As mentioned in some of my other posts, I’m not a big fan of overly prescriptive diets or workouts. I find it hard to believe that someone who doesn’t know me, doesn’t know my strengths or weaknesses, likes and dislikes, injury history, schedule, energy level, personality, commitment level, etc., can possibly provide me a specific workout that’s going to be best for me. So, I’m not going to list here exactly what I do but instead I’ll give you some insight into the framework that I build my workouts upon.  It’s really a set of guidelines and its constantly changing, especially this year after enjoying the benefits of a personal trainer and getting my CSCS®.  Also, it doesn’t stand alone its just part of a complete lifestyle.

My lifting adventures started many years ago on a tiny  island in the South Pacific called Roi Namur. I was there working as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative (that’s right, real life Star Wars) but as you can see from the photo, there’s not a lot to do there when not at work.  I managed to log almost 200 dives, SCUBA that is, in just 18 months.  But when I wasn’t at work or getting wet, I was at the gym.  We liked to categorize people who lived there into 3 types (a) workaholics (b) alcoholics or (c) fitness nuts and whichever category you fell into, well, you did it right.

My workout partner’s name was Andy and, as an experienced body builder, taught me everything I needed to know to build my initial framework.  In fact, I still use many of the lessons I learned from him today and nearly every one of them was validated as I went through the CSCS® program so Andy if you’re reading this – thanks man!

OK, so on to the structure of my workouts.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be adding more posts to complement what’s here, there’s just too much background and related material to jam it all into one post.  For example, I am confident that my workouts would not be effective at all if I didn’t also pay close attention to diet and sleep.  No surprise there I hope! So, keep in mind that this post is just about the activity side of my program, there’s a lot more to it. I mentioned in another post that I recently changed up my program so what I show below is new for me.  I used to have a much more body building style workout; split routine by body part with few functional multi-joint and structural exercises and lots of single-joint assistance exercise. There’s nothing wrong with that depending on your goals, right now I’m in swift-it-up mode 🙂

Most people think my program a bit much in terms of volume and are generally surprised that I don’t suffer from overtraining syndrome but I’m here to tell you that if you cover your bases well (diet, sleep, wellness) this isn’t too much — There is no such thing as overtraining, just under recovery!  I rarely do any 2 workouts in the same visit so yeah I’m at the gym at least twice a day M-F and usually 3 times per day on T-Th (I work from home mostly and the gym is just a few miles away if you’re wondering how that’s logistically possible as many do).

Here’s some detail about each of those workouts.  Note that I typically warm-up before the more intense workouts with a few 60 second sprints on the treadmill and my cool down involves both foam rolling and stretching.  I also try go get 7-10 minutes in the hot tub after heavy lifting as well.

• Lower Body:  3-4 multi-joint exercises usually with a hypertrophy protocol.  So roughly 85% of my max for 8-12 repetitions and usually I like to do 4-6 sets.  I’m focusing here on Front Squat, Back Squat, Dead Lifts (both kinds), Lunges, Sled.  Duration is ~ 60 min.
• Light Full Body:  Nothing too heavy… push ups, pull ups, crunches, various dumbbell raises, some arms.  When using weights this is more of an endurance protocol, 50-60% of max with 15-20 repetitions and maybe 3 sets.  This day was also part of my last program and works well, its a great way to start the week and I usually do this one with a partner.  It’s also a great day to substitute every once in a while with something different like, all arms or all core or something. An awesome way to start the week.
• Core: Core is an overloaded term for sure, here I don’t mean “the fundamentals” and I don’t mean “the abdominals”, I mean the entire trunk.  So this is usually 30 minutes of a mix of crunches, sit ups, side bends, back extensions, trunk rotations, etc.
• HIT:  I take a small group training class at the gym where we mix plyometrics, dumbbells, barbells, body weight exercises, you name it.   Check out my post on brain health if you want to read about some incredible benefits from this type of workout. Additionally, I consider this to be one of the main reasons why I’m able to recover from my other workouts so quickly. I do indeed lift the same day.
• Upper Body: Same theme as lower body except my main exercises are: Bench Press (rotate between incline, decline, flat and throw bench), Cleans, Push Press, Rows (all variations), Lat Pull, Shrugs. As with lower, this is about a 60 minute workout and I don’t do every exercise listed here, I try to shuffle them up and even if I do the same ones in the following week I purposely change the order.
• Sprints / Running:  This is sort of new for me, I used to run cross country many years ago and every Feb our MMA school, Chandler MMA, has an intense testing program for new Black Belts so every year I throw in a little running into my routine.  This year I’m trying to take it to the next level with more consistency, a good mix of sprinting and some fun 5K’s on the weekends.  I’m also really starting to enjoy trail running.

So what about rest?  Yeah, it’s HUGE. So you might wonder why I don’t have recovery days in my program, great question. I guess the only answer I have is because I don’t need them. I have great energy and my muscles are ready to go per the outlined program almost all of the time.  If I feel like I’m just too sore or too tired to nail the planned workout for the day there’s a pretty simple solution, I rotate in something I can do in the name of active recovery.  For me that means either Light Full Body, 20 minutes on the treadmill, or maybe just a lot of stretching and some pull ups.  The other keys to my ability to sustain this kind of workout schedule for years (no, this isn’t an experiment) are getting good sleep and eating well.  I’ll post more details on my eating behaviors later but I can tell you without a good 7 hours of sleep consistently I can’t do what I outlined above.  When I’m unable to get good sleep for more than a few days in a row is when I end up taking full days off…

And finally one last element…. the martial arts. My current fitness program doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for martial arts both in terms of time or energy but for a little while I was getting back into Judo on Friday evenings.  If you know anything about Judo you know its an anaerobic killer!  If you are engaged in Randori, you will be getting a workout like no other.  I do intent to get back into the MMA school on a regular basis in early 2016; it is a great passion of mine and has been for many years.  I’ll post some details on that topic another time!!!