Designing an Effective Exercise Schedule

In more than 25 years as an endurance athlete, I have seen many fitness enthusiasts drift away from health, balance and common sense towards an obsessive, robotic approach to training and an overemphasis on results at the expense of appreciation of the process. Predictably, the results are often disastrous. Pushing blindly towards a fitness or weight loss goal and ignoring important factors like your health, energy and motivation levels will invariably lead to fatigue and burnout. The prevalence of this approach is perhaps due to the fact that in the career venue, doggedly pushing forward typically leads to advancement and success. Leading a healthy, balanced lifestyle is not a prerequisite for passing the bar exam or securing a promotion to the executive boardroom. Unfortunately, peak performers find out the hard way that their career success template does not apply to the human body.

Instead of getting overly concerned with the mechanics of your exercise program, I prefer to focus on leading a healthy, balanced lifestyle and having a positive attitude about your fitness pursuits. The type of workouts and training strategy that you choose are actually far less important than whether you are having fun. On that note, here are my three most important factors for a successful exercise program:

1. Fun--Every single workout must be fun; otherwise change your approach, your routine, your workouts or even your sport!

2. Convenient--Your training program must fit smoothly into your lifestyle without causing additional stress or guilt from neglecting other life responsibilities and interests. Many athletes engage in grueling training regimens to run away from other problems in their lives, which automatically makes success and enjoyment difficult.

3. Energizing--Your workouts should give you more energy on a daily basis, rather than drain and exhaust you. Sure, pushing your body hard with tough workouts will make your body tired, but the overall effect of the occasional tough workout is increased energy and vitality. Furthermore, you should always align your workout choices with your energy levels. On days when your energy is low, a moderate recovery workout is the best and only healthy option. On days when energy and motivation levels are high, you can enjoy the exhilaration and fitness benefits of pushing your body hard.

These simple elements have unfortunately been ignored by many, from misguided beginners to elite competitors. One popular fallacy is that you have to be "consistent" with your training--run a certain number of miles each week or complete at least three workouts in each of the triathlon sports each week. In this context, consistency can be very harmful to your progress because it can interfere with a sensible balance of stress and rest--the true path to fitness improvement, weight loss and other peak performance goals. You must pay close attention to mental, physical and emotional signs and adjust your workouts accordingly--adopt an intuitive approach to athletic training.

Regardless of whether your exercise goals are casual or competitive, best results will be obtained when you design a schedule that fits comfortably with your lifestyle. Your exercise schedule must also reflect the proven athletic training principles of monitoring and controlling intensity, balancing stress and rest, and periodization. Remember that exercise, although enjoyable, exhilarating and a great "stress release" from work and other responsibilities, is merely another form of stress on your body.

Discovering your ideal balance of stress and rest is a complicated issue, due to numerous variables in your life that are constantly changing. A linear progression of training difficulty (even with planned down periods) ignores life variables and stress/rest balance and can easily lead to burnout. The proper approach would be to attempt ever more challenging workouts or training periods at times when your mind and body are suited for it. Despite our strong desire for simple, formulaic solutions to our goals, challenges and problems, and the fact that there is a lucrative market for dispensing such logically challenged wisdom, you must take matters into your own hands and think critically when applying knowledge and guidance to the real world challenge of your fitness pursuits. I prefer to help you establish a knowledge base of proper training principles and ground rules for your behavior and decision making processes. Then, you empower yourself to make the right decisions in your daily training and have complete certainty that you are making the right workout decisions each day.

For example, I advocate a ground rule of never exercising if you have symptoms of a compromised immune system after many years of experience with suffering the negative consequences of trying to train with a cold or other illness. This means when you wake up with a slight sore throat, you completely cease exercise until your symptoms disappear. Two days of rest is a much better option than struggling through your "normal" routine and suffering from two to three weeks of sub-par health and seriously diminished athletic performance with a cold. Another important ground rule has to do with controlling heart rates to reflect the desired purpose of your workout. An aerobic training session means that the heart rate stays between 60 and 80 percent of maximum--no ifs, ands or buts like a friendly sprint to the city limit sign in the middle of the ride.