Formosa Fitness

Intensity is a learned skill. It's an ability to be acquired. Not everyone can work at a truly advanced level, but everyone can start where they are. That is what's required.

Wherever you are on the road to true intensity, you will get out of a workout only what you put in.

I have been writing more intense programs for classes lately with the idea of upping the ante. The idea is to create an opportunity for an intense experience. Notice I didn't say "to create an intense experience." I didn't say that because I can't create that experience for the client, just provide a setting for it to happen. The individual person must make that happen themselves.

Take P90X, kettlebell circuits, or whatever you consider intense and think about it for a minute. If I program 50 pushups into a workout, some people will consider that hard and some easy. But beyond hard/easy, it's up to the person to make the set intense for themselves. Some will say it's easy and do 50 lousy reps. Some will say it's easy and do 50 correct reps. Others will say it's easy and make the exercise slightly harder on their own, usually by focusing intensely on what they're doing. The intensity involved for each of these three people is very different. Only the last person likely got an intense experience, thereby priming his body for higher levels of training and getting maximum results.

Ironically, the same situation exists for the people that think the set is hard. It's hard, but is it intense? Not likely. The first problem is concentrating on the number 50. Many people will focus on the number only and skip doing correct form. Intensity is lost because the correct muscles and movements aren't even being trained. When I tell someone to do pushups and they hump the floor instead, they could do a million of them or 5, no true intensity is experienced and the set is wasted. The person THINKS it's intense but let's be honest -- the incorrect form is a way to ESCAPE intensity. Doing correct form is too intense. Or so they feel. So hard and intense are often confused.

Not everyone can or will accept this path towards building intensity. Not everyone will get it. It takes courage to put the ego aside and admit that you've been doing "junk volume" that is just a bunch of low quality work.

So when you're doing P90X or whatever, focus on keeping the intensity of the experience as number one, not reaching a number. Internal measures, not external ones, are the key to progress.

  Edit: ugh, I'm not explaining this very well. Much easier in person.