Increasing the Intensity of Your Workouts Incrementally to Increase Your Fitness
You’ve worked out and it seems that you’ve reached a plateau, right? It happens to everyone. Let me ask you, have been doing the same workout on a regular basis? If you have, then there will come a time when the results you were getting will stop (or even reverse).
Our bodies were meant to adapt to physical stress. Our muscles will grow with each new challenge placed upon it. Our lungs will grow from both physical exertion and higher elevations. Our hearts become more efficient at pumping blood with increased exercise intensity (not from increased length longer than 45 minutes).
If you’re doing the same thing over and over your body will say, I need a new challenge. In weightlifting, it could be in the form of extra weight, extra reps or extra sets. Heck, it could be in the way each lift is done. Speeding up or slowing down. When I do plyometrics, I make adjustments in the amount, the speed and the way I do them. When I do pull-ups, I will add weight, reps and how I do them as well.
It is about adjusting. Maybe doing a different types of exercises is needed or even a new fitness routine. If you’ve been strictly lifting weights, then maybe doing bodyweight exercises will be better. How about doing pistols (one legged squats) instead of regular squats?
You can increase the intensity of any exercise or fitness program, even walking. It is simply how you do it.
I’ve added a Deck of Cards Workout to the mix of what I do. I will change up my circuit training and even do Tabata Circuits. Doing outdoor training versus indoor will help with one’s mental aspect as well. The point in all of this is to keep challenging your body in different ways.
Increasing intensity on an incremental basis is the surest and easiest way to accomplish that. So, there is no reason to plateau and every reason to simply raise the intensity, switch up and keep challenging yourself.
Cheers,
Bob Choat
“Transformational Master Black Belt” America’s #1 Mind-Body Transformation Expert and author of Mind Your Own Fitness
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