).png)
July 28, 2023
In today’s Health With Balance newsletter, I’m going to explain 4 principles you need to keep in mind with any exercise program to ensure that you 1) keep progressing, and 2) avoid wasting your time in the gym.
I see far too many people putting in their time in the gym, thinking that they’ll reap all of the benefits of exercise just by working up a sweat and wearing themselves out.
Usually, this stems from a mentality that reduces exercise to mere calorie burn - a mentality that says, "as long as you're moving around frantically, you're burning calories and meeting the goal of exercise, right?"
As I’ve written before, the best way to view exercise is for what it builds, not for what it burns. Exercise then becomes the Swiss army knife of health and longevity. Peter Attia calls it "the most powerful longevity drug" that we have available to us - yes, even more powerful than pharmaceuticals.
The potential benefits are many:
More resilient aging
More functional in everyday life
Better bone density and reduced frailty
Better brain health
Better immune system
But in order to keep reaping those benefits for whatever years or decades you have left, you have to keep at least 4 factors in mind. Simply flailing around on the gym floor is not going to cut it.
Let's dive in.
#1: You need to apply targeted stress to your body to force it to improve.
All of the benefits of exercise I listed above are examples of adaptations your body makes in response to stress.
Yes, exercise is a stressor!
Exercise is a crucible where you intentionally subject your body to some level of stress - whether in the form of a heavy weight, a heavy weight lifted multiple times, or cardiovascular stress.
If the stressor is a bit beyond your body's current capabilities, your body will detect the deficiency. This starts the process of shoring up weaknesses to be able to better deal with that stressor the next time you encounter it.
This is why the first time you do a set of squats, for example, it feels excruciatingly difficult. But if you do it again (most likely a few days later), it feels slightly easier, and even easier the 3rd and 4th times you do it.
#2: In order to keep making progress, you have to incorporate progressive overload.
This follows logically from point #1. If your body is adapting and shoring up weaknesses, pretty soon that set of squats is going to feel so easy that it’s not even remotely stressful anymore.
This is the concept of progressive overload. In order to keep driving adaptations, you’ll need to continue increasing the difficulty of the exercise to match your ever-improving fitness level. You can’t keep doing the same exercise routine with the exact same intensity level week after week and expect to continue making progress.
With strength training, this might mean increasing your reps, the weight used, the difficulty of the exercise, or your technique.
Of course, these improvements are meant to be made over long periods of time. At first, you might be able to increase your weights every single workout, but eventually, your progress will slow down. This is completely normal!
#3: You need to take your recovery as seriously as your training.
Here’s the kicker. You can get points 1 and 2 right, but your progress will almost certainly stall if you don’t take point 3 seriously.
You’ll only benefit from the stress you inflict on your body if you are able to recover from that stress.
Recovery is actually where your body rebuilds - getting stronger and more efficient. The exercise session breaks your body down to some extent, sending the signal to shore up weaknesses.
But it’s in between your exercise sessions that you’re recovering and rebuilding.
Practically, this means taking your nutrition, sleep, and stress management seriously. If you don’t, you’ll be leaving gains on the table.
#4: Not every exercise session needs to leave you hot, sweaty, and exhausted.
Again, this follows from point #3. Stress is potent, and you can only take so much of it at any given time. You can only do so much intense exercise - either strength training or cardio - before you have to scale back and give your body a chance to recover.
If you’re sweaty, exhausted, and out of breath every single time you work out, your progress will stall fairly quickly. You need some intensity, but only so much to force adaptation.
You don’t get bonus points for making extra-large sweat angels on the gym floor at the end of each workout.
Joel Jamieson makes this point well:
Summary
To reap all of the potent benefits of exercise, you must subject yourself to a stressor that is just beyond your current fitness level, but not so far beyond that you exceed your capacity to recover. Making continued progress for the long term is all about learning to manage your stress and recovery load.
Today’s action step:
Take stock of your current exercise routine. Do you sense that you're overtraining, undertraining, or in that Goldilocks ("just right") zone of stress? Depending on your answer, either 1) step up the intensity or frequency of your training, or 2) scale it back and focus on sleep and recovery strategies instead.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, click the button below. You'll be taken to the email subscriber page to get each edition of HWB in your inbox every Friday.
Commentaires