How Tough Should Our Training Be?

Why Crossfit and Insanity DO NOT set the rules of fitness

I feel a little worried about where fitness trends are going.  It’s as if Crossfit and Insanity are setting the standard to which we set the intensity of our training.  A lot of us go to the commercial gym and while most people are either doing their cardio or in the weights room engaged in 3 sets of 10 someone in the corner is doing flying burpees, supersetting with some clean-and-press.  Now I admit that I used to think that this was cool but now I do find myself backtracking.

Such is the strength of this trend that now if you audition for a role as an instructor you’re judged not by your own technique, knowledge or ability to interact but how tough you make your class.  Instructors are judged now according to how tough they make their class because participants now believe that this is the proper way to train.

 So how tough should the workout be?  Well, you’ve seen insanity being done like this

 

But when you see it being done like this…

 

The workout is too tough.  He's out of breath after the warm-up and at one stage he says screw form.  For a start you only go as far, as fast and as hard as form allows.  Once form is compromised you regress or you slow down.  The beauty of this approach is that when you try to execute things perfectly, that top level of breathlessness you feel while preserving perfect form tends to be the maximum you need to train at.  Try that yourself.

 So you don’t like Crossfit you don’t like Insanity, Is there anything you do like?

For a start Olympic lifts are not designed to be performed at high repetition or high tempo.  Most people don’t have the joint mobility needed to execute the moves.

As for insanity, if jumping around the living room like a chimpanzee in front of the telly is your thing then fine.  Fact is, half those moves aren’t designed for beginners yet the workout is promoted primarily to people that don’t work out, by people (in the DVD) who have been working out for years.

I actually prefer good old school aerobics, because at least the instructors have a concept for non-impact and high-impact moves.  It’s part of our teaching.

So how should we train?

I prefer not to mix weights with cardio.  Weight-training is done for a medium to heavy rep range and cardio is performed in a pure form by attending run clubs or spinning class, maybe some football/netball training to make it interesting.  To this we only add one circuit or high-intensity class a week.  That does mean around 4 training sessions per week which not everyone has time for, in which case you may need 2 circuit sessions per week or even consider an aerobics class which incorporates some weights.  You’ll be surprised by how tough they can be.

 So go out and find a class near you.  In London and the UK you can go to websites like evercise and classfinder and find a pay-per-class workout in your area of any modality.