Friday, August 10, 2012
What's the Definition of Insanity? Part II: Road Trip To Fitness
2:18 PM | 
Posted by
Kaplan Center for Health and Wellness
Have you ever taken a road trip? That’s a silly question, of course you
have. When you plan a road trip, what’s
the first thing you do? Chances are you
choose your destination, right? You
think about how nice it would be to take a weekend trip to the beach or visit
Aunt Sue or check-out the World's Largest
Ball of Twine (Cawker City, Kansas). With your destination in
mind, you’ll then need to determine when you’re going and how you’ll get
there. A good road trip requires a road
map – you wouldn’t want to have your heart set on the Ball of Twine only to end
up at the beach – imagine the disappointment!
Fitness is like a road trip to the Largest Ball of Twine (or
anywhere, but why would you want to go anywhere else?) – you need to identify a
destination and create a road map. I am
always surprised when I meet with clients and they can’t tell me a single
fitness goal. Why would you get in
your car for a road trip without knowing where you’re going?
The first step in any fitness program is to establish a
goal. When establishing fitness goals I
have my clients ask themselves the following questions:
1)
What do I
want to accomplish with my fitness? Is the pursuit of my goal something I will
find enjoyable or will it feel like a chore?
(Hint: if it feels like a chore, you’re probably not going to enjoy
it).
2)
Is my
goal attainable? Be honest with
yourself about your capabilities. If
your best 5K time is 45 minutes (not that there’s anything wrong with that) is
competing in the 2016 Olympics in the marathon realistic? Setting unrealistic
fitness goals is a sure fired way to become discouraged and quit.
3)
How much
time is required to meet my goal?
Much like picking a weekend to visit the Ball of Twine, you also want to
have an idea about when your goal will be accomplished. Don’t choose “run a marathon” as your goal
for next month if you can’t walk around the block. Duh.
4)
Is my
goal measurable? One of the mistakes I see people make over and over again
is setting an ambiguous goal like, “get in better shape” (see: New Year’s
Resolutions). We want goals that are
measurable so we know when we’ve reached them and if we’ve been
successful.
Now that you’ve established your fitness goal, you’ve got to
figure out how to get there. This is
where programming comes in. Programming
is the road map to your fitness goal.
When it comes to designing a successful program you must consider:
1)
Your
current level of fitness. If your
goal is to run a marathon and the longest distance you’ve run was last
Thanksgiving’s 5K Turkey Trot, the first training run in your program should
not be 10 miles. A successful program
starts where you are.
2)
How much
time you have available to train.
Let’s stick with the marathon goal.
If your training plan requires 10 hours a week of running but you have a
full time job, new baby, church commitments, a Ball of Twine project and are
reading War and Peace, running 10
hours a week might not be reasonable.
Make sure the program meets your
schedule.
3)
Overload
and progression. Recall from our
previous blog post the importance of overload and progression. Failure to overload your body with
appropriate stress will fail to create fitness improvements. Failure to program overload over an
appropriate amount of time (progression) will likely lead to injury or failing
to reach your goal. For example, running a 5K 3 days per week for 6 weeks will
not help you improve at the marathon distance.
One thing to note about designing a program, don’t be afraid
to steal. You may not know this, but
there are people out there who design fitness programs for a living. You could if you wished actually employ them
to design your program. We’ll call these
people “coaches”. But if paying a coach
isn’t for you (and I would argue unless you are pretty well advanced in your
fitness you don’t need a coach), then use the internet. Hundreds (thousands?) of websites exist that
have pre-designed programs for a variety of fitness goals: running, strength
training, cycling, body building, ball of twine building – wait, how’d that get
in here? Just be sure though when you
use someone else’s program that it meets the above criteria—don’t get trapped
in a program that’s not right for you.
So now that we have identified our fitness goals and created
(or stolen) an appropriate program for achievement, we’ll next tackle the hard
part: doing the program. Stay tuned!
Posted by Rachel L. MaySchool of Health Sciences
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment