I was inspired to write about the topic of consistency once again and this time it came from a book I am currently reading. I highly recommend Warrior Cardio by Martin Rooney, COO of the Parisi Speed School. As a coach he has prepared hundreds of athletes for the UFC, NFL, NBA, WNBA, D-1 college programs and the Olympics. One of the themes of his book is the importance of measurability and consistency, which resonates with that of the HOTWORX training philosophy.
Rooney has 10 commandments of metabolic training for which two of them stood out to me as particularly important with respect to a general fitness program. The 2nd and the 4th. In his 2nd commandment he states, “Thou shalt not confuse fatigue or soreness with being productive.” Too many times, trainers get sidetracked by listening to the popular noise about “muscle confusion” and workout “variety” to create more soreness, and therefore, the illusion of more results. The problem with that is, more soreness is not an indication of progress. Only results are the indication of progress. Trainers should pay more attention to workouts that afford better recovery time with less muscle “confusion”.
His 4th commandment declares, “Thou shalt monitor and record heart rate and HRV (heart rate variability) during every metabolic session."
One of the most important reasons to train is to positively affect your cardiovascular system. It only makes sense that you should measure your cardio performance during each workout to see improvements and to monitor your heart’s ability to recover, and of course, to check for any problems that might need to be discussed with your doctor. Consistency with measuring workout performance is vital. It’s the best way to know if your body is responding to a fitness program the way it should.
Rooney promotes an interesting observation and he explains it as the Illogical Four:
First, people and trainers select and prescribe exercises according to what I call the Illogical Four: Novelty, Coolness, Ability to Produce Soreness, and Ability to Produce Fatigue. What amazes me is that the veil of the Illogical Four has been pulled so strongly over our eyes that we no longer look for the reason why we started voluntary exercise in the first place: improvement in health and performance, a.k.a. results. (1)
As a trainer myself, I completely agree with this viewpoint, and illogical tendencies by trainers cause them to get sidetracked from the true mission to get results for clients. It is the results in strength gains, flexibility gains, balance gains, detox, and of course, cardiovascular gains that leads to progress, not soreness, coolness of an exercise, or changing of a workout merely for variety alone. Don’t listen to the noise. A fitness program should always be about results, and that requires consistency of training and measurability based on exercise that is logical and data driven.
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