TLDR
- Have a conceptual lens to understand things then think through a practical lens to apply things
- A good plan will take into account the years and decades that go into it
Overview
In earlier pages we have covered more cerebral points relating to mindset, goal setting and habit formation.
The different lens
First, I want to posit there’s broadly three distinct lens of breaking down this topic.
- A theoretical lens
- A conceptual lens
- A practical lens
A theoretical lens is what I would suggest is a ‘textbook’ way of looking at things. It might look something like this:
We’re looking to create adaptations to two systems, the musckoluskeletal system and the cardiovascular system. There’s x number of muscles in the body, though for training purposes we might divide it into 10-15 muscle groups. Or you could get into the concept of bioflow and view all tissue as interconnected.
This probably won’t come as a surprise but this guide won’t be covering this approach in detail. Indeed I argue that for the vast majority people, this isn’t the most helpful way of framing things.
Instead we will break things down with a more conceptual lens for understanding, and then a practical lens for action.
OK, while I’ve just been poo-pooing on excessive textbook theory, it probably is useful to start with the very first point:
Everything in fitness can be stated as creating positive adaptations to the musckoloskeletal and cardiovascular systems.
But now let’s frame it a different way:
Everything in fitness is stimulus and recovery.
You create a stimulus in your body, that sends signals within the body, and you allow it to recover. In this way you can gain muscle, get stronger, move better, and so on. (Astute readers might suggest losing body fat doesn’t fit neatly into the model, I would argue it’s simply a semantics issue.)
Training is just applying stimulus.
Eating well (and eating more or eating less), improving your sleep and lowering your stress are simply addressing recovery.
Understanding the concept of stimulus and recovery as the overarching umbrella to everything is key. It’s the yin and the yang, the white and the black.
Without decent recovery, all your stimulus is near pointless. Let’s say your goal is to get stronger. If you’re training hard in the gym then neglecting your sleep and living off a diet of pizza and alcohol, you’re unlikely to get results.
Without an appropriate stimulus, you’ve got nothing to recover from. Let’s say your goal is to build lean muscle and loss body fat. If you’re eating clean and sleeping well, but your entire physical activity consists of yoga, you’re unlikely to actually progress with your goal.
For those more mathematically inclined, you can think of this as a simple formula.
Stimulus / 100 points * Recovery / 100 points = results
To state the obvious you need to aiming for a decent dose of both stimulus and recovery for long term progress.
Timeframe
The fact that this is a marathon not a sprint – we’re talking about multi-year and multi-decade endeavour.