Launched ourselves head first into a new regime – perhaps as the result of a new year resolution, recent breakup or aggressively unflattering photo. You miss a few sessions, then stop completely. You feel deflated that you couldn’t stick to it.
Then some time later, motivation strikes again and the cycle repeats itself.” A better approach is to devise a realistic training schedule that actually aligns with your lifestyle. If you manage that, and have the time, energy and inclination to do more, you can always add in a third. It’s much easier to build on something you’re doing consistently than repeatedly start over with something that’s unsustainable.” “There’s an outdated belief that you must ‘keep the body guessing’ in order for it to adapt, by continually switching up your workouts,” says Nick Finney, who has trained Robbie Williams and Jennifer Lopez.
You need to practise your technique, become more proficient and give your body time to improve and get stronger. If you keep changing things up, then it’s impossible to measure progress by comparing what you achieved in previous workouts.” Instead, he suggests adopting the principle of “progressive overload”. Simply put, this means gradually increasing the reps or weight of your lift, in order to stimulate your body to react by growing stronger.
If over time you are able to increase this to eight reps you can then increase the load to 64kg, which may then put your maximum reps back down to five. So you keep practising until you can get to eight reps at 64kg, before increasing the load again.” “For decades, people have associated getting fit with running, cycling or other forms of cardiovascular exercise,” says David Vaux, an osteopath and author of Stronger: 10 Exercises for a Longer, Healthier Life. We lose these at a faster rate as we age, which is one of the major contributors to frailty, falls, reduced mobility and loss of independence later in life.
For most people, the healthiest approach is to combine regular movement with resistance training two or three times each week.” Victorian poet Robert Browning coined the phrase “less is more”. He wasn’t writing about Bulgarian split squats, but he might as well have been. This can actually just add fatigue without much benefit.” If muscle growth is your goal, you need to be training “close to failure” – the point at which you could not manage another good rep.
That burning sensation is largely associated with the buildup of metabolites during exercise, especially very high-rep sets, which are popular in some classes. It can be very uncomfortable, but discomfort isn’t necessarily the same thing as your muscles reaching the point where they could not do another good rep.” Finney warns that bad nutrition is “by far” the most common factor holding gym-goers back from reaching their goals: “Working out hard all week can be completely negated simply by eating whatever you want. People believe workouts burn tons of calories, but most barely even burn off a balanced meal.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
