My Training Principles

*Adapted from my upcoming ebook: How to Feel Good

Bruce Lee said "you gotta know the forms so you can break the forms". Or something to that extent. People love to misquote Bruce Lee, myself included. I spent years and years looking into and maybe even subscribing to XYZ fitness or exercise fad. Things like: 'the core is for stability, not movement', 'pure strength movements aren't functional movements', 'lifting weights makes you stiff'. I'll let you decide which ones I used to believe and which ones I didn't. I learned the forms so I could break the forms, or, again, like Bruce somewhat esoterically summarized: "Be water, my friend".

But regardless! These are the principles that I've been revising for my entire life (and they're still subject to revision). Don't follow them dogmatically but engage with them critically. In fact, before you read them, maybe just know that the first principle that whoops all the others is just "don't overthink it! just move your body".

With that in mind, here they are:

• Challenge your balance, stability, and coordination often. This could be by balancing on a single leg while you watch tv, it could be doing heavy single leg exercises like split squats or lunges, it could be playing pickleball.

• Lift heavy. How heavy depends on your level of training, but getting into lower rep ranges with heavier weights has substantial benefits for building power, strength, muscle, and bone density. This doesn’t mean every exercise of every workout needs to be intensely fatiguing, but that you challenge yourself. For me I typically take one set of each exercise to failure or close to failure. 

• Move fast. Power is the first to go as we age and it’s the hardest to get back. At least once a week try to do some explosive training, either by doing fast interval work on a run or a ride, train plyometrics (jumping), or do specific explosive movements in the gym with a medicine ball or olympic lifts.

• Get your heart rate up often. Aim to do both high intensity (like sprint intervals or v02max training) and low intensity exercise (like zone 2 steady state) every week with the majority being the latter.

• Train your joints. Spend time in end ranges of motion, both stretched and acute (within tolerance!). This can be accomplished by modifying regular ‘named’ strength training movements.

• Don’t neglect your feet and hands. Give the hands and feet as much focus as any other body part (or more). They’re your interface with the world, keep them strong and healthy. This is easier than it sounds, you can either add feet and hand work to your routine (between sets sometimes is a good option) or you can do exercises that specifically challenge your feet and fingers more.

• Recovery is when adaptation happens. Training sends the signal, but rest is when you adapt. If you want to go hard in the gym, by all means, go hard, but make sure you allow yourself more recovery. Better nutrition, more and better sleep, less stress.

• Progressive overload is how adaptation happens. Only by challenging yourself, for example, by lifting heavier weights, will your body adapt. “If you always do what you did, you’ll always get what you got.”

• Err on the side of what’s fun. Do the workouts you want to do, do the exercises you want to do, work out with friends or with your favorite podcast. Whatever you need to do to make fitness something you look forward to instead of something you dread.

• Don’t fix what ain’t broke. Only solve problems as they occur, don’t over optimize. If you are wanting to get stronger and you’re getting stronger then shy away from adding a bunch of unnecessary complications to your routine. Beware influencers and trainers that make things unnecessarily complicated. Even very nuanced adaptations can be achieved without a ton of devices or technology involved. Remember, anything that adds friction between you and your workout isn’t your friend, so if setting up for an exercise takes you ten minutes then maybe think about just using the dumbbells instead.

• Do fix what is broke! If you have knee, ankle, shoulder pain, by all means, let’s work on a solution. If you’re not getting where you want to go, ie, not getting stronger, not getting faster, not getting improved mobility or sense of well being, then yes, absolutely, let’s try new things. Modify as needed, reduce load, add load! Play around until you find what works for you.