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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.

No one can be for certain how it came to be.

There are many different schools of thoughts.

Many scholars believe yoga absorbed elements of Stone Age shamanism which dates back at least to 25,000 B.C., and probably earlier. Shamanism is the sacred art of changing one’s awareness to enter extraordinary realms of being and reality. In fact, the word shaman means a seasoned traveler in the spirit realm.

The history of yoga is divided into four broad categories:

1. Vedic
2. Pre-classical
3. Classical
4. Post-classical

The Vedic period (or Vedic age) (ca.1750–500 BCE) was the period in Indian history during which the Vedas (“praise of knowledge”) , the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, were composed.

The Pre-classical period was a time during the Upanishads. Upanishads are a collection of texts of religious and philosophical nature, written in India probably between c. 800 BCE and c. 500 BCE, during a time when Indian society started to question the traditional Vedic religious order

The Classical period, was around the second century  when C.E, Patanjali composed the yoga sutras, which consists of 195 aphorisms. They expound the Raja yoga or the eight-fold path, which are meant to be memorized, as it is not in written form. The earliest known Sanskrit commentary on the sutras is Yoga- Bhashya, byVyasa in the fifth century.

Patanjali’s Eightfold path of Yoga (also called Eight Limbs). These are:

1. Yama, which means social restraints or ethical values;

2. Niyama, which is personal observance of purity, tolerance, and study;

3. Asanas or physical exercises;

4. Pranayama, which means breath control or regulation;

5. Pratyahara or sense withdrawal in preparation for Meditation;

6. Dharana, which is about concentration;

7. Dhyana, which means Meditation; and

8. Samadhi, which means ecstasy.

The Post-Classical period was an era yoga makes a rather sudden shift. It is during this post 18th century period that yoga is introduced into the Western world. During this period, thanks in part to new technology, literature on yoga begins to proliferate

Regardless of it history, yoga is a practice that can tremendously help your physical alignment, flexibility, strength and agility.

The aesthetically pleasing postures (poses) known as asanas are what has become the staple of modern day yoga.

Here are some great pearls of wisdom from David Swenson, Yoga Practitioner. David began practicing yoga since the age of 13.

Here is a great routine from YouTube Expert Sarah Beth: Level: Beginner, Yoga (Hatha) (Time: 20:00 min.)

Here is another fantastic routine from Reed Taylor at Method Yoga: Level: Beginner/Intermediate, Yoga (Power/Vinyasa) (Time: 26:13 min.)

Before we began the work out, I did my normal warm up routine, and was asked by one of my friends who is somewhat of a novice when it comes to training, “What’s the benefits of warming up?”

He then pointed to the fact that my other friend who is in good shape and who is a physical education teacher at a local elementary school, was not warming up.

My novice friend was somewhat confused, to warm up or not to warm up, that was the question.

The question was then asked by my novice friend, “Do you think that his (“his” referring to the physical ed teacher)) not warming up before and after workouts will catch up with him later in life and cause him serious negative effects in the future?”

Both of these questions were very valid points and yet I didn’t really know what to tell my friend when it came to stretching and warming up.

I knew the basics around it, like supposedly it prevents injury and can improve performance, but even those were sort of regurgitated answers with really no knowledge or checking into on my part.

I just always did it because that’s what I was always taught.

It reminds me of a story that I once heard about a wife named Mary who wanted to impress her husband David by cooking her family’s traditional pot roast recipe.

The recipe was rather simple. It included a few slices of onions, some seasoning, a few slices of carrots, and slices of potatoes. As the husband watched his wife cut off the ends of the pot roast and place the remainder into the pan David asked, “Why do you cut the ends off?”

Mary replied as she laid the knife down and threw the cut ends of meat into the trash can, “I’m not sure, that’s the way it’s always been done.”

Several days later, Mary’s mom stopped by, and she remembered her husband’s inquisitiveness. “Mom, why does our family recipe for pot roast include cutting off the ends?”

A smile covered her mom’s face and she jumped upon the bar-stool. “I’m not sure that’s the way it’s always been done,” she replied.

Realizing the mystery was not solved and David would keep wondering why two grown women engaged in severing nice cuts of meat; she knew she had to cover the groundwork for this thirty-year plus puzzle. “Mom, let’s call Granny and ask,” Mary urged with excitement in her voice.

“Hello,” stretched across the phone lines and filled the silence in the kitchen. “Hi, Granny, this is Mary. I need to know why you cut the ends off your pot roast.” She dropped the phone into her mother’s hand and waited in silence. Their grandmother replied, “I don’t know why you do it but I cut off the ends so that it would fit into the oven.”

When it comes to warm ups and stretching it’s sort of like the above mentioned story.

We know we should do it, we just oftentimes, don’t know why.

Why We Warm Up & Stretch

Maybe a good synonym for warming up should be, preparation.

In anything we do, that we wist to perform at our very best, requires some form of preparation. This could come in the form of preparing the ingredients for a meal your are going to eat. It could also be preparing your speech before you go in front of hundreds of people to give a talk. There are numerous forms of warming up i.e. preparation that we do on a daily basis, we just call it something else.

Why would working out, be any different?

Instead of preparing a dish to be eaten or a speech to be given, we are preparing our bodies and our minds for an athletic event, that we are to partake in.

3 Types of Warm Ups

According to European Journal of Applied Physiology, there are three types of Warm Ups:

1. Passive warm-ups (e.g., taking a hot shower, having a rubdown, sitting in the sun) increase the body and skin temperatures and physiological reactions associated with heat removal.
2. General/non-specific warm-ups. Muscle temperature is increased in a more effective manner than that afforded by passive warm-ups.
3. Specific warm-ups. These produce major performance benefits if specific activities that simulate competition actions and intensities are included.

7 Types of Stretching

1. Ballistic stretching – uses the momentum of a moving body or a limb in an attempt to force it beyond its normal range of motion
2. Dynamic stretching – are designed to take a joint or a muscle through a challenging and repetitive motion.
   
3. Active stretching – requires the strength of the opposing muscle groups to hold the limb in position for the stretch.
   
4. Passive (or relaxed) stretching – are achieved as the name implies, through the use of mechanical devices, the assistance of gravity, or use of a partner.
5. Static stretching – are designed to hold a position for a joint or a muscle that is minimally challenging.
6. Isometric stretching – is a type of static stretching (meaning it does not use motion) which involves the resistance of muscle groups through tensing of the stretched muscles.
7. PNF (Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation) stretching – is a set of stretching techniques commonly used in clinical environments to enhance both active and passive range of motion with the ultimate goal being to optimize motor performance and rehabilitation

 7 Reasons To Warm Up

1. Rehearsal of movement (Preparation)  The psychological benefits from a proper warm-up are immeasurable. The athlete feels more confident as a result of proper planning and preparation via warm ups.
2. The prevention of injury.Soft tissue (tendons, ligaments, muscles) injuries are less likely with proper warm-up.
3. Elevation of body temperature Contraction and reflex times are improved with higher muscle temperatures.
4. The improvement of performance. Reduces incidence and likelihood of musculoskeletal injuries Enhances the speed of transmission of nerve impulses. Motor faculties improve greatly when you’re warmed up. Need proof? Get out of bed and run to the front door. You’ll probably bump into something, or worse, fall down. If you walked to the front door, and stretched. You could run like Forest Gump.
5. Supplies adequate blood flow to heart Exercising without warm-up places a potentially dangerous stress on the heart.  Warming up reduces the stress on the heart.
6. Prepares the cardiovascular system for impending workload. Helps the heart and blood vessels adjust to the body’s increased demands for blood and oxygen.
7. Prepares muscles for impending workload. Warming up may reduce the likelihood of excessive muscle soreness.
8. Help promote sweating. Remember: sweat is good. Sweating reduces the amount of heat stored in the body. Your body spends more energy cooling itself than through any other activity.

Warm Up Duration – Warm ups typically last between 5 to 10 minutes. But everyone is different some may require less time and others more time.

Warm Up Indications – By listening and monitoring your heart rate you will be able to know whether you have warmed up sufficiently.   A break of light sweat is also another good indicator of a sufficient warm-up.

Cool Downs –  Are just as equally important as the warm ups. The purpose, as the name implies, is to help you cool down the body from the previously rigorous exercise. The duration is normally about the same time as the warm ups, around 5-10 minutes.

Cool Down Indications –  Once the heart is a good indicator, if you know your heart rate, then it normally should be below 120 beats per minutes, however that varies depending on the person.

In conclusion, warming up (cooling down) is an essential part of any workout routine. This is one of the good habits, that must be formed. I warm up and cool down before each and every workout routine. It’s a great way to transition from the frenetic and hectic demands of the day and get focused on the task at hand.

Other ideas come to mind of new age people in tie dye esoteric colored clothing, singing and chanting strange things that border on the fringe between conspiracy theories and tin foil hat wearing propeller heads all the while humming and chanting mantras like Nam–myoho–renge–kyo.

Yes those are versions of meditation, that mainstream media, television and the movie industry would have you believe.

However they are so far removed from reality and the true intent of meditation.

As you have come to know, I enjoy breaking down things to their finer parts and examining the truth behind them.

So let’s do just that.

The literal word, meditation, has it’s origins in Latin from the word meditatio,  and from a verb meditari, meaning “to think, contemplate, devise, ponder.”

As you can see, this hardly has anything to do with any type of religious connotations, nor does it have anything to do with being eccentric or chanting mantras.

All of these ways that have been propagandized in the media as meditation are just mere techniques.

Like exercise.

Some choose to exercise their bodies by running, and others by yoga, and still other by CrossFit.

There is no right or wrong choice of exercise.

It depends on the person.

Learn to be silent. Let your quiet mind listen and absorb.
Pythagoras

Meditation is very similar in this respect.

I have been meditating since I was 10 years of age.

I did not take classes or join a local meditation gym.

I did not meditate because it was prescribed by a specific religious sect.

I simply chose to meditate.

I didn’t know that it was called meditation, at the time. I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing. The technique I do was something that just came naturally to me and pretty much do the same form of meditation to this day.

I sit quietly.

I do not use mantras (man means mind & tras means instruments) nor do I chant.

I just sit quietly.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
Blaise Pascal

I truly believe that meditation has helped me with my Calisthenics training because I am more body aware as a result of being more mind-full.

How I meditate is quite simple.

I close my eyes while sitting in a cross legged position (although it’s not required, you could meditate with your eyes open and standing) to block out any extraneous stimuli and to help me get more centered and focused.

Then I observe, all the thoughts and images that race pass by your mind.

When I explain to others what meditation is like, metaphorically speaking, I share this story.

Imagine, you are sitting inside a coffee shop, and you are facing a large window.

Outside there are cars racing by in either direction, a bus passes by as well. People walking in either direction on the sidewalks with bags in their hands, some listening to music and others talking to one another. There is a man with a brief case. A women walking her dog. A mother with her infant in a stroller.

The scene is full of sights and sounds, that you would find in almost any town or city.

Each of these instances, is similar to a thought or image or emotion that races pass mind.

As each of these passes, you simply just observe with no judgement or prejudice or opinion.

You just observe.

You take notice of those thoughts, images and emotions that seem to pass more often and you take a mental note of how you feel.

How does your body feel?

How do you feel emotionally?

But you never judge or label, you just observe, you just are present in the moment.

I realize many of you, by now, are thinking, what the heck is this guy smoking? And some of you may be thinking, can I get some of whatever it is?

All kidding aside.

I believe, that Calisthenics, is a physical form of meditation, sort of like yoga.

Body weight exercises force one to be present in the moment.

There is no judgement, or making wrong.

It’s just pure body movements.

For those of you that love Calisthenics as I do, you will greatly benefit from meditation.

It is something that I do twice a day, morning and night, when I wake up and right before I go to bed.

And like physical exercise, quality is far more important than the quantity of time spent meditating.

Do what comes natural to you.

For me meditating on a daily basis has made the difference in the world when it comes to being centered and focused.

It costs nothing to meditate and everything not to.