Fitness doesn’t have to be complicated. As a Leading Personal Trainer in Richmond, London, I say this quite regularly to my clients. Your body is an incredible machine and you can go into the science of how to optimise every last detail of every aspect of every movement. However, do you really need to?
Unless you are an elite or aspiring top level athlete, there is nothing wrong with keeping things simple and following the basics.
A Few Basic Principles of Exercise
Specificity – Matching the demands of your training to that of your sport or activity. Look at what is working while you are performing, from there recreate those movements and complete exercises that focus on the muscles in those areas.
Overload – Placing greater than normal demands upon the body and working muscles. So in order to progress you need to increase your resistance (weight), reps, sets or intensity.
Progression – Steadily increasing workload. Start off slow and built from there, your body needs time to adapt.
Reversibility – Unfortunately, adaptions that happen as a result of training will reverse if you stop entirely.
Moderation & Recovery – Your body needs time to adapt. You cannot always work to failure, it is important to have rest periods and days to allow the body to adapt.
How This Affects You!
If you simply want to improve your fitness, you need to regularly do something that makes you out of breath. You need to ensure you move a greater resistance than normal to overload the muscles. You also need to ensure you keep your muscles & joints supple, flexible and healthy. Do you need to go into a ridiculous amount of depth looking at 7 day splits, specific training zones, food timings, complicated exercises & and improving that top 5%? As I said, unless you are a top level athlete, probably not. Just go and move. There is nothing wrong in adding science and specifics later on, but first, just move.
