Challenge Your Exercise Routine For Better Fitness
When exercising, many times it will become routine and mundane. When it starts to become easy, then it is time that you start to challenge it. That means to switch it up. If you normally do circuit training, then you’ll need to change some of the exercises in it or switch to another routine altogether.
Most people who don’t fully understand how exercise affects the body will do endless hours of cardio on a treadmill or exercise bike. While those exercises will burn calories, your body may have adapted so that growth eventually stops. The calories that are burning at that point through cardio are not what you want.
If you notice long distance runners you will see that their muscles are small in size. And many long distance runners may even have an enlarged heart. This happened to one of my friends who run ultra-marathons.
Doing sprints in an interval routine is much better for both cardiovascular and muscular endurance. You’ll also burn fat at a higher rate and retain your muscle size as well. If you look at competitive sprinters their bodies are better developed versus long-distance runners. Our ancestors did not engage in long distance running. What they did do was to walk long distances while tracking game and then engage in a sprint to either catch or to throw a spear. A sprint was also useful to get away from a predator.
Other ways to challenge your exercise routine is to change up your weight lifting routine. You may want to switch to a bodyweight exercise routine for a few weeks and then back to your weightlifting. If you are a bodybuilder, then switching from a standard progressive set routine to a compound set may help.
Doing exercises in different ways is another way to challenge your exercises. For example, pushups can be switched around – from doing standard pushups to doing one-arm pushups. By changing any specific exercise routine, you’ll help your muscles to grow because of forcing it to adapt to the new challenge.
Our muscles, like the rest of our body, will continually adapt. It’s part of life. Without the adaptation, we cannot make it. Our bodies fight viruses and other diseases because it learns through adaptation. So when our muscles get used to doing a particular exercise or workout, then it’s time to change it. It has learned how to do that particular one. It’s also a reason you can take a very fit athlete in one sport and it would be tough for them in another one. They haven’t adapted.
So continually challenge your body and it will continually grow stronger and fitter.
