Fitness is Pushed from Low to High, Not Pulled Up From Above

Whether you are embarking on a weight lifting regime or a running or cycling program, all fitness is pushed from low to high. Just as if you were building a house, the roof is not built first; you would build a foundation and then the walls before the roof. The same goes for fitness. Whatever your current fitness level, you want to build from there. Whether you are just beginning or you have been doing workouts for a while and simply want to step up your training, it's always best to increase in increments from wherever your fitness is now to where you want to be.

Problem: With enthusiasm and motivation running high, we are tempted to jump ahead and do more strenuous or longer workouts to get to our goals. The same goes when coming back from illness, injury, or time away from your workouts.  You need to ease back into training to "push" fitness back up, and resist trying to make up for lost time by going right back into high gear and "pulling" fitness to where you want to be.  My experience is that human nature would have us do twice as much as we should when rushing to get to our goal. We are inclined to do too much volume (measured in mileage, minutes, or sets and reps in the gym) and intensity (difficulty of the workout) in the first weeks of a new fitness initiative in an attempt to "pull" fitness up. In addition to creating conditions for a likely injury, our physiology does not respond to that kind of load.

Solution: The concept of progressive workouts goes back to Roman times, when gladiators would increase strength by doing lifts with a growing calf over the course of several months to get ready for battle. As the calf gradually grew bigger, the workouts become gradually more difficult and the demands on the body to grow stronger are met easily by the adaptive nature of human physiology. We can't shock our body into growing stronger, we need to nudge it. The same goes for interval training. After we set a solid aerobic base we tax the physiology of runners, cyclists, and swimmers with increments of slightly higher intensity for short periods (usually eight to ten minutes at a time to start), then allow for recovery, and repeat. Using heart rate as a guide to measure intensity, we prescribe slightly higher heart rate workouts on the order of 5-10 beats per minute, we don't jump to workouts that are 30 beats per minute harder. All training should be designed to tax the body slightly and cause a strain from which you will recover and become stronger. Too big a strain, causing too much damage, and your body will not recover, rather it will break. Physical therapists and coaches exist because human nature fails us in this regard. Call or click to find out how we can help you achieve injury free peak performance.

Always stretch BEFORE and AFTER each workout to stay injury-free.