Bri­an Chin Le­ung

Whether you are a world-class ath­lete or just the av­er­age per­son try­ing to keep in shape, the prin­ci­ples that en­sure an ex­tend­ed life in fit­ness re­main the same. Fit­ness ex­pert Vern Gam­bet­ta once said: "You can't make an ath­lete in one work­out, but you can break an ath­lete (client) with one work­out." Train­ing should al­ways be struc­tured and should progress along prop­er sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples; it should nev­er be ad hoc or rushed.

Some peo­ple equate a great work­out with be­ing very sore. How­ev­er, while a cer­tain de­gree of sore­ness may oc­cur a day or two af­ter an in­tense work­out, sore­ness should not be the gold stan­dard by which you judge a good work­out. Any train­er can make you sore, but that doesn't nec­es­sar­i­ly mean you had a great work­out. If I were to hit you with a round­house kick on your up­per thigh, it would make you sore, but that's not good for you.

Prin­ci­ples of Train­ing

Warm-up–A prop­er warm-up is es­sen­tial be­fore any phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. A warm-up sig­nals your mus­cles that they are about to be used. How­ev­er, many peo­ple con­fuse stretch­ing with warm­ing up. Stretch­ing forms part of a warm-up, but it does not con­sti­tute the en­tire warm-up. Nev­er stretch a cold mus­cle. You should first per­form slow, gen­tle ro­tary move­ments to lit­er­al­ly heat up the mus­cles be­fore you be­gin sta­t­ic and dy­nam­ic stretch­ing.

Cool-down–Cool­ing down prop­er­ly af­ter an in­tense work­out is just as im­por­tant as the warm-up, be­cause it helps to bring your heart rate, etc, back down grad­u­al­ly to a nor­mal state. Dur­ing ex­er­cise, mus­cle fi­bres, ten­dons and lig­a­ments un­der­go a lot of strain and waste prod­ucts build up in­side the body. A prop­er cool-down will help the body flush the tox­ins and re­lease the strain. If ex­er­cise is sud­den­ly stopped, blood and oth­er waste prod­ucts can stay in the mus­cles; this may cause swelling and pain. Ath­letes re­fer to this as 'blood pool­ing'. A struc­tured cool-down en­sures that blood re­turns to the heart in ad­e­quate quan­ti­ties.

Core train­ing

Core train­ing is es­sen­tial for all ath­letes and phys­i­cal fit­ness en­thu­si­asts, be­cause it helps to pre­vent se­ri­ous in­jury to the body. Many peo­ple think of the core as just the stom­ach and low­er back mus­cles, but if you think of a va­ri­ety of sports, such as karate, squash, soc­cer, crick­et, Amer­i­can foot­ball, etc, the con­trol of your arms and legs dur­ing ac­cel­er­a­tion re­quires re­cruit­ment of many more mus­cles oth­er than just ab­dom­i­nals and low­er back mus­cles.

That is why I pre­fer to de­scribe your core in this way: imag­ine your body with­out your head, arms and legs; what you re­main with rep­re­sents your core. It is im­por­tant that you strength­en your core mus­cles through a va­ri­ety of ex­er­cis­es, be­cause these mus­cles will then be able to trans­mit pow­er ef­fi­cient­ly to your arms and legs. Fol­low cor­rect train­ing prin­ci­ples, lis­ten to your body when it talks to you and you may still be vi­brant and phys­i­cal­ly ac­tive go­ing in­to your 80s and be­yond.

Keep Train­ing.