Michael  Ryan of RnR Fitness in Tralee says the legendary Bruce Lee was ahead of his time regarding health and fitness…

It been more than 40 years since the passing of the martial artist Bruce Lee, but his name still holds a great respect amongst the fitness community largely due to his peerless approach to physical fitness and intelligent and scientific approach to understanding human movement and best practices.

As more and more educated research is being brought to light regarding health and fitness, it is only now that we can truly realise how far ahead of his time he really was.

Below are some training tips and principles from the man himself from which you can use an inspiration towards reaching your own training goals.

1. Educate yourself and find out what works for you

Don’t just merely accept what others tell you regarding what the “best” workouts are or what the “best” way of eating is, because the simple and correct answers lies within yourself.

Discover and educate yourself on what exercises/nutrition that best suit your goals, your body frame, your bio mechanics, range of movement etc.

What works for one individual does not necessarily mean it will workout for you. Don’t just blindly follow what is given to you. In his own words” find what is useful to you, reject what is useless and add what is specifically your own”.

2. Keep your body guessing

The body is an extremely adaptive organism and will quickly without fail, adapt to any new exercises and regimen’s you bestow upon it.

The best way to see results is to regularly adapt and advance your training programme to the ever changing needs of your ever changing body.

Don’t sit still or become stagnant in your training approach. Embrace changes; keep your body guessing with different exercise, weights, intensities, time, distance etc and you will reap the rewards.
3. Break through plateaus

It’s inevitable that at certain times or stages of your workout programme that your progress in the gym will some times hit a plateau whereby your perceived progress can/will slow down.

This can be a frustrating time for you as you feel you’re best efforts fall on deaf ears. The easy option is to get discouraged and lose motivation or focus.

All of a sudden your hard earned progress unravels before your very eyes. Don’t become discouraged.

In fact you should see this as a challenge your body is giving you to see how much you really want it. If you hit a plateau in your training, take a step back, analyse what parts you need to change or alter or remove totally(*point 2) from your training and work on.

We must constantly seek improvement and strive to improve ourselves. Hitting a brick wall in your training is inevitable and is a test to which ever fitness enthusiasts will have to face at one point or another.

It is not the problem that matters but your reaction to it that counts. In Bruce Lee’s own words. “When in trouble let your efforts redouble”.

• Michael Ryan is part of RnR Fitness: Qualified and Certified Personal, Trainers, Fitness Instructors and Sports Nutrition Consultants. See their Facebook page here