If you had to tell someone what your training philosophy was, could you?
I had the question pop up a couple of days ago and I kind of had to think about it. The reason? Because I haven’t really thought about it.
You see, I have an overall philosophy for how I think people should face the world, but that’s different. When it comes to training, I wasn’t sure I even had a training philosophy.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure what they were asking me. Once I did, I realized I needed to build one.
After a bit of back and forth, they linked an article about “why you train” and “how you train.” That’s what they described as a training philosophy.
So, fair enough.
Why I train
The reason I train is simple. I want to stay alive.
I know, it sounds melodramatic, but let’s keep a few things in mind. For one, I started off at 252.6 lbs on April 18, 2018. That’s not healthy. It’s begging for a heart attack when you’re only 5’8″.
Further, things like diabetes run in my family. Additionally, cancer isn’t unheard of either.
More than that, though, is the fact that we’re living in a psychotic time. People are losing their damn minds. I’ve talked about that before. My concern, because of a day job writing about politics, is that the insanity will become more than words and morph into targeted violence.
I’m realistic enough to know I’m unlikely to be anyone’s first choice of targets. I’m also realistic enough to know that thinking I’ll never be a target would be stupid.
So, I train to stay alive. I work to maintain good health–because let’s face it, even in times going nuts, I’m still more likely to die of natural causes than violence–and I work to be able to fight back effectively.
How I train
My training is focused on a lot of things, all of which I figure I’ll need moving forward. For one, I need strength. More than that, though, I need functional strength. It’s not enough to bench 300 lbs if you can’t actually use it when needed.
As such, the strength training needs to be a catalyst for power training.
That means implements should be versatile enough to fill both of those roles adequately.
For me, that means things like kettlebells first and foremost. It works for both quite well. Further, it also offers itself up as a dandy method for conditioning.
Yeah, that’s important too.
However, I won’t ignore other options that present themselves. As I have some strongman implements, traditional weightlifting equipment, sandbags, and even a sledgehammer purchased for training purposes, those will all get some use.
Additionally, mobility needs to be a priority as well. No amount of strength or power will serve you worth a damn if you can’t actually use it.
In other words, there’s a whole lot to train.
Anything else?
Yeah.
This stuff? It needs to be fun. You need to enjoy your training and your training environment. You need to be excited to train in general. That means implementing things that might not be the optimal training method, but will get you into your training space every day you need to be there.
Personally, I think this is overlooked way too often. Too many people simply think training should be enough reason to train. For them, that’s true.
But I fail to see any reason why this is ideal.
In fact, I suspect it’s not only not ideal, but may result in a number of people giving up training. Think about it for a minute. I’ve had a lot of people report being intimidated by training at a gym, so perhaps it’s pretty common.
My philosophy also factors in having a bit of fun with all of this (yes, that’s a fair bit of the Barbarian thing as well, truth be told).
So what about you? What’s your philosophy.
