I often notice how the “rules” that play a role in life, are the rules in the world of Marketing. When I read some of my books for the University, I find another relation- the similarities between Marketing and workouts. It seems that “the rules” are all the same for every aspect of our lives, the difference is how we will transform them and adapt them to our work.
This week I had an exam about Product policy and while I was reading the text book, an idea was born in my head. The theme was about the product cycle and the different stages, every product passes during its market life. That made me think about workouts and the stages, which a well structured workout needs to go through.
I will get away from Product policy and I won’t tell you about the life of products, I will go straight to workouts and their structure.
Introduction stage:
This is the moment, when you decided to workout and you are already entering the gym. Even though most people skip this stage, it is really important for the rest of your workout! Here is the moment when you have to “introduce”, prepare your body for physical activity. You need to warm up pretty good, so you can prevent injuries. You better start with dynamic stretching. I wouldn’t recommend you static stretching!
– Complete one lap
– Do some running drills
– Do some warms,spider walk,bear crawl
– Walking lunges
– If you are in the gym try doing 3 rounds: 100 single jumps on rope,20 mountain climbers and 10 squats or 3 rounds: 20 step ups and 10 burpees without the push up
All of this will rise your puls,it will make you break a sweat and it will prepare your muscles for the rest.Then you could stretch a little bit and move on to the next stage…
Growth stage
This is the moment of your workout when your muscles are warmed up and you can move to the hard part. If for example you are in the gym and you intend on doing some heavy squats, here is the moment to complete a couple warm up sets, starting out with the bar and moving up to heavier weights. Here you are still preparing your muscles for the workout but the main part of it!
Maturity stage:
This is the stage, where you reached maximum intensity. This is the hardest part of your workout- the main part. Here is the moment to break records, set PRs, beat past times, past reps and so on. Here your muscles work at their full capacity!
Decline stage:
This is another really important stage of the workout, which people often skip. Here you are already done with the main part of the workout and comes the moment to gradually finish the workout. You need to take 10 minutes to stretch your muscles. I already wrote an article about post workout stretching, which you can read here. Even though this stage doesn’t look important to you, it can actually give you a lot of advantages for your next workout and for your present workout. On this stage you give a chance to your muscles to relax and lengthen and prepare them for tomorrow, so you can feel ready for another physical activity.
This are the four main stages in each workout and you need to make sure that you are not skipping them! Unfortuantely, I notice that most people rarely do the first and the last stage. More often than not they walk in the gym, and go straight to the big weights and intensity! This is a wrong approach, which in the long term could have a negative role and you could injure yourself seriously!
