Get in Your Best Shape One Time Each Year,
and You’ll Be in Shape for Life

The FIT for SUCCESS Challenge has been a finely tuned peak phase for transforming your body—a 90-day training camp providing rhythm, focus and structure, and a chance to get into your best shape of the year.

And like all training camps, though, the challenge has come to an end.

Athletes don’t spend 365 days a year in their peak physical condition; instead, they organize their lives and performance around seasons. They know when to peak, when to maintain, and when to recharge their bodies and minds.

The new challenge each season brings and inspires renewed energy and commitment, keeping you fresh and focused year-round.

So just how do you build an annual plan? To start, we’ll use:

The Three Cornerstones of Fitness:

1. Strength: The realm of developing lean, sculpted muscles, primarily through strength or resistance training.

2. Stamina: Refers to your cardiovascular endurance.

3. Stretch (Flexibility): The process of lengthening or extending the muscles, tendons and ligaments, increasing your body’s overall range of motion.

Figure 1:

Shaping Your Seasons with Formula 4:2:1

Formula 4:2:1 is a guide for defining your seasons of training in concert with the Cornerstones of Fitness. Each Cornerstone is assigned a value in order of their primary emphasis for the season.

Your lead Cornerstone is assigned a 4, and your supporting cornerstones are assigned 2 and 1, respectively. Each number represents a combination of time and intensity of training—or what you might best call total effort.

It’s a half-half ratio: Halve 4 and you get 2; halve 2 and you get 1. Spend about half the time that you train in your Lead Cornerstone on your secondary dimension, halve that again, and you have the approximate time to spend on the remaining Cornerstone.

Figure 2:

Put another way, for every 40 minutes you spend training your Lead Cornerstone, you spend 20 and 10 minutes, respectively, in your supporting dimensions.

For example, let’s say you apply your 4:2:1 to a season of stretch, stamina and strength in that order. In any given week, you allocate three hours of a relatively challenging style of yoga (Lead Cornerstone: Flexibility), 90 minutes training your stamina (Secondary Cornerstone), followed by 45 minutes of strength training (Supporting Cornerstone). In this scenario, you’ll spend a little more than five hours training each week. This may be split up over five days, or perhaps, some days you’ll stack your training by hitting two dimensions in the same day.

Formula 4:2:1 is your perfect imbalance to help ensure that you focus in one area for a season, while sustaining progress in the other areas, with no one dimension ignored during any training week. It’s worth emphasizing that the numbers are meant as a guide, not an absolute.

General guidelines:

· Each season is about 12 weeks.

· Include all three Cornerstones each week.

· Allow yourself to experiment, leading with a new Cornerstone at least one season a year.

Planning Your Seasons of Strength:

Your annual strength and fitness plan begins by establishing your Peak Performance Day—your “best shape of the year day.” This is the day you complete your transformation. When you establish this day, you create the momentum that shapes your entire year.

Using your Peak Performance Day as the organizing point, divide the year ahead into four seasons. Next, select your Lead and Supporting cornerstones for each season. I encourage you to switch your leading Cornerstone for at least one season each year to embrace a new practice. Push your limits.

Plan your Formula 4:2:1 for the next four seasons, one of which will be a Transformation Training Camp (TTC).

Figure 3:

Stay Strong Year-Round

The key to staying in shape for life is giving your life shape: clearly defined, meaningful peaks when you aim beyond your best. It’s in pushing the bounds of the possible that you expand your limits.

Until next time,

Shawn Phillips

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