Posted on August 03, 2016 by Jenny Cromack
When you start your fitness and health journey it can be a little daunting, you’ll often want to accomplish a handful of goals all at once. Often these are related, however the mechanisms by which they are developed are often unrelated. For example you may wish to lose “weight” and build muscle but (maybe you probably don’t know this) the process of fat loss whilst building lean mass is possible, but extremely difficult. Or, for example, you may wish to improve your “fitness” whilst “toning”, which requires very separate approaches in training to develop these qualities efficiently. Therefore how do you organise your training?
Most fitness qualities regress towards the mean unless they are frequently stimulated, however the deterioration rate of the various fitness qualities varies considerably. This provides you with the opportunity to manipulate frequency in order to vary focus over a period of time, ticking off a multitude of goals. Below I have provided an examples of long term planning, for organising your training, based on common goals. I have also included some sort of time frames regarding how quickly you will experience results if you are a novice.
INDIVIDUAL 1: WEIGHT LOSS & TONING
Phase 1 – (6 weeks) (Developing Base Fitness & Movement Efficiency)
- 2 sessions per week using long interval based training
- 2 sessions per week using compound full body exercises 8-10 reps
- 1 session per week using steady state training
- It is unlikely that huge changes in body composition will occur during this phase, some weight loss is expected, adaptations to muscle tissue will be predominately neural.
Phase 2 – (6 weeks) (Fat Loss & Strength Training)
- 2 sessions per week using short higher intense intervals and circuit style resistance exercises
- 3 sessions per week using whole body compound exercises 6-8 reps
- Fat loss and base strength should see rapid development during this phase. During concurrent training such as this, the key lies in your ability to train shy of failure during resistance training.
Phase 3 – (6 weeks) (Toning & Remaining Fat Loss)
- 1 session per week using very intensity interval training
- 4 sessions per week using upper/ lower body split (one session uses higher volume 12-15 reps/ one session uses low volume 6-8 reps)
- During this phase most changes will be to the skeletal tissue. Some fat loss will still occur.
Remember there is no single solution to this objective, every individual is unique and requires modifications and adaptations, however take away that you can’t do everything all at once, there must be long term organisation employed to maximise your chances of achieving your goals.