Why Do We Repeat Our Workouts?
I'm asked this question quite a bit. People sign up to a programme and are a bit miffed that there is some repetition in the workouts. There is a good reason for this and in fact, I would be doing you all a huge disservice if we just did random workouts all the time.
We have all been here or maybe we see a friend doing this. They go to their gym a few days per week and do the same workout every time. 15 min on the cross-trainer, few kettlebell squats, bicep curls followed by some random core. EVERY SINGLE TIME. They are perplexed because they are dedicated, showing up (until they get bored and stop showing up) and not seeing ANY results. I was this person. I did this for years and completely wasted my time and money.
They are missing a key principle of training; progressive overload.
Progressive Overload
Progressive overload is a method of strength training that advocates for the gradual increase of the stress placed upon the musculoskeletal and nervous system. This improvement in overall performance will, in turn, allow the person to keep increasing the intensity of their training sessions while reducing the risk of injury if the balance is right.
4 ways to progressively overload
In order to continuously adapt and improve, we have to implement a system of progressive overload.
Progressive overload can happen in 4 ways:
Increasing Intensity: Lifting more weight in your next training session.
Increasing Volume: Doing more reps, sets or exercises for a certain muscle group in your next training.
Increasing Frequency: Doing more training sessions than the week before.
Increasing Tension: Increasing the duration of each repetition within an exercise. ie. tempo squats
It is for this above reason that we repeat our 3 strength workouts each week for 4 weeks trying to add a rep / some weight or some time. These are to be done each week for 4 weeks. Make sure you listen carefully to the instructions and demo videos. Email me or leave a comment under the workout if you need any help.
Emma x
