Total Body Transformation Training Blog

Total Body Transformation

Steve Ilg is a long time outdoor fitness trainer that believes in a balanced approach to whole body fitness along two main lines:

5 Fitness Discliplines: strength, cardio, yoga, meditation, nutrition

4 Lifestyle Principles: Breath & Posture, Mindfulness, Appropriate Action, Practice

His recent book, "Total Body Transformation" is an amazon.com bestseller and is easily one of the 10 best fitness books you'll find at the local Barnes & Noble or Borders. The book is comprehensive in covering Ilg's philosophy and approach with detailed workout plans and exercises to develop the body and mind. Everyone from runners to powerlifters trying to reach that next plateau can benefit from Ilg's experience and informal writing style.

Ilg's book and approach provide the structure and discipline to make whole life changes no matter where you are currently physically, emotionally, or mentally.

High Intensity Interval Training

A number of years ago there was a constant debate about the best form of aerobic exercise to lose weight. Many doctor's and health care professionals -- not to mention personal trainers -- were recommending light to moderate intensity aerobic exercise.

The thought was that moderate movement burned more calories per unit of time by keeping the body and heart in the "fat burning zone" as opposed to the more stressful "cardio zone" where VO2 max and a person's lactate threshold could be reached.

The only problem with the analysis is that people didn't run the absolute numbers. While it is true that moderate exercise is a more efficient burner of calories, it not more effective when compared to high intensity activities. Time being equal, the higher intensity effort burns more calories total overall -- and causes more of a metabolic recovery response. This means that like strength training, high intensity aerobic activity causes the body to need to rest and repair, which itself burns calories hours after the exercise ends.

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a form of "fast-slow" (or interval) training that has been shown to be particularly effective in improving athletic performance and in causing a high metabolic response. HIIT was made mainstream with some of the original Body for Life articles and advice but has been long a mainstay of track and field athletes and peak performance athletes.

The idea is simple -- during a training period you mix periods of moderate activity with high intensity activities. A good example of this would be a jog/sprint program lasting 20 minutes: jog 5 minutes to warm up, then start the following cycle: sprint 30 seconds, jog 1 minute. Repeat the sprint/jog for 10 rounds. Then cool down with a fast walk or light jog for 5 minutes.

HIIT has proven itself to be a major fat burner! Just combine rounds of a moderate longer burst activity with a short burst high intensity activity. You'll love the results on your weight and waistline.

It's common to have rest days. In order to gain strength, get faster, have more endurance -- any physical goal -- the body must recover. So periodically, you need to "rest" and give your body time to heal itself and grow stronger. Some people train every other day, some 2 on, 1 off -- there are endless variations. But at some point there needs to be "hard" day and "light" days, and usually some days with next to no major activity. Roger Bannister rested for the 5 days prior to running his world record breaking sub 4:00 minute mile!

But rest does not have to mean no exercise. Active rest can be just as beneficial, and sometimes even more so. An active rest day is where you plan on moving the body through some range of motion but nowhere near the intensity (or volume) that you would approach on a normal workout. If your strength training workouts usually move 2500 lbs of iron on average then an active rest day of 1000 pounds may be enough to keep the pump primed and the body responsive. If your light runs are at a 10:00 min mile pace then brisking walking at 4-5mph for 30 minutes or so would be active rest.

There are many benefits to active rest, and the largest being psychological. Sometimes we are so worried about "losing it" that there is a constant urge to be doing something. But the body needs time to recover. So an active rest day may be just enough to satisfy the inner critic and still give yourself the needed time to repair and rebuild.

I am a big fan of functional, whole body fitness. In addition to being able to (someday) run a marathon I want to be able to lift heavy objects, sprint after something, hike and climb, row, etc. Being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound wouldn't hurt as well. The point here is that instead of having pumped up muscles that aren't very strong, I would prefer to do what's necessary to have a strong body with some muscle definition but more importantly -- to have a body that has the right combination of strength and endurance for many activities.

Training for "strength endurance" is tough. Some would say it is near impossible. There are designated protocols to work out and get big muscles, to train for strength, to run a marathon -- but to combine the elements to achieve "strength endurance" eluded many so called experts in the stregth training world for years. And then someone looked at gymnasts and sprinters... Gymnasts and sprinters combine excellent muscle definition with explosive speed and body control. Boxers and fighters also fit the bill here. Bingo! The latest "functional fitness" craze is in large part inspired by looking at boxers, gymnasts, sprinters, and the like and realizing that there simple training methods work to forge a hard, lean body capable of amazing things whether you are female or male.

And that brings me to CrossFit. is a website blog that is all about functional fitness. Their journal is one of the best available and daily they post their infamous "WOD" -- workout of the day. Mostly named after women, the WOD is a short duration, strange combination of exercises that promises to exhaust and inspire even the elite athlete. The CrossFit WOD is awesome, and with these past two days of travelling, I've done Monday's WOD the past two days -- and while I feel great, I also feel like a truck's run over me.

It's a simple workout:

Run 400 meters

Do 50 squats

Repeat for 4 total rounds. You are looking to minimize your total time.

This has to be one of the most grueling lower body interval workouts I've ever tried. A great burn for all parts of the legs and the lower back and abs. Given the distance and number of reps going all out on round 1 is probably not the smartest thing to do. And most people cannot do 50 squats to parallel (or below if you are on your toes) at once in a single set. So a workout like this looks like 4 intervals but it really forces you to pay attention to pacing and spacing. On Monday I tried to go all out from round 1 and ended up spent and with a time of 25:32. Tuesday I thought about things a little better and paced myself in round 1 and increased my pace and effort with subsequent rounds. 21:17. A big improvement.

If you are a runner or training for any endurance activity it is important to mix long runs with intervals as part of an overall training program week in and week out. This simple workout is a great way to emphasize building strength and endurance in your legs, lungs, and abs like few I've seen and can be done on a treadmill or outdoors easily.

In starting to prepare for this marathon oh so many months out a strange thing happened -- I fell in love with rowing. The Concept 2 Rower has to be one of the most amazing pieces of cross training equipment I have ever tried. Whether it is a 2000m warm up, or a 10000m pull after strength training I find myself actually looking forward to the time spent rowing.

With the snowy and icy winter outside, my early prep for running the marathon has been confined to the indoors. Following the prep routine from a previous post, the treadmill is the mainstay right now. Varying the incline profile on the treadmill is a great way to ramp the heart rate up and down and do a form of interval training. In 30 minutes a good sweat breaks and sipping water here and there is fine.

Rowing intervals past 30 strokes per minute is another story. The cross training nature of the Concept 2 Rower is made to have a ful body effect. The rowing movement is like a stress free squat and stretch for your legs, and a stretch and pull on your abs and upper body. There is more of a need for me to keep myself hydrated during a row right now than during my walk/runs. As the weeks go on though and the speed and distance of the runs increase the need to hydrate will become more and more important.

Getting enough water every day is crucial to health and athletic performance. Whether strength or endurance, water consumption is vital. Ellington Darden, former chief scientist at Nautils, has long promoted that a moderately active adult needs at least 1 gallon of water a day. Not coffee, tea, or Diet Coke -- water. The standard reccommendation of 8-10 glasses a day should be seen as a minimum for a sedentary adult, he says. Drinking a gallon isn't that hard -- just get yourself a liter or more of bottled water, drink it starting first thing in the morning, and then refill the bottle until you've downed 4 per day. Drinking 3 liter and a half bottles seems easier for me that drinking 3 liter bottles.

When you work out it is important to replace the water lost during a work -- especially if you sweat a lot. Weigh yourself before and after a workout. Plan on drinking 8 ounces of water for every pound lost. For long runs, try and drink 4-8oz every 20-30 minutes. This was the general reccommendation in the Feb 2004 issue of Runner's World.

I have no idea what I've gotten myself into. After going through multiple titles at my nearby Borders bookstore I decided to buy one of the few books that didn't think it was crazy for a beginner to attempt a marathon. I figure that after months of training we won't be beginners. In any case, I think we're ready for the challenge.