How To Approach Fitness Like An Athlete

Ok, so you've spent some hours in the gym sitting on the treadmill. You've paid a personal trainer to sit there and count your reps on the chest press. You've even bought one of those "Starve Yourself Down 10 Pounds in 43 Minutes!" books.

Guess what?

You feel sluggish, uncomfortable in your clothes, VERY uncomfortable out of them, and last week you threw your back out picking up the newspaper.

The way I see it you have three options.

Number one is to keep on going like you are. That's all well and good, but if you're not happy with your body now then what do you think is going to change that?

Number two is to fire your paperboy. I'm sure that little bastard threw the Sunday Times (by far the heaviest paper of the week!) in an awkward spot just for you.

Number three is to do something about it! You've tried the traditional gym and diet thing and it didn't work. The reason it didn't work was because you weren't working with your body's design.

It's commonly said in this business that your body loves you... and hates you. Many people think that since they try so hard to get in shape but never see results it means that their body hates them. That's not true. In fact, it's because your body loves you that you can't get in shape.

Huh?

Let's look at ourselves from an evolutionary point of view. A long time ago we were living as hunters and gatherers forever on the move and always worrying about starving to death or some beastie trying to eat us. These ancestors of ours may not have been able to write this web page or rock the Playstation, but they were strong, fast, and had some pretty solid physiques.

During some parts of the year food was tight and they'd get pretty thin, losing a bunch of muscle mass and fat. Other times of the year there was more food available and they ate as much as possible. The body adapted to this by storing fat and gaining some muscle (fat, from a long-term survival point of view is better than muscle) from the extra calories they were consuming.

Your body was trained to store as much fat as possible when it could and to resist gaining a whole lot of muscle unless it was stimulated. Muscle consumes energy to perform its functions, so that is extra energy (in starvation times) that the brain and other organs could be using to stay alive.

These hard times our ancestors went through made them into very efficient storers. This fat stored in abundant times helped keep them alive in the lean times, and it's how their bodies showed that they loved them. The problem came about when we went to a more farm-type society. Suddenly we had more food and less movement. People still stored food as fat (since it was available) but had less lean times so they didn't have the periods of starvation to lose some of that fat. Farm work did have plenty of muscle stimulating work, so you'd see bigger people than the hunting and gathering days. However, now we're starting to see over-fat people who don't work particularly hard to balance the surplus of food they have available.

Fast-forward to modern times. Now our society doesn't require many of us to do a thing all day long that would stimulate building muscle yet food is much easier to find and more plentiful. In our society we store fat like heck and don't build a lick of muscle. Your body hasn't caught on yet (evolutionary-wise) that you probably aren't going to starve with 15 fast food joints within a three-block radius.

What does this show us? It shows us that we have a body that's looking to keep you alive through efficient storage of nutrients even in times of surplus as well as one that doesn't change unless forced to. This is great for staying alive but bad for beach season. In order to efficiently combat this we can't do the generic, plodding workouts or strange "diets".

The problem with this is that if you perform most of the workouts that people are used to seeing such as spending half an hour plodding on the treadmill or vaguely pumping some machine weights you're not pushing your body. Your body, as we've seen, adapts quickly to most short-term stimuli and will defend itself against it. We want this adaptation but when the stimulus is not particularly hard then it'll only adapt as far as it needs to.

The key is to have a varied, intense stimulus to force your body to continue to change. We'll cover some of that stuff in later articles, but I want you to think of what you've been doing from an evolutionary point of view and then consider why it's failing. Changing your body is hard work. Are you applying that hard work in the manner that's most conducive to the results you're looking for?

Ok. Now we understand that your body responds better to acute simulus rather than low, gradual stimulus. How are we going to apply that to build you the body that you want?

What do athletes do, both in their activities and in their training? In general they run, jump, twist, squat, lunge, push, and pull. What do they not do? In general you don't see many sports where an athlete performs one small movement over and over again until they can't do any more. So why are we training that way? Why, if you want to look like an athlete, are you sitting on the bicep curl machine where you need to coordinate and balance nothing and just flex your little bicep?

The body is designed to work as a unit and that's how it changes the best, too. That's not to say that every movement has to utilize the whole body, but the more of the body you can get working at one time, chances are the better the movement is for you.

Compound, or multi-joint movements, will require more energy (calories expended), activate more stabilizing muscles, and create a better hormonal response to training. These benefits will add up to a leaner, stronger, and healthier body.

Here are three great exercises that will increase your athleticism, burn body fat, and build muscle mass.

Dumbbell Thruster:
1. Stand with your feet slightly wider than shoulder width and your toes pointed out at about a 45 degree angle while holding a pair of dumbbells on your shoulders in a neutral grip.
2. Continue holding the dumbbells in position descend into a deep front squat, maintaining an arched back with your chest out.
3. At the bottom of your squat reverse the motion and drive through your heels. As you return to the standing position press the dumbbells over your head combining the power generated from your legs and that of your shoulders and arms.
4. Return the dumbbells to your shoulders and descend into another squat to start your next rep.

Inverted Row:
1. Set a bar securely in a squat rack at about chest height.
2. Facing the bar, grab it in a double overhand grip with your hands slightly wider than shoulder width apart.
3. Step under the bar until you are holding yourself up with the bar.
4. Squeezing your shoulder blades together pull yourself towards the bar until your chest touches it. Hold that position for one second and slowly return to the starting position. Be sure to hold your body stiff and straight while performing an Inverted Row. For greater difficulty step further under the bar, set the bar lower, and/or place your feet on a bench to achieve more of a horizontal position.

Turkish Get-up
1. Lie flat on your back with one arm extended straight up holding a dumbbell, barbell, or kettlebell.
2. Holding the implement, you need to stand up straight with it over your head. You have two rules:
2a. Your arm must remain straight. It cannot bend at the elbow.
2b. The implement must not at any time be below your head.
3. Upon standing, follow the same rules and return to the start position.