I did the Body For Life 12-week program as a change of pace and see how I would do is an appearance-based program. I probably would not do it again, nor would I recommend it to others.
This stems from a philosophical difference between performance and appearance goals.
Although the two are somewhat correlated, appearance goals are concerned with how you look with no regard to what you can do with your body. Examples of appearance goals are ladies' reduction in dress size, changes in body composition as measured by skinfold calipers, or changes in body measurements, such as waistline, hipline, etc.
In contrast, performance measurements are direct testing of your athletic conditioning, such as your time in a fixed distance (2-mile run), your single-rep maximum weight in specific lifts, the maximum number of repetitions of a particular calisthenic or weight exercise at a fixed amount of weight.
I believe that the appearance standards can be somewhat correlated to your level of condition, but it may be difficult to ascertain through, say, thigh measurement. Fat tissue loss may be more than offset by muscle tissue gain, but this may not be a bad thing. They can also be subjective.
However, the performance measurements are more objective. If you improve your 2-mile time, and you are almost the same bodyweight, there is little doubt that you have improved either your running efficiency, your cardiovascular conditioning, or both. Either way, your athleticism has improved. Athleticism is defined as the ability and ease at which one can do all things physical.
1) You must become inspired. This can happen by looking at an athlete perform in a sport at a high level, and developing a desire to improve one's own athleticism in the direction of that athlete.
2) You must set a target date for a major "after" performance asessment or competition. This asessment will be your motivation for training consistently throughout the cycle.
3) You must plan. The plan will be designed around optimal performance at the target date. The plan will layout the training and rest necessary to make progress. It is necessary to record all activity in a log book (recommended: a small weekly calendar), and also to record all progress made (in a chart or table).
Duration of the training program: macrocycles and microcycles. In most sports, you can use a one-year period for your macrocycle. The macrocycle would then be broken up into several microcycles throughout the year. Elements of the macrocycle would include the offseason, the preseason, in-season, and post-season.
During the offseason, the athlete is recovering from the bumps and bruises of the post-season. This is the time to get a complete physical and check for any physical concerns. If there are injuries or problems, this is the best time to get therapy or surgery. Lots of "active rest," which means the athlete is having fun playing low-stress recreational sports. Preseason is low volume, low intensity.
In preseason, the athlete adresses weaknesses in technique, strength, or other aspect and prioritizes training accordingly. Preseason training is usually high volume, low intensity.
Volume vs. intensity: volume means the number of reps, or the duration of the exercise in miles or time. Intensity is the percentage of the performed activity to the maximal activity. For example the speed relative to maximal speed, or the weight lifted as a fraction of the maximal weight. Volume times intensity equals total workload.
During the season, the intensity will be increased. Then during the post-season, the athlete will taper, meaning volume will be decreased. Rigidity vs. Flexibility: A program should be flexible enough to allow for variation in the day-to-day mental and physical state of the athlete. A program should not be so rigid as to demand that the athlete perform a high-intensity workout if the athlete feels unusually tired on that day. On the other hand, an overflexible plan may fail in that it does not motivate a less disciplined athlete to the highest possible training.
Routine vs. variety: A beginner program will start out with simpler, more routine, repeated activities. Anything a beginner does will result in progress. More intermediate programs introduce more variety into the training. You want to have consistency in training, but that does not mean that the training is routine, or the same every day. You want to have an element of cross-training in there every week. On the other hand, a training program is too complex if you can't get to the same or similar element once every 2 weeks. In that case, the elemnts are spaced out too far, and you lose your perspective of progress.
Frequency: once a week for a major exercise (such as bench press) is good frequency because it allows full recovery between workouts, but it is not too infrequent that you lose progress.
Overload and rest. These go hand in hand. In order to make progress, you have to overload: in running this means a tempo run. This will push you to run a little faster than your comfort zone. The next day, you must take it easy and do a recovery run. Also, you may need a little extra sleep. During the overload, you push your body close to its limit. Then the body responds during the rest by recovering and adapting.
Elements of athleticism: There are many elements of athleticism. An appearance-based program does not care about these. All they care about is outward appearance of the physique. However, a complete performance-based training program will encompass all of the elements of athleticism. Some sports place more emphasis on some elements than others. Strength is the ability to lift or perform an exercise at a given weight. Typically measured by single-rep maximal lifts of the powerlifts: bench press, deadlift, and/or back squat. Some technique is involved, but if your single-rep maxes of these lifts increase, it means your basic raw strength levels have increased.
Strength endurance is the ability to lift or perform an exercise for multiple reps. It is tested by performing an exercise of a fixed weight or a calisthenic for multiple reps to failure, within a reasonable time limit (1 minute). Typical tests include pushups and pullups, or any weight exercise. If you can increase the umber of reps, you have improved your strength endurance.
Explosiveness is the ability to move your muscles with resistance fast. Explosiveness is trained through plyometrics and olympic lifts.
Plyometrics are a series of exercises that improve an athlete's explosiveness. Lower-body plyos include things like power skips, jumping, box jumps, and bounding. Uphill sprints and stadium hops also have a plyometric effect if they are performed fast. Upper-body plyometrics include medicine ball throws and drills.
Plyometrics is one of the most neglected elements of the appearance-based program. In plyometrics, you are targeting you fast-twitch muscle fibers, and you are also training your neuromuscular system (NMS). The NMS regulates the sequencing and ordering of the firing of muscle fibers. Each individual muscle fiber fires and exerts a force only for a fraction of a second. In order to hold a weight out and still in outstretched arms, the NMS must coordinate the firing of these fibers so that the weight is held still and does not shake.
Most people who have trained with weights are good at holding a weight out steady. However, in order to jump high, the NMS must fire lots of fibers at once, or fibers of several muscle groups in rapid sequence. This requires training. Also, the Golgi tendon organ, part of the NMS, is a feedback mechanism that inhibits all of the fibers to fire at once so that the tendon is not overloaded and torn. The Golgi tendon organ is to prevent injury. However, through training, as the tendons become stronger, the Golgi tendon organ requires more and more force to activate.
Plyometrics work on the stretch-reflex principle. When a tendon feels a sudden force, it reacts by causing a coordinated contraction of the connected muscle tissue. This response is part of the "autonomic" nervous system, and is actually involuntary. It is faster than you can think, because the stretch-reflex neural pathway only goes to the spinal cord, not the brain. For instance, when the doctor taps your patellar tendon with his mallet, a signal of sudden tension goes from a sensory nerve in the tendon to the spinal cord. The reflex response is sent directly from the spinal cord node to the muscles in the thigh.
Bottom line is, if you want to become more athletic, be able to cover more of the tennis court, be able to jump higher, etc., then do plyometrics.
The olympic lifts train explosiveness. They include the snatch, the clean and jerk, and all of the variants. Mental focus is also important because adrenaline raises the inhibition threshold of the Golgi tendon organ.
Cardiovascular conditioning is an important element. A good training program will contain a variety of aerobic and anaerobic training: long intervals, short intervals, long distance, and tempo work. Short intervals are anaerobic, meaning that you are performing at a pace that cannot be sustained indefinitely. As you are running or rowing, your muscles are going into oxygen debt, which must be replenished after you stop. The puropse of short interval training is to try to extend the time at which you can run or work until you run out of breath and have to stop to catch your breath.
Intermediate tempo runs, on the other hand, train your areobic conditioning, causing your heart and lungs to be stronger so that they can deliver more oxygen to the muscles. Also your veins will grow, so theat they can more easily draw blood from you at the lab. :o)
Long, slow distance runs (LSD) are important mental training, and help to get the blood flowing. However, even a marathon training program must include some tempo runs in addition to LSD, or else, you will not be able to increase your running speed.
Sport-specific training are the skill and technique elements of a particular sport. They are trained by doing repetitions with weights or a sports-specific apparatus in order to learn coordination and body awareness. Running form can be improved by specific running drills.
Flexibility: My opinion is that adequate flexibility is developed during performing the sport, and doing the exercises in a full range of motion. Athletes should warmup to get the blood flowing. If the muscles are warm, you don't need much warmup. Warmup should be a jog, or doing exercise with light weights. Do not stretch during warmup because holding the tendon in a gradual, sustained stretch will disinhibit the Golgi tendon organ.
Remember: tere is no overtraining; there is only underrecovery!
References
The Wolverine Plan, Training Plan of the University of Michigan Women’s Rowing Team, 2001-02. This plan shows the distinction between a serious performance-based training plan and just "working out" for fitness.
Last modified 10Mar03 comments
http://www.geocities.com/aedziepak/training/performance.htm