Holistic Training Explained

By Howe Russ


Every ten years or so, an old style of exercise comes back into the foreground. From kettlebells to high intensity interval training, the fitness world loves a comeback. One of the items doing this right now is the art of holistic training.

While the industry is seemingly hell bent of discovering new training methods designed to get you in and out of your local gym in less time than ever before, it's important to remember that there are a few quite basic routines which still work better than anything which has been developed in the last decade.

Despite the constantly evolving world of fitness, the workout styles you can see on display in any gym or fitness magazine have existed for years. The industry operates on a fifteen year cycle, with old techniques disappearing from the public eye for a while and then making a comeback a few years down the line. So the next time you ask for tips on how to lose weight, bear in mind that the answer you'll be given could be older than you are. This can be seen already with kettlebells and fat loss boot camps.

The height of popularity for holistic approaches to exercise was probably the middle of the eighties, where everybody from action movie stars to athletes were adopting this technique in a bid to keep their workouts at the cutting edge of science.

If you'd like to train holistically you simply need to inject constant variety into your program. Every week you should train with a different focus in mind.

Are there any real benefits to this method, though?

There are two main advantages.

* Constant variation forces new muscle growth and fat loss.

* Gym sessions become intense, interesting affairs rather than drawn out, predictable nonsense.

The most common problems with people who hit plateau usually involve boredom and lack of progression. As you can see above, those are the two main areas this workout method attacks, making it a great choice for those who usually succumb to the pressures of either issue.

That's because it involves switching between different styles on a weekly basis. You'd be going from training with high resistance and low repetitions in one week, to suddenly doing high intensity sessions involving lots of work the next, followed by extremely low rep strongman style workouts. The constant variation is enough to keep most people away from the slightest plateau. This is great for both muscle building and fat loss.

Monitoring progress is the toughest part of this type of routine. As exercise enthusiasts switch between high intensity interval training, high repetition endurance work and strength based sessions every seven days it can lead to confusion when trying to monitor your progress.

Depending how important that factor is to you, you may actually really enjoy this way of exercising. Holistic training is one of the simplest forms of breaking a plateau and, therefore, it's usually one of the tried and tested methods which pops up whenever any gym user asks for tips on how to lose weight.




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