Breaking free of a fitness rut
By Jeanette Jenkins
When you were a kid, your mom told you to brush up and down not side to side or you wouldn’t get your teeth really clean. The same theory applies to fitness: Do it right and it will work.
Many of you undoubtedly have tried various exercise programs, lost a bit of weight at the beginning, and then became frustrated because your body stopped changing. Being unable to get past the “plateau” (as it is called) isn’t your fault -- it’s because the program has been poorly designed.
These six exercise-training principles are the cornerstone of a good program design that will guarantee that you’ll break through the plateau and maximize results:
1. Individual Differences: Every person is different, and each person's response to exercise will vary. A proper training program should take individual differences into account. Whether you are a beginner or more advanced, there is a safe place for you to start and a challenging place to which you can strive!
2. Specificity: To become better at a particular exercise or skill, you must perform that specific exercise or skill. In other words, to tone and strengthen your abdominals you have to include abdominal exercises in your program. To tone up your thighs you have to include specific exercises for your thighs. If you want to improve your ability to jog then you have to include jogging in your training.
3. Use/Disuse: You have to move your muscles or they become soft and flabby. Many people try to lose weight by working out just sporadically -- when they feel like it -- but they soon give up because they don’t see results. You must be committed and consistent to see results.
4. Adaptation: By repeating an exercise, the body adapts to the stress and the skill becomes easier to perform. This also explains the need to continue to apply the principle of “overload” (see next entry) to continue to see improvements and changes in your physique.
5. Overload: A greater-than-normal load on the body is required to create change. If your body is already used to walking then it is necessary to start incorporating an incline or jogging intervals. If your body is use to lifting 3-pound weights, then you have to move up to 5-pounders to see results. The more you do, the more you become capable of doing. This is how all the training adaptations occur in exercise and training. The human body is an amazing machine. When you stress your body by lifting a weight that is more than you are accustomed to, your body will react with physiologic changes that will enable you to handle the stress the next time it occurs. This concept is the same in cardiovascular training relating to the heart, lungs and endurance muscles. This is how people get stronger, bigger, faster and increase their physical fitness level.
6. Progression: There is an optimal level of overload that should be achieved, and an optimal timeframe in which this overload should occur. Overload should not be increased too slowly or improvement is unlikely. Overload that is increased too rapidly can result in injury or muscle damage. Therefore it’s important that you start slowly and then progress to the next level as your body adapts to the exercise.
Adapted from the new book “The Hollywood Trainer Weight-Loss Plan,” available May 3, by Jeanette Jenkins.