I'm new to JSF so I want to say hi to all and thanks to John for putting up a great site. It's nice to see real people who are serious about improving their health and fitness, and educating themselves in the process. I've been looking for something like this for a while, and I’m glad I found this place!

A little about me and my fitness history: I'm 30 years old, male, and I live in the Seattle area. In my teens an early twenties I was an athlete - football, wrestling and rugby mostly. I was fairly skinny growing up, but bulked up a little in my mid twenties and settled into the size I've been for the past 6 years or so: a shade over 6'0" and 190-195lbs. I've managed to remain sporadically active with lifting and aerobic training over the years. I'll have periods of 6 months or so where I'm exercising regularly and feel great, then I'll slack off because of work, time constraints, illness, or a hundred other excuses, and lose most of what I've gained. In spite of all this, I'm lucky in that I've managed to keep from gaining a lot of fat (I'm 195 at 12% BF now, I think the highest I've ever been is 200 at 13% or so), and I tend to recover pretty quickly when I get around to getting serious again.

Anyway, I don't have a degree in exercise science or anything, and I'm not a personal trainer. Fitness is just something I think a lot about, and I tend to read everything I can find on the subjects of training and nutrition. My philosophy leans more toward "train for health and performance" rather than "train for aesthetics". I'm more concerned with how I feel and perform than if I can see every one of my abs. No offense to the bodybuilder set. If I look better because I'm strong and fit, that's great, but it's a secondary goal, not a primary one. That said, everyone wants to look good, myself included. I'll work to lose that extra pound of fat if it means I can look good for the summer and not sacrifice too much else in the process. But I'm all about balance. I see a lot of people pursuing a fitness path that to me is one-dimensional - whether it’s a bodybuilding program, an endurance regimen or whatever, they seem to work only in that one plane. To me, that’s not real fitness. So what if I can bench press 400lbs? What good is that if I can’t run five miles or wipe my own ass because I lack the flexibility? Conversely, why would I want to run a 3-hour marathon if it means my upper body looks like a skeleton and I can’t do a single pull-up? See what I mean? I want balance. I want endurance. I want to be strong and agile. I want to be able to run a 10k if I feel like it and not feel like I’m going to die. I want to go out and play a rugby match with my local club team and not get pummeled. I want to be able to do a three-day, 50-mile backpacking trip and have a good time doing it. I want to play a pickup basketball game and not look like an idiot.

Most of all, I want to lead a life of healthy, balanced fitness. It’s a lifestyle. I think this is probably what most regular people really want, but maybe they’re not really sure how to go about it, so they end up following a one-dimensional program that they got from a magazine or the “personal trainer” at their gym. Get bigger arms! Get that six-pack! Lose 30 pounds in 3 weeks! They plug along at it for a while, but before long they end up abandoning the program because it doesn’t address their true goals and they’re not really sure why they’re doing it. They don’t understand why they don’t look like the guy or girl in the Bowflex commercial after six weeks, so they give up. You can’t make fitness a lifestyle with an approach like that.

So here's my primary goal: I want to be the best all-around athlete I can be. What does that mean? I've spent a lot of time reflecting on what constitutes an "athlete". What are the elements of athletic performance? What are the physical tools that all athletes must possess in order to be successful, regardless of their sport? I came up with five categories:

Strength
Strength is the ability to do work. Pretty straightforward. Pick up your kids, move a couch, carry a heavy backpack, pull yourself up a rock wall. Gotta be strong.

Endurance
Endurance is the ability to do work over a sustained period of time. Run a 10k, play a whole soccer game, hike all day.

Power and Speed
Power = Strength x Speed. It's the ability to do work quickly. To explode out of a three-point stance, to jump for a rebound, to sprint, to throw a ball - all of these require speed and power.

Balance, Agility and Coordination
What good are strength, endurance and speed if you can’t control and focus them? Walk a balance beam, hit a softball, catch a football, dribble a basketball, scramble over a boulder field with a pack on your back. To make your fit body do what you want it to do, you need balance, agility and coordination.

Flexibility and Resilience
Resistance to injury. Increased range of motion. You can't perform if you're sidelined with an injury. Flexibility helps prevent injury and increases the range of motion in which your body can do work.

These elements are important in all sports and physical activities, albeit in different proportions. For example, a football player may place more value on strength, power and agility than on endurance. In contrast, a marathon runner will focus on endurance and maybe some speed, but won't likely be doing a lot of heavy lifting for strength. A gymnast will train primarily for flexibility and agility with some strength thrown in. Training to improve in all five categories will help any athlete regardless of the sport, but certain sports require greater emphasis on one element over another. For me, I want a good balance of all of them.

Incidentally, these elements and the methods for improving them that follow are the same whether you’re an Olympic sprinter, recreational athlete or just want to get off the couch and lose your gut. The only difference between you and a world-class athlete, other than genetics and an endorsement contract, is the volume of training. The scope is the same; it’s only the scale that varies.

Man, this is turning out to be a long post. I need to get back to work, but I'll post a follow-up this weekend with the details of the program. Have a great weekend! :cool:

Looks really cool man. I need to focus on fat loss for a good bit longer but my ultimate goal would be a program just like you are doing. I used to be an athlete and I can definitely appreciate FUNCTIONAL power, explosiveness, agility, balance, coordination. It's just not what I am set to do right now but it's something to progress into - I'm all about getting that extra chin off my neck for now. Hope it goes well.

Ok, now that I know what it is I want to accomplish, the next step is to figure out how to get there. How do I put together a training plan that will build strength, endurance, speed and coordination all at the same time? How do I make it scaleable, sustainable and progressive, yet flexible enough to allow for modifications due to changing short-term goals, new information?

After several months of research and experimentation, I ended up with a plan that so far has worked really well for me. Actually, I think of it less as a “plan” and more as a “framework” upon which various plans can be built. It’s based on the idea of periodization, which most people have probably heard of. There are is a lot of material out there that explains the concept in much greater detail than I can, but periodization basically involves training in progressive cycles (periods) to achieve results. Virtually all top athletes now follow some form of periodized program. The bulking/cutting routine followed by many people on this forum is a simple example. The idea is that by training in cycles, each with varying intensity and a specific objective, you force your body to continually adapt. This eliminates the “plateauing” seen in more linear programs. You also build in rest phases to allow your body to rebuild and prepare for the next round of training.

A typical periodized program consists of three tiers: a macrocycle, two or more mesocycles and several microcycles. Microcycles are the building blocks; for me they’re one week each. Mesocycles (phases) are made up of several microcycles. Each mesocycle has a specific objective: strength, endurance, rest, etc. String your phases together and you have a macrocycle, which is the “big picture” of your program. A macrocycle is usually 4 months to a year in duration, depending on who you are and what your long-term goals are. My macrocycle is usually 4-6 months. When you get to the end of your macrocycle, you start over again at the beginning.

The attached picture shows an example of a 20-week periodized program. There are four phases (mesocycles), each with a specific objective. The colors represent the relative intensity as you move through each phase. Green = low intensity, dark red = high intensity.

The beauty of a program like this is that it’s 100% flexible. First decide on what your specific objectives are and create a phase for each one. Then build a plan within each phase. Expand or contract the length of a given phase based on the type of plan and how much time you want to spend working toward that particular objective. This allows you to experiment with different training programs at different points in your macrocycle. For example, right now I’m in the “strength” phase of my program. I’d been reading a lot about the 20-rep squat programs for size and strength detailed in the book “Super Squats” and elsewhere, so I decided that this time around I would try that for my strength phase (it’s brutal, by the way – but it works :D). Next time I might try Max-OT, since I’ve been hearing a lot about that. The framework and objective remain, but the specific plan is available for tweaking. This allows me to keep it interesting and fresh while challenging my body and achieving great results.

The transition phase is important, because it lets the body recover and rebuild in preparation for launching into the next macrocycle. Most of the material I’ve read recommends about four weeks of “active rest” every four months or so to avoid overtraining. For me, active rest usually means very light weight workouts and fun activities that I don’t normally do as part of my training. Hiking instead of running, playing soccer, stuff like that. The idea is not to sit on the couch for four weeks, but to stay active with low-intensity workouts. Alternatively, if I’ve slacked off and it’s been a few months since I’ve exercised regularly, I use the transition phase to ease back into it. I start off with light workouts and gradually increase the intensity before launching into a building phase.

Incidentally, periodization doesn’t apply only to resistance training. I use the same principles for my cardiovascular training. I’ll usually try to stagger the two, so that while the intensity of my resistance training is increasing, I’m decreasing on the cardio side and vice versa. This helps to keep me from overtraining.

Anyway, that’s the general idea and my overall approach toward training. I could go into a lot more detail about specific cycles and methods, but I’ve taken up a lot of space already with this. If anyone is interested in more or has specific questions, let me know and I’d be happy to share what’s worked for me.

I hope this gives people some good ideas or a different perspective on how to approach their training. I’d love to hear feedback, so let me know what you think.

Looks really cool man. I need to focus on fat loss for a good bit longer but my ultimate goal would be a program just like you are doing. I used to be an athlete and I can definitely appreciate FUNCTIONAL power, explosiveness, agility, balance, coordination. It's just not what I am set to do right now but it's something to progress into - I'm all about getting that extra chin off my neck for now. Hope it goes well.
Thanks Bo. Good luck with the fat loss! :tu: