Fitness - Anaerobic Training

Anaerobic fitness is the force component of fitness in general, which also contains at least two other essential components: aerobic fitness (the part of cardio-vascular resistance) and joint mobility. 

Speed and skill are native qualities and they are not very relevant for the health state – which is the main concern in mass fitness, the one meant to keep the body in good shape.

The purpose of anaerobic training programs is to develop the force and the fortifying of the body or the muscular mass. There are situations when only force or muscle fortifying is intended. 

The typical example for these situations is given by the sports organized in categories, in which physical force (with the interdiction of going over a certain limit of weight) is tested. 

The growth of muscular mass determines the increase of force and fortifying of the skeletal muscles. In this case, the fitness programs are very similar to bodybuilding training, without being followed by the spectacular, yet dangerous changes, specific to bodybuilding.

 

The purpose of anaerobic fitness is the uniform, balanced, and harmonious development of all the muscles, without ignoring their functionality. This last idea is important for making a clear difference between fitness and the tendencies, many times narcissistic, manifested by bodybuilding practitioners. 

The sportsman who takes up fitness wants to be able to and is able to do something with his muscles, more than showing them in contests or in different other occasions and places (discos, swimming pools, clubs, etc.). 

One of the important characteristics of anaerobic fitness training is the use of general programs, during which all or almost all the muscles are worked out in one training session. In bodybuilding, the programs are divided and training is focused every time on one, two, or at most three groups of muscles; while in fitness one training can be focused on a certain area, but it does not exclude the other muscles, which will benefit, directly or indirectly, of at most one exercise for each group of muscles. 

This way, the programs are not excessively long; they take an average of one hour and fifteen minutes; thus the catabolic faze is avoided; this usually appears in very long training sessions (two hours or even more).

 

Another modality of reducing the time of training is doing a super-series whose object is to train two antagonistic groups of muscles (chest and back or biceps and triceps, etc.). Thus, each group of muscles must be performed a series of exercises, without a break in between; the break is taken only at the end of this double effort. 

The programs can also contain triple series or even giant series (more than three exercises one after the other). The intensity of the training can be considerably increased: many muscles can be trained in a short time. 

The weekly frequency of the training remains the same (three sessions); so the aerobic phase can be covered in the free days. If only three or even two weekly sessions are possible, mixed programs can be adopted: after the anaerobic fitness, always done at the beginning of the session, 15-20 minutes of aerobic fitness are added for balancing the two phases (anaerobic and aerobic). In this case, also, training must not take longer than one hour and a half; otherwise, the phase of catabolic processes is initiated – a phase in which muscles 'self-cannibalize'. 

Anaerobic fitness is recommended for all somatic types, with specific differences in the modality of training.

 

In the cases of ectomorphic and metamorphic types, all the series (3 or 4) performed on the same machine must be finished, and then the machine and the group of muscles which is trained must be changed at the same time. This system is also called 'workshop training'. 

In the case of the endomorphic type (the overweight), circuit training is preferred: the group of muscles trained is changed after every series and the whole circuit must be repeated three or four times. This type of training consumes more calories because an aerobic component is introduced by not having breaks between series and slightly increasing the cardiac frequency.

Growth of muscular mass through fitness programs can't exceed one weight category (5-6 kg), but they do not misbalance the other motion parameters.