“Muscle confusion” is a popular phrase in fitness media nowadays. Apparently, the idea is to avoid plateaus by continually challenging your body in new ways. It makes great advertising copy, but how does it work in practice?

This blog series will attempt to answer that question by taking a closer look at the relationship between exercise variety and progress.

Simply defined, progress is positive development. It is advancing in a certain direction or toward a particular goal. To understand progress, exercise science uses the SAID principle – specific adaptation to imposed demands. This means that when you run a mile as fast as you can, your body adapts to make you a better miler. So, generally speaking, if you want to improve something, you should train it (or the qualities it requires) specifically. That’s always the place to start.

Now, to make consistent progress, you need a consistent stimulus. Initially, this means you should keep running that mile, and keep striving for better times. Eventually, though, specific training leads to a plateau. You run hard, but your mile time doesn’t improve. This is where variety comes in.

Plateaus indicate that it’s time for a change in your routine. But not just any change, not variety for the sake of variety. Instead, you want variety for the sake of progress – or, put another way,progressive variety. The basic idea is to do something similar enough to continue progressing in the direction you want to go, but different enough to impose new demands on your body. Rather than continue to run one mile as fast as he can, our hypothetical runner might decide to run half-mile repeats with short rests. Or he might choose to run as far as he can in 5 minutes. (Let’s imagine that’s how fast he eventually wants to run a mile.) In either case, he challenges his body in a new way while still developing the physical qualities necessary to improve his mile time.

Oftentimes, further progress only demands that you change one or two variables. Depending on the activity, changes in time, distance, resistance (weight), sets, reps, rest, etc., can all work. Just keep your goal in mind, and continue to train the qualities that will get you there, only slightly differently.

Next time, I’ll address how and when you can train multiple physical qualities (strength, endurance, flexibility, etc.) simultaneously.

This post discusses the basics of bodyweight exercise and suggests a variety of ways you can make it work for you. If you take one thing from this article, though, it should be this:

Ultimately, fitness is free. Your body is your gym, and it’s always open for business.   
                               

Remember your playground days? Running, jumping, clambering, climbing. Wherever they are, kids love to move. If bad weather keeps them inside, they run in circles, jump on the bed, or charge up and down the stairs. Kids understand what adults have forgotten – for fun and effective exercise, all you really need is… yourself.

You can get a full-body workout anytime you want without a single piece of equipment. Using the resistance of your own bodyweight, you can strengthen every major muscle group through its natural range of motion. There are hundreds of movements to try, each with several variations, but here is a short list of basic patterns and example exercises to get you thinking.

• Squat – bodyweight squat, jump squat, pistol
• Bend – bodyweight good-morning, one-leg deadlift, king deadlift
• Push – kneeling push-up, decline push-up, one-arm push-up
• Pull – doorframe row, inverted row, sternum pull-up
• Lunge – stationary lunge, walking lunge, split squat
• Twist – twisting crunch, windshield wipers, hanging windshield wipers
• Gait – walk, run, sprint

Basic Progressions – Reps and Weight:

Once you begin regular bodyweight exercise, progress comes very quickly. Not only do your muscles adapt, but your nervous system learns to coordinate your movements more efficiently. It feels pretty awesome when you realize that a formerly tough move is now simple – imagine busting out a set of 10 or 20 pull-ups whenever you feel like it, for example. Of course, as exercises become easier, you need to find new ways to shock your body into further progress. With strength training broadly, people generally progress either by increasing the number of repetitions or by adding more weight.

Though you can almost always add repetitions to bodyweight exercises, adding weights is trickier. Strictly speaking, bodyweight exercises become something else if you add weight. For example, if you add dumbbells to a bodyweight lunge, it becomes a dumbbell lunge (another great exercise). However, if you hold a dumbbell between your ankles while you do a set of pull-ups, convention still considers that a bodyweight exercise. Different bodyweight exercises have different hacks. You can have someone put a plate on your back for push-ups, or on your lap for bench dips. A heavy backpack works for a number of “bodyweight” exercises, and a weighted vest works for most. But again, you don’t need any equipment.

Stay tuned for the second part of this series, which explains how to take your bodyweight exercise to the next level – from beginner to mastery.

So far, posts on this blog have focused on fitness fundamentals. Our idea has been to make fitness as simple as possible, by providing high level overviews of important topics and concepts, and by suggesting practical ways anyone can live a fitter, healthier life. This post is a bit different. It focuses first on an individual, and then on what his work represents for the fitness industry in general.

Peter Zwerling owns and operates a gym called Regular Exercise in San Francisco. As you might guess, the name of the gym reflects the philosophy of the owner. Peter doesn’t try to sell people on quick fixes or miracle equipment. He doesn’t push fads, gimmicks, or “secrets” from the latest self-styled guru. Rather, Peter, and the trainers at his facility, encourage and instruct people in the practice of regular exercise. To make things fun and challenging, they use a variety of tools and methods – everything from strength training and stretching to obstacle courses and reaction drills.

Peter is always looking for innovative ways to engage people in fitness, to help them make exercise a priority, and to improve their quality of life. We at GAIN Fitness have had the pleasure of working with Peter and some of the other folks at Regular Exercise, and we think they represent what is right with the industry.

Even with all the misinformation and gimmickry that pollute popular ideas about health and fitness for the sake of a quick buck, there are still lots of good people out there, working hard to spread quality information and help people improve their lives through exercise.

Attention all Personal Trainers:
We invite personal trainers and other fitness professionals who share that same ethic to contact us about possible collaboration. As a young service, we’re constantly seeking to expand our range of expertise, and we look forward to joining forces with like-minded folks.

Don’t hesitate to drop us a line: trainers@gainfitness.com.

A semi-pro female figure skater and budding writer named Amber Sass contributed to this post. We hope readers of both sexes find it helpful – women in their own training, and men in encouraging the women in their lives to get fit and stay healthy.

One common misconception we hear frequently is that women shouldn’t lift weights or engage in any type of strength training. Some worry about developing bulging muscles, while others claim that women risk injury by lifting weights. First off, many men wish it were so easy to build muscle. Women hardly need to worry about sprouting man arms overnight. As for risking injury, women should know that strength training, done correctly, is not only safe but can actually prevent injury. Now, having dispensed with two of the more common objections, let’s consider some benefits.

Women who strength train commonly report feeling more vibrant, capable and confident as a result. Improvements in posture and mood really do go together.

As women become stronger, formerly strenuous activities become easier, so more strength often means more independence in daily living.

Along with an increase in physical strength, women usually experience significant improvements in body composition and muscle tone. The number on the scale may not change much initially, since women new to strength training often replace fat with muscle, but they soon see the difference in the mirror, and can feel it in the way their clothes fit.

Studies show that strength training helps prevent heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, back pain, and depression – just to name a few.

As increased strength makes physical tasks easier, women discover that they have energy to spare.

Strength training increases bone mineralization, making bones more resistant to fracture. Women, coincidentally, experience higher rates of osteoporosis than men.  Strength training helps offsets that risk.

Strength training helps any Beauty fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly.

This is just a sampling of the benefits that women can gain from strength training. As you can see, far from an aesthetic blunder or physical danger, strength training actually helps women both look and feel better.

Even when they understand all the benefits of strength training, many women still struggle to get started. If the variety of free weights, resistance bands, machines, and bodyweight exercises seems overwhelming, we encourage women to start very simply, with just a few basic exercises, 2-3 times per week, and then progress to more demanding exercises from there.

If you read the previous post, “How to Commit to Fitness, Part 1,” you already know several powerful ways to motivate yourself. This post describes three practical guidelines to help you realize those intentions. Together, these guidelines provide structure, a framework to support your efforts and encourage consistency.

This one may sound daunting, but don’t panic. Even if all you do is stretch for two minutes while you nuke a burrito, it still counts. You might be thinking: “But two minutes won’t do anything!” Think again. Though it’s true those two minutes of stretching may only offer marginal physical benefits, daily exercise is daily exercise. Some days you do more, some you do less, but every day you do something. The point is to establish a beachhead in the battle against inactivity — to create a new habit (however modest) that will eventually lead to “full mobilization.”

At this point, I want to remind you about the importance of awareness, as I described it in the previous post. When you exercise, even if you’re only taking two minutes to stretch, pay attention to your body and all the changing sensations that accompany movement. Then, at the end of each session, ask yourself ‘why is exercise important to me?’ This helps rewire your brain to make health and fitness a priority. It might seem silly, but it works very, very well.

OK, say you’ve established a habit through daily exercise (of whatever kind). Now it’s time to extend your gains.

Have you noticed how getting started is usually the hardest part? That’s why we stripped Rule #1 to its essence (daily exercise of any kind), and it’s also the insight behind this seven minute minimum. Even when you’re busy, tired, or otherwise unmotivated, you can always spare seven minutes, so commit to just 420 seconds of activity every day. If you decide to call it a day after seven minutes, that’s fine. You’ll probably find, however, that seven minutes is just enough time to get the blood pumping, and for your muscles and joints to start moving freely. You’ll notice that as your body becomes ready for exercise, your mind does too. Most days, seven minutes is just the beginning.

For some people, fitness lives in the gym. For the inspired, though, fitness lives in the world. The qualities you develop through dedicated exercise can and should enrich your life in new and even unexpected ways. Looking better naked is nice, of course, but I’m also talking about things like playing with your kids, running with your dog, or helping a friend move. In a way, fitness is potential energy looking for action. So put it to work! You’ll find that fitness not only improves your life, but also allows you to have a stronger impact on others, and nothing is more motivating than making a difference.

I hope this and the previous post have provided you with some useful methods to fuel or reignite your fitness efforts. I’m also curious:

Intensity Explained.

When people describe their workout routines, they usually focus on the amount of time they spent doing something. “I hit the gym for two hours.” or “I rode the bike for sixty minutes.” While duration is important, sometimes we pay too much attention to “how long” and totally neglect another key aspect of fitness — effort, or “how hard.” What did you do for two hours at the gym? How intense was that hour-long ride? Did you push yourself, or were you just going through the motions?

Intensity is duration’s counterpart, it describes the level of effort you apply to an activity. In general, higher intensity means more work and more fatigue. People often equate high intensity to faster heart rate, but it can have more specialized meanings as well (lifting a higher percentage of your one-rep max, for example). The take home point is that higher intensity workouts deliver more results for a given period of time. Here’s an example:

• Amy and Jane are identical twins. Amy jogs for 30 minutes at a rate of 5 miles per hour. During that time, she runs 2.5 miles and burns 288 calories.
• Jane runs for 30 minutes. At 10 miles per hour, she laps Amy and burns 594 calories.

Jane ran twice as far and burned twice as many calories, even though both sisters ran for the same length of time. Jane’s higher intensity also challenged her body to adapt. Amy took it easy by comparison. If Amy keeps doing the minimum while Jane pushes herself to improve, the sisters won’t be identical for long.

Does this mean that lower intensity exercise is for chumps? Not at all. Even a short walk has its benefits. Besides, our bodies can only handle so much high intensity exercise before they become overtrained and start to break down. To prevent overtraining and develop general fitness, workouts should vary in both intensity and duration. Fresh challenges also stimulate you mentally, helping you commit to fitness for the long term.

Here’s what I suggest: Exercise daily, and each day after you’ve warmed up, listen to your body. It will tell you when to push and when to coast.

Feel charged? By clarifying future benefits, visualization offers a taste of what’s to come and an instant motivational boost. Try a little visualization every day, even if it’s just for 30 seconds at your desk.

Accountability: Skin in the Game.
Visualization can inspire a fresh effort by clarifying the benefits of change, but rewards are only half of the motivational equation. Perseverance loves a downside too – “nothing ventured, nothing gained” and all that. One effective method to combat laziness is to risk your pride by telling the people you most respect about your fitness goals. By sharing specifically what you plan to achieve accomplish and when, you make yourself accountable both to them and to your own ego. Failure will be doubly embarrassing…. More reason to get fit!

Awareness: Achieve Clarity.
Together, visualization and accountability create powerful emotions to help you achieve your fitness goals, but you still need one more thing: the right mindset. The fact is, change happens naturally when you become aware, truly and consistently aware, of how your actions effect your health, fitness, and well-being. So when you exercise, experience all the sensations of your body and all the thinking that accompanies them. When you eat, become aware of all the feelings and thoughts that attend eating. As you develop this clarity of mind, the bad habits fade away. Suddenly the potato chips have less appeal, and every run, every stretch, is different and exhilarating.

You’re now equipped with three very effective motivational techniques. There are many others, and if you keep in mind the importance of emotions and mindset in goal-setting and commitment, you’re certain to discover more for yourself.

Check back soon for the second part of this series, where I’ll address the second component of commitment: structure.