If you’re serious about making consistent, lifelong progress with your fitness training, you need to learn some simple exercise physiology. The greatest fitness favour you can do for yourself is to really understand how your body performs, and how to maximize it’s performance… unless you’d rather waste valuable time in the gym going through the motions and complain about your lack of progress, or pay someone to spoon-feed you exercise routines with no real idea what you’re doing and why…
There are several universally accepted scientific training principles that must be followed in order to improve human performance. This blog will discuss the Principle of Overload.
The principle of overload states that a greater than normal stress or load on the body is required for training adaptation to take place. The body will adapt to this stimulus. Once the body has adapted, a different stimulus is required to continue the change. In order for a muscle (including the heart) to increase strength, it must be gradually stressed by working against a load greater than it is used to. Likewise, to increase endurance, muscles must work for a longer period of time than they are used to. If this stress is removed or decreased, there will be a decrease in that particular component of fitness.
One of the most amazing things about the human body is it’s ability to adapt. Consider a 3hp treadmill motor; if it is subjected to a 4hp load, it will burn out. Now imagine the human body as a 3hp motor. If it is continually subjected to a 4hp load, it soon becomes a 4hp motor. The only way to become a bigger “motor” is through overload. The flip side is, the 3hp treadmill motor will always be 3hp, even when continually subjected to a lighter load; the human motor will soon adapt to a lighter load and become a lighter motor. This is what we want to avoid.
Arguably the most effective method for overloading muscles during strength training is by working the muscles to failure. The accepted protocol for resistance training is working with a weight that allows you to do x repetitions to failure with good form (the number of repetitions depends on what you are training for; strength, hypertrophy or endurance). I personally believe going to failure every set is unnecessary, and should be dependant on total workload for the workout; but for the standard 3-5 sets/exercise, at least the last set should go beyond just hard work. You really should not be able to finish that last rep of the last set, but you should be pushing like John McClane - all while maintaining strict form.
The real message here is be true to yourself. How hard are you pushing yourself, really? Going through the motions with the same 10lb weight you’ve been using for 2 years will get you absolutely nowhere, regardless of what benefits you think you’re getting out of it. “At least I’m doing something” does not cut it anymore. Your body becomes what you make it do. Make it do something you never thought it could, push past your perceived boundaries and watch what happens…
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