One of most frequently asked questions I get is “what should I do on the days I’m not in Fusion Training Class”?
My answer: It depends.
But, whatever your goals, there is one basic principle that should be guiding your efforts. The principle of the minimum effective dose.
Make your boot camp days the main focus of your training. Go hard. Create change. And then recover. Most of us are already plenty stressed. There’s no need to train like you’re in an 80’s training montage.
I have to confess that as a former college swimmer, I struggled for years with over training because I believed that I had to continually train – whether that was in the water, running, or lifting, that I had to be working hard if I wanted to see any sort of improvement.
Instead lost the ground I had gained and I became skinny/fat. Those “love handles” drove me to do more cardio and the lack of muscle drove me to keep hitting the weight room, and I ended up frustrated for many years.
It didn’t help that I ended up working at a gym that was based on one of the Mecca’s of MMA style circuit training. This was not good for me. Good people, but not a good match.
By the way, even though we use circuits in Fusion Training, there is a method to the madness. We do enough to create change (the hardest part of our workout adding up to right about 25 minutes) and then we stop, stretch, and that’s it. We follow the principle of doing the minimum effective dose. Do the smallest amount of work to create the greatest amount of change. It’s a big mental shift, but one well worth making.
And I do the same thing for my own workouts. The main part of my workouts clock in right around 30 minutes, and I typically spend no more than about 45 minutes total in the gym, and I do that three times a week. That’s a fraction of what I used to do, but I look and feel so much better.
So, if you do Fusion Training Classes three days a week, you should consider yourself done with hard workouts. Go for a brisk 40 minute walk. Play a sport with your friends. Do something fun. Yes, we do sit a lot and we do need to move more, but there’s no need to train all out every day. That’s adding stress and will prove counter productive.
What if you train in boot camp twice a week?
My short answer is to add one more strength and conditioning day. Pick no more than five exercises:
1. Push (IE Push Ups or Overhead Presses).
2. Knee dominant leg (IE Squats, Lunges or Split Squats)
3. Pull (IE DB Row, Pull Ups)
4. Hip (butt and hamstring) dominant leg (IE Swings, Single Leg RDL’s).
5. Core/Movement (IE Sit Through, Spiderman Climb, Side Plank + Rotation)
Check out the movements page on this site for more details.
Work and rest on an interval, which you can feel free to mix up From:50/:10 (evil), to 45/:15, to :40/:20, to :30/:30. Run through that for 10 to 20 minutes and you’ve got a great workout on your own.
I do have a fair number of runners, so let’s take a look at running for a minute. First, I highly recommend checking out The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss and going over the section on endurance.
He outlines a sprint based approach to distance training. You can get more benefit from a shorter, faster workout, which will put less overall mileage and stress on your body than the usual approach of adding mileage, building a base and getting really good at running slowly.
Hill sprints (for 10 to 15 minutes), regular sprints on flat ground with a few rounds of power skips (I usually do 50 – 75 yards), and Fartlek training are your best bets. (I have to admit I still have a Jr. High sense of humor and find that name funny) Go hard, allow for a good amount of recovery between sprints, and finish while you still have something left in the tank.
Principle for runners:
Speed work will carry over to distance and make you a faster runner. Long distance work does not have a corresponding effect. Train hard, keep it brief, then consider yourself done. And definitely count boot camp as a serious training component. I’ve run some of my best Thanksgiving Day Races with very little running specific training. Circuits and sprints will take you far.
I’ll go over recovery strategies in another post.
And I also realize that food is a huge component to overall success and (Dare I say it?) enjoying your life. Don’t get weird with food. Eat real food, not funky food-like substances. Listen to your body. It’s not the rocket science that so many programs would have you think.
Michael Pollen summed it up well. Eat real food. Mostly plants. Not too much.
Nia Shanks is a trainer I highly respect and she shared about her three year struggle with an eating disorder in her blog.
She was also recently interviewed and spoke in depth with my friend Jim Laird. If you ever wondered how the top fitness professionals talk to each other, this is a great chance to listen in. Click here to check that out.
Stay Strong,
Charlie