By: Anthony Campo
1.) Warm-up – Everyone seems to know the benefits of warming up, yet it is amazing the amount of people who either don’t do it or put minimal effort into it. On the other hand you have individuals that will jog on the treadmill for 20 minutes for their warm-up which is both inefficient and misguided. It is important to warm-up with specific stretching, mobility, and activation work that will enhance your performance during your session. It is also important to warm-up the specific exercise that you are training, ramping up the weight with proper jumps in weight and reps in order to prime your Central Nervous System and prepare the body to perform at a high level.
2.) Corrective Work – Whether it is soft tissue work, stretching, neural activation, or exercise selection itself, every program should contain corrective work to help rehab injuries, or prevent them from happening in the first place. Corrective work should be chosen to help promote symmetry and balance throughout the body in order to promote proper mechanics.
3.) Strengthening – Every program should contain compound functional movements in which the pure goal is to get stronger and more proficient at that movement.
4.) Motor Plan Learning And Bio-mechanics Training – Throughout our youth, up until around our early teen years, doctors and pediatricians monitor our developmental stages and neural-muscular function. The problem is after this time period very early on in our lives, doctors stop paying attention to these patterns of development. Over time if we ourselves do not pay attention to these motor plans and mechanics they will begin to deteriorate leading to dysfunction. Part of your training should be dedicated to re-learning these motor-skills and mechanics in order to stay functional and increase our quality of life as we get older.
5.) Peri-workout nutrition – Peri-workout refers to the time periods before during and after your training session. You should make sure that your nutrition in and around your training matches up with your goals. To learn how to maximize the benefits of nutrition as it relates to training pick up a copy of the book Do This, Eat That which will teach you everything you need to know!