Variety Show
Today I'm going to talk about another training principle. This one I personally struggle with a little in my own fitness regime. Well, struggle isn't really the right word. It's more like I'm constantly dealing with this principle on the fore front. The overload, and specificity principle sort of take care of themselves just as long as your smart and constantly pushing yourself. But this next one can be a little tricky for some, some like me.
The Variation Principle.
This is the "you-gotta-mix-things-up" principle.
This principle states that one must vary their training regime to avoid having their bodies get to used to their training. If that happens you can get to the point of dimishing returns, just like economics, you start getting less and less results from the same exercises over and over again. It's also helps to prevent boredom, probably the worst enemy of exercise.
This doesn'e mean you can master an exercise to the point where you'll never have to do it again. It just means you should vary the instensity, duration, frequency (sound familiar? overload principle anyone? see how they all work together?) or style of the exercise.
Here's an example from my own training:
I'm big into pushups, all kinds. I'm always trying to find new ways of dong them. Recently I was getting a little bored of the regular way of doing them, plus I wasn't really improving any further, I hit a wall so to speak. So I used my superior ingenuity to come up with a new way (for me anyway) to tweak my pushups. And boy oh boy, let me tell you, the results have been awesome. Doing 5 of them this new way literally felt like I did 25-50 the old way. Needless to say I almost exclusively do pushups this new way. The results have been crazy, my upper-body is transforming. I thought I was already good at pushups for somebody my size, but I was wrong, maybe I am now. Who knows?
There are always ways to inject some variety into your workouts. Just think, read, research. Contact a trainer. I have some clients with very short attention spans. With these clients I try to make every session different. I have to, otherwise they get bored and don't work as hard, and maybe even quit.
It can be a challenge to marry the variation and specificity principles together. You might think, "One says to be specific and the other says to mix it up, which is it?" It's both. You can be specific to a goal or sport and still vary the workout, just think about it.
These principles all work together. Tomorrow I'll introduce you to yet another one.
Train smart,
RL
The Variation Principle.
This is the "you-gotta-mix-things-up" principle.
This principle states that one must vary their training regime to avoid having their bodies get to used to their training. If that happens you can get to the point of dimishing returns, just like economics, you start getting less and less results from the same exercises over and over again. It's also helps to prevent boredom, probably the worst enemy of exercise.
This doesn'e mean you can master an exercise to the point where you'll never have to do it again. It just means you should vary the instensity, duration, frequency (sound familiar? overload principle anyone? see how they all work together?) or style of the exercise.
Here's an example from my own training:
I'm big into pushups, all kinds. I'm always trying to find new ways of dong them. Recently I was getting a little bored of the regular way of doing them, plus I wasn't really improving any further, I hit a wall so to speak. So I used my superior ingenuity to come up with a new way (for me anyway) to tweak my pushups. And boy oh boy, let me tell you, the results have been awesome. Doing 5 of them this new way literally felt like I did 25-50 the old way. Needless to say I almost exclusively do pushups this new way. The results have been crazy, my upper-body is transforming. I thought I was already good at pushups for somebody my size, but I was wrong, maybe I am now. Who knows?
There are always ways to inject some variety into your workouts. Just think, read, research. Contact a trainer. I have some clients with very short attention spans. With these clients I try to make every session different. I have to, otherwise they get bored and don't work as hard, and maybe even quit.
It can be a challenge to marry the variation and specificity principles together. You might think, "One says to be specific and the other says to mix it up, which is it?" It's both. You can be specific to a goal or sport and still vary the workout, just think about it.
These principles all work together. Tomorrow I'll introduce you to yet another one.
Train smart,
RL
posted by Ryan at 6:56 AM
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