Becoming an Athlete

The pursuit of strength and health have taught me that consistent and sustainable efforts beat inconsistent heroic efforts every time.  The last 2 years especially have been a game of progressing by inches instead of miles, but I have covered many miles none the less. It has taken me 18 months to fully recover from donating a kidney, concurrently with 13 months to recover from major knee surgery.  I have found the following to be the safest and most consistent way to build durability, strength, work capacity, and mobility. Principles of Optimal Progress Durability: You need repeated exposure to a specific load to build up your connective tissue.  Your tendons, ligaments, and cartilage strength more slowly than your muscles Work on stabilization: targeted core exercises help some. Controlling the rep speed and movement quality helps most Strength: Double progression is all you need to avoid plateauing for many years.  My favorite approach is Volume Accumulation. ...

My fitness methods have become pretty simplified in principle, but varied in execution. Building Strength: Use the 5-3-1 Method.  It always works Build Mass: The Volume Accumulation.  Use timed sets (2 minutes is a good place to start) to take a given weight from 5 sets of 5 reps and grind till you can do to 5 sets of 10 reps.  Add more weight and repeat.  This could as easily be 4x8 to 4x15.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is doing more reps in a given timed set with a given weight. Conditioning: It's hard to mess up conditioning.  When it comes to elevating heart rate, burning more fuel, and becoming a leaner more energy efficient athlete, variety of movement is a good thing.  The more static your exercise selection or work/rest ratios, the faster you'll make neural adaptations. That said, one of the work/rest frameworks I use frequently is the boxer's bout.  Start with 4 rounds of 3min work and 1 min rest.  During the 3 minute work ...

 2020 was such a tough year for everyone.  I don't need to rehash the global level stuff.  Compounding it on a micro-level, I had to get through two major surgeries.  The first was kidney donation.  That was a tough one.  I've never been so fatigued in my life.  I tried getting back to exercise after a few weeks but could only sustain maybe 2 minutes of effort. It was humbling.  Then in October I had 60% of the meniscus in my right knee removed.  This has proven to be even more limiting than losing a kidney. But after shifting my focus to movement quality, mobility, and of course rehab, I'm back to normal energy levels and near normal ranges of motion in my right leg. One realization is that as I get stronger, I'm able to increase my mobility, so I've started training "heavy" again.  Keep in mind heavy is a relative term. I am using timed sets in a circuit to create a nice 1-2 punch of strength and conditioning.  Each set is 90 seco...