LESSSONS FROM MY 5 YEAR JOURNEY TOWARD FITNESS ----------------------------------------------

1. Looking like Mark McGwire and running like Alan Webb are, unfortunately, mutually exclusive. If we can't decide on one, we'll have to settle for being faster than the Mark McGwire's of the world and bigger and stronger than the Alan Webb's.

2. An athlete's physique supports and reflects his performance goals. Being bigger is conducive to being stronger and is the result of training for strength. Being lighter and leaner is conducive to being faster and having better endurance and is the result of training for speed and endurance. We need to choose performance goals that correspond with our aesthetic goals, align our training and nutrition for greater performance, and let the aesthetics take care of itself.

3. The easiest way to get faster and have more endurance is to get lighter and leaner. On the other hand, eating more and getting bigger is necessary for building new muscle and getting stronger. Consequently, the way we eat can have more impact than our training on our performance and physique.

4. We are all subject to the laws of thermodynamics regardless of our history or our genetics. If we can figure out our energy intake and our energy output over some period of time, then we can control our bodyweight and become more lean no matter how we train. The types of foods that we eat and when we eat them affects our metabolism to some degree, but in the end it still just comes down to thermodynamics. And in practice, rounding to the nearest 100 calories is good enough.

5. The human body is not made up of "parts" that magically fit together just right. The most effective way of training it is as one integrated system, thinking in terms of athletic movements (pushing, pulling, squatting, running, etc) instead of isolated muscles groups (biceps, quadriceps, abdominals, etc).

6. Specificity of training is important. Obviously, we have to practice the movements that we want to get better at; just training squats will not make us significantly better at doing pull-ups. Less obviously, though, we also have to train in the same band of the Power/Duration spectrum that we are interested in; just running 20-second sprints will not make us significantly better at running 2 miles. Generally speaking, we get what we train for. That said, training with too much specificity comes with a price: a lack of well-rounded fitness and possible injury.

7. Intensity of training is important. We don't get stronger or faster unless we TRY going a little harder, heavier, or faster with every workout. Don't exercise just for the sake of exercising. Workout with the purpose of getting closer to your performance goals.

8. Volume and frequency are important but the specifics don't really matter. We will almost certainly progress if we just stick to our goals and put in 10, 20, or 30 consecutive weeks of solid training regardless of our particular set-rep scheme or track workouts. We just need to look back often and ask ourselves how many miles we really ran or how many lifting sessions we really put in over the last few months. If we haven't progressed, the answer is usually "not enough". The greatest danger is expecting to see progress immediately, getting bored, and jumping ship from one plan to another every couple of weeks. As many fitness professionals have said, we tend overestimate how difficult our goals will be to reach and underestimate how long it will take to reach them. We are all prone to getting super-motivated at first and then falling victim to a short attention span.

9. Progress must be measurable, such as a gain in lean body mass, a loss of body fat, or a new personal record in some exercise. It can be easy to fool ourselves without looking at the numbers.