How should you train?
With so many conflicting opinions and ideas on training, yes, I could recommend you do a certain thing and you would get results, 100%, but instead I’m going to recommend you do two things.
Number 1: Do what makes you happy. This comes back to the idea that if you do what you love you will never have to work a day in your life. The other belief is that if your training in something you love, you’re going to be a lot better at it as your passionate about it.
Examples – You may love running or surfing or boxing or CrossFit, IT DOESN’T MATTER! I cannot remember the amount of times I have heard, “that felt so good, I feel so much better when I train… when I surf… when I…” If you're doing what you love to do, and it involves being fit and active, your life is going to improve in so many ways.
NOW, number 2 conflicts with number 1 to a degree, but not entirely, and I’ll explain why.
Number 2 - DO WHAT YOU DON’T DO.
Now, why did I pick these two things to tell you? Number 1 is going to give you your base level of fitness and hopefully keep you going and not fall off the wagon because, as you stated above, ‘you love this’. And number 2 is to shock your body and get results.
So lets talk about number 2. Do what you don’t do means that if you go to the gym and do the same thing every time, e.g. Run on the treadmill, get off and go home, or do the same weights circuit and go home, or the same spin class and go home, then you NEED TO MIX IT UP.
If you hate strength training because it’s hard and you’re not good at it, then do it. If you don’t do it because you feel you have bad technique or don’t know what you’re doing, then of course ask your local trainer or someone in the gym to show you. If you hate cardio because you can’t breathe after it, then guess what… cardio is what’s going to get you the best results.
From a training science point of view it’s about adaptations and constant progressive overload. We do not want our bodies to get comfortable, which is what a lot of people do. We need to change, hence why rule number 2. By continually shocking the body and changing the exercises or workouts, along with progressively increasing weight, reps or duration, this can help to increase your aerobic capacity or increase your 1rms, and definitely improve you aesthetically.