Exercise is getting popular and important role in the life. The gyms are everywhere and most of them are 24/7. You can see the posts as to exercise and workout on the social media.
It is a lot easier to access but we need to understand the basic principles?
Exercise principles we need to know
- Overload
We need some additional physical stress and put harder and stronger effort to improve our fitness. For instance, if your job requires to carry and lift heavy objects, you need to have stronger and heavier stimuli to improve your fitness level. This can be achieved by increasing frequency, intensity and time.
- Specificity
Our body reacts to the stimulus you receive. If you want to increase your cardiovascular system, you need to stimulate that system. Short sprint does not increase your aerobic capacity. Or weight lifter needs to lift 80-100% of 1RM(repetition maximum) to perform better.
- Progressing
Keep inclining exercise level is the key to get a gradual fitness improvement. You can not skip some steps (prone to get injured) and you cannot stay with same intensity for a long time to progress.
- Individuality
Everyone has different structural, body, muscle mass, height and weight. Just because some exercises go well with most of people does not mean they suit you. For example, two guys who are same height, same weight and play same sports may lift different weight. One may be good at doing more reps while the other may be able to lift heavier but not a lot of reps.
- Reversibility
The body gets lazy a lot quicker than we think it would be. If you are the person who works out 5-6 times a week and all of sudden for a few weeks even a week you stop doing your routine for whatever the reason, after that period, you may not be able to as much and heavy as you used to do. Keep being active is a key!
- Adaption
Personally, this is the most crucial principle but not many people know this. The body and brain are super smart. The body gets used to the stimuli for about a few months or even faster. Therefore, it is really important to modify your exercise level, intensity and frequency for every 2-3months so that you can always give your body and the brain new stimulation.
Table below shows how the body reacts to 8 weeks of resistance training.
This graph shows that how resistance training affects muscular and nerves system to increase the muscle mass. Muscle mass starts going up after 2 weeks of strength training (orange line). First 3-4 weeks of training, nerves system contributes to muscle gain more than actual muscle mass which means your brain (cerebrum) and body begins to adapt to the weight. However, after 4 weeks of training, actual muscle mass contributes to gain muscle.
What do you mean by contribution of muscle system and nerves system?
3 components which affects muscle mass (how heavy you can lift or muscle performance level)
1, Nerves system (how much the brain gets activated)
2, Actual muscle mass (dimension of the muscle)
3, Muscle fibre composition
Ex,) two guys have exactly same muscle dimension in quadriceps muscle (thigh muscle) and perform 1 RM of leg extension (straighten the leg with some weight). One (A) can lift heavier than the other (B). WHY? Because A can switch on the brain more than B which could mean A is just used to lifting heavy weight or A can secrete more adrenaline than B.
Or A might have bigger muscle fibres than B (this is 2 dimension of the muscle). Or A has more fast-twitch fibre in comparison to B (fast-twitch fibre is good at exploding power).
*1,2 are modified by training but not 3 as this is genetic.
Reference
- Nathaniel DM Jenkins, Amelia A Miramonti, Ethan C Hill. Greater neural adaptions following high-vs low loads resistance 2017 Frontiers in Physiology 8-331
- Moritani T, DeVries HA. Potential for gross muscle hypertrophy in older man 1980 journal of Gerontology, volume 35, issue 5, pages 672-682
