Playing with balloons, prioritising fun, spending time with your friends and getting into sunshine instead of the gym when you wake up.
They don't really sound like the tips of top trainers.
But what sets an elite trainer apart is often a nuanced approach that is less about smashing you for the sake of it and more about enhancing performance by thinking outside the square.
And if you're inclined to think this means that results suffer, consider that these three trainers, whose brains I picked for my own selfish interest, coach some of Australia's fittest and most elite athletes.
NAM BALDWIN
WHO: A former sprinter and free diver (who could hold his breath under water for seven minutes), Baldwin trains current World Surfing Champion Mick Fanning, Steph Gilmore, the Australian Olympic K4 Kayak Gold Medalist Team, NRL'S New Zealand Warriors and some of Australia's leading Big Wave Riders.
SWEARS BY: Making life more enjoyable – jumping in the ocean, running, not on a treadmill, but in nature and "piggy backing" meditation off other activities.
"If I want to get to another level in anything, if I make it easier I'm more likely to do it."
So he tries to engage his senses by being in nature as much as possible, zoning in on the experience of eating (he is "strictly organic and mostly vegetarian") and exploring how to have fun when he trains his athletes.
"If you were to ever watch me train Mick, it's shoes off, we do Kung-fu training, samurai sword drills with sticks, we do activities outside the box," Baldwin explains. "I might throw a tennis ball at his head while he's on a Bosu ball – he doesn't know it, but he will have done 50 squats."
Why is this different to doing 50 squats?
"You are using your brain to make decisions, bringing in a mental awareness, a mental acuity to a physical action. It's trying to incorporate a response to a challenge," Baldwin says. "It brings in a fun factor too, so it's a bit of a game."
A lot of people go to the gym and then pull a hammie on the beach, Baldwin adds, because their training is "too structured". Rather we want "multiple movements and responses to things so your body is adjusted to what happens on a beach or in the park".
While he says he always incorporates "certain basic movements and basic stability", his training approach is fundamentally based around incorporating fun and creativity and play, followed by a warm down of acupressure massage, breathing and meditation exercises to take the body from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic nervous system state (that is, going from alert to relaxed). Missing this final phase and staying in the stressed, adrenaline dominant state is "I think the biggest missed thing" in people's training, Baldwin says.
TOP TIPS
- If you want a great night's sleep, start preparing by getting in natural sunlight as soon as you wake up. "Melatonin, the sleep hormone, will come out when it's dark but it regenerates in sunlight," Baldwin explains. "Daytime is to regenerate the hormones for sleeping and sleeping is to regenerate the hormones for waking.
- A simple way to regulate the stress response is through even, rhythmic breathing, becoming more aware of your feet "so you naturally ground yourself" and softly gazing with your eyes "so you become aware of your periphery – part of your brain that regulates the stress response calms down".
MARIN LAZIC
WHO: The owner of TRX Training Sydney and a former water polo player for the New Zealand national team, Lazic is the Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Australian Water Polo teams as well as other athletes preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
SWEARS BY: Fun and functionality.
Like Baldwin, Lazic has a playful approach to training.
A session might involve "tapping balloons" or racing to the top of a hill to ride a skateboard back down.
The goal, with balloon tapping, is to stop a balloon from hitting the ground. "You start with one and soon have six and suddenly you're lunging and reaching and running and you're moving in a 3D way," he explains. "The emphasis is on the fun instead of exercise."
Similarly, instead of saying "let's do hill sprints" he will suggest racing to the top of a hill, where there are skateboards and "whoever gets back down first on a skateboard wins".
"You think you're having fun but from the outside-in you're actually doing sprints. Just because you're laughing and running people think it's not exercise, but if you're having fun you're more likely to sustain it."
"In all my sessions now, my number-one goal is to get people to smile," Lazic says. "When you smile, your anxiety drops and when your anxiety drops, you move better ... A lot of us are pretty stressed out these days so if you get people to drop some of that and have fun then you're likely to get the most out of a session. Training is meant to make you better, not worse."
Lazic doesn't believe in the "go hard or go home" philosophy, insisting that moving should be "about decreasing stress, moving better and being happier – that's going to get people results".
"My approach is more about longevity and anti-ageing – how do we upgrade the software without damaging the hardware," Lazic says. He says fatherhood changed his attitude to training.
"Full-on, hard, stressful training is not going to help you with anti-ageing, it's not going to help me go to my daughter's 30th and to be a young dad kicking a ball ... my ultimate goal is to play golf with my daughter when I'm 80.
"There are days when you're really good and you can do 100 burpees ... but something we forget is that high intensity training is putting more stress on your body ... [If you've had a bad week], going hard is not going to result in good things."
He believes whatever training we do should be with our goal outside the gym in mind – be that being able to play with your children, feel better in general or do an activity you love with more skill.
"Why are you training – are you training to be better in the gym or better in life?" he asks. "The ultimate goal is to walk out of the gym feeling better, not worse. Sometimes being undercooked is better than being overcooked."
TOP TIPS
- Recover as hard as your work. "What you don't see is that the athlete who trains hard recovers hard – as much time as they put into training, they put into recovery ... they're not going straight home to stress and work. If you don't have time to recover then don't train as hard." Recovering can be as simple as deep belly breathing for three or four minutes, hydrating well, and making sure you get good sleep.
- Be flexible with your nutrition. Lazic used to be paleo, but says: "Being 100 per cent paleo and being so rigid is not healthy. I think you need to enjoy food … if you live a relatively clean lifestyle 80 per cent of the time then you should be able to enjoy life ... I don't know how healthy anything extreme is."
KEVIN TOONEN
WHO: Toonen, the founder of Strength Elite, spent 15 years in the special forces and now works as the strength and conditioning coach to the special forces in Australia as well as on the selection board.
SWEARS BY: Health above fitness, which means paying attention to all aspects of your life, not just exercise.
"I take a whole-person approach and I know that it works for everyone," says Toonen, who reads and exercises for a minimum of 30 minutes a day. "It's time spent on relationships – with your family, friends, work colleagues, physicality and intellectual engagement – learning new skills."
He adds: "I'm a huge believer in mindfulness, autogenic conditioning, visualisations."
When one aspect of our health is neglected, we tend to suffer, he says, adding that good training is equal parts challenge and recovery.
"If I spend seven sessions hurting myself, I need to spend seven sessions recovering," he says. Recovery might involve walking, swimming or gentle cycling.
Recovery aside, there is one aspect of fitness he believes we all need.
"If there was one thing I would do for the rest of my life it would be strength," says Toonen, who stresses the importance of varying the way you move. "You have to remember if you're going to train slow – squatting, deadlifting, then you have to train fast. Your body will naturally do what it's taught to do, so you need to change it up."
He does every day.
"I won't squat the same for eight to 12 weeks – different bar, stance, different loads, different weights – bands, kettlebells.
"Your bod constantly wants to adapt and do as little work as possible … you need to continually make it work by changing it up. You don't see elite athletes training any other way."
TOP TIPS
- "You have to go backwards – you can't continually go forwards. You have to get weaker to get stronger," Toonen says. He doesn't follow a particular diet, but believes there is merit in protein powders and creatine. "I can't get bigger, stronger, more endurance and faster all at the same time, there has to be peaks and troughs – one supports the other.
- "Most people get injured through instability through ankles, knees, hips, shoulders. Ligaments and tendons are strengthened by resistance – everyone should do strength training two to three times a week. It's not going to make you big and bulky, it's going to make sure your bone density is taken care of, it's going to make you a better runner, a better cyclist, make everything better."
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