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Five Secret Principles of Physical Exercise Training!

By David Wehrenberg

The five secrets to physical fitness principles are the same in general, specific conditioning programs will vary from person to person depending on there fitness level. The five secret training concepts are overload, progression, specificity, recuperation and reversibility.

SECRET #1

Secret of Overload-To improve in any fitness program you must start with the basic of overloading and stressing the body or specfic muscles. For muscles to increase in strength it must work against a heavier load than it is used to. You do this by increasing the intensity of the exercise by using heavier weight. Another way of overloading is by increasing the duration of exercise. So if you want to increase muscle indurance work out longer by adding repetitions. Another example would be to increase flexibility through the overload principle. To do this you would either strecth the muscle to longer lengths or hold the strecth position for a longer period of time. The overload principle does not mean you have to work so hard that it is painful and you quit working out. You will receive benefit from not putting your body through agony of “NoPain NoGain principle.

SECRET #2

Secret of Progression- This is the area that most people and many trainers seem to miss. This principle is a continuation of overload. You want to gradually increase the overload on the body to have continued muscle and bone growth in the first four the six weeks. After the intial phase of overload a steady progressive rate for the next eighteen to twenty weeks of training is key. Here is where many trainer and people miss this principle. In order to continue progression of your training routine you must change the routine every three weeks. I can’t count how many times a client has told me they have been doing the same routine for the last two years and expecting the a different results. You MUST do something different, increase weight, reps, or sets put some different exercise in your work out. This is the only waty to stimulate your muscle growth and improve your cardio. There are hundreds of different ways to change you work out use your imanigation!

SECRET #3

Secret of Exercise Specificity-is when a exercise workout affects specific muscles involved in training. For example you wouldn’t expect your cardio to get better by shooting basketball jump shots. So if you want to improve your cardiac output you would practice running longer distances or perform interval training. If you want to pass a police fitness test than you need to work specific exercises that police departments require you to pass.

SECRET#4

Secret of Recuperation-To receive maximum benefit from your physical training routines your body needs to rest and recovery from all of the stress placed on it during training sessions. Your body needs rest in between work outs for your program to be effective. It took me a long time to get my wife to understand this prinicple, she loves to work out but she couldn’t figure out why she was not improving. That’s because she was overtraining, she was constanlty breaking down her body and not giving it time to recovery properly. Proper rest is essential to improved fitness and to reach your goals, take off twenty four hours in between workouts sessions, it will do your body good.

SECRET #5

Secret of Reversibility of training effects-Once you reach your fitness goal, you must make it a habit for life . Once you stop you will lose everything you worked so hard for. If you stop weight training in eight weeks studies show that you lose 10% of muscular strength and 30-40% of muscular endurance. The good news is that every cell in your body has memory and if you happen to stop working out for a period of time you will get your strength back fairly quick. I urge you to stay involved with you program even when you get busy, do something physical your health is price less.

Source p70-72 Total fitness and wellness 2nd edition Powers,Dodd,Noland

About the Author:

David Wehrenberg is a certified Athletic Trainer and Former Police Officer located in Maryland, District of Columbia, Northern Virginia. His website is http://www.policefitnessbootcamp.com