What should you do to improve your physical condition? (my advice)

The 12-week "Body for Life" is a great way to add structure to your program. It encourages you to set goals, to write things down, and to monitor yourself using objective criteria. It is great for:

  1. Athletes who have just completed a rehab of a major injury or surgery, in order to do a cycle of offseason general conditioning (this was my case). During injury down time, athletes will experience a loss of lean mass and/or a gain of bodyfat. The challenge can reverse this.
  2. Persons in average shape who are in a workout rut, to take them to a higher level of general conditioning or to improve their body composition.
  3. Nonactive persons as an introduction to conditioning. I recommend these persons take a week or two after joining the gym, before the start of the program to familiarize themselves with the exercises.

    4. While I think this is a good program for some, I believe that the current version of this program places too much emphasis on appearance-based measures over performance-based measures. My recommendation and hope is that many readers prefer a performance-based program over the EAS program. Nevertheless, it is still useful to review the information below, regarding requirements to be successful, along with recommended diet and exerciase components.

    After that, please visit the performance-based program link.

    Finally, the dress link may be a helpful guide to dressing for morning training.

    General Requirements

    There are three things that you must do to be successful in this program or any program. 1) You must plan. You need to send for the entry packet immediately and all the free goodies: the video, the audio tapes, etc. and have them on hand before you begin. You must mark weeks 1 through 12 on a calendar, including specific start date, and end date. You should join the gym at least one week before beginning.

    2) You must have objective self-analysis. Don't kid yourself about exercise. When you get into a situation where you don't prioritize your exercise, and you do things like, you had a long shopping day, and all of that walking must have been good enough exercise, yeah, but it is hard to measure eaxctly how much work you have done w/o a heart monitor, pacing, or measuring the distance or time.

    I mean, come on, treat this seriously. Behave like an athlete. Do you think a long shopping trip counts as a workout to the USA soccer team? Your body composition is the result of your cardio and strength capacity, which is determined by your current average weekly workload. So to make progress, you should be looking for ways to increase your workload week by week.

    You must acknowledge the macronutrient content of your present diet. Write down everything you eat during a full 3-day period before you start the program. Write down the time you ate everything, including waking, napping, and sleeping hours. Measure portions using a scale and/or measuring spoons and cups. Estimate portions. Save labels and boxes. Request nutrition information brochures from restaurants. Eat the way you normally eat; no modification until after the analysis.

    Then you will total and divide by 3 to get average daily fat, protein, and carb intake. You will also look at the time of day the nutrients were eaten, and the portion and frequency of the meals. Then you will make slight, but significant modifications.

    3) You must be consistent. Look for results after one week of consistent hard work for six days. Don't look for results after one or two days. You must be consistent in both diet and exercise.

    THE DIET PLAN

    THE EXERCISE PLAN

    A PERFORMANCE-BASED PROGRAM

    GUIDE TO APPROPRIATE OUTSIDE DRESS

    Last modified 08Mar03 comments
    http://www.geocities.com/aedziepak/training/EAS 1