Mistake #4: Not applying "Progressive Overload"
Our bodies are REALLY good at adapting… BUT, the ability to adapt can have both positive and negative implications on our health. POSITIVE: The stimulus of consistent exercise creates beneficial adaptations of the heart, lungs, and muscle fibers— resulting in improved efficiency and performance. NEGATIVE: Sitting for extended periods of time/poor posture create negative adaptations like muscle compensations, tightness, and imbalances— resulting in pain and/or injury. The ultimate goal with consistent exercise is to increase the beneficial physiologic adaptions that occur in the body while also correcting the undesirable effects caused by lifestyle habits or chronic patterns.
LEARN, ADAPT, PROGRESS...
I’m willing to bet that you didn’t stop reading books at the 4th-grade level. Your teachers and parents would encourage more challenging books so you could learn new words, their meanings, how to spell them, and use them correctly in context. As you gained knowledge and your vocabulary grew you would progress to a slightly more difficult level of text. The same concept holds true when we talk about “fitness gains”. You can’t do the same workout at the same intensity forever and expect to make progress. Your body will learn to adapt to that intensity, so you will need to ask more of it in order to make fitness gains and reach your goals. Fitness plateaus occur when your body gets used to (aka adapts) the demands of your current fitness routine and it causes your progress to level out— and with that, motivation often declines as well.
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