FITNESS Raise the bar for better results

Raise the bar for better results


Personal Trainer
Paul O'Brien

Our bodies and brains are very clever. If you’re pretty new to exercise, you’re well placed to notice how both of them have adapted or changed.
Your body may be thinner, your muscles stronger or more flexible, your heart may be beating more slowly at rest. Your brain chemistry will also have altered. You may notice yourself feeling calmer, focusing and concentrating better, sleeping better or enjoying a greater sense of well-being generally.
So what’s happened? Basically, you have made demands of your body and brain through exercise. Your body and brain in turn have enthusiastically responded by developing, yielding the aforementioned results and more.
They have done this in response to one of the key tenets of physical training – your body will respond to demands placed upon it by developing its inherent systems. Being as smart as it is, however, means the body and brain assess the demands placed upon them, and unless this demand continually changes, pretty soon your initial progress slows and you experience a ‘training plateau’ (see February 9 article on plateauing, available at www.mayonews.ie/living).

Progressive Overload
To prevent training plateaus, you must apply the principle of progressive overload. This means that you persistently ask yourself to do a little more than you are comfortable with. It also means pushing yourself beyond your perceived ability. By doing this bit by bit each week, you will continually improve.
That said, it’s important to work within your comfort zone. We are trying to stretch this zone in small increments, not completely ignore it. Too much applied overload can lead to injury. If you are new to training, any small applied overload will yield progressive results.

Push rates
As a general rule of thumb, I apply the rule of 10 per cent to the principle of progressive overload in training. For example, in a given 12-week training program, I would run 10 per cent longer on a long run each week, or try cut my time for a given cycle or swim by 10 per cent week-on-week. With weight training, I apply an extra 10 per cent of weight every two weeks up to a certain point.
The key is to experiment and find what works for you. Maybe 10 per cent every two weeks on your run times is better. You may feel 10 per cent weekly is too much. Erring on the side of too little rather than too much is the key to consistency.
So, keep raising the bar, stretching your comfort zone and enjoy riding the curve of consistent progress.

Next week A look at another important training principle – ‘specificity’.

Paul O’Brien is a certified personal trainer with the American Council on Exercise and a qualified life coach. He runs his own business in Westport and is the creator of Bootcamp West, an exciting and challenging exercise programme in Westport. For details of upcoming classes, visit www.bootcampwest.com or e-mail paul@bootcampwest.com or telephone 086 1674515.