Training

It's a necessary part of fitness, training. There's no getting around it. Our daily activities will most assuredly make us fit for doing what we usually do. But fitness is bigger than that. It's a general thing, rather than the specific of your daily routine. It's a preparation for the unexpected. When we hear the term survival of the fittest, it isn't about surviving normal things. If you run a lot, to train, that's good. But sometimes life requires you to stand and fight, rather than run. Did you train that? A metaphor, of course -- we're too civilized to need to fight. But you see the point. Running will not make you suited to carry fainted damsels down firetruck ladders. Strength matters too. So does speed. These are trainable. So train them along with the running. Be fit.

We've discussed it before, the ideas of activity, and exercise, and training. Activity is just an expression of metabolism. Living things move around, most of them -- even sponges. Going here, doing this, moving that -- just a part of being alive. Then there’s exercise. It requires an accelerated heartrate. There’s no intelligence required, it’s just working at a more intense level than usual. A good thing, pretty much, but possibly rather haphazard. Then there’s training: exercise with the addition of intelligence. It requires a plan, and a goal, and measurable progress, and consistency.

Life has its randomness. But it's not random. It's predictable, in a statistical way. No guarantees, but usually it's business as usual, usually. We don't however train for the usual. We train for the extraordinary. Yes, we may have to climb stairs every day. That counts as exercise. If we plan on climbing a mountain, though, we need to do more, we need to train. A reiteration, because important things should be remembered.

An athlete can’t be better than his deficits allow him to be. They hold him back, obviously. A weakest-link thing. So training must identify and address those shortcomings. They are not something to be ignored. They are to be embraced, as it were, and sometimes made the heart, the core of a workout. It’s not about idealism. It’s a necessity, for improvement.

The reason a standard gym-bodybuilder is so much weaker than he should be is that he has never trained his shortcomings. No, it's not about calves or forearms or deltoids or rhomboids. It's about the little stabilizers that hardly anyone knows the names of, and that don't show up in the mirror except subliminally, as the difference between a guy who works a few muscles so he can pose in front of a mirror, and an athlete who's trained his body the way it was meant to be trained -- completely.

Well ... the reason he's weaker, that bodybuilder, than he should be is the lack of meaningful variety, but also the sort of training itself, the reps and sets and loads he's carrying. No need here to go into it. It has to do with effectiveness and with goals. If you want to be big and sort of puffy, the muscle mags are full of advice on that. Lots of bad advice, some okay -- hardly any really sensible. Point is, train to achieve an intelligent goal. It's not about being one of the prettyboys. Just get the job done. Prettiness comes along with that.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank