Fit Soul, Fit Body by Brant Secunda

Author:Brant Secunda
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781935251057
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 2010-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

This is what helps bring a Fit Soul together with a Fit Body.

Chapter Five

Find Your Conditioning Program

Physical fitness allows us to activate the good health, good thoughts, and positive sense of self that is coded inside our genetics just waiting to come out.

You don’t have to be un-athletic to feel intimidated at a gym. Before I turned thirty-three, I was able to compete in triathlons on par with the best in the world without lifting anything heavier than my bike when I put it in the back of my car. But at that age something started to change in my body. I noticed that I just didn’t have the same strength I used to when climbing hills on my bike. I couldn’t find the speed on the run. My shoulders fatigued quicker in the pool. And my speed of recovery was slowing. It seemed like I was working out harder, but my fitness was going in the opposite direction. I knew I had to hit the gym.

So I went down to the health club near my house. It was one of those places where the grunting was so loud it would drown out the music. I stopped at the door. I looked at the bodies of the people working out in there. Then I looked at mine. I froze. I felt like I was a different species. There I was, the Ironman Champion, intimidated to go into the gym and lift weights because my body didn’t match what I saw through the door to the weight room.

I was supposed to be an expert at getting in shape. I had swim, bike, and run down pretty good. But I couldn’t have told you the difference between a lat pull-down and a side lateral raise to save my life. I needed some help. So I contacted a local woman who was an expert in the field of personal training. She led me through an entire season of strength training, which brought back the muscle I was losing and enabled me to get back to the level of training that was slipping away so quickly. Now, almost two decades later, I still do the same program that I started at age thirty-three. In this chapter, you’ll learn a program you can do routinely to preserve your muscle strength and maximize your agility and power. No matter where you’re starting from—or how intimated you may feel at the thought of stepping into a gym—you can make vast improvements with just a few simple exercises. And you can even create your own personal gym at home without ever having to join a gym or spend lots of money.

Something else that changed my conditioning for the better was learning how to use a heart rate monitor. I learned this trick earlier in my career—before the wins started coming at the Ironman triathlon—and you can benefit tremendously from learning how to use one, too, even if your physical feats are easy walks. We’ll teach you how to

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