What does training for life look like?
Training for life looks very different than training for a specific sport. Sports require you to focus more on areas of fitness that will enable you to maximize your potential in that sport. If you’ve been watching the recent Netflix show, Receiver, you will have seen some of the very sport specific drills that they do for sprinting (footwork and speed work) and blocking their opposition (bench press & other upper body work). These are essential for receivers to dominate in their sport.
Obviously none of us are receivers in the NFL but many regular people end up training for specific sports rather than training for life – and I don’t often see it working out so well long term…
The most common sports/events that people train for are either marathons or triathlons. I don’t see many adults doing speed work for their local hockey pick up game but I do see many people put hours into running over many years.
This is not what training for life looks like…
Training for life requires us to take a 360o approach to fitness. In basic forms we want to lift, run, jump, do pull ups, go short and go long.
In more complex terms we want to:
- Build Muscle – sets in the 8-15 rep ranges, short rest, moderate weight
- Get Strong – sets in the 1-5 rep ranges, longer rest, heavy weight
- Go fast – work really hard over short time frames (up to 6 mins)
- Go long – work at a consistent pace for over 40min keeping the heart rate steady
- Go in-between – work really hard but not maximum effort for 6-15mins
- Use our bodyweight – pull ups, push ups & dips are all great to train for life
- Mimic life movements – carry things from A-B, pick stuff up off the floor
Training for life looks like all of the above and we call this Functional Fitness. It will allow you to be really good in all areas. You will look & feel great (low body-fat & more muscle), you’ll be able to hike a mountain with relative ease, if you have kids you’ll be able to play with them all day and carry them around Wonderland when they have a melt down…
I am all for playing sports and doing events like marathons or triathlons. In fact, I’ve spent the last 5 years doing a variety of these kinds of events. But I’ve always prioritized most of the year training for life, rather than training for a specific sport or event. The priority for the most of the year is to lift, run, jump, do pull ups, go short and for short periods prior to a race I will spend more time going long, which is the sport specific part of these events.
Does this allow me to perform my best at these events? Probably not, I’d probably do better to lose some upper body weight in terms of muscle but that wouldn’t have served me well when hiking 80km over 4 days in Killarney earlier in the year…
Prioritizing training for life allows me to do anything at the drop of a hat and do better than average. If I put a good 8 weeks of sport specific training into my program then I can do much better than that and do relatively well. I’ll keep most of my strength, my muscle, my ability to do other things and best of all – overuse injuries don’t happen.
The Blueprint for training for life:
- Find a good gym where you can do all of the above for 3-5 days a week
- Go for a Ruck (hike with weight on) 2x week
- Ride, run or swim for 40+ mins 1x week
The Blueprint for training for life but also doing events like a triathlon:
- Find a good gym where you can do all of the above for 3-5 days a week
- Run, bike or swim – do two of those 1x week
- Ruck 2x week
- 6-8 weeks before your event – reduce gym to 1-2x week and increase run, bike swim (may need 12 weeks for long distance)
It’s really that simple – if you’re not a professional earning money for racing then you should train for life. Some people love running and just want to do that – that’s great… for now!
I don’t think it will serve people when they get older and they haven’t built the muscle and strength that is required to move well and freely in older age.
Sports are great but training for life will serve you best!
