I’m going to do something with this principle which has never been done before.  On one simple page, I’m going to give everyone a formula for training.  This will cover most every goal you might have.  It will work for any sport, any goal, and any training situation. 
 
Basic Components- For any sport or training goal, you will need these components.  Give priority to what your goals are, as well as what you need to improve on.  

1. Aerobic conditioning – No matter the goal, your heart and lungs need to have a basic amount of conditioning.
2. Anaerobic conditioning - This is glycolytic interval training, your ability to maximally produce energy for 30 seconds up to 3 minutes, it combines aerobic conditioning and strength along with your body’s ability to rid itself of lactic acid (the byproduct of muscular exertion).   
3. Stability/ Agility- Balance and your ability to move in an agile way.  
4. Flexibility- Your range of motion and your ability to move dynamically.
5. Strength- Your ability to exert force.  
6. Power- Your ability to apply force with velocity (speed).

 
Specific Components

• Your sport or goal- What exactly is your primary goal?  This will determine how you train.
• Practice the skills for your sport or goal-  If you have a specific goal, let’s say golf for example, you will have to train specifically for that.  I don’t care how fit you are, you need to be specific.  If you want to hike the Appalachian trail, you better get out and hike!
• Health care, performance and fitness testing and retesting- Get your routine physicals, and also use OBJECTIVE performance and fitness testing to determine what you need to work on.  

 
Sample Schedule for Everyone
 
*If you have a sport, or hobby you’re training for, add in 30-120 minutes of practice, 5 days per week.  Play Saturday and Rest on Sunday. 
 
Day 1- Stability (5 minutes), Flexibility (5 minutes), Strength and Power Training (30+ minutes) 
Day 2- Flexibility (10 minutes) Aerobic Conditioning Intervals (24 Minutes) 1 minute Intense, 1 Minute Moderate
Day 3- Stability, Flexibility, and Strength on the Floor (30+ minutes), Optional 20 Minutes Strength Training with Weights
Day 4- Flexibility (5 minutes) Aerobic Conditioning (30 Minutes)
Day 5- Stability (5 minutes), Flexibility (5 minutes), Strength and Power Training (30 minutes) + Specific Training.  
Day 6- Aerobic Conditioning Moderate Intensity (30-45 minutes)
Day 7- REST!

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And remember...there's never been a better day than TODAY to make it happen!
 
Read Next:  History as the Decline of Community  
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“Excellence is a process.” - Nick Saban
 
“What gets measured gets managed.” - Peter Drucker
 
We all need a system to get things done. Like many other things in life, when it comes to exercise, fitness, and training, systems work. What does it mean to have a system? It means that there’s a certain order to what happening. The order, or system, can be complex or it can be very simple. A system might have several levels, all interacting with each other in a complex way. Or a system might be a couple of simple guidelines put together. If you apply various guidelines or rules of thumb, to an organized approach to reaching a goal, then you have a system. Systems thinking is a “slow” way of thinking in the sense that it forces us to slow down and be methodical about planning out what we’re going to do. 
 
In his excellent book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman writes about the critical differences between fast and slow thinking. We need to do both. We need good instincts, or fast thinking, because thinking fast often keeps us safe and because we only have so much time to deliberate. We can’t think slow all the time because we’d never get anything done. On the other hand, our society does not value slow thinking like it should and slow thinking determines how our lives turn out. Slow thinking is about settling down and really planning, turning off distractions and focusing. Creating systems requires slow and deliberate reflection. And this is the part we have a hard time doing, because we live in an instant gratification culture. Buy this, hurry here or there, eat this, desire this, consume that, become angry impulsively at this tweet or that post, and the list goes on. Fast thinking is instinctual we are groomed and trained by the culture to think fast. 
 
Slow thinking is hard work at first.  But in the end, slow thinking resulting in systems is a kind of shortcut. Once we set up the system, then we can switch to fast thinking. Once a system is in place then all we have to do is follow it, and then periodically slow down and re-evaluate the system. But once a system is in place the work and effort can begin. Another great example is a business.  Even though I’m a sole proprietor, I have a system for how I operate.  I track leads, lead conversions, marketing channels, revenue, appointments, and many other factors, and I have entire systems for each aspect of running a small business and subsystems under the primary ones.  

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​“The human spirit must prevail over technology.” – Albert Einstein
 
Technology for its own sake is at its best a harmless amusement and pleasant waste of time, or at its worst a nihilistic and dangerous dead-end.  With exercise, training, and fitness, technology is rarely life-threatening like nuclear bombs, but it can waste a lot of time and energy.  Most crucially, it can also conflate means with ends.  Technology is not the end goal, but a possible way to reach it!  Technology should serve its master, not the other way around.  Let me illustrate with an all too often example.
 
Unfortunately you occasionally see the ugly side of human nature and technology meet in a gym environment, when trainees fight and argue over limited fitness equipment like treadmills, which is especially repugnant when perfectly good roads are available right outside the door to run on.  I’ve seen it many times.  You’d be surprised how capable of nasty behavior are those overworked sleep-deprived lawyers or suburban moms, phone in hand, earbuds in, yoga pants in place, and trendy running shoes on, when someone takes the treadmill they want!  The problem with this infrequent but inevitably recurring scenario is that the ends- getting in shape and being healthy- are being confused and subjugated to the means- the expensive and high-tech machines called treadmills that have everything technological from Facebook, to YouTube, to regular TV, to heart rate on their screens.  
 
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, especially with technology.  Use it, but use it in a smart way which makes your workouts more efficient, effective, and fun.  Or don’t use it at all.

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When I saw Big Ben for the for the first time, towering above the Thames River, I was awestruck and it became one of my fondest memories of getting to travel abroad.  Big Ben is the nickname for the clock at the Palace of Westminster in London and its featured on t-shirts, coffee cups, and countless other souvenirs because of its iconic status.  There’s nothing quite like gazing on a structure, well-built and pleasing to the eye, for the very first time, especially when it’s in an ancient city like London surrounded by other notable achievements in architecture like Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tower of London.  
 
I’ve always enjoyed looking at beautiful buildings and marveling at the construction techniques and engineering capabilities of the building sciences.   That’s not that unusual, we all like looking in awe at attractive things.  I’ve been even more interested though in finding out what makes a building popular, lasting, and one that people enjoy using, all at the same time.  
 
I’ve seen the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the Empire State Building in New York City, Soldier Field of the Chicago Bears, Ely Cathedral in England, and countless other iconic and well-built older structures all over the US, Europe, and Latin America.  They aren’t exactly famous like those places, but I’ve seen more towns and cities that I could mention which have beautiful homes, relaxing and bucolic town squares, and pleasant plazas with parks in the middle.   This latter form of “Main Street” architecture seems to be the US’s strong suit. 
 
The more I studied architecture and sought it out as something worth learning about it, the more I realized, with quite a bit of surprise, how intertwined it is with the human body.  As a matter of fact, I’ve never even seen or heard of anyone discussing the correlation between physical fitness of the body on one hand, and successful architecture on the other.  It turns out though, the two fields are closely interrelated. 
 
After reading Tom Wolfe’s book, “From Bauhaus to Our House” about the pretensions, ideology, and flawed approach to modern building practices,  I became even more interested in what was going on with architecture.  So I took some online courses, read several books, did some drawings, gazed over photos I’d taken all over the world, and even worked through an online course offered at Yale University called “Roman Architecture.”  What I discovered was fascinating:
 
Successful architecture is based on the symmetry and proportion of the human body. 
 
Vitruvius, a Roman architect and engineer was one of the first to leave a record of his principles in a multi-volume book called “De Architectura,” written around the year 40 BC.  Based on his expertise in human anatomy and many other fields, he taught that there were 3 essential attributes in the field of architecture:

1. Firmitas – Strength, Solidity, Firmness
2. Utilitas – Commodity, Comfort, Serviceability
3. Venustas – Delight, Beauty

 
The famous work by Leonardo da Vinci, “Vitruvian Man” is based on his idea that the human body is perfectly proportioned and that buildings should be as well.  The drawing implies perfect symmetry emanating out from the navel, and reflected the universe as a whole:

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