I asked the same question of John, except I asked it excitedly, like: “You mean I don’t have to take rest days? Awesome!” I have exactly one full rest day every four weeks, which to an athlete is like opening a Christmas present and finding the Punk Rock Barbie you had been bugging your parents for all year.

Basically, the training program is periodized over the short term (week) and the medium term (month), and it’s matched up with my nutrition program. I have seven kinds of workouts: low-intensity cardio (walking), strength, power, high intensity intervals (sprints), conditioning circuits, grappling technique and live grappling. The way that my training is scheduled, even if I have two or three sessions a day–and there are some three-session days in weeks two and four, including one tomorrow–there’s plenty of variety and enough time between similar workouts that I don’t kill myself. Each session (well, except for the walking) is quite intense, but I did work up to this over the last year and a half. Still, I don’t feel like I’m training THAT hard – training smarter definitely increases your ability to do work!

Also, I am focused on recovery as an essential part of my program. I get regular massages, show big love to my parasympathetic nervous system, get plenty of sleep, take the right supplements, eat a perfect diet, and am fanatical about my post-workout nutrition.

When I was overtrained, I was grappling ten times a week: seven days a week, at least two hours a day, and three out of seven days I trained grappling twice a day. My body just gave out on me. This program should avoid that result. It’s looking good so far.

For a lot of people it’s not the training time, but recovery from training that can be difficult. Of course this is highly dependent on the intensity of the workouts, as well as work capacity. Can you comment on how intensity and recovery are accounted for in your program?

“What I discovered is that if I make training a priority, it’s easy to fit it into my schedule.”

is spot-on. Even more so, make *yourself* a priority. It’s sad how many people take care of others while letting Number 1 (ie, themselves) fall by the wayside.

I can’t believe I used to do 60 or 90 minutes of cardio a day. Switching to 3 days of weights and 2 days of intervals has given me more of the fat loss than I would’ve gotten in like a year with my old system.