Look, Feel & Perform Better - Train Everything

As we begin to pass through our 20’s and enter our 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, life starts to catch up with us. Body fat seems to accumulate quicker, aches and pains start to become more apparent, and tasks that were once simple suddenly get more difficult.

It’s no surprise then, that most individuals I work with generally want to look, move and perform better.

Their goals are not just one-dimensional, but rather multifaceted. Broadly speaking, they are looking to reduce body fat, get out of pain, improve their mental health and develop their physical fitness to be able to play with their kids, or take on a new activity such as golf, running, tennis or hiking.

Therefore, in order to achieve multiple goals… we must train multiple qualities.

Rather than compartmentalising their workouts and training one single quality at a time, it would make sense to include mobility, strength, power and endurance work throughout the programme over the course of the year.

To do this, we should be lifting some relatively heavy weight, moving across multiple planes of motion, incorporating drills that keep us moving fast, and also training the aerobic system at low and high intensities.

The only issue we run into, is that if we wanted to give adequate time to train each quality, we would need to be in the gym 4-6 days a week, which is not very practical for most working adults.

To overcome this, we can instead opt to develop each quality concurrently throughout a single training session, thereby enabling us to get everything we need from just 2-3 sessions per week - a much more realistic level of commitment.

The great thing about this setup, is that you can start to create adaptations in mobility, strength, power and endurance on as little as 2-3 hours of training per week.

See below for an example of a two day per week training plan that includes all of the elements mentioned above.

Workout A

Workout B

If your current fitness goals are similar to those mentioned at the beginning of this article, but your workouts don’t look anything like the examples given above, I would encourage you to broaden your training spectrum to include exercises that train strength, power, mobility and conditioning.

If you start to train these qualities whilst also making a concerted effort to improve your food literacy, then not only will you look better, but you will also move better, feel better and perform better in any sport or physical activity you choose to pursue.