Bill Hebson - Breaking Fitness Boundaries 

As a professional trainer and practitioner in the field I have had the opportunity over the years to observe many, many trainers and trainees and have observed thousands of different training sessions and workouts. I am struck by the repetitious and dogmatic approach of much of the work I still see in many commercial gym environments.

Total Body Conditioning
In the mid seventies when I began personal training I had the great good fortune to read a small piece by a Romanian trainer new to the US from the University of Bucharest, Radu Teodorescu or simply “Radu”. He described total body conditioning utilizing athletic training, running, jumping, throwing, elements of gymnastics, track and field, karate, ball work, calisthenics and weight training. He described a scientific methodology of training to improve the body’s natural movements.

The lights went on for me and I can truly say this was a cathartic moment for me as it opened a flood gate of possibilities for what was indeed possible within the context of a single workout. All the fences came down. This has colored my work from that moment until this day.

The entirety of my Olympic Weightlifting, martial arts, dance and diverse athletic pursuits were now a wellspring of resources I could draw from for my clients, and my own workouts. As a physical artist it certainly provided for a much richer and more colorful palette.

These ideas were driven home and validated for me by the work of many other luminaries in the field, Dr. Tudor Bompa, also a Romanian describes complex training as using balls, bands, bounding and other modalities in concert with weights as they complement each other and the training effect is much more “complex”. Mel Siff, Yuri Verhoshanski and many other Eastern Boc and European researchers championed these philosophy’s.

In this country Vern Gambetta, a visionary and much copied strength coach published an article entitled “Train Movements Not Muscles”. This has become all most a spiritual axiom now amoung educated strength coaches. This echoes nearly verbatim Radu’s early work.

So the take home message here is that weight training is just one component of total body conditioning. We want to recognize the universe of possibilities that exist out there and integrate not exclude. So keep training, keep it interesting and keep an open mind. We are all students for life in this game.