My Fitness Strategy
WHY AND HOW!
Fitness is the ability to survive, which depends on one’s preparedness to solve life’s problems, especially those most necessary for survival. In other words, fitness depends mainly on the quality of care given to the most common and basic things in life, such as eating, resting, and working. Underlying our ability to care for things is our ability to learn, which necessitates we make learning our priority.
- Value things in accordance with your ability to influence them. Invest your energy where you get the highest return. Don’t invest in things you can’t change.
- Prioritize fundamentals. They are the foundation and the things most often in use. Focusing on the basics gets you the most for the least.
- We learn best through playful repetition. Mix it up. Value your wins and losses. It’s all just practice. Don’t limit yourself to imitation, and try something different.
- Performance is efficiency, which is measured by the energy (not time) needed to achieve a goal. Ruthlessly cut at the unnecessary until you’re left with nothing but highly refined essentials.
- You only get good at what you do. Learning is limited and specific. Improving performance requires accurately duplicating the movements needed for any given situation.
- Just enough is enough. Activities are most productive in the beginning, and they gradually (sometimes quickly) become less productive until becoming counterproductive and harmful. More is probably not better, and in the game of life, knowing when to stop is the key to winning!
How do I apply these guiding principles to exercise programming?
The main purpose of my training is to physically prepare you to easily learn new skills. I can’t make you better at everything, because you only get good at what you do. However, I can specifically improve the fundamental parts needed to learn more complex skills, and thereby, I improve your overall performance through better preparedness to learn. Additionally, the execution of these fundamental movements is tailored to allow for more efficient locomotion- which is simply your ability to get from Point A to Point B. We prioritize locomotion because it is necessary for everything and essential to survival. Improving this function, has the greatest impact on overall performance and injury resistance. Also, I continuously play with how I apply exercise stress. I know I don’t know- but through a playful process of trial and error I learn to get more for less.
Whether learning music, reading, mathematics, or athletic ability- a thorough appreciation of fundamentals is needed to create logical skill based progressions. You can’t learn to play the piano using random exercises that develop the muscles of the hands and forearms, and in that exact same way, learning useful athletic ability can’t be developed with random movements unrelated to real life. Effective preparation, requires getting specific about the movements actually needed in day-to-day life and sports. Let us step out of the dark ages and start applying sound reasoning. It’s all physics. Performance is efficiency.
Visit one of our courses to learn the exercises and to hear more about the strategies behind our workouts.
