***Exercise & Nutrition Strategy***

Workout Bristol Blog:

Exercise & Nutrition Strategy

Start with longevity ...

There is so much information and opinion thrown at us day after day that it can become very overwhelming and confusing when trying to decide on the best type of exercise & nutrition programme.

Should I do HIIT training? Should I run long distances, short distances or in intervals? Should I lift heavy weight for less reps or light weight for more reps? Should I lift fast or should I lift Slow? Etc etc etc

The answers to all of these questions and to pretty much all questions when it come to fitness is of course... 'IT DEPENDS'

What type of programme you decide to follow really depends on your personal circumstances. Even if you have the same goal as a friend... lets say for argument sake that it's to lose body fat, then the progamme that each of you may need to follow in order to achieve the exact same goal could potentially be completely different. For example, there may be exercises that you can implement into your programme that your friend cannot for some reason or other (Like an injury issue), or you may both have different dietary needs etc.

HOWEVER,

There is one consideration that is absolutely essential to think about when deciding on your exercise & nutrition programmes and that is a strategy for LONGEVITY. i.e ... am I likely stick to this.

Most of us are not athletes and therefore the most important thing to think about is not what results we will get in the next 3 months, but rather what strategies to adopt in order to stay consistently active and eating consistently healthy for the rest of our life.

Lets take HIIT training and steady state training as an example;

For argument sake lets say that a news report comes out to say that science has proved that doing 15 minutes of interval sprints is three/four times as beneficial as doing 30 minutes of steady state running/jogging.

Well that's great, but if you personally prefer and enjoy steady state running to interval sprinting then the likelihood is that you would give up on your HIIT training programme whereas you would stick to your steady state running programme. In this situation, even though one type of training gets better results than the other.... you personally would get more benefit from doing the least effective programme! This is because you will be more consistent with with it over time.

The point being made here is to not base your choice of exercise & nutrition programming simply on what gets the best results, base it on whether or not you are likely to stick with it over time ...

long-term consistency always beats short-term gains.