New Year Fitness resolution?
A Sustainable Approach Multiplies Your Chance of Keeping It!
Two main reasons people don’t stick to exercise programs are lack of time and/or due to sustaining injuries.
Optimal results can and should be achieved in a fraction of the usual time recommendations if a person hopes to stick with a program long term. Realistically, once the initial “honeymoon” period ends, our motivation to get to the gym 3-6 times a week, spending an hour or more each time, not counting travel time, changing and showering is simply not SUSTAINABLE for the vast majority. Interestingly, not only are current time commitment recommendations not sustainable long term, but they are not even optimal.
In exercise, three variables are, frequency, (how often you exercise), volume (how much exercise you do in any given workout) and intensity (the degree of effort put into each set of exercise performed.). Pareto’s 80/20 rule suggests that the majority of success in any endeavour is most often attributable to a minority of overall activities that are most critical. In the case of exercise, intensity is by far the most critical signal that triggers the body’s adaptive response which is the main goal of exercising in the first place.
There is a principle sometimes used for restaurants, that suggests that the food in a restaurant may be described as good, fast or cheap and that you can have any two, but not all three. If it’s good and fast, it won’t be cheap. If it’s good and cheap, it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and cheap it won’t be good.
Similarly, with exercise, if you have high frequency and volume, you can’t have high intensity. If you have high intensity and volume, you will need to drastically reduce frequency. If you have high intensity and frequency, volume will have to be drastically reduced. If intensity has been shown to be the most critical factor, then an optimal program will reduce volume, frequency or both.
Not only is this more optimal, but one of the other reasons it is more sustainable is because, done properly, it minimizes the chances of chronic or acute injuries.
Almost all common “chronic” injuries are the direct result of “over use” or more accurately, cumulative repeated force over time, eventually exceeding the body’s ability to recover. “Acute” injuries are the result of high forces, due to excessive speed and improper form. (Sometimes what may seem like an acute injury is actually “the straw that broke the camel’s back”, which again comes from “over use”).
Our slow motion continuous tension method with one on one supervision was first tested safely with osteoporosis patients. This proved to not only be safe for this vulnerable population but significantly more effective for the general population as well. Moving slowly, eliminating the use of momentum and leverage recruits muscle fibres more agressively, in the safest possible manner. Minimum time commitment, superior results and avoiding injuries means “SUSTAINABLE” over a lifetime.
If you’re looking for a New Year’s fitness resolution that you will actually still be doing next year at this time, take me up on my offer to come in for a complimentary session or two to determine whether this makes sense for you. I guarantee at the very least, you will gain valuable knowledge that you can apply, whether you exercise on your own or with another trainer. richard@sustainablesuccess.ca