Handling Change
June 7th 2007 14:12
If you pick up a weight with the intent of using it to improve your fitness, you have many questions that must be answered. How heavy should the weight be? What muscle is the lift going to stimulate? How many times should it be lifted at one time? How often should it be lifted in a week? There are actually so many questions that the beginner cannot conceive of most.
That is why there are so many workouts for you to rely upon out there. Reliance is the word,though. Every routine has an overriding purpose that it will achieve,if followed. Every routine provides answers to the above questions based on that purpose. You may choose a routine whose sole purpose is to get you started. It will tell you to take a certain weight and do 10 repetitions with it on some movement, wait exactly one minute, and repeat. It will offer a simple illustration as to how to do the movement and you will mimic it. Then you will be sent on to another movement and the process will begin again. The beginner workout will then answer the question as to how often you should appear at the gym and do the workout.
If you follow this routine you will get results for awhile. Your ability to do the movements will improve and your muscle will grow. If you continue with that routine,however,the positive results will stop and the boredom and dissatisfaction will set in.You will have reached the level of fitness that you will have to be happy with, unless you take the time and effort to make changes in some or all the considerations that the workout prescribed for you.
If you take the beginner workout and make a couple of simple changes in it, you will prolong its life. Lets say that you decide that you are not going to do 10 repetitions of each movement but as many as you can until complete failure. You will force new adaptation and your fitness will improve. Lets say that you add more weight to the movements you do in.You might discover that the number of repetitions you can do goes down,but after a few weeks of this there is again improvement.
Weight training is thus about how you go about changing what you do. If you never really change your workouts, you will get no real change in fitness. If you change too often or too much, you will not get the results you hope for either. This is basic to weight training. Yet, muscle mags and columns are sprinkled with queries from people who complain that they are stuck and cannot make progress. In the next few post I will try my best to explain how to systematically approach change. Your servant, as always.
That is why there are so many workouts for you to rely upon out there. Reliance is the word,though. Every routine has an overriding purpose that it will achieve,if followed. Every routine provides answers to the above questions based on that purpose. You may choose a routine whose sole purpose is to get you started. It will tell you to take a certain weight and do 10 repetitions with it on some movement, wait exactly one minute, and repeat. It will offer a simple illustration as to how to do the movement and you will mimic it. Then you will be sent on to another movement and the process will begin again. The beginner workout will then answer the question as to how often you should appear at the gym and do the workout.
If you follow this routine you will get results for awhile. Your ability to do the movements will improve and your muscle will grow. If you continue with that routine,however,the positive results will stop and the boredom and dissatisfaction will set in.You will have reached the level of fitness that you will have to be happy with, unless you take the time and effort to make changes in some or all the considerations that the workout prescribed for you.
If you take the beginner workout and make a couple of simple changes in it, you will prolong its life. Lets say that you decide that you are not going to do 10 repetitions of each movement but as many as you can until complete failure. You will force new adaptation and your fitness will improve. Lets say that you add more weight to the movements you do in.You might discover that the number of repetitions you can do goes down,but after a few weeks of this there is again improvement.
Weight training is thus about how you go about changing what you do. If you never really change your workouts, you will get no real change in fitness. If you change too often or too much, you will not get the results you hope for either. This is basic to weight training. Yet, muscle mags and columns are sprinkled with queries from people who complain that they are stuck and cannot make progress. In the next few post I will try my best to explain how to systematically approach change. Your servant, as always.
| 47 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog