When I was in high school I decided, for two weeks, that I wanted to be on the wrestling team.
Wrestlers seemed tough. No one fucked with them. And they were shredded.
This sounded like a recipe that would take me from sweet but pudgy dough boy to confident and chiseled bad ass. Which certainly would get the attention of the one thing I cared about, girls.
What I didn’t fully appreciate was the weight cutting.
Dropping several pounds in a short period of time is not only unhealthy, it also makes you hungry. Which, ironically, makes you completely uninterested in girls which, as you recall, is why I signed up for this in the first place.
Then, as competition grows closer, you try to drop additional weight by not drinking. It’s funny how quickly you stop thinking about hunger when you haven’t had water in two days.
And then, in my first match, a much more experienced wrestler from a rival high school tossed me onto my back, knocked the wind out of me, and suddenly breathing was the only thing that mattered.
I quickly decided wrestling was probably not for me.
People want things.
Sex is one of them. So is food. Sleep. Air. Water.
But here’s the part that matters, you only get to care about the higher-level wants if the basics are already handled.
No one is thinking about sex when they can’t breathe. No one is fantasizing about a great meal when they haven’t had water in two days. Strip away the fundamentals and everything else disappears fast.
Desire is a luxury. It only shows up when survival is already taken care of.
That hierarchy applies to a lot more than biology.
Training has a similar, but much more voluntary, hierarchy.
If you don’t follow this order of training priorities you are not likely to die or get arrested. However if you want to get the most out of the time you dedicate to your health and fitness, it would be well worth it to adhere to this ranking.
(Quick caveat before the haters email me: I’m not including anything about nutrition, sleep, recovery, stress management or relationships here. But, of course, they are huge pieces of the puzzle.)
Top of the list, number one with a bullet, absolute non-negotiable regardless of your goals is strength training. And I would recommend anywhere from two to three hours per week for most people who want to stay reasonably strong, healthy, live longer and maintain good body composition.
I realize this is “based” as the kids say (at least I think that’s what the kids say) but I’m not making this your top priority simply because I own strength-focused training gyms or because I am a dyed-in-the-wool (a term that kids certainly are not saying) meathead.
Turns out that resistance training is a great way to maintain good body composition, hormonal health, bone density and balance while promoting longevity and contributing to essentially every other strength quality, energy system and performance goal you might have.
So if you want to be a runner, a football player, a Dad who can chase around their toddler or a grandma who can still make all the old timers turn their heads in the nursing home, strength training is a positive contributor.
Of course, you can do more. But most people will get the majority of their results from two to three very structured and relatively intense sessions per week. It’s essential for anyone.
The next is cardiovascular or endurance training. Ideally one to two hours per week of fairly intense cardio through running, rowing, tennis playing, sled pushing, cross country skiing or whatever else gets your heart rate up is going to lower your risk of disease and contribute to your general stamina.
Even if you are, say, a recreational competitive powerlifter, cardiovascular conditioning will help you. While you only perform each of the lifts for seconds, a powerlifting meet is a long day filled with managing your energy. Having some level of cardiovascular conditioning will help.
If you are unable to perform cardio at any level of intensity, daily walks of 8,000 steps or more will suffice as a good substitution.
Last on the hierarchy, anything physical that you enjoy. It can be rock climbing or Zumba classes or yoga or more running or whatever. All of that contributes to your health and fitness and, more importantly, your joy. And joy is undervalued these days.
And you can overindex on the things you like. You can Zumba for 9 hours per week and strength train for only two. That’s fine. But you need to get the strength training in.
Many people will want to fight me on this. Like literally fight me. I mean I was just in the Starbucks and a dude punched me in the arm for seemingly no reason. But I know this blog was his motivation.
Powerlifters will argue that cardio is meaningless. Runners will argue that, for them, cardio should be higher up than strength.
And, listen, this used to be a free country so I encourage you to do whatever you believe is right for you. But I stand by this list.
Strength training is the foundation that primes your body for anything else you want to do and is the biggest training-based driver of health, function and performance.
And cardiovascular training will help you stay alive and endure nearly anything you want to accomplish.
Doing the things you love should be the goal of any training program (and, life, really) so you want to make time for those things as well.
But practicing your yoga while ignoring your strength training is like trying to have sex without being able to breathe. Sure, it sounds like fun but probably not worth the risk.