Has your fitness journey hit a bump in the road? By that I mean have you stopped seeing gains or noticed that your ability to do certain exercises has reached a plateau, or even worse declined? Then perhaps it’s time to switch up your routine. It’s a pretty well-known fact that the human body will adapt to the demands that are placed on it so overtime doing the same workout will have less and less of an effect; but what most people don’t know is how to adjust their workout to push through plateaus and achieve a higher level of fitness. Like we talked about last week, many people think simply adding more weight will help them break through this ceiling but that’s not always the case, especially if the body or particular muscle group is exhausted and having problems lifting the current load already. There are more factors at play that must be considered, and these are known as acute variables.
At the most basic level acute variables modify the stress demands placed on the body and dictate what gains or adaptations will occur. Adding more weight is just one of many acute variables that we can adjust when designing a fitness program and is essentially modifying the intensity of the workout. However, training intensity can also be raised or lowered depending on the environment in which the exercise is completed. For example, to raise the intensity of the bench press, you could add more weight or pick a more unstable surface like a stabilization ball for dumbbell presses thereby increasing proprioception which forces your core muscles to work harder to maintain correct form.
Other variables that can also be tweaked are the amount of reps, sets, rest between exercises, the speed at which the exercises are completed and even the exercises themselves. If you’ve been doing 10 reps of bicep curls then going up to 12 may be in order after a few weeks. Same with sets; if you’ve been doing 2-3, a new goal could be 3-4 as long as you are not overtraining which can ultimately lead to injury. Starting out you will need more rest between sets but can decrease it as you progress. However, intensity will determine how much rest is needed and so a general rule of thumb is the higher the intensity, the longer your body will need to recover and refuel its energy supplies.
The rate in which you complete your rep is also important and can be altered by going faster to increase power, or slower to perform isometric holds thereby increasing stabilization. Plyometrics are a good way to boost power and explosiveness and are performed rapidly so consider working them in which brings us to in my opinion, the most important acute variable; exercise selection.
The average person will only do exercises that they like and that’s why see you guys at the gym that look like Johnny Bravo, you know big chest and little bitty legs. That’s the result of doing the same exercises week in and week out without focusing on other muscle groups which is important not only for your appearance, but also for your overall level of fitness. If you just do the same exercises for any particular muscle then again, the body will eventually adapt so be sure to incorporate a wide variety to keep your body in a state of flux. For example, instead of just bench pressing, try incline bench presses, champagnes, fly’s with cables or dumbbells, push-ups and total body exercises. Remember, it typically takes the body 4 weeks to adjust to stress demands so be sure to switch it up from time to time.
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