4 Pillars of The ATG System
This has been on my mind recently.
A close friend reached out, about to start an extreme fitness challenge. I tried to warn her not to think of exercise as all-or-nothing, and instead to build up gradually — but I tend to let people come to their own conclusions. It was clear she wanted to do this so I wished her well and gave my best tips for safety.
She wound up in the hospital.
I realized then that I should have used my wits to offer her a SAFER workout challenge.
Meanwhile, Fernando Lopez, who runs our Physique section, has been trying to make an ATG30 workout challenge for quite some time.
I thought ATG didn’t need that kind of starter program, because what works for me is:
I never go too hard.
I never lose interest and fall off for too long.
I listen to my body and ENJOY the gift of being able to exercise without pain.
So I’m not telling you to do a workout challenge.
Nonetheless, a challenge often does help people gain momentum, and I want to be prepared for the onslaught of…
“OK Ben. I’m ready to get in shape, NOW!” — which comes with every holiday season and new year.
Fernando and I put our heads together, and now we’re ready. Now we have a go-to answer for those trying to jump into fitness and achieve something they can be proud of.
Also: You can do these 30 workouts at your own pace. You don’t have to do them 30 days in a row.
Here’s what we came up with…
- Resistance From The Ground (sled or backward treadmill)
- Stretch-Strength
- No Weak Links
- Bodyweight
The first 3 are what I consider the 3 main pillars of ATG, in that order.
When you use a resisted treadmill or sled, where is the resistance on your body?
It’s at your foot. The resistance comes from the ground.
This creates a fundamentally safe method of resistance training.
I’ve mentioned in many articles, “If my mom tried to drag 1,000 pounds on a sled, it just wouldn’t move.” Well, we tested that recently to help illustrate the concept:
The weight isn’t bearing down on you, so it’s a safer category of exercise.
You wind up with a form of resistance training that strengthens you FROM THE GROUND UP, helping fortify many different parts of the lower body, starting with your feet.
And because it’s so safe and smooth… you can keep going and going, which ends up getting tremendous CIRCULATION to heal lower body injuries.
And when you keep going and going… it also turns into CARDIO!
You can be huffing and puffing within just a few minutes or less, because the resistance amplifies difficulty.
So in SHORT time, we’re able to get:
-strength!
-healing!!
-cardio!!!
I know of no other method which can do this.
So, Step 1 of each “ATG30” workout is one of these options:
-backward sled
-back and forth pushing the sled and going backward with it (I always advise at least as much backward as forward)
-resisted backward treadmill
-or just walking/jogging backward if you don’t have equipment, but do have a safe space
Step 2 is the second pillar of ATG: “strength through length,” “stretch-strength,” “mobility” — whatever you want to call it is fine with me!
Is this stretching?
Yep!
Is this strengthening?
Yep!
But when you walk into your local gym, odds are there are a multitude of strength machines costing many thousands of dollars each…
And a paper-thin yoga mat in the corner for flexibility.
Yet the human body has huge breakthroughs awaiting when strength and flexibility are trained in harmony!
I envision a world where every gym offers MOBILITY equipment.
“Mobility” — in my opinion — is the single simplest word to describe this subject, since it implies both strength and flexibility.
However, there’s a lot of confusion on the subject of mobility, so it’s possible that “stretch-strength” will communicate more effectively when trying to explain this to someone.
I wish I was done there.
Resist from the ground, then stretch-strength… done!
And this would still work very well.
But we modern humans seem to broadly share some commonly weak links.
Let’s take an example…
I believe we can all benefit from stretch-strength training for the opposite of the modern posture.
But due to our stiffening up on one side, the OTHER side wound up broadly WEAK.
You have muscles in the middle of your back — just above your lower back — which in most ADULTS are as weak as the average 10-YEAR-OLD. This conclusion was based on our testing of hundreds of people at the original ATG.
So the 3rd Pillar is “NO WEAK LINKS.”
It’s this combination of stretch-strength and no weak links which allows Alissa and me to have childlike mobility relative to our age — without it being painful or risky to demonstrate:
At this point I believe you have a full system:
Strengthen from the ground, then stretch-strength, then weak links! Boom! OK, let’s hit the gym and DO THIS!
“Gym Closed. Merry Christmas.”
So Pillar 4 (or Pillar 0, depending on how you look at it) is knowing how to create a fit body without the gym.
To be clear: ATG bodyweight training IN ITSELF embraces those 3 pillars we just described:
- Bodyweight training to strengthen from the ground up.
- Bodyweight stretch-strength training.
- And bodyweight training to work on our commonly weak links.
I put together 6 different workouts, each of which uses the 3 main pillars PLUS a bodyweight exercise, so that over the 6 days you wind up getting a good grasp of the ATG system.
I suggest cycling through 5 times in order to master the forms, and this results in 30 days of exercise.
[The ATG30 program is first-up in the Physique section of the ATG Online Coaching app.]
Conclusion
I hope this article helped make the ATG system seem a bit simpler.
I’m doing my best to figure out and explain exercise. The body didn’t come with a user manual. And these aren’t absolute rules. But they help make exercise simple and effective for me, and I hope they help you too.
Yours in Solutions,
Ben
