A Training Template for Long Term Health
A Training Template for Long Term Health
When we think about training, we often think about it in terms of performance, in regards to sports, strength or physique. Within these areas is a long term focus made up of many very specific goals. For example, a weekly sports event that culminates in a final, or a modelling competition where competitors have to compete for a day. Sometimes the performance in simply something to maintain with no specific event, such as models staying lean or "cover model ready" for long periods of time. In each of these cases, the priority is performance over health.
Health on the other hand has no specific event to prepare for. It is the longest of long term goals. It can involves performance (just as performance involves health), but it is harder to measure than performance. It's not measured in events won, or kilograms on the bar, and yet it is one of the most important things in our lives.
Often we're sold on performance, but need to focus on health.
Ideally long term health is all about making small incremental changes to your habits. It's about testing, experimenting and reflecting. What doesn't work for most people is making wholesale changes over a short period of time in an attempt to undo months, but more commonly years, of poor habits and a lack of awareness, or care, about their health.
In this article I wanted to break down a simple template for health (although performance will improve along the way using this template). This template can help get you lean with a six pack, it can help you to add muscle and get stronger, but that's not the key focus of the template. It's real aim is to provide a sustainable long term practice which will get you and keep you healthy.
Movement
The basis of most health practices should include some form of movement; enough movement for your requirements. In today's modern society of maximizing everything, many people often think that means non-stop training. Others don't move at all. It's interesting the "blue zones", the areas in the world which are classed as the healthiest and longest lived do not do intense training, but simply move to live; to tend to their gardens, to see their friends, to buy what they need to get by. It is Western Society which has significantly reduced the time spent doing incidental movement and increased the amount of time doing high intensity exercise. My belief is that, for ideal health, the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle; we do want to have some performance after all!
Training
Get two high intensity days per week: this doesn't mean high intensity interval training as such. It might mean two heavy sessions of lifting weights, or two sessions of focusing on things that are more taxing such as sprints. The idea is two days a week you do something to push yourself outside your comfort zone. If you do more than this, it might actually help to cut back to this recommended schedule and focus on recovery, at least initially before possibly (although probably not) adding more.
Get two moderate intensity days per week: Consider these days as the training days when you keep a little left in the tank. This can look similar in terms of the type of training done during the high intensity days, it is simply done in a way to not go beyond your limits.
Get two recovery days per week: recovery can mean yoga, swimming, walking or simply stretching. It doesn't need to be something with an exact schedule or last for 45-90 minutes. It can be as simple as stretching or walking for 30 minutes or working on getting more focused movement in.
As a simple guide, I would set out a week like this:
Monday: Moderate Intensity
Tuesday: High Intensity
Wednesday: Recovery
Thursday: Moderate Intensity
Friday: High Intensity
Saturday: Recovery
Sunday: Rest
Nutrition
Nutrition is the most confusing and difficult part of a training program to consistently get right. There are enough diets out there, and each of them could probably work. So which is the best one?
This is part of the reason why the best diet is the one you can maintain, and that diet might not fall under the category of vegetarian, vegan, paleo or keto etc.
An ideal diet, for long term health, is one that will, on average, stay within approximately 500 calories of your required maintenance calories. This should result in little to no change in your bodyweight over an extended period of time.
If you wanted to lose fat, then you would aim for the lower end of this, that is 500 calories below your maintenance calories. If you wanted to add muscle, 500 calories above your maintenance calories. Of course you can get much more scientific than this, but these are some good guidelines to follow, and for long term health, it would be better to not focus to heavily on one goal or the other.
How do you work that out? Check out Precision Nutrition's Calorie Calculator, which is simple and easy to use.
Recovery
The missing component for most people is recovery, not even from their training programs, but from their day to day lives. And the simplest way to do this is sleep. The experts recommendation of 7 to 9 hours still rings true, and if you're following this training template, I would say a minimum of 8 hours sleep. This also has the added benefit of improved energy, focus, mood and lowering your chance of major disease. So yes, it's pretty important.
As mentioned earlier, recovery also includes active recovery such as yoga, swimming, walking, stretching or more. As you can imagine, each of these can also be pushed to quite high intensities, so the aim to to improve and feel better for the other days of training, and of course your day to day life. Stretching especially will provide overall benefits for your life.
To add to this, I believe recovery includes time with friends and family, time away from electronics, and time to reflect on how you feel and how your energy and stress levels are. This can be expanded to include reflection on other areas of life, which obviously affect and are affected by training.
We could also add getting outside, connecting with a community, learning and developing your values as great additions to long term health; each has been shown to assist our mental health, which of course will assist us in the long term. What else would you add to this list? What have you found to work great for your long term health?
HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL RECEIVE WHEN YOU JOIN PEAK
Access to the Fundamentals Program: Not just one session covering all you need to learn, but up to 8 sessions of programming to take you from beginner to knowledgable or to improve you current training methods.
Vision Casting Session: Beyond your normal goal setting session, this will be cover your goals AND provide you the blueprint and habits required to achieve your goals across multiple areas of life.
Free Custom Nutrition Plan: A nutrition plan not only based on your goals, but also on your current schedule and capacity, the nutrition will be designed for you.
Unlimited Access to Coaches: Access to coaches for help with training, nutrition or mindset
Access to In Depth Mobility Library: learn how to take care of your own body with a 50+ video exercise archive that will help you feel great from head to toe!
Free goodies such as shirts, books, sweat towels: look and feel the part not only with your training and nutrition, but with your accessories too!
And much more…
Simply fill out the form on the right and I’ll be in contact with you within 24 hours to discuss the best time for the interview. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have before the interview as well.
