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Training each and every day to become the best version of ourselves is really what life is all about.

I love to workout.

Probably the most difficult thing to do, is to give myself a rest day.

I realize this topic is a bit controversial as there are different camps that believe you can workout everyday and others that believe you should rest at least one day. (Below in the table, I discuss rest and recovery.)

My general rule of thumb on this topic is to just listen to your body.

The wisdom of your body will speak to you, the only challenge is are we willing to listen?

Training and working out really covers a wide spectrum of questions, one of the most prevalent and interesting aside from rest and recovery is training smarter.

That reminds me of a famous experiment conducted many years ago by Jean-Henri Fabre, the great French naturalist, who conducted a most unusual study with some pine processionary caterpillars.

These caterpillars blindly follow the one in front of them. Hence, the name. Fabre carefully arranged them in a circle around the rim of a flowerpot, so that the lead caterpillar actually touched the last one, making a complete circle.

In the center of the flowerpot he put pine needles, which is the food of the processionary caterpillar. The caterpillars followed each other around this circular flowerpot. Around and around they went, hour after hour, day after day, and night after night.

For seven full days and seven full nights, they went around the flowerpot. Finally, they dropped dead of starvation and exhaustion. With an abundance of food less than a few inches away, they literally starved to death, because they confused activity with accomplishment.

It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants.
The question is, what are we busy about?
-Thoreau

Some of us might know someone who trains in a similar fashion to the processionary caterpillar, and maybe quite possibly, it is someone you know intimately, like yourself, at times.

The purpose of this article post, is to go over some training tips to help you work smarter, and well, harder, because by pushing ourselves past our comfort zone, progress will become a reality.

I am guilty of this, confusing activity with productivity.

To begin I want to discuss rest and reps based on your desired goal. If you want to grow in size than more reps lower rest periods, however if strength is what you are after than you want to lower your reps and you increase your rest periods:

Desired Outcome	Growth Vs Strength	Reps Per Set	Rest Time
Explosive Power	Strength	4-7 Reps	3+ Minutes
Peak Strength (Myofibrillar Hypertrophy/Functional)	Strength	1-3 Reps	5+ Minutes
Strength (Myofibrillar Hypertrophy/Functional)	Strength	4-6 Reps	2-3 Minutes
Hypertrophy (Sarcoplasmic/Non-Functional)	Growth	8-12 Reps	60-90 Seconds
Muscle Endurance (Sarcoplasmic/Non-Functional)	Growth	12-20+ Reps	30-60 Seconds

The next area I want to discuss is some helpful tips or suggestions that I found online as it pertains to training smarter.

Here are 25 sure-fire ways to train smarter:

1. Set daily and weekly goals. SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed) The SMART acronym is a bit trite but true. In order to truly improve your training you need to have specific, measurable, achievable, realistic goals with a time that you are going to achieve them.

2. Make this the year that you conquer that weakness. Each of us has our strengths and weaknesses. In order to improve your training focus on a specific weakness and begin to conquer it and make it your slave instead of the other way around.

3. Slow and steady, think turtle. Training is not a race. There is no magical prize at the end of your journey. Your training is the prize. With that being said, you want to pace yourself and focus on quality not quantity. And be patient, take your time, and just enjoy the journey of practice.

4. Break down why you train the way you do. The “Why” is extremely important. You started training and working out for a reason(s). It’s important to remember why, and use that as the carrot and the stick to motivate you from the inside out.

5. Excellence seeks excellence. Birds of a feather flock together is one of my favorite sayings. You can gain nothing by surrounding yourself with mediocrity, but you gain everything by surrounding yourself with those that make being excellent and a “can do” attitude their first priority.

6. Share your goals. In his famous book, Think & Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill, shares that one of the keys to lasting and sustainable success, is to form what he calls, a mastermind group. This is a group, that is familiar with what is important to you, that knows your goals. When you share your goals you also make yourself accountable, which is key.

7. Plan, plan and then plan some more. It’s been said if you fail to plan, you are planning for failure. The opposite can also hold true. If you succeed in planning, you are planning for success. A plan puts on paper what was once just a dream. Make your dreams a reality.

8. Employ the Buddy System. No man nor woman is an island. When you train with another person(s) it makes training all the more fun. Time goes by, and you feel like a kid playing in the school playground instead of a chore or a “have to” or “should”. Training with others also can help to motivate one another.

9. Carpe Diem. Seize the day, although this phrase has been used quite often, it is certainly relevant, especially when it comes to training. Taking advantage of the 86,400 seconds that we are gifted each and every day. The time we use wisely builds on the day before. With each day that you live to its fullest and train to it fullest, contributing to the next and so on and so forth, until you have a lifetime of fully lived and enjoyable moments.

10. Feed Those Muscles. 70-80%of your health comes right down to the food choices you make day in and day out. You are what you eat. Your muscles benefit from the food choices you make, which in turn contribute to the quality of training you experience. Food is energy and makes a huge difference in your workouts.

11. Go Injury Free(ish). Look its a part of training that you will eventually be sore and quite possibly sustain an injury or two or three. To think otherwise is pure nonsense. You can however reduce your chances by listening to your body and paying close attention to the signs and symptoms as they come up. For example, if you feel sore in your legs to the point you can’t properly do a pistol squat and there are cramps, it probably makes sense to work around the pain or just stop all together and rest. It’s not a competition to see who can break muscle tissues and tendon and bones the quickest.

12. Take 5 minutes a Few Times Each Day to Improve Your Flexibility. Stretching and warming up are fundamental to your training. If don’t believe the importance of warming up and stretching, check out this post on the subject.

13.  Make a habit of breathing.  Breathing is essential to life. Every breath you take sustains your life through detoxification and strengthening your immune system. Again here is a post if you have any doubts to deep diaphragmatic breathing.

14. Plan your meals. Again as I said before, food is fuel, and if fail to plan you are planning for failure. End of subject.

15. Consistently seek feedback for trouble spots. How will you know if you are improving especially in your weak areas if you don’t seek feedback. Feedback helps you to get better. Don’t take it personal. It’s just feedback.

16. Get one extra hour of sleep. If you aim to get an extra hour of sleep you may find that you have far more energy and as a result your training improves. Sort of common sense.

17. Respect the recovery work (and the resulting bounce back). Your muscles gain not when you are training but when you are resting, that’s why you need to give yourself time to recover properly. Don’t skip the recovery.

18. Attack that one thing. Make one area your focus and just improve that one thing. If you want to get better at pull ups than focus on that and attack it with a vengeance. Don’t stop until you overcome and conquer it.

19. Help create a positive training environment. Who the heck wants to train where it’s depressing and negative. Create an environment that is fun. For me, it’s the park. I just love working out in the fresh air.

20.  Pick out the 3 habits that will have the biggest impact on your training. Og Mandino, once said, form good habits and become their slaves. This is so true. For me, its consistency, variety, and intensity.

21. Imagine your mentors  training beside you for an extra little kick. If you imagined that your mentors were training alongside you, do you think you would slack off? Probably not. This one tip can make a world of difference in your training.

22. Make the training session or small-group workout more fun and engaging by playing games. This is pretty self-explanatory, we tend to do more of what we like and that is fun and we tend not to do the things that are boring. So have fun!

23. Focus on total repetitions.  For example, I focus on 400 reps, between working out my chest, shoulders, triceps, and abdominal (4). That’s 100 reps per body part (4 X 10). I do 40 reps (4 Sets X 10 Reps) or more without resting, than I rest 1-2 minutes and repeat, until I get to 400. Oftentimes I do more.

24. Know how to correctly use high-intensity interval training (HIIT) & metabolic conditioning. On my off days, I do sprints using HIIT, doing as many burpees or jump rope as I can in 30-45 seconds, and than resting 15-20 seconds. I repeat this 15-20 times. Its quick, fun and intense. This is a great way to get a burst of cardio in a short period of time.

25. Learn & practice recovery strategies. It’s not only great to honor your rest day(s) but its also fun to investigate other methods that might add to your overall performance such as myofascial release via a foam roller or incorporate a bit of yoga or Pilates moves into your warm up/stretching routines.

In conclusion, training smarter and harder can make the difference between great gains or not so great gains. Of course the tips and advice are just suggestions. Ultimately you decide what you want to incorporate and not.

When you train smarter, you begin to notice that working out is a lot more fun and less rigid.

The key is to make your training enjoyable.