Exercise is good for you, right? Exercise is “the bomb” for improving your fitness level and health. But if you have a set routine in place that never changes, you can limit your fitness gains, not build balanced fitness, or reach your fitness goals. Too much routine can also lead to boredom.
Committing yourself to daily exercise is commendable, but if you do the same workout, in the same manner, at the same time every day, your body becomes accustomed to the stress you’re placing on it. Also, your body ceases to adapt and change. You’ll stop gaining strength, endurance, and muscle tone; and if you’re trying to lose weight, you hit a plateau, which causes frustration and loss of motivation.
Exercise Adaptations and Why Fitness Gains Slow
Why do the gains from a particular exercise eventually slow? When you first start working out, the novelty of the movements you’re doing forces your body to work harder. Your body is less efficient at doing those moves and it takes more effort.
In response to exercise, your heartbeat speeds up to carry more oxygenated blood to your hard-working muscles and you sweat from the exertion. A variety of hormones like epinephrine, growth hormone, thyroid hormone, and cortisol also enter your bloodstream to mobilize energy and help your body better handle the stress of exercise. But this response is more subdued as your body adapts.
Your Body Becomes More Efficient at Doing the Same Exercise Routine
These changes and adaptations are all to be expected, but your body becomes more efficient at performing the same movements. If you do the equivalent workout each time you train and continue at the same intensity week after week, your gains will slow. This adaptation process takes around 4 to 6 weeks. The increased efficiency means your body expends less energy to perform the same amount of work. So, you burn fewer calories. If you’re training for strength, strength gains slow too.
You also might discover that even though you’re exercising and eating less, the scale isn’t moving despite your best efforts. Most people respond by eating even less when the fat loss slows, but that’s the wrong approach. This forces your body to burn even less fat to compensate for how little you’re eating. It can become a vicious cycle that’s hard to break.
What can you do to avoid the pitfalls of a regular exercise routine and jumpstart those gains and weight loss? Mixing up your routine is the key to success. What’s your go-to form of cardio? If walking is your go-to exercise, add some hills and vary your pace. Alternate short jogging sessions with longer walking sessions. Combine walking with intense exercise, such as jumping rope or climbing stairs.
Mix Things Up with Interval Training
Consider interval training too. Burning more calories with interval training is one of the best ways to keep your body guessing. If walking is still your favorite form of exercise, interval walk. As you walk, alternate short bursts of higher intensity movement, such as running at top speed for a minute or two, with periods of lower intensity. You can achieve better results with interval training while spending less time exercising.
You can also keep your body from adjusting to your regular exercise routine by mixing resistance training with aerobic exercise. Perform a few minutes of resistance exercises after five minutes of cardio. Alternate back and forth until you’ve completed your thirty-minute workout.
You can also shake things up and relieve boredom by working out at different times of the day or performing a completely different exercise routine. You can do a novel workout on some days, as an alternative to doing what you usually do. Keeping the intensity and type of activity varied regularly is the key. By doing this, your body has less chance of hitting a plateau. Plus, you’ll have less chance of getting bored.
For Strength Training, You Need Progressive Overload
Unless you use progressive overload, you’ll reach a plateau with strength training too. Progressive overload means gradually increasing the stress placed on the body during strength training. You do this by continually adding small increments of weight to a barbell or another piece of equipment, performing more sets, or adding an additional set at the end of a workout.
Your body needs a stimulus to adapt and become stronger. In weight training, this means increasing the resistance placed on the muscles. However, progression doesn’t have to mean more weight. Progressions can also include altering resistance type (e.g., changing from a recumbent bike with high resistance to a standing machine with low resistance) or substituting kettlebells or a barbell for dumbbells. It can also mean adding new exercises that you’re not accustomed to doing.
The Bottom Line
Make it a point to mix up your routine and alter the intensity if you’re not seeing good results. Taking this step can help ensure you keep seeing results and avoid plateaus. When you strength train, use progressive overload. Never let your workouts become stagnant. Why would you even want to?
Switching workouts after a few weeks keeps it challenging for your mind too. Strength training and aerobic exercise might be the backbone of your workouts, but you can also do exercises that help you develop better balance. Try some of the resistance exercises in your routine, while standing on one leg.
Get out of your comfort zone! The key to keeping an exercise program fresh is challenging your muscles in different ways and varying the intensity. It’s the best way to build balanced fitness and keep progressing.
References:
- “Progressive Overload: What It Is, Examples, and Tips.” 30 Jul. 2020, .healthline.com/health/progressive-overload.
- “Progression of volume load and muscular adaptation during ….” ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4215195/.
- “Adaptations to Endurance and Strength Training.” perspectivesinmedicine.cshlp.org/content/8/6/a029769.long.
- “7 Easy and Effective Ways to Break Out of a Workout Rut ….” aaptiv.com/magazine/break-out-workout-rut.
- “How to Get out of a Rut – Verywell Mind.” 30 Apr. 2020, verywellmind.com/how-to-get-out-of-a-rut-4172608.
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Is Your Exercise Routine on Autopilot? Why It’s Important to Break Out of the Comfort Zone
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