Most people believe getting fit is just simply a case spending hours and hours in the gym, running every day or for some just hitting a yoga class is all the fitness they need.
But what if you want to be fit for a long time?
And what do you even mean by fit?
Some people see fitness as simply being able to run 3miles everyday and feeling great about that. Others get a bit obsessive and need to track every metric about their body composition, protein intake and how they look in the mirror.
Over here we focus on what you can actually do as way of measuring fitness. Which ever methodology you do, CrossFit or otherwise, here are some things everyone can do to ensure you’re making progress and not hitting a plateau in your training.
This figure on the right is what we tell our members but it works for anyone on any programme. Your year should be broken into particular focus’s. By the way, I’m talking to the hard working professionals who maybe have about an hour at most each day to work on their fitness, they might have kids, partner, dog etc, etc.
You should have that main something, whether it’s running, rowing, bodybuilding, CrossFit, you name it. That pursuit, the thing that makes up for your enjoyment in fitness should serve as about 50% of your time spent on fitness.
Nutrition should be a focus at some point and actually multiple times within the year that make sense for you. Starting a nutrition programme in December is damn hard. Starting one in January is easy because everyone’s doing it. So there is no need to try and tackle nutrition 365 days of the year because the time of year, day, week or month will actually play a massive part in your success. Instead, prioritise when is a good month to focus on fixing or learning some better nutritional habits. In our gym we throw out nutrition challenges every 3 months that are easy and simple to follow that give people some results that last much longer than the challenge itself. Lifestyle varies, therefore your nutrition will always vary, it’s not a great life trying to live 365 days on chicken and broccoli that perfectly fits your macros. We recommend 2-3 Nutrition focus per year last minimum of 30 days each.
SPP – Specific physical preparedness is when you change up your normal training to focus one some form of element that goes into your normal stuff. For example if I want to be stronger for CrossFit I might book some 1-2-1 sessions to focus on building strength. I’ll drop my usual 5 classes per week to 3 classes and fill the other two days with PT, a gymnastics course or something that brings me close towards my specific goals. Do this every quarter for 30 days or so and you’ll see great work capacity in your class efforts. For runners, this could be trying to focus on one aspect of running, trying to improve stride, efficiency, your short game (sprinting) etc, etc.
Specialise – In CrossFit specifically the methodology is to not specialise but be average at everything. That’s where fitness truly lies, can you run, lift, jump, throw, go? But it’s okay to put the GPP down for a bit to get better at the other modalities of fitness. Sometimes I’ll tell my members to just come to lift for a month and do one endurance session per week to focus on building strength. If you’re a long distance runner, specialise in sprint training for a month, it’ll probably help your long game. I think you get my point. Specialising won’t hurt you, it’ll improve the weaker parts of your fitness and turn them into strengths that you have confidence in.
If you’re struggling with seeing results, mix it up. Your body like’s variance, it’s why our GPP programmeming is different everyday. If you’ve been exercising for years and haven’t seen any results, someone has failed you or you’ve failed yourself and could use some help. We provide all of the services needed to continually make progress towards the things that are important to you.
Go use them.
