IT BEGINS AND ENDS WITH “YOU”
Simple Structured Training starts with the equipment necessary for every sport and activity that you currently have and always will have – your body. People complain that they can’t get to a gym, don’t have the equipment, or can’t work out alone because they need a spotter or partner to assist them, motivate them, support them.
Simple Structured Training teaches you how to use your bodyweight as its own resistance when you begin a strength training program. Once you learn how to add repetitions and sets to a foundation based on good form, you learn how to build on a program that disciplines your body in every area, alleviating weaknesses and building strength upon strength for better athletic performance, better health, longevity and lifelong activity.
Simple Structured Training works on the weaknesses hidden or ignored which hold you back from superior performance. It increases vertical and horizontal leap distances, directional mobility, and explosive power. Yet, it is simply a collection of exercises known by man for as long as they’d had a name for them. You must think of how you’re currently training, why you are training, and if that training is effective enough to help you improve in your sport and your life.
Simple Structured Training asks you why and how you train in the first place. When you learn how your body works toward your respective activity, you begin to look at the movements you rehearse in practice so that performance becomes automatic on the field and reaction comes first rather than reflexion. This deep-seated mental acuity is key to making even the most simple work, play.
Simple Structured Training are a core group of exercises that everyone at every level should do. Balance, coordination, flexibility, strength, speed, agility, ability to recover, mental sharpness and physiological training are crucial at every age. As you train the body, you train the mind. You begin generally, learn, grow, feed-back, get more specific, and refine goals to continually monitor your plan until you get to a level of maintenance that fits both your time and physical demands.
What typically happens is that an athlete begins to favor the training he or she is stronger at, that which comes easier. Some would rather run than stretch, without realizing stretching would allow faster and longer runs. Some choose to strength train rather than run, not realizing the benefits of oxygen uptake on muscular endurance. The athlete that gets by on talent and genetics alone survives for a while with intermittent peak performances spotted by occasional injuries. The well-rounded athlete, who focuses on training weaknesses to strengths, while strengthening natural abilities, usually enjoys the longest career by constantly learning and achieving and often passing on this wealth of knowledge by example to others.
When you’re tuned in to exactly how your muscles feel, you’re doing it for you. If you’re going too fast and not concentrating on the movement, you’re doing it for a coach or condition, to just “get it done”. Once you find yourself making it harder on purpose, pushing for extra reps, tuning in to how your body performs instead of taking motion for granted, you’ll know you’re hitting the upper levels of training. Going further, doing extra, paying attention and letting go reward the creative soul many times over. This “feel” is the basis of Simple Structured Training.
INTENSITY
The understanding you’ll need to be a better athlete is to simply feel what your body is telling you and respond to it with more or less intensity. Is your heart beating too fast as you exercise? Learn where your optimum heart rate should be for a given, desired outcome, then meet it, surpass it, or slow down. Do your joints ache? Pay attention to form, stance, angle, leverage and body position and back off on the weight. Is your bodyfat too high? Lower your intensity around food, and definitely skip the extra repetitions! There are no great secrets left to this training game. The major “bodybuilding,” “shaping,” “renewing,” and “longevity” magazines have the same articles with the same exercises they had 50 years ago. They call it something else, wrap a concept around it, design new equipment and put a fresh-faced model next to it, but it’s still Jack and Jill doing six basic movements.
People who get on a treadmill for forty minutes, four days in a week, after being physically dormant for 4 years, not only begin in an unbalanced state, but are bound to get more mechanically out of balance without flexibility training or working toward their maximum heart rate. Throw in some weight training with too little or too much resistance or incorrect execution, and you often have an injured athlete instead of a strong participant. With this, the frustration factor goes up, interest goes down and apathy returns because “you’re hurt.”
Many people work at jobs requiring them to bend, lift, lean, hunch, squat, or sit for hours on end. Some drive or travel daily, thousands of miles per year. Ergonomics in the office often only means a wrist rest near a computer keyboard, or an adjustable chair, while repetitive stresses are taking their toll on joints and organs. All areas of work, as well as play, can be enhanced by learning how to strengthen the posture and balance the symmetry.
