Hot Body Training

When last did you make any real progress in the gym? If you’re just starting out, chances are you’re progressing in leaps and bounds, but anybody who’s stuck with an exercise program for a good length of time will tell you, that progress inevitably comes to a screeching halt. How many people do you see in the gym who never seem to make any headway? You know who I talking about, those same people who always seem to be in the gym training no matter what time you go.

At the most fundamental level, in order to progress you need to be doing something different from your last workout. It was Einstein who said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.� Well, this applies to your training too. How do you expect to forge the body you want by performing the same workout every time you hit the gym? Once your body has adapted to your newbie gains, you quickly enter a state called homeostasis.

Homeostasis: The state in which a dynamic equilibrium is reached.

Once you reach homeostasis, your body has adapted to the stressors of your current workout and it sees no reason to get fitter, stronger, leaner or whatever your goal is. It’s happy where it is and if you want to make further progress, you’re going to need knock it up a notch. Enter the principle of overload.

Simply put, overload means doing more than you did in the previous workout. Every time you hit the gym, you should be trying to eek out a little more from your body, trying to constantly keep your body under stress so that it will be forced to adapt towards whatever your goal might be. Your body is very stubborn in this regard – it doesn’t want to change, so you need to force it to change.

When it comes to weightlifting progression, most people immediately think of adding more weight to the bar. This is a time-tested progression method, but eventually your going to hit a wall if this is your only method of progression. Here are some more progression methods you should try to incorporate:

• Repetitions – Trying to perform more repetitions with the same weight from one workout to the next. Try to squeeze out just one more rep on each exercise and you would have performed more work.
• Sets – Keeping the weight and reps the same, perform one more set of each exercise on your program.
• Rest – This is a great progression method and one that is often overlooked. Try to reduce your rest intervals between sets. This is also a great method for fat loss as it taxes the metabolic system greatly. You’ll also be able to condense your workouts considerably if time is an issue. This one takes a bit of mental fortitude thought as the temptation to rest that little bit longer will be strong come the end of your workout.
• Changing exercises – Your body adapts very quickly to the same set of exercises. Change your routine up every 4-6 weeks to keep your body guessing. I think we’re all guilty sometimes of falling into an exercise rut and end up sticking to the same routine for far too long.
• Lifting more rapidly - Try to complete the set in less time than it took the previous workout. This is also good if you are trying to develop power, but watch that your form stays intact.
• Increase weight – This one should be obvious and is still a great progression method, but totally overused.
• Longer, faster, harder – You should apply this principle to your cardio workouts too. Put your heart rate out of it’s comfort zone or run a little longer at each session.

A word of warning
Progression is great, but there are times when you need to back off a bit and let your body recover. These can be planned recover weeks where you don’t train at all or train with a reduced volume. Personally, I like to use a little less structure in my recovery methods. If you listen to your body it will let you know when you need a break. The important thing here is to actually listen to what your body is telling you. If your joints are taking strain, your performance goes through the floor or your desire to go to the gym isn’t there then chances are you need to give yourself a break. A lot of people fall into the trap of thinking that if they back off training for a week then all their hard work will be undone. Chances are, if they’d taken a week off they’d come back stronger, injury free and totally rejuvenated.

What if progression is not the reason for my lack of progress?
Of course, your diet is also fundamental here. You can’t lose weight if you’re eating more calories than you’re burning and you can’t gain weight if you’re burning more calories than you’re consuming.

Another trap that people fall into is training for to many conflicting goals at the same time. If you’re one of those people who expect to be able to train for fat loss, muscle gain, strength and expect to run a marathon at the same time then you are bound to fail. Pick a goal, find a training program that will help you achieve that goal and then stick with it.

I know a guy who wants to bulk up a bit and is always asking me what he should be doing in the gym, but never seems to take on my advice. Problem is, he’s a runner. My advice to him was to cut down the running, eat more and keep up with the weights. Gaining is often more simple that people make out. Just get the basics right, if you don’t eat you won’t grow and if you do too much cardio you’ll struggle too.

Here’s a recap of those progression methods again:

• Increase the number of repetitions
• Increase the number of sets
• Reduce your rest intervals
• Change your exercise selection
• Lift more rapidly
• Increase the weight
• Don’t forget to progress your cardio too.