I spent six hours yesterday considering a new fitness program for myself. I’ve been happy with my Hillfit experience but want to try something new.
I surfed the ‘net, read some chapters in Jonathan Bailor’s The Smarter Science of Slim, and thought more about the Hillfit program. I spent a lot of time at the Whole9 website reviewing their recent three-part series on “The Five Best Exercises for Overall Fitness, Health, and Longevity,” or some such.
Bailor’s exercise program focuses on eccentric exercise, a place I’m not ready to explore. “Eccentric” probably doesn’t mean what you think. Take pull-ups or chin-ups, for example. You pull yourself up, which is concentric; letting yourself down is eccentric. I’ll get to Bailor’s program some other day.
I was planning to put something together based on the Whole9 series, like Clifton Harski did.
My ideas started to crystallize after I remembered an old architectural aphorism: Form follows function.
So I asked myself, “Self, what are you’re goals?”:
- improve my current fitness level
- effective
- efficient (e.g., not time-consuming, so under two hours a week)
- scalable
- teachable
- relatively safe
- simple
- no machines or commercial gym needed (i.e., home-based)
A couple items from Whole9 caught my fancy: man-makers, Turkish get-ups, the primacy of squats, the High Knee Walk to Spiderman with Hip Lift and Overhead Reach. Except for squats, these ideas were new to me. The Spiderman thing brought some of Mark Verstegen’s Core Performance exercises to mind; particularly good for flexibility.
Do you know of a good existing pre-packaged program that meet’s my criteria, either in book or DVD form? I’m sure there are hundreds available.
I’ll share more ideas with you in the next few days.
Advanced Mediterranean Diet 