Training Secrets Of The Pros

Social media is great for a lot of reasons, but it can be a horrible thing as well. You go on to see what the elite and professional athletes are doing in their training. You see how much they are training. You see a lot of amazing things coming from their brilliant minds. So you train hard like they do…and then you eventually get injured. 

What many of the athletes on social media are not showing or talking about are the ‘behind the scenes’ things they do so they can remain high level athletes – the warm up and activation exercises, the ‘unsexy’ accessory work, the recovery and rest, the nutrition. 

Most recreational athletes I speak with and observe do very little warm up, do minimal to no accessory or isolation work, don’t take rest days (or actually say they can’t take a rest day), eat ‘healthy’ but don’t take into account the foods that can actually help them recover faster, and are sleep deprived and overly stressed. 

The recreational athletes are training harder, not smarter. Rather than building the body up, they are only breaking it down. They are putting in the work, but not letting the work actually work for them.  

At the same time, the elites and professionals are taking necessary rest and active recovery days, spend time doing a proper warm up before training, spend time doing regular accessory and isolation work, have their nutrition dialed in so the foods they consume help them heal, and make sure they get enough sleep so their bodies can heal from the rigorous training they do. 

The elite and professional athletes are training smarter, not harder. That is not to say that they are not training hard. They are training extremely hard, but they are being smart about what they are doing in the process. They are training efficiently, training effectively, and training with purpose. 

There is such a disconnect and discrepancy between the two worlds of athletes! It is time to end it…or at least begin the process of ending it! 

Time to start creating some new habits for yourself so you can begin to train smarter, efficiently, effectively, and with purpose: 

• Spend 5-10 minutes doing a dynamic and activation warm up prior to your workout. 
• Have one workout a week be strictly activation and isolation. 

• Pick one day a week to be an active recovery day in which you go for a walk or a leisurely bike ride and do some mobility work. 
• Shut down from screens (phone, tablet, TV) an hour before bed so you can get better quality sleep. 

Yes, I can see you rolling your eyes as you read all this, thinking you will lose endurance and strength if you back down your training compared to what you are doing now. I thought the same thing for years, which is why I did not take rest or recovery days and pushed my body hard every day. After one too many overtraining episodes, I realized how important it is to take rest and recovery days…and how much better, stronger, faster of an athlete I am because of it. 

Obviously, you don’t have to listen to anything I say, but I highly encourage you to test it out for 30 days to see if you notice a difference in your training…and your life. 

Comments? Thoughts? I would love to hear them. Email me at brianne@getyourfixpt.com to share them. 

Train Efficiently. Train Effectively. Train With Purpose!