Change Your Exercises

• This time of year is one of the busiest times in most gyms all around the world. People are full of motivation to exercise for many reasons – getting fitter, getting slimmer, maybe bulking up, or just “because they think they should”.

  What is most common at this time is the prevalance of people exercising really hard (nothing wrong with that!), getting great results (brilliant news!), carrying on for maybe a month or two (excellent start to the year), and then finding it all trailing off towards March or April.

  One of the most common reasons for people giving up on an exercise programme is because they do not get the results they feel they deserve.

  They dedicate lots of time to working out, and find that for a while it works, until they usually hit a plateau. Of course, 90% of gym go’ers go into the gym on their own and train with their own programme as opposed to a scientifically devised programme that you might get from a personal trainer or CHEK qualified professional such as myself.

  Unfortunately one exercise programme just isn’t enough! A person needs many, and they need to be correctly periodised and progressed for results to become stable and sustained.

  The fact of the matter is that approximately the first 6 weeks of exercise for most people is neural. What this means is that whatever the exercise programme is, the person will likely get results. Of course they need to be doing kind of the right thing, and kind of thinking about changing their exercise and lifestyle for this to happen!

  After this period of 6 weeks, after people get great results at first, they carry on doing exactly the same thing and the body gets bored, muscles and joints go into what we call “pattern overload” from doing the same exercises/movement patterns too much, and then results plateau. Sometimes they even get worse.

  They way to avoid this is to change your exercise programme on a regular basis. Of course you need to have an consistent programme to begin with. Here are a few tips when it comes to changing your exercise programme:

  1. Do the same programme for 3-6 weeks. No longer than 6 weeks! Try to stick to this regularly (2-5 x per week)  for best results.
  2. When your weights / speeds / distances start to plateau and stop improving, it is time to change your programme.
  3. A simple way to change your programme is to turn it all on its head. For example, if you were doing 4 exercises, A, B, C, D in that order, next time you come in the gym (and for the next 3-6 weeks), you could do them D, C, B, A using the same weights you were previously doing. This will once again give your body the kick-start it needs.
  4. Alternatively you can get a Personal Trainer to design you an exercise programme with sensible periodisation. The first programme should be used for Flexibility and Stability, followed by a programme for Strength and Functional Movement, and lastly a programme for Power and Performance, before the cycle is repeated again.

  I hope you found this useful. If you need any more help and guidance, especially as we move towards the 3rd and 4th week of the New Year and exercise programmes need to be changed, please don’t hesitate to comment and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

  
  
  January 10th, 2009 | Brett Sanders | No Comments | Tags: Exercise, Fitness, health, Movement, personal training, programme, training, workout

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