“Why Do We Need to Learn from Athletes?” This question came from a member at Bang Fitness. This was fair enough, as one of our mottoes is Train Like an Athlete, Feel Like a Superhero. The other big one is Don’t Be Baby. I can’t comment on the latter, but I have some ideas about the former.

Would you like a wonderful idea that would be terrible for your physical progress? Don’t learn from the athletes. Instead, do whatever the gym crowd is doing at your local shiny-machine-big-box-gym.

1) Slow treadmill workouts while watching The Price Is Right at a pace that allows for a casual conversation? Go for it.

2) Token machine work for the muscles you can see in the mirror? Outstanding! Yep, after you’re done this ambitious undertaking, start slamming energy drinks and recovery shakes.

3) Am I missing something? I’m sure I am, so get subscriptions to all the muscle comic books too. You know the ones I’m talking about; they have gorgeous cover models, tonnes of advertisements for supplements that are borderline useless or borderline illegal, and articles that claim to be penned by Mr. O, but aren’t.

You could spend a lot of years doing this. It will work terribly, but you’ll be in the gym a lot, and you can wonder loudly to anyone who will listen why NOTHING works for you!

There is some exaggeration to prove the point here, admittedly. There are a few people who will do well regardless of what exercise program they are on, and they will do well with the above system also. Not because of it but in spite of it. We call these people jerks because most of us won’t be able to get away with the same nonsense. They do, however. As a result of their success, others to delude themselves that this absolutely stupid style of exercise will make them look like a cover model in eight weeks or less!

Let’s contrast this with how the training of athletes is approached. First of all, athletes don’t typically subscribe to one notion of conditioning, or fitness. Face it, being “in-shape” for a Chi Chi Rodriguez is a lot different than being “in-shape” for Bret Favre. Even though there are numerous similarities, each needs to be readied for his own sport.

What are your sport requirements? Let’s take the example of the game of life (not the Parker Brothers version). For a game of lifer, your fitness needs might likely start with achieving and maintaining full mobility (combating the dreaded muscle creep from office work or driving). Before you can do much else, you are going to need to be able to move without restrictions, because when we game of life types need to spring into action, we don’t get too much of a warm-up period. Has anyone ever asked you if it was a good time for you to jump out of the way of a speeding bus? No, you pretty much just jump, so one of our big goals has to be sufficient mobility in emergency situations.

Now, by the way, I’m not on the “be prepared for ANYTHING!” band wagon. I don’t suspect that I’ll need to wrestle ‘gators in space anytime soon. But certain standards for the game of life need to be understood as a given.

We’ve established that we need mobility. Jumping out of the way of oncoming traffic without pulling a hamstring is good. But say your kids are running away from you at the park. You’ve been doing foam rolling and drills for your mobility, and you can go after them without pain. Can you do it fast? Kids play hard and fast, and sometimes they fix their gaze on the distant horizon and just give‘er. Don’t just stand there, start sprinting!

Moving fast is a huge part of what is missing in the big-box-gym paradigm. They would rather you not rock the boat by moving too ballistically. For them it is an issue of wear and tear on the shiny machines, and possible liability issues. But no athlete plays their sport slowly (spare me the possible exceptions), and the game of lifer should not either. So chase the kids fast, and step into the realization that coaches the world over have already encountered: strong athletes are fast athletes.

This does not mean you need to devote your life to powerlifting, weightlifting, or Highland Games. You can instead just STEAL some of their methods! The fun thing is they don’t even mind: most of the time no one asks them anyway, so they are often eager to share what they’ve learned.

So now we’ve got a nice foam roll warm up, mobility drills, an abbreviated strength training routine that makes us stronger and faster without making us slaves to the gym grind. Mobility, Speed, and Strength allow us to move our butts without hurting our hams, catch up to the kids, and heck, even pick them up for an airplane ride! Next goal: we do it all day long, baby. Let’s be the kind of “game of life” players that shine in the fourth quarter, if you know what I mean. Energy systems work! Finish your workout with something that gasses you! Push a sled, run a hill, carry a rock, throw a med ball, push, pull and squat and keep it going! For conditioning, rest periods should not allow full recovery. But for explosion training, full recovery is crucial, so you can’t mix the two very well.

The items in bold in the last paragraph are a short list of athletic requirements for the game of life athlete. Your list could be longer or different; there are lots of ways to tweak it, but I think the really important thing here is to understand that there are different definitions of “fitness”. Fitness is really just the ability to do a task. What task do you want to be able to do? Use the means and methods appropriate to the task, but unless your task is “move slowly and with great discomfort”, consider training like an athlete to do so.

Ron Dykstra