| Detail April 1, 2008
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Progress when you train
in the gym is the key to making continual progress to your physique. |
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Progress
A short time ago, a woman called me asking for some advice.
She had already been weight training for a couple of years and had made considerable
improvement, but, more recently, she had found herself at a standstill. She felt that what
she had been doing wasn’t really working anymore and she wanted to start improving
again.
When she first started talking to me, I could tell that she
simply wanted me to give her some sort of new training program – something telling
her to do so many sets and reps of certain exercises. That is, after all, pretty much what
most of the training articles have in them so she figured that would be the cure. However,
after talking to her for some time, I knew that wasn’t the solution.
More often than not, I’ve found that the real culprit
isn’t the number of sets and reps, or even the exercise selection, but, rather, that
the person has forgotten about one key concept that must be part of any weight-training
program in order for it to work: progress. This means making progress with the
exercises you’re doing in the gym which, in turn, translates into improvements with
your physique.
If you look at any good weight-training book, the term they
always use is progressive resistance training – the idea being that as the
resistance progresses, your body gets put under constantly increasing stress and must
"adapt" to it. That adaptation results in improvement through increased muscle
growth. However, if the resistance is not increased, the body isn’t stressed enough
and, therefore, won’t adapt and improve.
I also wrote about this concept a couple years ago in a
series of articles called "Natalie
Waples: A Two-Time Figure Champion in Just Three Months." In the second
installment, there is the following a paragraph:
"For the people I coach, I apply the concept of
progressive resistance for each exercise in four ways: 1) by increasing the weight, 2) by
increasing the number of repetitions, 3) by improving the form so it’s stricter,
which makes the exercise more difficult even though you haven’t actually increased
the weight, and 4) by decreasing the rest interval between sets, which, again, makes the
movement more difficult even though the weight hasn’t actually increased. There are
other ways too, such as increasing sets, etc., but this is what I like to focus on
doing."
Of all the things I wrote about in that five-part series,
this was the most critical when it comes to improving your physique but, unfortunately,
it’s one of things that’s either not applied, or is only adhered to for a short
time and is then forgotten.
This is exactly what had happened to the woman I was
talking to on the phone. In fact, when I asked her how her training sessions had
"progressed" with either the weights she was using, the reps she was doing, or
the time it was taking for her to finish her exercise routine, she was silent for a few
moments before she confided in me that she hadn’t been paying much attention to any
of that at all. Instead, for months, she had been using the same weights for the same reps
and finishing her workout routines in the same amount of time. So, when she reflected back
on the last few months, she realized that there was a direct correlation between when she
had stopped making progress in the gym and the lack of improvements in her physique. As a
result, she was basically going through the motions and getting nowhere – a rut that
many fall into.
Although there are countless workout routines you can do,
over time all of them stop working if you forget the notion of progress. Therefore, I like
to say the following to the people I coach: You must always make it harder! In
other words, each time they go into the gym, they should increase the weight or
repetitions, make the exercises tougher to do (better form), or decrease the time it takes
to do the exercises. If need be, set specific goals in order to keep moving ahead like
this. Quite simply, when you make progress with the exercises that you do in the gym, the
improvements to your physique will follow.
...Doug Schneider
das@seriousaboutfitness.com |
