The Five Tenets of the FitFAB Workout

The FitFAB Workout is an amalgamation of research and curated advice brought together into a single unique vision for strength training. It combines decades of training experience with information gathered from the best physical therapists and sports medicine doctors.

To create the base framework for the FitFAB Workout, there first has to be a set of overarching guidelines to which we can return whenever there is a question. Consider it our workout’s constitution. Its components are the guiding principles of an effective workout for anyone, but especially those of us over forty. The goal is to eliminate injuries, which gives us more time to work out and keeps us in our good habits.

Counting repetitions is often a bad habit left over from earlier years in the gym. Typically, it starts in high school. No matter the sport, coaches train us to think in terms of a set being ten repetitions. Why ten? It could be that it is an easy number to count, even if you are not on the dean’s list. But that is not a fitness-related answer. Often, we are so desperate to get to the tenth repetition that we contort our body into all sorts of shapes to get that tenth rep completed. These contortions lead to bad form and long-term injuries — doing them after forty will not serve our body well.

There is a better way. A simpler way. An automated way. We will use a visual timer to answer the question of “How much more do I have to go?” The key thing to remember is that we will track two minutes of weightlifting followed by two minutes of hydrating, stretching, and resting. By focusing on weightlifting until we reach a particular minute on the clock, we can get rid of the beleaguered process of counting and remembering repetitions. Another nice thing about this method is that it gives our brain a chance to process the stress of the day without having to remember the count at the same time.

Plus, tracking minutes keeps us focused on the pureness of the movement itself. When the weight is light, we could do one rep every two seconds and go crazy to reach sixty repetitions per set. That is insane to even consider. The goal of this workout is to keep us from injury. By significantly slowing down our movements, we end up with more control of the weights. Our workouts become impactful, injury-free, and consistent — the three factors for building strength.

First-time weightlifters tend to focus on finishing a movement rather than building the muscle memory to perform it correctly. Muscle memory is like a painted lane marker on a road. It keeps us going in the right direction. Without it, we become more chaotic in our movements as the weight increases, or we feel more fatigued when performing the movements. Over time, this leads to bad habits that put us at risk of injuries as our joints take the brunt of the force and other muscles must kick in.

My plan was simple: slow down to get my muscles into the right “lane,” while at the same time strengthening the secondary and tertiary muscles that help the core muscle group in each exercise. The problems we create when throwing weights around can be fixed when we make proper form our top priority. As the main muscle in an exercise starts to fail, the other supporting muscles pick up the slack and keep the weight moving, thereby acting as a spotter for our main muscle group. We will not contort our body because the weight will be lighter, and we will be going slow and in control.

Muscle failure is exceptionally good. We want our muscles to fail when we lift weights. This indicates the muscle has spent all its available energy in the form of water and oxygen. Muscle failure creates opportunities for other muscles to jump in and help. This will give you the overall body strength that comes with the FitFAB Workout.

The goal of muscle failure also means we do not use traditional free weights. Instead, we use a combination of cable-and-pulley machines to eliminate any risk of injury when our muscles start to tire. If all the muscles used in a particular exercise fail, the handle of the machine will return to its starting point, and we will stop for a moment to catch our breath and replenish oxygen in our muscles. This also resets our muscles’ powerband, the horizontal path the muscles’ energy takes throughout a complete movement.

In exercising this way, when we reach the start of the movement, we let our muscles rest for a full two seconds before continuing the movement. This little break in the action helps reset our muscles and prevents injuries from strain that accompanies pushing or pulling a weight for an extended period.

When we visit our local gym, we likely notice people, big and small, performing exercises extremely fast. They might be pulling weights up quickly on a biceps curl and then sending their arm down just as quickly, if not more so. This is a recipe for disaster. Instead of isolating their biceps and building strength, they are forcing the muscles in their arms, shoulders, traps, wings, and lower back to work harder. The result is lower back and bicipital tendon injuries. Unfortunately, some will learn from years of this type of abuse that tendon injuries are among the more painful and debilitating ones.

The FitFAB Workout uses the slow-out/slow-in method. The first important thing to learn is how to time our breath with the first movement. For example, let’s say we are performing a chest press. Our first movement is to position our hands at the sides of our chest, gripping the handles of the bar. The goal is to push the handles forward and away from our chest. When we are about to start our first movement, we take a large, slow breath in through our nose and mouth simultaneously. We then close our nose and exhale slowly through our mouth as we push the handles away from our chest. We push it very slowly for five to seven seconds. This is the positive movement, or “slow-out” portion of the movement. We call the point at which the handles are farthest from us the “apex” of the movement.

Immediately, but slowly, we change directions and start coming back from the apex. There is no resting at the apex, as this can lead to hyperextensions and other major injuries. Just like on the slow-out movement, we go slowly as we complete the slow-in motion.

In the slow-out/slow-in movement method, we rest for two seconds at the beginning of engaging our powerband. In our chest press example, this requires us to lower our shoulders a bit and let our arms hang on the handles. By resetting our powerband, we maintain our available muscle strength, extend our muscle to its full range, and give it a chance to get the oxygen-rich blood it needs to quickly recover before the next repetition.

The beauty of the slow-out/slow-in method is that it aligns our incentives with each exercise. Rather than performing ten quick repetitions per set, we perform two minutes of intense powerbands with varying rest periods. By reducing the number of repetitions during our set, we increase our strength tremendously.

Adequate hydration is an essential success factor of the FitFAB Workout. Proper water intake helps our body move lactic acid and other nutrients around our muscles. It is not enough to occasionally take a sip from a water fountain at the gym. Our adult bodies are 60 percent water. Muscles are 79 percent water. If that percentage drops by too much, we can experience various ailments, including significant muscle tears, which lead to large gaps in our training and little to no progress at the gym.

Back injuries, which are also common when we work out dehydrated, are some of the worst because our back is central to everything we do. Our back is a set of bones separated by discs to keep them from rubbing together. These discs between each of the spinal column bones are soft, jelly-like pads that protect our backbones from injury. Together, they act like a cushion for our spines, and when we become dehydrated, they can lose their cushioning effect. The result is significant pain throughout our back and neck.

If we are feeling thirsty during our workout, it is too late. Our body has already suffered from dehydration. To help prevent this, I designed the FitFAB Workout to include hydration steps along the way. Each step includes time to drink water and allow our body to recover in real time. The goal is longevity and sustainability. For the routine to work for us, we must take each step seriously.

Our muscles need time to rest after we put pressure on them. Performing the same exercise every day will lead to injuries from overuse, so we will stagger our workout over several days.

Day 1 will be focused on our chest muscles. The next day, we will work on our back. The days following will be legs, arms, and then shoulders. By staggering the muscle groups in this way, we give each group a chance to fully recover. They will be the primary focus on their day of the week, and they will get lightly used through secondary and tertiary movements on the other days.

We will also perform the different workouts in complementary ways. The first day is always chest. Our chest workout will also work our triceps. Our triceps will feel the workout, but our chest is the primary muscle group for that day.

We will order our workouts so that the day after chest exercises is back exercises. The two are complementary, so when we work one and then the other, we maintain a sense of balance. We will also work our biceps and triceps on the same day. This will allow us to have two days of secondary arm exercises, followed by a day of primary arm exercises.

We will end our five days of lifting for the week with a shoulder workout. There are several reasons for this. First, our shoulders get a secondary workout on each of the previous days’ exercises except for legs, so by the time we get to them, they are already partially fatigued. If we were to start out the week working our shoulders, we would have a harder time performing the chest, back, and arm workouts.

Second, if we were to perform our shoulder workouts first, we would be in shoulder pain for each subsequent day because our shoulder muscles would not be resting enough. By leaving shoulders to the last day, we give them the most recovery time, given that they are so crucial to exercising the other muscle groups.

Last, if you ever need to skip a day, I recommend skipping shoulders, as they will have already received a lot of training on each of the previous days. This does not mean we should not do shoulders. It just means that we should not feel bad skipping shoulder day if we must cut our week short (unlike skipping leg day, which is a no-no).

Richard Bagdonas is a forty-eight-year-old weightlifter and former body builder. He spends his days inventing technology, writing code and leading teams for his healthcare and hospitality industry start-ups.

Richard has a passion for creating systems. He’s most proud of the non-profit phenomenon he founded in 2000 — Operation Turkey — a system of procuring and moving food to those who need it on Thanksgiving day. Richard and thousands of volunteers now feed more than 15% of the US’s homeless and less fortunate populations.

He was born in New York, raised in Southern California, and has been living in Austin, Texas since the mid 90’s. Richard lives in East Austin with his amazing wife Tina, their two handsome sons, and two adorable dogs.

Related posts:

There is no way that you have missed Netflix’s Russian Doll on social media. OINTB’s Natasha Lyonne’s seven-year work finally saw the light of day this year and received well deserved accreditation…

me or you that is the voice of the siren or is she always inside us and we are all victims and does that i can’t tell when you try to pretend we were not born millions of years ago and born into…

Imagine 2077. That cyberpunk video game is finally out and those of us who lived to this day can finally enjoy playing it. Alright, seriously though, what would the technological world look like at…