LET’S START TRAINING

Photo by Fletcher Wold / the Advocate

“Hell yeah, Deniqua,” you say, “I’m ready to get jacked!”

Well, to that I’d say, “Slow down there, partner. A lot goes into training. You can’t just start lifting weights and expect to see good results.” So far, I’ve discussed sleep, nutrition, and goal-setting, all of which are important to your success. Training is progressive, as well – you don’t just start off lifting. Especially so in the gym, you don’t just jump into exercise. Always warm up first.

Warmups prepare the body for exercise by getting your cardiorespiratory system (heart and lungs) and body ready to exercise. Warmups do not necessarily have to be related to the workout to follow. For instance, a person who is lifting weights to increase strength and muscle mass should do cardiorespiratory exercise during their warmup.

For those just beginning, training will be focused on two things – cardiorespiratory and stabilization endurance training – for good reason.

Cardiorespiratory training will continue throughout the course of your training, and should continue throughout the course of life. This is primarily because of the health benefits of cardio exercise, such as improved cardiorespiratory function and regulation of mental health and mood. Cardio exercise in a warmup also helps get blood moving through your body, meaning you will have more endurance for the workout to come, in a sense.

Stabilization training combined with cardiorespiratory training is the baseline for strength training. The goal of stabilization training is to teach your nervous system to use the proper muscles to most efficiently move in a variety of ways. In essence, you take a controlled environment (i.e. the floor, even and steady) and make it unstable (i.e. add a stability ball to a specific exercise). This could be something as simple as hopping on one foot instead of both, or doing a one-legged squat.

Endurance is the ability to perform an action for an extended period of time and is also vital to outcomes.

Without stabilization training, strength training can be more strenuous and even more dangerous, and without cardio training, you may not reap all the health benefits of a program.

Think of training as a tower: Every stage or step builds upon the last. Cardiorespiratory and stabilization endurance training is the foundation, to support all the work to come.

Advocate Staff