Simple Structured Training will help the weekend athlete as well as the Olympic athlete to enhance their game through feedback and intelligent, well-rounded and effective training. The intent of this book is not to "tell" you how to train. It is a means to make you think of how you train, why you train, and what you're training for. This book is intended for the person who is already an athlete and would like to become a better one. But it is also for the weekend athlete and the novice; an 11 year old can benefit from this advice as well as a 77 year old. It is a general guidebook to put your mind back into the workout. The basis of the understanding you need to be a better athlete is to simply "feel" what your body is telling you and respond to it with more or less intensity. Is your heart beating too fast as you exercise? Slow down. Do your joints ache? Pay attention to form and back off on the weight. Is your bodyfat too high? Lower your intensity around food There are thousands of books ready to tell you how to diet, how many sets to perform, how much weight to lift, miles to run. But the sign of good training material is that which asks, "What do you want? How soon do you want it? How much are you ready to sacrifice to get it?" There are no great secrets left to this training game. The major bodybuilding, shaping, fashion, fitness and longevity magazines have the same articles with the same exercises that they had 50 years ago. They call it something else, tie a concept around it, design new equipment and put a fresh-faced model next to it; but it's still Jack and Jill doing basic movements. Research is contradictory and often vague, usually benefiting only the medical or food companies, and the consumer goes through all these magic solutions, weighing formulas and recipes and ends up, still, in the weight room where only honest work garners honest results. The first step with SST: Basics is to "think." Be conscientious of what your body is going through on a daily basis. What repetitive stresses do you perform? How often do you bend, lift, reach, stand? How long do you sit? How far do you drive? How much time are you willing to invest in getting in shape? What are your ultimate goals? What equipment and facilities do you have to work with? What are you willing to learn? The average amount of time you should allot is 90 minutes, three times a week. It's a small tradeoff when meals alone consume up to or over 20 hours. Feedback is essential because it helps to gauge our progress within a given exercise. Does your back hurt? Check your posture and alignment on the bench, or the amount of weight being used. Are you feeling the movement more in the shoulders than the pectorals? Check your grip. Are you having more pains since beginning workouts? Weight lifting programs are supposed to make you stronger, feel better, shape faster, and perform longer at higher intensities. If these things aren't happening, then you must ask, "why." That is feedback. If you're here to stay, than so too should your workouts, or some type of physical activity, every day. The sooner you rest this in your mind, that exercise is just as essential to life as sleeping and eating, the faster you can find an activity which both meets your level of physicality and time. Walking is exercise. Biking is exercise. Even gardening is exercise with all its reaching and pulling, lifting and moving. If it fits your lifestyle and you enjoy it, stop calling it "work" and respect the benefits available in everyday things. Get more from what you already do. Just like you'd choose a cookbook to learn how to create certain flavors, you use SST, to identify the aspects of your game or physique that are missing, the "ingredients" of your life. You try a little of this, a little of that, until the outcome suits your tastes and the results please the physicality. With SST, you'll learn that and more.