Ok, cut to the chase...the major problems with people and exercise:

1) Too much cardio (chronic cardio): Running 3-5 miles everyday and thinking this translates to fitness.
2) Too much strength: lifting weights and thinking this translates to fitness
3) Too much high intensity: doing bootcamps/metcons and thinking this translates to fitness.

So truly the problem is unidimensionality...even programs that promote themselves as "always different" are really just different within the same format.


Fitness is adequately working each of 3 energy pathways:
ATP: that's strength workouts. Days when you just lift weights. Do reps. Let ATP recover. Do more reps. Trying to make this a Heart Rate day defeats the purpose. Aerobic load is the enemy of strength development. You just have to embrace that strength/resistance days are necessary, and probably the most beneficial to weight loss. STRENGTH is the key! It's the foundation. We can't benefit from the other formats if we aren't strong enough to hold our bodies in certain positions (ie, how many people can really, really, really do an OH Squat?)

Glycogen: that's the high intensity workouts. Anaerobic. These are the POWER days. Move weights as fast as you can! The kind of feeling you get trying to sprint 400m! These are still shorter sessions, but require heavy metabolic load!

Aerobic: low and slow. Lower intensity, longer duration. The body needs to make fuel with oxygen.

OK, so that's how the body fuels itself (quick w/ ATP, next it taps glycogen stores, then goes aerobic). So, complete workouts that dynamically, and in a variety of formats addresses each.

Also, these workouts should take you across types of "strength." Ideally. For total fitness:
1) Maximal Strength workouts (lower reps, higher weights, relatively slow pace)
2) Maximal Power Endurance workouts (moderate reps, mod/lower weights, high pace)
3) Low Intensity Endurance workouts (higher reps, lower weight, low pace, longer time)