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By Don Heatrick
If you're bored at the gym and have stopped making progress, it's time to train like an athlete (even if you never intend to be one)! For far too long now, body building has influenced gym training sessions. Finally the fitness industry has woken up to the strength and conditioning principles applied by competitive athletes, and now regular non-athletes are reaping the benefits of sport science.
 Mark Twain said: “If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got.” It's a very telling statement, and very apt in the context of your gym sessions. The truth is that your body will quickly adapt to the demands of an unchanged regular gym session and stop developing. You need to progressively mix things up – you'll benefit both physically and psychologically.
First of all, forget training isolated muscle groups and start training compound movements – squatting, lunging, bending, twisting, pushing, pulling and general gait and locomotion. It's important you work opposing movements to stabilise and balance the strength on both sides of your joints, developing a coordinated, efficient body and reducing the likelihood of injury. You must also dump the resistance machines in favour of free weights, kettlebells, medicine balls, tornado balls, power bags and sledge hammers! Sliding a weight up and down a guided path just won't cut it – learn to lift. Develop skill and coordination as well as fitness.
Athletes also employ periodization, a term used by trainers and coaches to describe breaking up a programme into a number of cycles or periods. Studies have shown that using different set, rep, resistance, rest and exercise modes over the course of weeks, months or an entire year results in greater gains than using the same routine repeatedly every workout. Training periods of adaptation, strength, power and muscular endurance are typical and makes gym sessions not only more productive but far more interesting.
Unit One Gym has been designed for exactly such training, providing the equipment and space to train like an athlete. If you want to work your movement patterns by flipping a tractor tyre or smashing down a sledge hammer, if you want to competently swing a kettlebell or throw a punch on a punch bag, if you want expert guidance then Unit One is the place to train in 2011. If you think this sounds insane, then I'll leave you with one more quote; “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” - Albert Einstein
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