After lockdown with gyms reopening, many are back on track with their health & fitness journey. It can be very tempting to force habits while pushing for rapid progress in order to reach your goal faster. This could be in the form of countless hours of HIIT classes, cardio, removing all enjoyable foods from your diet, or trying to lift more weight than you were before lockdown.
Whilst this isn’t necessarily a bad characteristic, it may leave you at a loose end later on.
If you were told to run two hours every day to lose weight, would you?
Thinking logically our brain tells us not to do things that could lead to potential harm or danger. Unfortunately, when it comes to training and dieting, a lot of us have tendencies to replace rational thinking with emotional going with an “all or nothing” approach. Think back to the last time you gave up on something – did you actually set yourself up for success in the first place?
Here are some reasons why we believe that more isn’t better:
1. There are a number of tools we have in the toolbox when we are ready to make a change. However, if you use all of them too early, what do you do when results start to stagnate?
It’s important to be patient through the process, and only make a change when it is necessary to do so. Consider at first applying to minimum affective change for your desired result, as this will give you a starting point and give your body something to think about at first. Then create a small, but very easy amount of momentum to sustain.
2. Most individuals are actually limited by their recovery time. When a lack of results is seen, it’s immediately presumed that more exercise or a stricter diet needs to take place, when it could actually be the opposite.
As coaches, it is to ensure also what the client needs help with most outside the gym also – how they’re recovering, nutrition tuning with what fits around the client’s current lifestyle and fatigue. Any time these areas are off, recovery won’t be as good and would be detrimental to then introduce more load/volume and food restrictions until they’re addressed.
3. If your mobile phone battery represented your daily energy levels, having more screens open would subsequently drain the battery faster and require a more regular recharge. Some daily stressors place greater demand on the body and brain than others but if you let too much accumulate then other functions within the body will be affected such as performance, rest, energy/ fatigue and the immune system.
When is it an appropriate time to introduce more?
What we’re saying here is not to take things easy and not to work hard. There still needs to be an element of working hard for adaptions to occur.
So, here are the main factors we insure before introducing more stressors:
- Little to no muscle soreness and/or fatigue on the day of training.
- Good sleep quality minimum 7 hours.
- Progressing performance – increasing strength or stamina.
- Decent levels of energy.
The next time you’re thinking of increasing volume or adding more to your routine, consider the points above to determine whether its’ the right time to take place.
If you feel you need more structure with your training routine, why not get in touch about our personal training service in Finchley and book a Free Consultation today.
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