What Is Total Fitness Bodybuilding?

My goal with my website is to help guys just like you get in your best shape ever by building muscle, burning bodyfat, and improving your overall strength and conditioning. That's my definition of "Total Fitness Bodybuilding" - building your body and improving your fitness level.

There are several ways to go about achieving "Total Fitness Bodybuilding". You can follow numerous weight training workout routines; from bodybuilding splits, powerlifting programs, high intensity, high volume, etc. to build muscle and strength.

There are numerous forms of cardio that you can do to help burn fat and improve your endurance; from long duration steady pace cardio, to high intensity interval cardio.

If you have been following along with my training philosophies then you know that I'm a big believer in cycling your workouts and incorporating different types of training to help maximize muscle stimulation, prevent training plateaus, and make your workouts more enjoyable along the way. That's why I'm constantly pumping out new training ideas, exercises, and strategies that you can use in your own workouts.

However, I was quite surprised to get some negative feedback about my recent blog posts from some people who were actually upset by the fact that I would ever suggest a workout that wasn't a traditional "bodybuilding" routine.

Now if you are only interested in bodybuilding workouts, and that's all you want to do, then that's totally cool. But like I mentioned above, there is more then one way to get in shape and build your body. So I like to take advantage of the different training styles that are out there because in the big picture they all complement one another in helping you get in your best shape ever.

I didn't always do bodybuilding only workouts...

Right on up until my late-teens I worked out with weights. But I was involved with swimming and martial arts and I also participated in other activities such as skateboarding, BMX biking, mountain biking, and skiing.

In my late teens got more serious with weight training and started competing in bodybuilding competitions and did so for several years. Then in my mid-twenties I took a break from bodybuilding competition and focused on training for powerlifting.

A few years after that, in my late twenties, I wanted to try something totally new so I took up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, and I even did some yoga in there as well. During this time my main strength training workouts were focused around bodyweight conditioning exercises and sandbag workouts.

After that I went back to bodybuilding competition and got in my all time best contest shape ever, winning the light heavyweight division and overall at the 2007 HWC. Since then I've pretty much stuck to a bodybuilding based workout program, but I'm open to changing things around from time to time.

I'm more interested in the final outcome of getting in better shape, I'm not so narrow minded in my approach to think that I can only stick to one method of training to get in shape. Variety is the spice of life!

So even though I love bodybuilding and have focused the majority of my training and workouts around bodybuilding, it doesn't mean that you have to only do bodybuilding workouts. I personally believe that you'll become better conditioned and a lot more athletic all around if you incorporate different styles of training in your workouts from time to time.

In fact, I just spent this past weekend working out with Jason Paris, who is the strength and conditioning coach for Georgia Tech. Jason has coached numerous Division 1 and NFL football players and he knows how to whip athletes into shape in a hurry.

Over the next week I'm going to be posting up some videos that we shot while working out together. This will give you an idea of the type of training that Jason uses to get his athletes in top shape.

Let me tell you, Jason put me through my paces with a lot of killer workout drills that really focus on building up work capacity, functional strength, balance, agility, and coordination. These aspects of fitness very often get neglected with typical bodybuilding workouts that simply focus on weight training and cardio.

I'm still recovering from all the workouts we did this past weekend. And as they say... "I worked muscles I never knew I had" :-)

You can check out one of our workout videos below...

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http://www.YouTube.com/leemhayward