Are You Following the Wrong Exercise Program?

Posted by Neill Abayon

Your body recognizes exercise as a form of stress -- mostly good stress. When you stress your body the right way for long enough, it adapts.

When a body changes, there’s a reason. When a body doesn’t change, there’s also a reason. It’s important to learn how to ‘drive’ your body and to discover what works for you. Individual bodies respond differently to the same stimulus. Here’s a few things to consider:

1. What works (in terms of creating significant physical change) and what you enjoy doing are often two different things

Yes, you should make exercise fun when possible, but sometimes you need to stop looking for easy and starting doing effective.

2. Your body will only adapt when it needs to

If you constantly stimulate your body the same way day in, day out (same workout, same exercises, same format, same intensity, same weights, same distance, same machines, same duration) it won’t change because it doesn’t need to. Give your body a reason to change and it will.

3. Over-training

Many people simply train so much that their body is in a constant state of disrepair. When you stress an already stressed (over-trained, injured, exhausted) body, you’re setting yourself up for long term problems and frustration.

4. Going through the motions

Don’t go to the gym and fluff around for an hour or so without actually doing much. Sometimes you simply need to force your body to adapt. If what you’re doing in your workouts is easy for you, then don’t expect to see much in the way of physiological change.

5. All the other stuff

If you’ve nailed your exercise but your diet is a nightmare, your results will not be good. Other factors which might sabotage or inhibit what you’re doing with your exercise program are: alcohol, drugs, lack of sleep, stress and medications. No use training like an Olympian if you’re living a lifestyle which is at odds with your exercise goals.

6. The Wrong Program

For a wide range of reasons thousands and thousands of people are currently following a program which is less than ideal, if not completely inappropriate for them. If your program wasn’t designed specifically for you (by someone who knows their stuff), then it’s not the best strategy for you.

See the article here.