Integrating aerobics and other activities with F1

Removed.

If you are doing your warm up the way Coach's boys do their warm-ups, it's one hell of an aerobic workout.

Start with some simple locomotion drills like AG walks, crab walks, bear crawls, and lizard walks in all directions. This alone will take around 5 minutes and will have you sweaty, warm, and breathing extremely hard.

Next start doing some simple leg exercises like spit squats and the iM work from F1.

Now do your warm up based on mastery of previous elements, as dictated in F1.

Now, after a 20-30 minute warm up that had no rest between any of the above elements (and whatever else you want to throw in... this is a great time for movement exploration) you actually start your F1 workout. Be sure to keep track of yourself with a clock or timer for both iM work and PE/SE work during the F1 workout! Never let yourself take more than a minute of rest.

This takes a little while to get used to, but workouts are so much more productive this way!

After the workout, a 30-40 minute run might be your bag, but you may find that you prefer to do these on rest days.

Try to keep in mind that too much exercise can be just as bad as none at all... those don't need to be hardcore death runs A nice jog at 120-140 bpm is plenty good for stretching the heart chambers, and that's the primary benefit of steady state aerobic work.

Higher intensity interval training is actually better for the metabolic changes that increase aerobic capacity. Together, these are an incredibly powerful combination.

When you train this much, it becomes incredibly important to have tons of veggies with each meal. You can probably get through just fine without them in terms of workout progress, but you WILL notice better progress with them. More importantly, in my opinion, is the constant stream of antioxidant chemicals you will be getting with the veggies. You need those phytochemicals to protect your long-term health, particularly when you are extremely active. They help keep you from developing systemic inflammation due to excessive exercise.

Joshua Naterman said:

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Higher intensity interval training is actually better for the metabolic changes that increase aerobic capacity. Together, these are an incredibly powerful combination.

 

When you train this much, it becomes incredibly important to have tons of veggies with each meal. You can probably get through just fine without them in terms of workout progress, but you WILL notice better progress with them. More importantly, in my opinion, is the constant stream of antioxidant chemicals you will be getting with the veggies. You need those phytochemicals to protect your long-term health, particularly when you are extremely active. They help keep you from developing systemic inflammation due to excessive exercise.

Thanks a lot for this post.  I used to do HIIT after my workouts (short 10-12 min at the end of workouts) but when I started to dedicarte more time to isometrics and bodyweight exercises in general, I noticed I fare better in Strength gains without this.  I also felt like absolute crap.

The veggies is a very interesting point.  I eat lots of salad but not enough veggies with every meal.  So that might have had a lot to do with how bad I felt after long stressful exercises.  I told myself I'd do HIIT on off days but never really got around to doing this.

I've read a lot of posts about strength work rest times and cardio.  But a lot of those posts were on the old forums and the perceptions might have changed.  The rest structure of F1 was very interesting and confusing for me.  I always thought (read) that resting 3 minutes between exercises was optimal when working for strength.   F1 turned that on it's head.

In terms of GST, I do not consider F1-F4 to be pure 'strength work' per se; but rather the establishment of a basic physical foundation from which more advanced GST may proceed safely and efficiently.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer said:

In terms of GST, I do not consider F1-F4 to be pure 'strength work' per se; but rather the establishment of a basic physical foundation from which more advanced GST may proceed safely and efficiently.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Not particularly.  Both options were provided and are acceptable.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer said:

Not particularly. Both options were provided and are acceptable.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Removed.

The best answers you can get are the ones that you find out through several months of steady practice.

As a general guideline, start off with all of that stuff but small distances (or rep counts, or range of motion. increase all of this slowly over time). Even 10 feet can be challenging at first. For some people, just holding the positions can be challenging, and that's ok too. The point is that there is only one way for you to learn how to scale this stuff, and that is to start doing it so that you know how much is enough right now. Over time you'll notice that it starts to feel too easy, and you'll add just a little more distance (or reps or ROM).

Mm. That was really interesting reading that kind of warmup Josh, thanks for that.

Slightly off topic, while I've been in Greece I've gone to training 6* a week rather than my 3+3, to accommodate shorter sessions and not interfere with family time. I've thoroughly enjoyed it and may make that approach, to focus on improving fewer things in one session, my norm. That'll involve doing more extensive warmup ib the style you've outlined there, gradually focusing more specifically on the days work over the course of. I have so much motivation Im making myself sick, ready to get back into it!