Most of us would benefit from improving our conditioning and recovery methods before we go crazy doing full body resistance workouts 5-6 days per week.
Joel Jameison had a great post on this today, referring to younger individuals versus older individuals; his point was that most adults would benefit from more time spent improving conditioning and recovery than putting themselves through numerous high intensity workouts per week.
It’s hard to know what path is the smoothest toward moving better, losing weight, and reaching your fitness goals:
Should I do more low impact aerobic work and a minimal amount of strength?
Should I lift heavy more and do short bouts of intensity when it comes to conditioning?
Unless you’re a professional athlete, most of our time spent getting fit should be centered around improving our aerobic conditioning through whatever modality we enjoy the most, and then supplementing that with recovery methods (sleep, light movement, walking, stretching, nutrition, hydration, etc.)
Is there a time and place for crushing weights?
ALWAYS.
But think Minimum Effective Dose for the heavy resistance work. I like 2-4 sessions per week, with 30 minutes spent tops lifting and recovering between sets. If you can find a balanced approach of squatting, deadlifting, pushing and pulling, you don’t need hours upon hours of work.
Instead, when you find that precious alone time to work out, you can spend more time chasing heart gains and getting your body into a state of rest and relaxation.
You will likely see quicker results that way, and your body will be able to fight through adversity with more resilience.
Most Adults Would Benefit From More Conditioning And Recovery Work