What can you do if you’re just not seeing progress with your exercise routine? The principle of overload can help explain why you’ve plateaued.
What can you do if you’re just not seeing progress with your exercise routine? The principle of overload can help explain why you’ve plateaued.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Dr. Jonathan Su. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
Find Get-Fit Guy on Facebook and Twitter, or subscribe to the newsletter for more fitness tips.
Get-Fit Guy is a part of Quick and Dirty Tips.
Links:
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/get-fit-guy-newsletter
https://www.facebook.com/GetFitGuy
https://twitter.com/GetFitGuy
https://sixminutefitness.com/
Welcome back to Get-Fit Guy. I’m your host, Dr. Jonathan Su. Every week, I’ll share science-backed tips to help you get fit, stay fit, and optimize performance.
It was Friday evening and my family and I just sat down for dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant a few blocks from our house. I ordered my usual chili verde pork, my partner Farah ordered the chicken fajitas for a change, and the kids were going to share a carnitas super taco and a fish taco.
Our cadillac margarita on the rocks just arrived and I was ready to wind down after what seemed like a nonstop week of work, chores, and kids. As I was taking my first sip of this potent concoction of sour lime, floral citrus, smooth tequila, a hint of sweetness, and a salt rim to balance it all out, Farah informed me that she hasn’t seen progress with her lunges in a while and wanted to know what to do.
If you don't already know, I really love being a physical therapist and fitness professional. I catch myself analyzing people’s running and walking form whenever I’m at Lake Elizabeth—a family-friendly park in Fremont, CA with a 2-mile loop trail around the lake that’s popular for walking, running, and biking.
I’ve also been known to strike up conversations with random people on crutches I see at the grocery store because I’m so curious about what’s going on and I want to make sure they’re getting the proper care. So naturally, the topic of conversation with Farah over dinner that Friday evening revolved around understanding why she wasn’t seeing progress with her lunges and what to do to change that.
I realized after our conversation that many of my listeners may have experienced similar issues and would benefit from what we discussed. Of course, your issue may not be a lack of progress with lunges.
It may be with another resistance exercise for another part of the body or it may even be with an aerobic exercise like running, cycling, or rowing. Keep listening to find out what to do if you’re not seeing progress with exercise.
In the field of exercise science, the principle of overload states that a greater than normal stress on the body is required for training adaptation to take place. In plain language, this means you must challenge your body to go beyond what is familiar and comfortable for improvements to take place.
While exercising, you naturally want to stop and rest or catch your breath when you start feeling tired. Your body doesn’t like to do more work than it has to, and it will let you know by making you feel sore, exhausted, and consumed with the desire to quit.
But if you give in to your body’s demands too early and stop exercising, you won’t make much progress because you’re not giving your body the increased stress it needs to change.
When you continue to exercise beyond the point where you would normally quit, you signal to your body that the demands you’re placing on it are the new normal. As a result, your body will very quickly change to meet these demands; this change translates directly into rapid increases in strength and endurance.
For example, a person can walk a mile in 30 minutes, or they can attempt to run the same distance in 6 minutes. Although the distance is the same, the 6-minute mile pace is more intense and you'll burn twice as many calories.
At the 6-minute mile pace, most people would tire and quit in a few minutes. Even so, those few minutes of intense running will create more improvements in endurance than walking the entire mile in 30 minutes.
When you push until you feel tired and then push a little more, your body will very rapidly change in ways that may surprise you. So the next time you're not seeing much progress with exercise, make sure you’re following the principle of overload.
Another important consideration is the frequency of exercise. The interesting thing is that you likely won’t see much progress if you're exercising too little or too much.
Exercising too little won’t provide your body with the stimulus it needs to get stronger. The main reason Farah wasn’t seeing much progress with lunges is that she was only exercising her legs once a week.
She reported pushing herself to the point of muscle failure every time she performed lunges, which means she reached the point during each set of lunges where her muscles were so fatigued that she could not physically perform another repetition.
She even reported that her legs felt really sore the day after lunges so I knew she was following the principle of overload. But the problem was that she was only performing resistance training for her legs once a week.
This was only enough resistance training to maintain strength in her legs but not enough to improve strength. Aerobic exercises such as running, cycling, and rowing will definitely exercise the legs but will not strengthen the legs in the same ways as resistance training that uses heavier resistance.
If you’re exercising too much, you also won’t see much progress. Exercise is the stimulus for your body to get stronger, but it’s during rest that your body has the opportunity to repair and actually get stronger.
If you’re exercising hard every single day, you’ll see improvement at first. However, you’ll see your performance plateau after a few months or less and you’ll likely get weaker over time—if you don’t suffer from an injury first—because your body doesn’t have adequate time to recover.
Give yourself time to recover between workouts by targeting different muscle groups on different days so that each muscle group has at least 48 hours to recover. Also, be sure to take a week off of exercise every 6 to 8 weeks to help reduce injury risk, improve your fitness gains, and increase your motivation to exercise.
If you find that your progress with exercise is not where it should be, make sure you’re following the principle of overload and also make sure your frequency of exercise is not too much and not too little.
And don’t forget, if you have a question that you want me to answer on the show, email me at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com or leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104.