There was an article recently on MailOnline which touched upon a subject that greatly interests me.
The article, by Sara Finlay, tells the story of father-of-two Fitness Trainer Lawrence Price (pictured) who is an advocate of focused and efficient exercise.
According to Price, there is no need to spend large amounts of time in the gym, when what he terms 'NEAT' (or 'Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis') workouts can achieve better outcomes at a fraction of the time spent by some gym bunnies when exercising.
I’m not that a gym bunny myself (I’m more of a fitness fox), but I do support Price’s approach here. From my perspective, when training clients and working out I regularly see people spending huge amounts of time exercising and sometimes complaining about how frustrated they feel at the lack of progress they are making in the gym.
Which to my mind is not surprising.
As an alternative to this way of working out, Price (above) points to exercises that can be undertaken in shorter periods of time and, judging by the photographs of him in the MailOnline article, they seem to be having the right effect.
Of course, all people are unique, have different physiologies, diets, genes and life pressures, so how a person appears physically is almost certainly not down to one set of inputs or circumstances.
But one thing I think we can all take from Price’s approach is that analysing what we want as fitness outputs from our exercise and dietary inputs is vital.
And in that equation, the correct ratio of time + energy is crucial in delivering positive outcomes and the kind of aesthetic payoffs we desire when we embark on any exercise programme.
So, want to get the best from a workout? Then plan for what you want to achieve, over what period of time, and put together an exercise programme that delivers measurable results using the right amount of energy.
Which, if thought through intelligently, can also require only reasonable modest amounts of input used to the maximum of effects.
Julien