Unless you are an athlete by profession or have a seemingly infinite amount of free time, energy and healing ability, exercise is likely not your highest priority. Life is busy enough even without technology vying for every ounce of your attention. It's easy to lose yourself. Somewhere in the traffic jam of all the technological distractions, responsibilities and overlapping list of tasks being thrown at you is a voice that reminds you that you need to stay healthy.
As a person who values good health, you know you need to carve out a place among your hierarchy of priorities for training in order to bring balance and control over your life. However, the jump from knowledge to action can seem like an infinite chasm of uncertainty.
Developing your strategy to bridge the gap (point A:where you are now -> point B: where you want to be) can be an overwhelming prospect, but I attempt to provide some clarifying guidelines.
Define Your Goal
The more specific your goal, the more likely you are to achieve it. It's OK to have more than one goal at the same time as long as they don't contradict each other. It's also OK to aim for something you think is completely out of your reach; this is how we affect personal growth.
Ask yourself the following:
What exactly do you want to achieve?
How much time do you have to achieve this?
Why is this important to you?
How does this fall among your top 3 list of priorities?
Once you define your destination, you can start to strategize and develop a road map for your journey. The overall goal needs to be broken down into milestones; and the milestones can further be subdivided into objectives.
Some martial arts schools organize the goals for each student into belt levels. Each level represents the successful completion or mastery of a handful of techniques. Eventually, the student achieves the highest rank: a black belt.
With the goal broken down into smaller, more manageable steps, you can start to design each individual training session.
Structure Your Journey
Once you set your sights on the end goal, you need to figure out a strategic plan.
Know how much time you have to achieve this goal. In the absence of an external deadline, you can always give yourself one. Having a set time frame will help you prioritize tasks and measure your progress.
The more time you have, the less specific you need to be in your training sessions. Conversely, the less time you have to reach your goal, the more concise your training needs to be.
Here are some questions to get you started:
What is your current state?
If your goal is to increase strength, how strong are you now?
What will it take to get there?
What should each workout include?
How much time do you need to recover?
Having a snapshot of your starting point gives you a basis for comparison and a benchmark for progress.
How much rest are you getting?
How quickly can you recover from training sessions?
Is your nutrition up to par with what you are trying to achieve?
The sum total of all your hours spent training are minuscule compared to the number of hours in a week. The remainder are composed of recovery and nutrition, so don't neglect this.
What can you do consistently?
What is the easiest thing you can do consistently that will move you in the right direction?
Note that HOW MUCH you move forward is not as important as HOW OFTEN you move forward.
Define Your Workout
Workouts don't need to take up a significant portion of your day; or even a whole hour. In fact, shorter, more focused , more frequent workouts do more to bring about improvement than infrequent hour-long sessions. Train for as long as you can dedicate 100% focus. For some this is 5 minutes, so those 5 minutes need to be concise and efficient.
The following is a 5-minute workout(no rest between exercises):
1 minute of air squats
1 minute of push ups
1-minute plank
1-minute floor bridge
1 minute of pike push ups
Try it out and see how you feel.
Long training sessions increase the likelihood of your mind wandering and your body simply going through the motions. Focus is the key.
With longer training sessions also come the risk of injury due to fatigue. As you expend energy, and fatigue sets in, your form and focus can decline. Injuries bring down time; and down time due to injury can hinder your progress.
A bit of research, or a good coach, can help you structure your workout for what you want to achieve.
Have Back-up Sessions
Defining your ideal workout is the easy part. Because life never occurs in a straight line from start to finish, you need to be able to adjust your training accordingly. This means having back-up workouts that you can do in place of your regular workouts, should the need arise.
Some workouts will leave you feeling like Superman, while some workouts will make you feel like you did the bare minimum. The truth is that the first type occur less frequently while the norm is somewhere in between the two extremes. Everyone has "off days" when its hard to get your head in the right zone. At least you're not on the couch.
What's important to remember is that all training counts if it moves you in the right direction.
Maintenance Mode
Having the right coach can address much of the prep work. However, you may find yourself in maintenance mode - training solo to maintain your level of fitness without any particular competition, test or event in mind. In this case, cycle your training throughout the week, month, year, etc. Create a curriculum for yourself with blocks of time dedicated to the skills you want to maintain.
Sample Weekly Curriculum
Saturday – Overall strength training
Sunday – Cardio, internal martial arts and breathing exercises
Monday , Wednesday, Friday - Bag work
Tuesday, Thursday – Power training
or
Sample Monthly Curriculum
Week 1 – Long weapons
Week 2 – Short Weapons
Week 3 – Open hand styles
Week 4 – Projectile weapons
With a curriculum, you have targets by which to assess your skills on a consistent basis. Your performance against a set of standards that you follow, be they personal or external, will help you gauge progress in the right direction.
Note that it's OK for some skills to receive lower priority. It's not uncommon for some skills to become irrelevant and be replaced with others. For instance: I hope to never have to use my broadsword skills in a fight, but there is a better chance that I might get choked, so I adjust my training accordingly.
With respect to health and fitness, the best approach is the one that fits into your unique circumstances, goals and personality. Do some of the work in the planning phase of your journey to reduce the need to find motivating factors along the way. When the bar is set to a smaller task fitting the larger goal, it becomes more tangible.
For instance: Instead of looking in the mirror and telling yourself you need to lose weight, tell yourself that you need to meet today's 20 push up quota. On some days you might even have enough energy to smash that quota and achieve a new personal best.
Consistency is easier to achieve when you accept that you will have good days and bad days. At the end of the day, at least you can walk away with a measurable victory. Long term success is measured in cumulative victories.
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