How to Lose Weight with the 4S Approach

This article isn’t only for those who want to lose weight. It also applies to athletes at any level.

There is a well known approach to sports called “4S“… Strength, Speed, Stamina & Suppleness.  You can also add #5 Skill (including Agility & co-ordination), and #6 Sports-Psychology, but I’ll save that for another article.

COROLLARY: The 4A’s of Success is Academics, Athletics, Attitude, & Achievement… yes, another article!  Plus we all know about the 5P of Success… Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance!

[Tweet “The 4S approach is Strength, Speed, Stamina & Suppleness”]

A couple of random thoughts led me to this 4S weekly training or workout approach:

1. Charlie Francis and Vertical Integration (Charles Staley refers this as Horizontal summation, but it’s basically the same thing), which is to do all exercises all time in a given week.  Does it make sense to do weight training in the Fall & Spring, only to drop it entirely in the Summer when racing season starts?  Should you do base training in flats or trainers in the Fall, only to put on the spikes for speedwork in January for the first time? (HINT: you should be doing acceleration development from Day 1 in Fall training)
2. Most people do only 1 thing – like my 10K and Marathon friends and their running club.  They run, but they only run and maybe stretch.  They don’t do anything else.  Same approach goes for the meatheads in the gym.
3. My circuit training sessions always has new exercises which I have not done in weeks, or even months.  This results in getting sore muscles the next day.  Click here to learn more about DOMS.   This “new exercise”, which can be anything from doing lots of proper lunges to full range abs on a Bosu ball, will “shock” the system.
4. I am tired of hearing this “metabolic reboot” and “metabolic programming” bullshit.  Working out increases your metabolism. Simple as that.

What I have deduced is to do all different energy systems, all of the time, based on a weekly cycle.  The 3 primary elements of energy systems include ATP-CP,  Anaerobic/Lactate, and Aerobic/Cardio.  I’m not trying to be an Olympic athlete (well, at least not anymore :)

So my routine looks like this while I’m still rehabbing my Achilles (typical week):

• Monday (PM) – Iyengar Yoga
• Tuesday (AM) – circuit training
• Wednesday – strength training
• Thursday (AM) – circuit training, more HIIT focused
• Friday – rest
• Saturday 9am – 5K Park Run
• Sunday – rest

So this incorporates all “4S” – Yoga (Suppleness), Circuits (Speed – to a certain degree), Strength training, and Park Run (Stamina).

It doesn’t matter your background, or your body type.  Give this method a try and report back on findings :)

The Interference Effect

OK, I know what you are thinking. I wrote about the Interference Effect, where it ponders the question, “Can you train Strength and Endurance concurrently?”.  It all depends on your level. If you are a world class Miler or 5000m runner, I doubt very much you’ll be pushing massive weight in the weight room.

As well, I covered several “cross fit” (not crossfit) articles strength and endurance in a STREND event.

But I do remember when I was injured, all my weights in the weight room soared. I was Benching and Cleaning much heavier weights, which leads me to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics:

The total energy of an isolated system is constant;
energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.

So if you have one bucket of energy, it will all go to the weight room if you don’t run :)

The moral of the story? Do everything and pace yourself :)