💪🏻 Training Principles to Live By

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I'm Ryan, and I'm obsessed with cracking the code of human recovery. This newsletter challenges the status quo of healthcare and fitness by sharing what I'm learning, testing, and teaching. Thanks for being a part of The Movement.

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Training Principles

Methods are many. Principles are few.

While the fitness industry bombards you with endless exercises and mobility drills, the truth is simpler: master the fundamentals, and the rest falls into place.

These aren't just workout tips—they're the bedrock of sustainable performance.

Let's break down what really matters...

The 9 Core Adaptations of Training

When you exercise, your body adapts in specific ways. Understanding these adaptations helps you train smarter and achieve your goals. Here are the fundamental changes your body makes in response to training:

1. Skill Development Movement patterns become refined and efficient through practice

2. Speed Your ability to move quickly and explosively

3. Power The combination of speed and strength - think jumping or throwing

4. Strength Your muscles' ability to produce force

5. Hypertrophy Increase in muscle size and mass

6. Muscular Endurance Your muscles' ability to work repeatedly without fatigue

7. Anaerobic Power High-intensity output for 30 seconds to 2 minutes

8. VO2 Max Your body's maximum oxygen uptake during sustained effort (6-12 minutes)

9. Long Duration Endurance Ability to maintain continuous activity for 30+ minutes

Here's the key: It's not the specific exercise that determines which adaptation you get - it's how you apply it. The same movement can trigger different adaptations based on how you structure your training.

To simplify things even further..

• Build power with intensity.

  Power comes down to two things: speed and load. While you might think heavier is better, the secret lies in explosive movements with lighter weights. Think quick and sharp rather than slow and heavy.

• Build durability with tempo.

  Slow is smooth, smooth is strong. Tempo work involves moving slowly through full ranges of motion i.e. a 3-5 second descent into a back squat and then slowly standing back up. This type of training creates high amounts of “time under tension” that strengthens not just muscles, but joints and connective tissue. Want bulletproof durability? Slow it down.

• Build skill with practice.

  Building new skills takes time. Whether it’s learning to play the guitar or do a handstand, when our body and nervous system has to form new neural networks through neurogeneis to figure out how to complete the task. The practice of failing, learning, correcting over and over again is how those neural networks are strengthened. Over time, you become a master of the skill.

• Build opportunity with movement. 

  More movement, specifically in the forms of mobility and flexibility training, expands our body's capacity for athletic expression. Think of Novak Djokovic sprinting for a ball, stopping on a dime, legs stretched wide, and still smashing a powerful forehand (see image above). Without sufficient mobility, your ability to generate power, maintain control, and prevent injury is limited. The goal is to create "windows of opportunity" where your body can perform optimally without hesitation or restriction.

• Build resilience through recovery. 

  The equation is simple: Stress + Recovery = Adaptation—or put another way, Work + Rest = Growth. While the stress of training pushes your body to its limits, true progress happens during recovery. This is where the magic unfolds, as your body rebuilds, strengthens, and adapts to handle greater challenges in the future.

  The most resilient athletes aren’t the ones who train the hardest; they’re the ones who recover the smartest. They understand that pushing endlessly without rest leads to diminishing returns, burnout, and injury. Recovery has come a long way from being an afterthought to becoming a vital component of athletic success. While sleep and hydration are important pillars, effective recovery goes far beyond simply logging hours in bed or sipping electrolyte drinks.

Progressive Overload 

If you want to improve strength, endurance, and muscle size, you can't keep doing the same exercises at the same intensity forever. Your body adapts to repeated stimuli, so to continue making progress, you must challenge it by progressively increasing the load—this is the principle of progressive overload.

• Add more weights 

• More reps 

• More sets 

• More complexity to the movement

• More work

• More intensity

The key is to apply these changes gradually, allowing your body time to adapt without risking injury or burnout. Consistent, structured progression keeps you breaking through plateaus and continually improving your athletic performance.

3 to 5 concept 

You can practice 3-5 concept to build your strength fast. The concept says:

• Choose 3 to 5 compound exercises: Focus on key lifts like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses, and pull-ups—exercises that recruit multiple muscle groups and build overall strength.

• Perform 3 to 5 reps: Use about 85% of your one-rep max (a weight that feels heavy but still allows good form), ideal for building raw strength without excessive fatigue.

• Complete 3 to 5 sets: This volume is enough to stimulate growth without overtraining.

• Rest for 3 to 5 minutes: Allow adequate recovery between sets to maintain maximum power output and lift heavy each set.

• Train 3 to 5 times per week: Strength gains require consistency, and training multiple times a week helps reinforce movement patterns and recovery cycles.

Training Frequency

When training for strength, you don’t have to endure constant muscle soreness. Unlike hypertrophy-focused training, which often causes muscle micro-damage, strength training relies more on neurological adaptation—teaching your body to lift heavier with greater efficiency.

If you're new to strength training or have a lower tolerance for high-frequency workouts, starting with 2 sessions per week is perfectly effective. This allows your muscles and nervous system to recover and adapt without overreaching. As you build capacity, you can increase your frequency to 3 or more sessions per week based on your progress and stamina.

Consistency »»» Everything

When it comes to success, consistency is king. Mastering form, prioritizing recovery, and showing up regularly are the foundations of long-term progress.

Here's a simple formula for athletic performance:

Number of training days – Number of days missed due to injury = Speed of improvement.

The more durable you are, the better athlete you’ll become.

The more consistent you are, the faster the results come.

It’s not about training harder all the time; it’s about staying in the game, avoiding setbacks, and continuously building momentum.

I love calisthenics because they’re a perfect example of what consistency can achieve. Take the Front Lever, for instance (see image above). Athletes who can hold this advanced position didn’t start there. They began by simply hanging on a bar. Over time, they progressed to tucking their knees, then straightening them, and gradually added layers of difficulty.

The truth is, we all start at the same place. The key difference between those who achieve results and those who don't? Daily deposits. Those who show up, even on tough days, build strength, resilience, and skill over time.

Simple as that. Consistency beats everything.

You should probably be moving more.

It’s no secret that people simply aren’t moving as much as they once were.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “I exercise, I move a lot, and I know a ton of other people who do, too”, I encourage you to Zoom out.

A recent report found that 25% of U.S. adults are physically inactive, with activity rates varying from coast to coast. For those who are active, exercise and movement are often localized to a 1-hour exercise session, with the rest of the day spent sitting. Our ancestors spent their days moving, grazing, farming, and hunting. Gyms didn’t exist. Their exercise was survival.

While 1-hour sessions are great, it’s not enough.

The missing ingredient in most training plans is to take the same concepts from that 1-hour workout and sprinkle them throughout the rest of the day. This method is what I like to call “movement snacks.” Movement snacks (or micro sessions - whichever term you prefer), are little bursts of activity and movement completed throughout the day.

These micro sessions have several benefits, including improving longevity and reducing overall mortality risk by 25 to 30%, reducing cardiovascular-related mortality by 50% and cancer-related mortality by 40%. Remarkably, these significant health benefits are also seen in individuals who typically don't engage in regular exercise routines. There are two types of exercise snacks:

• Deliberate training - mobility work, jumping jacks, air squats, or high knees- can be done in just a few minutes.

• VILPAs - Standing for ‘vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activities,’ they take advantage of everyday opportunities like sprinting up the stairs rather than walking, turning short walks into intensive bursts of vigorous activity, etc.

Here, Dr. Andy Galpin explains the data surrounding so-called exercise snacks and how they are known to markedly improve cardio-respiratory function during exercise of other types. Keep in mind this is not the only type of exercise; you would do it as a supplement to other types of training.

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Move While Idle

It’s incoporating physical movement and mobility exercises into everyday moments of inactivty.

Instead of remaining sedentary while watching TV or attending your kid’s sports game, MWI advocates for mobilizing and stretching instead.

There are a million different ways to introduce micro sessions into the day. One of my favorite ways is to perform EHOHs - Every Hour on the Hour. I set an alarm to go off at the top of every hour. Assuming I’m not in a meeting (and sometimes even if I am), I’ll get up and do a quick series of movements.

For example, 1-3 Rounds of..

• :20-second Deep Squat Hold

• 8 alternating Cossack Squats

• 20 Pogo Jumps

This will only take a few minutes at most, but the investment return is huge! Heart rate elevation and cardiovascular health, mobility gains, mental clarity and focus, etc.

One key point to make about these sessions is that they shouldn’t leave you feeling overly fatigued.

Ideally, you feel better afterward compared to when you started. Similar to what Pavel T in “greasing the groove”, the goal here is not to build muscle or improve fitness necessarily. It’s to improve general health and longevity by incorporating more focused movement into out otherwise sedentary lives.

Remember, there are 24 hours in a day. Ideally, 7-8 of those hours are spent sleeping. What are you doing with the other 15-16? While a 1-hour workout is a good start, it’s the rest of the day where true longevity is built.

“A rolling stone gathers no moss.”

These micro-session movement snacks are a great way to ensure you’re getting more movement in and keeping the body feeling fresh and healthy.

Bonus: Training vs Exercising

Semantics matter and I’m a big believer in the power of the words we use the mindset they foster.

While they’re often used interchangeably, there’s a very real difference between “working out” / exercising and training.

To say you’re “working out” fosters a short term mentality without any appreciation of long-term goals or impact. Show up, punch the clock, do your exercises, and you’re done.

You either do what feels easy (even if that means exercising hard) or what everyone else is doing (CrossFit).

There’s no reflection on intent - why am I doing this session? How does it benefit me?

Workouts don’t adjust to what the body needs - recovery vs max effort, for example. They’re static. People who work out often find themselves stuck in terms of progress. Never making any gains in strength, health, or fitness. Or they lack consistency altogether. Those who work out often say, “I need to exercise hard for my mental health. I’m stressed and need a hard session or I’ll go crazy.”

So, they sacrifice their physical health for a short-term dopamine release that becomes less and less over time. Or they make excuses why they have to miss that session, which turns into another miss and another..

“Training” is intentional.

There’s a focus on the long-term goals and outcomes. How does this stimulus allow me to adapt and improve consistently over time? Stress + Rest = Growth.

Those who train ask the question, “Do I need stress or do I need rest?”

They reflect and do what’s best, even if that means doing the thing they don’t want to do. Training is about exercising incredibly hard and recovering even harder. Training programs are fluid and adjust based on what’s needed in that moment in order to continue to move the needle.

Sometimes it requires taking a small step back in order to take 3 steps forward.

Tiger Woods trains. Lebron James trains. Winners train.

So ask yourself the question..

Am I working out? Or am I training?

The difference is everything.

Summary

Methods are many, but principles are few. Focus on progressive overload, consistency, and intentional movement.

Master these fundamentals, and sustainable results will follow. 💪

Until next time

That’s all for today. Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help.

• 🤝 Want to work with me 1:1? Book a Discovery Call to see if you’re a good fit.

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Ryan

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice.