Decide, now
What would you rather do:
- Add 10 kilos onto your dead lift
- Take a minute off your 5k time
- Lose 5% body fat?
- Gain 2 kgs muscle
If you pick the first or second, you're probably inclined to be an athlete. If you pick the other two, your likely a body builder.
Most people I see are body builders, and that's OK.
They are interested primarily in body composition and secondarily in performance. After all, what does it matter if you can run 100m half a second faster or jump and inch higher than before? How does that translate into everyday life?
What is tangible to everyone is being able to walk down the beach with a stunning body showing everybody how fit you are.
However there are good points and bad points to both ways of living. Let's take a professional body builder and an elite rugby player.
Body Builder
This guy is all about aesthetics. He doesn't give a hoot what his max bench press is, all he cares about it being big, being well proportioned and being really, really lean.
His training reflects this. He trains purely to get muscles bigger, lots of volume, lots of density and lots of isolation exercises. Typically he supplements his resistance training with cardio training to burn extra calories and keep body fat down.
Food is everything to him. Every meal is carefully portioned and balanced to control composition
Elite Rugby Player
This guy is all about improving a skill set and peaking his performance at the weekends during his on season.
His training is very varied, with skill work coming earlier on in the week, some conditioning and rehab to improve his fitness during the week.
During off season it's all about focussed workouts to improve performance in a short period of time.
Eating is much more relaxed, it is focussed around recovery and performance rather than body composition. If they ate to be lean all year round they simply would not be able to perform to their potential every weekend.
So which is a better lifestyle, which will make you healthier?
Well the answer is neither is better. Actually it is a combination of both which will produce the most desirable results in for most people.
Periodise your training to systematically target strength endurance, hypertrophy, strength and power. Also periodise your conditioning to target both aerobic and anaerobic endurance. Stretch and strengthen your joints and develop the core muscles required to ensure freedom from poor posture and mobility.
Then treat your nutrition like a body builder would. Eat good food all the time and be sensible about what you are eating and when. Then you will be lean all year round. You will have the healthiest metabolism around and that will ensure your protection form metabolic diseases which look like they will be our biggest threats for the foreseeable future.
You will simply be better at life if you are athletic and lean. You will be able to move things that no-one else will, catch the train when everyone else is panting behind you, squat down to get something off the bottom shelf, look the way you have always wanted and be a force to be reckoned with.
Someone who already does this is England player James Haskell. Someone who trains like an athlete and eats like a body builder
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