its work, sport, or recreation, we want to mimic or train opposing movements to balance the body for performance.

One of the best things said at the seminar concerned the decade rule. For every decade you have been alive, you should be doing mobility based exercises for that many days in a week. The older we get the less mobile we become. The more sedentary we become the less mobile we become.

For athletics, we want performance enhancement. This is based on ability not skill. We may develop the skill but we may fall short, due to lack of ability. Ability is defined by strength, speed, power, and flexibility. Training for sports ability can not be peaked with isometric, single planed programs.

Look at your daily routines and hobbies. What movement patterns are involved? Where in those patterns are you weakest, or what do you need to work on? We are only as strong as our weakest link, and we need to identify those and fix them. Strengths are strengths, and if we continue to focus on them they will only get stronger -- and the weaker will only get weaker, eventually leading to injury.

Regeneration

Speaking of injury, how much time do you dedicate to rest and recovery? I feel as though the most important issue in fitness, besides mindset, is regeneration or recovery. Flexibility, muscle tissue health, sleep and nutrition all fall in this category.

Do you plan regeneration into your program? If not you should! Proper and adequate rest and recovery will make or break a successful program. Getting 6-8 hours of sleep a night and taking the time to stretch and work on muscle tissue will take your progress to the next level. It will also keep you from injuring yourself.

When planning your week, month, or year, take days off to focus on you and your body. Treat yourself to a massage, or a hot bath. Let all that hard work you are putting in the gym, or outside, catch up to you so you can reap the benefits.

Overtraining is common. I see a lot of people fail because of it. The progress slows or stops altogether and what is the most common response, work harder, when all you really need is rest and recovery.

I hope that you can take these four strategies to heart and start implementing them today, whether you are already in a program or have been thinking of getting started. I was fortunate enough to hear these strategies reiterated again and again from some of the best in the business and I stamped them into my own teachings and ideas. Sometimes it's important to stop and reevaluate what you are doing, and question the success of the efforts you are putting forth or even the lack thereof.

Remember these four aspects of fitness, mindset, nutrition, movement, and regeneration. With them, you are bound to succeed.

Josh Luck is a Certified Personal Trainer at Bay Tennis & Fitness in Harbor Springs.

This is part of the online edition of Northern Michigan Life.

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