If You Don’t Challenge Yourself, You Don’t Change Yourself
I have found it to be a light bulb moment for many clients…
When I explain to them WHY they must continually increase the challenges they set for themselves in the gym.
The human body is an amazing vehicle of change, however its primary goal is to maintain homeostasis. If you remember back to high school biology, homeostasis is the ability of a system (the body) in which variables are regulated so that internal conditions remain stable and relatively constant. The word is derived from the Greek words “homeo” meaning constant, and “stasis” meaning stable.
Your body only desires to stay stable. It isn’t interested in being bigger, faster, fitter, stronger or more powerful, unless it feels that it has to make these adaptations in order to survive. Your body will only make adaptations that allow it to withstand the consistent stresses you are placing on it during your daily existence. If your daily physical stresses include primarily sitting and walking, then your body creates a vehicle that is perfectly capable of performing these tasks, but little more.
People are always amazed when they come back to training after long layoffs and see just how “unfit” they feel. One of the most common phrases heard by trainers is “I used to be so fit”. Well that’s probably because you “used to be” active and place your body under regular physical stresses. Once these stresses stop, your body will revert back to its baseline levels that allow it to exist in your current reality.
So what does this mean to my training?
Your body will make improvements in physical markers such as strength and cardiovascular endurance only if you force it to. This means that we must be habitually increasing the challenges that we place on ourselves.
Progressive overload is the most important principle to follow when it comes to triumphing your goals. If you’ve ever found yourself in a plateau with your results, then chances are you have been neglecting this principle.
So what is it?
Progressive overload insists that we are constantly manipulating and ascending the difficulty of an exercise and exercise program, in order to continue forcing the body to make improvements.
This can be done through modification of many variables, including but not limited to: Increasing the frequency of training, weight lifted, sets, reps, time under tension, length of intervals, intensity of intervals, or by decreasing rest periods between sets and intervals.
The most effective of these, and the easiest to regulate is to increase the amount of weight you are lifting on a regular basis. You will never get strong enough to lift 80kg, if you never put more than 60kg on the bar. It seems self-explanatory but it is very common for people to only lift what they are comfortable lifting. Your body has already made the adaptations required to lift that weight, and unless a new and increased demand is placed on it, it will make no further improvements. Your body doesn’t care what you WANT, it cares what it NEEDS. You will get a small metabolic benefit from training under comfortable conditions but don’t expect any major body composition or strength/conditioning changes.
For strength training I find the best way to achieve these gradual progressions is to work within rep ranges for your sets, rather than strict numbers. For example rather than doing 3 sets of 10, aim to work between 8-12 reps for 3 sets. Use the same weight for each working set (not including warm up sets) and if you can still get 12 reps on the last set, then next time you do that exercise you have to add more weight from the first set. If you can get more than 12 it’s too light, and if you can’t get 8 then it’s too heavy. Also when doing this you will need to record your progressions from session to session. One session your reps of 60kg bench press could be 12/10/10/9 and the next they might be 12/12/11/10. This shows any gradual increases in your strength, but if you don’t keep track you won’t be aware of it.
Another really common thing we hear is “it never seems to get easier” and that’s because it shouldn’t. The thing that changes is your workload for the same amount of discomfort. Where 5x 30 second intervals used to be your maximum, now you are doing 10. Or where 15kg dumbbells were lifted, now it is 22kg for the same reps. It feels just as hard to you, only the improvements are marked.
Some of the advances your body makes in response to unrelenting escalations in intensity are……
Aerobic
• resting heart rate slows
• stroke volume increases
• Cardiac output increases
• Lung function improves (muscles adapt to be able to take in more oxygen)
• Increase in mitochondria numbers and size – these structures create energy inside your cells.
• Improved oxygen uptake by muscles – more of the oxygen you breath in is used by your body.
• Increased haemoglobin levels. This is the part of the blood which carries oxygen to muscles
• Decrease in blood pressure
Anaerobic – this is any activity that doesn’t use oxygen as its fuel source and includes high intensity intervals and weight training.
• Improvements in nervous system function – peripheral nervous system and central nervous system
• Muscular hypertrophy
• Increased muscular strength
• Increase in lactate threshold – this is the threshold of training intensity where your body begins to accumulate lactic acid. The higher this threshold is, the higher the intensity you can work before you begin to fatigue.
• Increased bone mineral density
• Increased strength of tendons and ligaments
• More power through development of type II fibres.
• Beneficial hormonal responses
Your body is an amazing vessel that is capable of continual progressions, but only if you inspire it. Always look for a small way to challenge yourself from one session to the next.
