NEWS DESIGN: Consistency is key when it comes to getting in shape. After all, you cannot have a fit body if you don’t work hard at the gym. But is there any benefit to doing the same workout day after day?
Some influencers say yes – claiming that doing the same workouts for years is the key to their fitness success.
While this may sound appealing to those who have trouble sticking to a routine, the truth is that if we don’t challenge our bodies enough, this strategy can actually end up being counterproductive. our goal of getting back in shape.
To improve your fitness, you need to disrupt your body’s homeostasis. This is the process by which living organisms maintain a stable internal environment despite changes in external conditions.
In regards to exercise and fitness, the external condition could be lifting weights at the gym. This puts stress on the body, changing our internal environment – and thus disrupting homeostasis.
Stress is what causes our bodies to react and adapt. When the stressor that disrupts this homeostasis is exercise, the response is fatigue as it disrupts our normal, internal environment.
The more stress exercise puts on our bodies, the more fatigue it causes. Only when stress is removed – such as when we rest between exercise sessions – does fatigue begin to dissipate.
Fatigue is actually the secret to physical adaptation. The more tired you are, the greater your ability to adapt and the more your fitness will improve. On the other hand, if the exercise stressor doesn’t disrupt homeostasis, you won’t be tired enough to see any physical adaptations.
Just be careful not to tire yourself too much, as this can lead to poorer performance and potentially illness.
As we adapt physiologically, we adjust our homeostatic “set point.” This means that the minimum level of stress our body needs to produce a fatigue response will increase. So, to continue improving our fitness levels, we need to start varying our workouts to continue to stress and fatigue our bodies. This principle is called “progressive overload.”
There are three basic ways to achieve progressive overload: increase training intensity, increase frequency of training sessions, or increase the duration of each training session.
The principles of biological adaptation are a complex combination of these components – although exercise intensity is considered the main driver of adaptation. To increase the intensity of your workout, you can increase the demands of your workout or adjust your recovery time — for example, by reducing recovery time between workouts.
Just remember that adaptations happen during the recovery phase, not during the actual workout. So if you increase the intensity of your workout, aim to reduce your overall workout time to avoid burnout.
It’s also important that you don’t do too much too soon. You don’t need to make each exercise harder and harder. Depending on your fitness level, you may only need to increase your workout intensity every 4-8 weeks.
However, a word of warning. High-intensity exercise alone is not the answer to improving your fitness and health. You need a combination of low, moderate, and higher intensity exercises to promote a variety of physiological adaptations.
So what happens if you maintain the same workout routine every day?
There will of course be an initial period of adaptation as new challenges are placed on your body. But unless progressive overload is applied, these changes will only be maintained in the best of cases. And in some cases, it can even lead to a loss of fitness gains – ultimately sending us back to where we started.
There are also psychological benefits to using more progressive training methods. People often stop exercising over time due to various personal and environmental factors – such as losing motivation if you lose interest or enjoy working out anymore. Incorporating new exercises or adding variety to familiar routines are great ways to help you stay motivated and enjoy your workouts.
While sticking to the same exercises may seem like the easiest way to stay physically active, it can be harmful to you in the long run. If you want to stay in shape, vary your workouts every 4-6 weeks (by increasing the intensity or adjusting the exercises), incorporate different activities (including weight training and cardio), and Track your fitness – so you know when to change up your workouts again.
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