![]() This could involve additional weight on a given exercise or an increased number of repetitions or sets compared to what you were previously doing. Overload is a related concept which involves putting extra stress on your body beond what it’s used to in order to stimulate growth in strength, muscle mass, endurance, and other desired physical characteristics. If you don’t continue to challenge yourself with progressively harder exercises, your progress will eventually plateau. By gradually pushing your body to do more than it is used to, you will increase your strength, muscular endurance, and overall fitness level. This can be done in two different ways: by increasing the amount of weight being lifted or by increasing the number of repetitions or sets being performed. Find out more on when to take a rest day and how to structure your ' back-off week'.Progression is the process of gradually increasing the intensity or difficulty of an exercise over a period of time. When overloading, the key is to up the ante just enough so that you don’t reach a plateau, but not so much that it is too much for the body. ![]() Increasing all of the variables at the same time would lead to overtraining (or under recovery) the body needs time to adapt to whatever you have decided to increase. Avoiding OvertrainingĪlthough there are several ways to add intensity to your training programme, the important point to mention is that all three shouldn’t be changed in one go. ![]() ![]() So, instead of two runs and one strength session per week, they would complete two runs and two strength sessions. Using our runner again, with the goal of reducing the time it takes to run 5k, they could add one more strength session to their training programme. 4 x 5 x 25 = 500)įrequency is how often you train. We could add volume by increasing any of the above variables: Using our runner example from above if they did 3 sets of 5 reps of squats at 20kg, the volume would be worked out like this: 3 x 5 x 20 = 300. We can usually define it as reps x sets x weight (excluding warm-up sets). Volume can be considered as the amount of work you do. When overloading, the key is to up the ante enough that you don’t reach a plateau, but not so much that it puts strain on the body Overloading the Body via Volume This slow increase in time and therefore intensity would be added weekly until they reached their 5k distance. The following week, they may run for 8-12 minutes. This is fairly straight forward to measure: if someone had a goal of running a 5k, they may start with a simple 5-7-minute jog, twice a week. However, there are more accurate ways of gauging just how hard you’re working. Often when people think of ways to measure intensity, they look at how much you sweat. We can overload the body, via intensity, volume and/or frequency – but never altogether (more on that later). This adaptation to incremental stress is called the ‘overload’ principle. When our bodies are adequately stressed, incrementally, over time, we adapt and make progress. Love it or loathe it, exercise is a stress on the body – but, with the right application, it’s a good stress. In her latest column, personal trainer, sports therapist and Nike Global Master Trainer Joslyn Thompson Rule highlights how to increase the gains of your training programme and overcome frustrating fitness plateaus – without damaging your body. We all want to maximise the benefits of our training sessions and know the secrets behind some of the industry’s pros.
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