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Exercise prescription/selection is tough. Which exercise do I choose? How often do I do it? Etc, etc.

This is about simplifying exercise prescription.

I mentioned a few emails back about a great book called the one thing and it has relevance again here when it comes to exercise prescription for rehab and achieving your goals.

Facebook, youtube, twitter…………are in my humble opinion great.

BUT, like everything in life, it depends on how they are used.

Spending hours looking at videos of naked cats (just because some people dress them up) playing guitars and how this new exercise regime which involves you combining SAS style training with mixed martial arts, weight lifting and yoga aka SARTIAL WOGA, has changed the lives of everyone who has ever been stupid enough to try it, is NOT a great use of these mediums of

communication.

My point is, there is an epidemic of ‘Information and fitness debate/snobbery overload'. We are bombarded with “EXPERTS”, some with no more qualifications than the cat with the guitar telling you about how you should eat, train and rehab. Moreover, even those highly respected individuals in the world of health, fitness and sports medicine are constantly telling you about the most recent evidence and how one treatment is better than the other.

I’m exhausted just writing this and I am supposed to be one of those experts (not the cat guitar playing ones, I'll have you mind).

Exercise selection is a bit like shopping in a local shop versus a supermarket. For this example please ignore price and all the silly details like, “my local shop has nothing in it etc” for this example.

Ok, your goal is to EAT SOME FOOD because you are hungry. You also are trying to do it relatively quickly and efficiently.

In your local shop, you have the basics; bread, milk, butter, some vegetables and some meat.

In the supermarket, you have (insert swear word of choice here) EVERYTHING. Just for the record I Hate supermarkets, some more than others but they are all pretty close on my list of things I hate which is a list mainly consisting of supermarket names.

You have 50 choices of bread, you even have several choices of milk. It’s overwhelming and it’s all based on marketing and sales. Get you in and put things in front of you. They employ very clever people (Basically marketing psychologists) and collect bucket loads of stats on your buying habits so that they can Sell Sell SELL you everything and anything.

So in the local shop, generally you get what you NEED and decisions are made quick as the choices are limited. You get out of the shop quick (5-10 minutes) and you get to your end goal fast i.e. you eat food.

While at the same point and time you are leaving the local shop, in the supermarket, you are looking at a flash new 50” TV and the basket is still empty. You then contemplate organic versus non organic, light or mature cheddar etc etc. 60 minutes later you are done and you kind of get to your goal with a lot of other stuff you didn’t really need e.g. a 50”tv.

So why am I banging on about supermarkets for?

Well, the key factors from this example that relate to exercise prescription are: Time, Choice, and the Goal.

Time:

It's one of the main reasons/excuses given to me by people who say they cannot train or complete their rehab.”I don’t have the time”. If you spend 20 minutes moving with a purpose, with control and with an end goal in mind, I guarantee you will get what you want much quicker than, 60

minutes of moving from one exercise to the next, chopping and changing and getting nowhere. Then giving up because “Nothing Works, i don't have the time and I am still injured”.

Choice:

Too much choice leads to poor consistency. The body takes time to adapt, it doesn’t respond in two weeks. You NEED to train consistently with a few things in order to get results. If you keep changing to the newest exercise on the web every couple of weeks, you will go NOWHERE. The same goes for rehab.

Goal:

To quote a famous strength coach from the US, ‘the goal is to keep the goal the goal’ (Dan John). If your goal is to lose body fat (I use fat loss to explain the point because it is easy to understand for everyone but it applies to rehab also) then you do NOT need to train like an

elite rugby player, learning lots of new complex skills that you will never master. Otherwise, you will end up Not being an elite rugby player, probably injured and still FAT.

If the goal is to lose body fat, your one thing is, SORT OUT YOUR NUTRITION. That involves, planning meals, shopping, etc etc.

That one thing (nutrition) trumps 8 boot camps and 2 Zumba classes a week i.e. 1 thing vs 10 things.

“But isn’t exercise good for fat loss” I hear you ask?

Yes, but only if you have sorted your nutrition first. It’s your one thing that will help your next one thing, which is THEN exercise.

It’s like dominos, you hit the first domino at the right point and the next one falls. However,  It’s important to choose the right domino.

With fat loss, nutrition is the first domino NOT exercise.

If you try to change nutrition and exercise at the same time, your free will is used up fast (see previous emails on free will) and you will not have enough for both, so failure is around the corner. The phrase goes ‘if you try and catch two rabbits at once you end up catching none”.

When it comes to exercise and fat loss, shop locally.

When it comes to injury rehab and injury prevention, shop locally.

Get the essentials and basics done well and consistently.

More is not always better, more is just more. Select the most important one thing that will allow you to achieve your goal and attack it with a hammer (you know what I mean, try your best).

This is what gets result.

If you are injured or would like to prevent injury and can’t decide on the first domino (i.e. you are in the 50” tv aisle), Click the link below and ProCare will get you shopping locally and success will come.

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