Have you made plans to continuously improve at each workout?
Maybe you should as monitoring your workouts may pay in the long run!
Exercise progress forces the body to adapt to higher levels of physical fitness, which develops a greater demand in energy metabolism and expenditure. At higher levels of physical fitness cell physiology is vigorous and helps force the body to control weight at a faster rate, even if the diet is relatively high in calories an efficient energy system can take care of the all calories without converting the excess into fat.
You can only improve your fitness by challenging the body to perform at higher levels, although this must be a gradual process too much too soon can shock the nervous system and may result in an over trained state. For an over trained individual the feeling of constant tiredness will reduce motivation for further workouts.
Record each session and use the information to plan future workouts.
By recording each workout you can plan a gradual climb to a higher level of fitness. The degree of effort required for an improvement can be estimated before starting any exercise. For example, if you walked 3 miles in 30 minutes then try walking 3.5 miles in 30 minutes the next time you decide to walk for a workout. Performance levels fluctuate all the time so it’s not just a case of remembering what you did it should be logged.
Monitoring your progress is easy it’s simply a case of writing down everything you did during a workout, things you should note include...
- The day you trained
- Time of workout
- Type of exercise
- Duration
- Target heart rate level
- Estimated calorie expenditure
Make a record of food intake
It may also pay to note down what you eat on each training day, this information can help determine which foods give you more energy and possibly which foods make you feel sluggish. For example I discovered that rice eaten the night before a weight training session gave me much more energy. I could train longer and at a higher pace yet it was only discovered after I started recording food intake. This doesn't mean everyone will benefit from eating rice the previous night however, logging your progress enables you to discover what works and what doesn't for both exercise and diet.
Go for exercise progress and watch the muscle energy system develop into a fat burning machine!
Combine various types of exercise to speed progress!
The human body has a habit of adapting to all sorts of stress, it adapts to the stress of exercise that's how we become stronger and fitter. What many don't realize is energy expenditure also adapts, in other words we gradually burn less energy if we constantly repeat the same exercise for too many sessions. The simple reason for this fact is muscle coordination improves resulting in less contracting muscle cells to achieve the same movements. In fact it’s a little more complicated than this because there's also improvement in neurons innervating the musculature, plus better energy provision and utilization within the cells.
Many of us have experienced the feeling of excess energy expenditure at some point, remember when trying to swim or ride a bike for the first time how breathless we became within a few minutes. As the bicycle clumsily swayed from side to side we vigorously contract other stabilizer muscles in order to control balance, when swimming we drove the arms through the water as the fear of sinking crept into the mind. These intense movements place a greater demand for energy from muscle cells.
Practice has taught us to move efficiently as a result most of us now glide through the water to complete a full length of the pool without becoming breathless; the result is we burn less energy than when we first attempted the exercise. On repeating exercises we gradually require longer sessions in order to burn the same amount of calories.
The answer is not to stick with the same workout too often maybe change it after 3-5 sessions and energy expenditure should stay above normal, or you could rotate the use of 3 or 4 different programs then as each workout is repeated try to improve on the previous performance. Providing you have clearance from your own doctor or physician you should be utilizing the benefits from trying out new exercises just remember to record everything for future reference.
