I don’t think any of us have time to waste on ineffective workouts. The key to remember is that as you increase your fitness, your regular exercise routine becomes less effective as your body adapts to the challenges you’ve set before it. You need to change things up in order to keep challenging your body and seeing results.
If you belong to a gym and spend 20-30 minutes on the treadmill at 4.0 or 6.0 mph three days a week, and then do the weight machine circuit you learned at orientation two years ago, you are probably no longer benefiting from that routine.
Your body is an incredibly amazing machine; your muscles strengthen and your cardiovascular capacity increases with nearly every challenging exercise session. However, when you gain that strength and capacity you must continue to challenge yourself if you want to continue to increase your fitness.
Change your routine and continue to see results. If you live with diabetes, you will need to monitor your blood glucose before, during, and after these sessions because when you impose a different stress with a different exercise routine, your blood glucose level may quickly drop during the exercise, and may drop hours after you finish. Be aware and keep a close watch.
On the treadmill, speed up the pace or ramp up the incline. Even better, try a session of intervals! You can find guided workouts at www.itrain.com or at www.cardiocoach.com that will tell you at what settings to set your machine so that you can continue to challenge yourself. If that doesn’t work, try programming your music with fast songs followed by slow songs, one after another—run the fast songs, jog the slow songs and really push your cardiovascular envelope. (This is also true with a walk/jog or flat/incline session.)
Every time I do an interval session like this on a treadmill, I know I need to supply my body with extra glucose so I make sure to have Gatorade nearby and sip it during the recovery phases.
With weights, if you use machines at the gym, increase your weights to really speed up your progress. Incremental steps (from 10 pounds to 15 pounds or 5lbs to 8lbs, etc) will keep you safe—no one wants you to be injured trying to lift a weight you aren’t ready for. If you always do the muscle groups in the same order, switch it up—any of these small changes serve to shock your body and recruit muscle fibers in a new way.
These changes keep your workouts effective and keep you fit and healthy.
Go for it.
I’m thinking you need to print these and hand them out to your Boot Campers.
Written by a dedicated 5lb bicep curler for how many years now? Benefits? Not anymore.
In Physical Therapy while rehabing my shoulder, I was taught to do exercises with soup cans, and my diligent PT tought me the same thing: “You can only get so much better if you only use tomato paste. You won’t have full range of motion back untill you move to the Baked Beans”