While I contend that short, intense exercise bouts and proper diet are all that are necessary to achieve and maintain health, the idea isn’t original. Jack LaLanne trumpeted this concept 60 years ago (as well as the crazy notion that eating too much sugar would make you fat and eventually kill you).

Here’s the relevant passage:

“He concurs with Jack’s belief that a person only really needs 13-17 minutes of high-intensity exercise every day and that a plan is more important than a lot of fancy equipment (emphasis added).”

I’d contest the “every day” part, but a plan being more important than the equipment? Is it ever.

Look, we’re not reinventing the wheel here, folks. The honest truth: While you can manage your health and fitness activities any way you please (and please, feel justified in doing so), there are several undeniable truths.

• First, muscles are made to move bones.
• Second, muscles move those bones in specific ways (i.e., have a unique job to do).
• Third, the cardiovascular system supports the muscular system.

The conclusions?

1. There’s probably a best way to move an object from point A to point B.
2. There’s probably some value in performing activities that challenge the muscular system.
3. It’s probably best to challenge that muscular system in a manner befitting the actual function(s) of the individual muscle group(s).

My old boss, Bill DeSimone, put it best - “My programs look simple; but boy, the thought I put into them!”

Keep it simple, folks. Basics = Best.

Edit (7/18): Full disclosure - I get no kickback from Bill for linking to his manual. In fact, unless he reads this blog it’s highly likely he doesn’t even know I did it. If you’re a fitness professional or a savant on exercise or biomechanics (or the kind of person who reads Godel, Escher, and Bach for fun), you will find his book valuable (personally, I think it’s Awesome). But be forewarned - it’s more Good Calories, Bad Calories than Body For Life.

Michele asks, “What do you consider the ideal amount of exercise per week?”

Good question. The inevitable follow-up riposte: “What are you looking to do?”

The problem: Ideal for one person’s purpose may not be ideal for another person’s. An ideal program for a 41 year old Olympic swimmer looks a lot different than an ideal program for a 62 year old recreational tennis player. Even if their goals are exactly the same, two individuals can have much different programs (say, Dara Torres and Katie Hoff).

So here’s the short answer - for most people to achieve what they’re looking to achieve (better-looking body, stronger bones and muscles, etc.), they would have to spend anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours per week of actual training time (not chatting, water breaks, lying on the floor gasping for air, etc.), and if pressed, I’d guess closer to 30 minutes, not 2 hours.

All in all, for the average trainee, in order to address all preexisting injuries, main muscle-joint functions, and sundries (tight hamstrings, upper cross syndrome, etc.), maybe an hour a week or so.

It’s important to note that the time spent isn’t important, it’s how that time is spent that’s important.

The literature doesn’t give us a clear cut answer here, so that’s my opinion based on my research and application. Lurking fitness professionals and enthusiasts, what are your thoughts? Post to comments.

There’s almost nothing quite as frustrating or annoying as feeling as though you’re making progress, then getting sick. Worst part is, if you try and force the issue, it’s all too easy to make yourself even more sick and lengthening your infirm time, setting you back even further.

Here’s a multi-part plan for you to get back into action.

1. Wait till you’re at 90%.

The easiest way to make sure you don’t relapse into illness or make your current illness worse is to wait it out. Wait until you feel better, roughly 90% of your full capacity. Want an easier way to judge? If you’ve got any symptoms from the neck down (aches, chills, etc.) or a fever, don’t exercise; you’ll likely make things worse. Having symptoms from the neck up only (congestion, sore throat, etc.) generally indicate that you’re on the mend, but you should still be cautious.

The best rule of thumb is to wait, if you’ve any doubt in your mind. It’s better to push your workout back one day than set yourself back an entire week or two because your illness relapsed.

2. During your first workout back, decrease weights by 10%.

Being that your body has been busy fighting off whatever pathogen’s been festering in it, you’ll likely not be at full strength. It’s better to ease back into exercising as opposed to jumping right back into the fray.

Use the 10% rule as a guide but not a hard and fast rule per se. If you feel you need to, it’s okay to reduce your weights even further.

3. If you normally lift to failure, don’t.

There’s some evidence to suggest (and common sense would tell you) that exhaustive exercise precipitates infection. In other words, work out too hard and you risk getting sicker. There’s some truth to the notion that moderate exercise boosts immune function, so back off a little on the level of intensity (read: effort) you put into your workout. That means that you should stop a set with a rep or two still “in the tank.” Do too much too soon and you risk longer recovery (don’t forget that exercise is also a “stress” that your body will need to recover from).

4. Listen to your body.

Perhaps the soundest bit of workout advice I can give you is this: Listen to your body. If, in the middle of your workout, you start feeling unusally crappy, stop. If you find that you perform the first two exercises in your workout fine, then feel weak on your third (as in, you reduce it to 75% and struggle), stop. Your body is trying to tell you something. And it’s probably, “Knock it off, hero/shero.”

Aside from the workout, there are a couple of things you can do diet-wise to speed your recovery:

• Drink water - lots. Being fully hydrated improves the function of your lymphatic system (the “transporter” of your immune system), increasing its efficiency and efficacy.
• Keep it simple, as far as diet goes. Now’s not the time to sample the complex flavors of a seafood paella or to hunker down to something heavy, like Vaca Frita al Caballo. Keep your meals simple and easily digestible: hard-boiled eggs and fruit at breakfast, for example. Nuts and seeds are good as snacks.

Be smart and a tad cautious, and you’ll be back on your training in no time.

Benchmark yourself.

That’s right; hold yourself to your progress.  What I’m asking you to do is to test yourself.  Not in the Marines’ “Everyday you don’t test yourself is a day wasted sir!” way, but by performing a workout that tests your current ability against your past ability.

The athletes reading this post are all slapping their foreheads and saying, “Of course!  How obvious.”  But for those of us whose lives aren’t under such close scrutiny (”8:15am?  Time for your 500mg of bee pollen!”), benchmarking performance isn’t intuitive. 

Of course, benchmarking makes sense if you think about it. Perform x amount of work for x length of time, and you have the formula for prescribable, progressable, and scalable exercise. Want to improve? Simple; increase your power output (i.e., increase the amount of work done, the length of time, or both). Every single exercise program that gets results has this simple formula at its core.  Sure, you can lift more in the Lateral Raise now than two years ago (at least, I hope so), when you started.  But how does that really compare?  And is there a way to look at the whole picture instead of parts of the whole?

Using a benchmarking workout is probably the best way to compare the current you with prior, lesser versions of yourself.  While a benchmarking workout can be many things, I’ll loosely define it here as any workout with fixed parameters that allow for infinite progression.

Crossfit’s “Cindy” WOD is a great example of a benchmarking workout.  The parameters are fixed and simple:

One round = 5 Pull-ups, 10 Push-ups, 15 Squats; As many rounds as possible in 20 min.

In May, you perform Cindy and only get 10 rounds in.  Then, you train for two months, and curious, you try another Cindy.  If you get more than 10 rounds, congratulations; you’ve improved, and you can show it in a measurable and definable way.

Of course, metabolic conditioning may not be your cup of tea; perhaps pure strength is your thing.  Your benchmark workout might be your 5 RM (the maximum weight you can lift for 5 reps) of Leg Press, Bench Press, and Bent-Over Row.  You can imagine how easy benchmarking is if you’re involved in a sport (times, rounds, serves, punches, etc.).  And fat loss?  The only metric worth caring about - total body fat, however you choose to measure it.

If you’ve not done so before, or if you’re looking for a tool to help you restart your motivation, give benchmarking a try.  Create (or find) a workout that you can set a baseline with.  Train for a little while, then test yourself again. 

Medhi writes, “The exercises you struggle with are the exercises you need to do.”

Truer words never spoken.

If you’re like most people, you tend to gravitate towards and perform exercises that “feel good” to you.  If you’re a guy, for example, you may enjoy performing barbell bench press or dumbbell biceps curls.  If you’re female, your preference may be more machine-based; say, hip abduction or hip extension.  Likely, every single foray into the gym involves a set or two of your favs.

Whatever the case may be, it’s a truism that you tend to avoid things you’re bad at in favor of things you’re good at.  But all you’re doing is creating weak points.

An example: You squat, for years; however, you avoid using full range of motion and instead choose to stop slightly above a 90 degree bend in your knees (not quite thighs to parallel).  Over time, your hamstring and hip flexor strength will begin to lag behind your quad and glute strength, since the hamstrings and hip flexors are not meaningfully engaged until you squat below parallel.  This can increase your chances of injury (via hamstring pulls, etc.).

Of course, if you do sufficient hamstring work, it’s not an issue.

But back to the point - it’s one thing to avoid exercises that you aren’t biomechanically suited for (e.g., if you’re long-legged or have arthritic knees, don’t squat).  But don’t avoid exercises simply because you don’t like them or don’t do them well.  Chances are you don’t do them well because you are weak in that particular muscle group or function (and in that case, you need to do them to avoid growing even more feeble).

So do those rotator cuff exercises, even if  they’re boring and you hate them.  Work your posterior chain (upper and lower); you know you need to.  Do what you hate and it just might make you a better athlete (and a better looking athlete, to boot).