Those of us in first world countries who spend time in developing countries or in lands of ancient civilizations often encounter alternative medicine doctors out of necessity, and leave having had a surprisingly positive experience. Sometimes, they learn about these types of doctors by accompanying a friend to a local clinic, or even through a social event or casual conversation with someone. Awareness about alternative medicine also spreads through media reports and by advertisements for products that these types of doctors are known to use. Reports have shown that the interest and use in different practices are on the rise across the globe.
Natural cosmetics and homeopathic products can now be found in almost any country in the world, though the availability of alternative medicine doctors may be more difficult to find. The use of homeopathic remedies actually originated in Europe, though it is a practice that is now much more common in India. Because the fees and costs of alternative medicine are affordable, economics also plays a large role in the rising popularity of these types of treatments, especially in poverty-stricken areas of the world.
Alternative Medicine Doctors and the Internet
Video-conferencing used to be something in a science fiction movie, but now we use it nearly every day. This tool is tremendously useful for these doctors. Using video-conferencing, these doctors can take part in involved dialogues with people across the globe. And, because the internet offers nearly unlimited storage space for data it is perfect for the detailed record keeping that is necessary. Now that computers and satellites leave no corner of the globe uncovered, the only significant obstacle in consulting online with these doctors is language.
Many components of modern medicine, including diagnostic testing and professional dialogues with western medical practitioners can help these doctors better serve their patients. It is quickly becoming understood that a combination of modern and alternative medicine treatments is the best way to meet the growing healthcare demands of the public. These type of alternative treatments also have a key role in those countries where large amounts of people are uninsured or under-insured. Recent increases in the number of immigrants have resulted in a rise in serious diseases amongst impoverished communities, and a large gap remains between these communities and the ability to receive proper healthcare. There are strong socio-economic reasons for our government to examine how we can best make use of the growing number of qualified alternative medicine doctors.
Are you just starting out and want to be a successful triathlete? Then you need to develop a triathlon schedule that is personalized to your goals and meets the demands of your lifestyle. Don’t worry. It’s not that hard to do. Just follow the steps that are outlined below and you will be able to develop a customized triathlon schedule that will keep you focused and get you well prepared to perform your best at your next race.
Use the triathlon training schedule as a guideline and adjust the plan according to any changes in your goals, exercising schedule or fitness level. Also, don’t forget to include time off for real life situations such as vacations, holiday’s, job commitments, volunteering responsibilities, or special occasions where you will not be able to train.
Here are the six steps to a triathlon schedule – all of which will contribute to your success as a triathlete: Identify your training goals, write objectives supporting your goals, determine and keep a log of your annual training hours, identify the races you want to compete in, break your triathlon season into training periods, and lastly, assign weekly hours when you will train.
Step 1. Identify Your Training Goals. When you are identifying your goals, think about what you want to accomplish within a 4 – 12 month period of time. Ask yourself some questions. Do you want to participate in a specific race? Is there a race time that you want to better? Do you want to improve your performance from the previous year? You can have overall triathlon goals or you can split up your goals and have them specific to biking, running or swimming.
Whatever your goal, make sure that it is measurable, meaning you should have a number associated with the goal. The number could be a date that you want to run a triathlon, a time that you want to beat, coming in first at a particular race, or a percentage of improvement that you want to see from race to race or year to year.
Step 2. Write Objectives Supporting Each of Your Training Goals. You need to look at your goals and determine what it would take for you to accomplish each goal. How much time will you need to train and what type of training will you need? One way to do this is to look at your weaknesses as a triathlete. What would it take to make them not weaknesses?
Step 3. Determine and Keep a Log of Your Annual Training Hours. To determine the annual hours you train, you will need a calendar. You will be populating the calendar with training types, periods, and hours.
Step 4. Identify the Races You Want to Compete in. You can do this by going on-line to find out triathlon race schedules that are near you. Once you know the race schedule, choose 1-3 races in which you would like to participate throughout the year. Pencil in the race dates on your calendar.
Step 5. Break Your Training Season into Training Periods. There are six periods you want to incorporate on your training schedule calendar. These periods are triathlon race (2 weeks), peak (2 weeks), build (7 weeks), base (10 weeks), preparation (4 weeks) and transition (3 weeks).
To do this, go to your race date on your calendar and begin to map out in colored markers the different periods associated with the timing above. For example, go to your race date and in yellow marker start marking a line from your race date to two weeks before your race date. Label this as “race period”.
In red marker, starting at the beginning of the race period, mark a line two weeks in length before the race period. This red line is the “peak period”. Do this for the build, base, preparation and transition periods. If you are unsure of what occurs in each of these periods, Joe Friel gives a very good explanation of each period in his book Triathlete’s Training Bible (2009).
Step 6. Assign Weekly Training Hours. Depending upon your fitness level, you should begin to train three days a week then move to four days a week until you eventually work your way up to 7 days a week.
At the beginning, it’s best if you start to train 3 hours per week with 4 days off, then move to adding 30 minutes each week until you are able to go 8 1/2 hours spread over 7 days with no time off.
For each week you train, you will be distributing the recommended time to train among the recommended days. So if you are to train 3 hours in 3 days with four days off, you could distribute the time in day 1 as 1.5 hours, day 2 as 1.0 hours and on the third day the training would be 0.5 hours.
After assigning the amount of time you will train per week, you will then determine the type of training. When you do this, remember to alternatively work on swimming, biking, running and weight training throughout the week. When planning your training schedule, make sure you aren’t being too overly aggressive. You want to avoid over training, injury, illness and burnout.
In order for you to see improvement as you train, you will need to keep track of your progress. You can track any improvements over time using a training log, however, you will have to keep it up-to-date as you train throughout the year.
Developing, implementing and executing against your triathlon schedule is the first step in becoming a successful triathlete. The advantages of your triathlon schedule is that it is customized to your goals and meets the demands of your lifestyle. It should be flexible to your needs, yet keep you focused and get you at your peak for your next race.
60 pull ups in 1 min World record for leg assisted pull ups
