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You’re So Beautiful

If you’re like most people, a weight scale is the only tool you use to figure out if your workout plan is working. But maybe you’re more advanced than most, and you use more detailed body measurements like body fat and the size of your shoulders, hips, chest, legs, arms, etc. Even so, you may be missing a key source of useful fitness information: performance assessments. Coaches and athletes have used performance assessments for decades to monitor whether or not their training is having the intended results. This information helps them make useful changes to the program to continually progress by making modifications when necessary. By continually tracking their progress, they are able to predict future performance, indicate weaknesses, measure improvement, assess the success of their training, and provide the necessary motivation to keep moving forward. Many athletes are driven to satisfy their competitive urge even when they’re not in season. Performance assessments allow them to compete against themselves, much like many people do to lose weight, gain strength, and achieve their fitness goals. So how can you use performance assessments to achieve new levels of fitness and health? Let’s take Average Joe for example. Average Joe hasn’t worked out for years but has recently decided to get into shape. He gets a diet and workout plan and gets to work. He loses weight for the first few weeks, but then the scale stops moving… in fact, it goes up a couple pounds despite the fact that he’s doing the same workout and eating healthy. Dismayed, his routine starts to break down and pretty soon, he’s back to where he started. If Average Joe had been performance assessment testing periodically, he may have avoided failure. What many people don’t realize is that muscle weighs more than fat. This simple fact confuses people who rely completely on their weight scale to measure results. Performance testing would have shown Average Joe that his continued workouts were improving his reps and times, keeping him motivated despite what the weight scale said. Just as important, he would have realized that he needed to change his workout if his test results weren’t improving. Here are some guidelines for incorporating performance assessment testing into your training: Performance Assessment Tests The best source for useful performance assessment tests is the U. S. Military. These tests don’t require fancy equipment and there’s tons of useful information regarding test results based on age and gender. Here are just a few: Max Push Ups in 2-Minutes Max Sit Ups in 2-Minutes Max Pull Ups 1. 5-Mile Run Time Tracking Results Performance Assessment Tests are only useful if you keep careful track of the results. Ideally, you need to repeat the same conditions of each test; this means you should rest the same amount before each test, test during the same time of day, and in the same conditions as the previous test. Performance testing every four weeks will provide you with useful information, helping you gauge whether or not your current workout program is really working. Setting Goals Goal setting is just as important as performance assessment testing. How do you know when you’ve arrived if you never set a destination in the first place? Before your first performance assessment test, set a goal of where you would like to be. If you go look into Military Physical Fitness Test standards, you’ll find PFT score charts for different branches of the military. Go hardcore and try to hit Navy Seal standards if you can! Write you’re goals down and compare them to each of your performance assessment tests; adjust as necessary.

Are you eating your prescribed six bodybuilding meals a day and not gaining muscle?

Have you been blowing your hard-earned cash on body building supplements with techie names like “Nitric-this” and “Cell-Max-that”, yet still fall short of getting the size gains you’re after?

You’re not alone. Thousands of muscle building enthusiasts are needlessly struggling – grunting and sweating for painfully little progress – and mislabeling themselves “hard-gainer”.

Building muscle, like accomplishing anything, requires some rational thinking and a well-executed strategy. It doesn’t just happen because you made it to the gym and finished your workout. It won’t occur simply because you’re using a product that was purportedly created by a “genius” wearing a lab coat. Successful natural muscle growth takes place as a result of adherence to laws of nature – just like success with any endeavor in life.

To back my point, let’s look at what many muscle building aficionados counter-productively do in gyms around the world. This is a simplistic example, but some variation of this scenario is the cause for much unneeded frustration for too many natural bodybuilders.

Let’s say Bill and Joe are training partners. They arrive at the gym to perform their much-anticipated biceps workout. Bill likes to start out with standing barbell curls and he’s glad he has Joe there to spot him. Bill just knows that if he can get Joe to assist him with the heavy sets, some “forced reps” will really get his arms growing. He’s decided to use the ever-popular ‘pyramid technique’ to work his way up to those heavy sets.

Bill ends up doing six sets. His sets are as follows: 50 pounds/8 reps, 55 pounds/8 reps, 60 pounds/6 reps, 70 pounds/6 reps, 55 pounds/7 reps, 50 pounds/6 reps.

Bill feels proud of himself. It was a grueling biceps workout. His first three sets were moderately challenging. However, the 70 pounds he piled on the bar for his fourth set of 6 reps represented a respectable stretch for him.

Although he didn’t ask for any help from Joe, he definitely had to dig deep within himself to find that extra pride-inducing push that allowed him to achieve the set of six reps. This fatigued his biceps enough to make the final three sets extremely challenging, even though they were performed with descending amounts of weight.

Five days later, Bill and Joe are back again for another biceps workout. Why? Because their schedule says it’s time to work those muscles again. Of course, muscles only grow from recovery between workouts – not directly from the tissue-ravaging training sessions themselves. But Bill and Joe have apparently worked out some kind of deal with their biceps in which the muscles have agreed to recover and grow in a four to five day span (sarcasm).

Bill wants to get bigger, so he’s decided to boost his heaviest set up to 75 pounds. He figures this will really “shock” his biceps into growth. His sets on this workout look like this: 50 pounds/8 reps, 55 pounds/8 reps, 65 pounds/6 reps, 75 pounds/6 reps, 55 pounds/6 reps, 50 pounds/5 reps.

Wow… Bill got a little assistance from Joe and managed to use five pounds more weight on his two heaviest sets. That extra intensity caused him to fall short a couple reps on his final, lighter sets. But that’s okay, right? Bill is increasing the poundage and getting stronger and bigger, isn’t he?

Hell no! . . . Bill is deceiving himself. If you add up the total volume he moved in the approximate twenty minute time period during the first workout, it was 2,305 pounds. Five days later, he moved 2,260 pounds in the same time frame. His volume of lifted weight went down. Now he’s counting on moving forward after having possibly over-trained in this most recent workout. Yet he’s not even aware of what he’s doing.

Until Bill straightens this out, it won’t matter how many stomach-stretching meals he piles down. And all the nifty powdered supplements made by smart looking guys in cute little lab coats won’t help much either. He’ll just be peeing all that into the toilet and wasting time to boot.

That is, unless and until he gets his bodybuilding strategy on track. Nice, huh?